The Witch Who Mysteries Box Set

by Katie Penryn

  “I prefer dogs myself,” said Sam bending down to stroke Zig and Zag, our two German shepherds, and Piffle, a cute dachshund we had adopted. The dogs offered him vigorous tail waggings in return.

  Felix harrumphed. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings, young Sam.”

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to,” I said to smooth things over. “You’ve broken my concentration and, anyway, we have to prepare ourselves for lunch with the mayor.”

  “What today?” asked Sam, “That’s short notice. And who’s going? All of us? Can I get out of it?”

  “Just Felix, you and I. I phoned Monsieur Bonhomie to make an appointment to see him about advice on setting up the antiques business. He invited us to lunch, the three of us. It would be discourteous not to turn up, Sam, and I’ll need your help with the forms we’ll have to fill in. It’d be more efficient for you to be there from the beginning.”

  Attached to the side of the house was a brocante, an antiques shop, which had been left to us along with the house by our father. In its present state shop was perhaps too smart a word as it hadn’t been opened for close on sixty years. Furniture, paintings and objets d’art whose value we couldn’t even guess at filled every square inch. Our father’s request was that we run an antiques business to provide us with income to supplement the trust fund his will had set up for us.

  “I suppose it would give me a chance to practice my French,” said Sam. “I’d better go and make myself presentable,” he added as he left the study to Felix and me.

  “Did you warn Audrey we wouldn’t be in for lunch?” Felix asked.

  “Yes. She said she’d take Jimbo and her two kids down on the beach this afternoon if we’re late returning from the mayor’s.”

  I’d met Audrey by accident, literally. She crashed her car into mine, totaling her unroadworthy Deux Chevaux. The sight of her distress had taken my anger away in a second. Old bruises and scabs bore witness to the reason for her headlong flight and lack of care on the road. We’d taken her in to hide her from her abusive husband. She was a pleasant young woman and had taken on the task of cook, enjoying working in the kitchen Gwinny had revamped for us in accordance with Dad’s Last Will and Testament.

  Felix clicked his fingers in front of me. When I looked up at him he smiled, green lights sparkling in his eyes. “Thought I’d lost you for a moment there. So? We’ll visit the cats tonight?”

  I smiled back at him. “I’m sorry if I didn’t catch on straight away. There’s so much to think about at the moment.”

  “It’ll be fun. You’ll enjoy it. We never know when we’re going to need their help again. For another murder maybe.”

  My smile gave way to outright laughter. “Never going to happen. This is peaceful Beaucoup-sur-mer beloved of holidaymakers looking for a fun holiday by the sea, free from big city crime. Last week’s murder was a one-off. You heard what Inspector Dubois said. They’d never had a CSI unit here before. We can concentrate on our own lives now. There’s no chance of another murder. It’s statistically impossible.”

  “There you go again with the logic. I’m crossing my fingers and I suggest you do to,” he said sticking his crossed fingers into my side.

  Oh, what the heck. Better safe than sorry. I crossed mine and thought positive thoughts.

  *

  We didn’t have far to go to the mayor’s house. It sat on the other side of the horseshoe bay that makes up the seafront of Beaucoup-sur-mer. The similarity ended there. His modern bungalow hung low on the promontory, its verandah running all the way around the house. The drive curled behind the house leaving the front aspect open to the sea. The mayor’s wife, Madame Bonhomie, had set up a table for lunch under the clump of wind battered fir trees that edged the terrace.

  “Tina Bonhomie,” she said coming forward to meet us holding out her hand in welcome.

  She explained that her husband had been held up at the office but would be along shortly. This was the first time I’d a good look at her. It had been too dark at our party the previous week to see much of anyone. Where the mayor was portly, she was slim. Where he was rough like a bear, she was as neat as a doll.

  As she showed us to our seats she said, “It’s lucky my husband is late. It gives us a chance to get to know one another.”

  I smiled as I sat down in a chair facing the sea. It was good to feel the breeze coming in off the tide and cooling me down in what must have been a good 95 degrees F even in the shade. Felix took the seat beside me and Sam sat opposite. Tina handed round an apéritif of kir royale and we made small talk until Monsieur Bonhomie arrived all in rush, his face bright red in the heat.

  “Welcome, welcome, my dear friends, welcome,” he greeted us, shaking hands with the guys and brushing a kiss across mine. “We have much to discuss… and where better, eh?” he said sweeping his stubby arm across the view and missing his wife’s nose by an inch.

  She flinched, caught his arm and led him to his seat at the head of the table.

  “I’ll fetch the hors d’oeuvres,” she said turning to go into the house.

  “I’ll help,” I said springing to my feet, but she pushed me down saying she didn’t need me.

  When she returned, a tall girl of model proportions with chestnut hair and eyes like almonds accompanied her. Sam perked up and began to pay attention.

  “This is my daughter, Emmanuelle,” she said as the beautiful creature set plates down in front of us.

  Sam’s mouth dropped. I had to kick him to break his enchantment before he gave himself away.

  “She will be lunching with us. The little ones are too young. At eighteen Emmanuelle is sensible and discreet. You may talk in front of her without fear of her passing on anything you say.”

  With everyone served and the wine poured, Emmanuelle sat in the chair next to Sam. He raised his brows at me to say wow!

  While the three of us enjoyed the delicious food, our attention was taken up with the matters under discussion. Even Sam paid attention. The mayor gave us something of a lecture on carrying on a business in France.

  “So many dossiers,” he said. “That’s the French way. Everything in quintuplicate, on paper and on the computer system. Files everywhere. Forms galore.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from sighing. I hated paperwork and not only because I had trouble reading.

  The mayor patted my hand. “Don’t worry, little one. We have ways of getting round much of it, you’ll see.”

  Tina touched her finger to her nose. “The black economy, you see. Anyone who runs a small business declares eighty per cent and puts the other twenty in their pock—”

  “Sous la table,” the mayor interrupted. “Under the table, we say.”

  “Isn’t that risky?” the lawyer in me asked.

  “But of course. Where would the fun be if it wasn’t, eh? It’s a national pastime.”

  Sam kicked my foot. His turn. He was laughing at me. He knew me well enough to know that I would find it difficult to do what I’d consider was cheating the government.

  “Loosen up, Penzi. When in Rome and all that.”

  By the time we reached the cheese course – a delicious ripe camembert with fresh apricots – the mayor had finished his lecture.

  “I’ll put you in contact with a good accountant, not too expensive. But you don’t tell him everything, you understand,” he said, tapping his nose with a laugh in replication of his wife’s earlier gesture. “Any time you need advice, you come and ask me. I can never repay you for solving the murder last week and restoring the good name of Beaucoup-sur-mer.”

  Emmanuelle stood to remove the cheese plates. Sam jumped up to help her and together they went off into the house to collect the dessert.

  The mayor took advantage of the lull to mention that Camion, the dumpster driver who’d cleared away the bulk of the junk in our back yard, had told him about a rat infestation on our property.

  “He had to, you understand. It is a reportable event touching as it does on the town’s sanitati
on.”

  Felix put his wine glass down. “I killed nearly two hundred of them.”

  I nudged him quickly in case memories of his feline prowess threatened his secret life as a shape shifter. “And Camion and his chaps shot up a few dozen,” I added.

  “But the rats will be down in the tunnels and cellars beneath the houses on that side of the bay,” the mayor warned. “We shall have to poison them.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” I said. “Use poison I mean.”

  “So softhearted,” the mayor said giving my arm a surreptitious stroke while his wife watched the progress of Sam and Emmanuelle as they tripped down towards us carrying a lemon tart and a pot of crème fraîche.

  “Are you serious?” asked Felix giving me a wry look. “You really couldn’t bring yourself to poison those loathsome creatures?”

  “Don’t make fun of me, Felix. I think we should use humane traps.”

  “We’d need hundreds and they’ll be breeding as fast as we catch them.”

  The mayor chuckled. “And what will you do with them when you’ve caught them?”

  I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to poison them. It was too cruel. A horrible death.

  And then the thought struck me. I could use magic, couldn’t I? Could I justify using magic? It wouldn’t be for my benefit only if the mayor was to be believed, so it would qualify. Being a white witch I was limited to using magic for the benefit of others. Magic used for one’s own interests quickly turned to black magic as everyone knew.

  “What are you smiling about?” asked Felix.

  “Nothing.”

  Conversation grew more general over the dessert and coffee. As we were leaving the mayor pulled me aside and whispered that he’d have to send a sanitation inspector round to our house and there would have to be a follow up.

  “Unavoidable, you see. My secretary opened a file on the subject and once that’s happened one is trapped in bureaucracy and we French have the most industrious civil service in the world.”

  I wasn’t worried. I’d have to learn a new spell to deal with the rats, but I wouldn’t have to make a bargain with the Pied Piper. The children of Beaucoup-sur-mer would be safe with my newfound magic skills tackling the problem.

  Chapter 2

  We’d decided to leave the car outside the mayor’s house. He’d been generous with the wine over lunch, and it wasn’t far for us to walk back around the crescent to Les Dragons, our house at the tip of the left-hand side of the bay. The heat and the wine sent all three of us upstairs for a siesta in the shuttered cool of our bedrooms.

  When I awoke, I collected my mother’s Book of Spells from my armoire and tiptoed in to see if Felix was awake. Although he slept in man mode, he lay curled up on top of his bed like the cat he was at heart. As a man his ears took on the rounded shape of a leopard’s ears and not the pointed shape of a cat’s. I tweaked one, and he reared up ready to take on all comers. When he saw it was me, he yawned and stretched out each limb in turn as a cat would.

  “What?” he asked opening his eyes to the barest chink of green.

  “We could check out a spell for ridding the property of those rats you hate so much. We’ve just time before Audrey calls us for supper.”

  “I suppose we have to. Why you can’t be like everyone else and use poison, I don’t know.”

  He angled himself onto the floor, searched about for his sandals with his toes while he combed his long fingers through his mop of tawny locks.

  We shut ourselves away in the study downstairs and prepared ourselves mentally for the task of increasing my repertoire of spells.

  I took care laying the book down on the desk. I didn’t want to damage the worn antique leather or loosen the precious stones which encrusted the front cover. As I opened the book, the rainbow colors of the gems shot out merging into their original bright white light, blinding me for a moment.

  The laws of the High Council of the Guild of White Witches forbade Felix from touching the Book of Spells and so I turned the pages to the index. There we were stumped.

  “What kind of spell are we looking for?” asked Felix. He ran his finger down the list keeping it an inch above the crinkled old parchment.

  “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Magic has to be precise, doesn’t it? All this is taking time to understand. I wish I’d paid more attention when my mother was teaching me. Do we kill the rats, dematerialize them or move them somewhere else?”

  “What can we do? Let me see.”

  Felix read the names of the spells and called out to me any he thought were appropriate. As I’m dyslexic, the High Council had given me permission to have Felix as my helper in my training as a witch. Usually, only witches are allowed to read the Book of Spells.

  Felix turned the page. The parchment grinced and crackled.

  “Here’s one — To change one creature into another: Trans—”

  “Wait, Felix. Cross your fingers in case uttering the spell’s name will do something. We just don’t know enough about magic. Let’s not take any chances with this unknown power.”

  Felix grinned at me and held up his crossed fingers. “Relax, Penzi. Nothing will happen if I say the spell because I’m not a witch.”

  I let out my breath. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding it.

  “If I may continue,” said Felix turning to the page for the spell. “It’s called Transmogrificus.”

  I looked down at the page trying to assess from its length how difficult it would be to learn it. Although I couldn’t distinguish the separate characters and images, it didn’t cover too much of the page.

  “Fine let’s try this one, but what shall we turn the rats into? We don’t want to find ourselves worse off.”

  “Something useful.”

  “Something beautiful. The antithesis of a rat.”

  I went over to the window and gazed out while I thought. The ugliness of the junkyard which should have been our garden struck my soul a blow even though I’d seen it before.

  The answer zapped me. “Butterflies. We need butterflies.”

  I hurried back to Felix and the magic book. Felix checked to make sure it was possible to change rats into butterflies.

  “There’s only one problem,” he cautioned. “Would you be doing this for your own benefit, because that’s not allowed by the High Council?”

  I had to admit I would benefit, but so would the rest of the family and the whole of Beaucoup-sur-mer. We’d be removing a source of germs and disease and carrying out the mayor’s instructions. I explained this to Felix.

  “Another problem,” he said. “We don’t know how far this spell would work. The mayor and Camion both said the tunnels and cellars stretch back all along this arm of the bay.”

  “Some things one has to take on trust. We’ll do the best we can.”

  “We could put a spell on the garden so that any rat that appears changes into a butterfly. Let me check if that’s possible.”

  I stayed quiet and still while Felix absorbed the ins and outs of the spell. At last he looked up again and said that with a small adjustment I could cast a spell that would transmogrify all the rats within range and raise a protective shield over and around our property.

  But was it fair to change another creature’s life?

  Felix put his arm around me. “I can see you’re worried. Wouldn’t you rather be a butterfly than a rat?”

  “You mean a shorter life being loved as a butterfly rather than a longer life being despised as a rat? That’s another question altogether. What I can say is that I’d rather be a butterfly than a poisoned rat.”

  Felix returned his attention to the Book of Spells. “Right, let’s get on with it then.”

  For the next hour Felix taught me the words and the images – fingers crossed by both of us to jinx any inadvertent working of the spell before we were ready to cast it for real.

  When we both decided I had the spell learned by heart, I went downstairs to tell the rest of the family to look
out of the back window for the next few minutes. Of course, they wanted to know why but I couldn’t tell them. I said they should trust me.

  Back in the study with Felix I took a few deep breaths to calm my mind and slow my pulse ready to call up my magic powers. We both took up our places in front of the window. Felix smiled at me, “Go for it, Penzi. You can do it. Believe in yourself.”

  I allowed the images to appear in my mind’s eye and when they were settled, I spoke the words of the spell.

  Whoosh! From the cracks and holes in the ground clouds of butterflies in a kaleidoscope of colors billowed up into the air in a fluttering spiral until they disappeared from view into the blue sky of the summer’s afternoon.

  As the last one vanished from sight Felix and I looked at each other in wonder, lost for words.

  *

  “That was so beautiful,” said Audrey later, when we were all in the kitchen having a cup of tea.

  “So many different butterflies. Where did they all come from?” asked Gwinny.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be something to do with the weather.”

  Jimbo gave me a funny look. I was saved from having to add anything by a knock at the door.

  The Sanitary Inspector had come to call. I showed him out into the yard. We watched as he bumbled about checking holes and overturning the junk that still remained.

  “I couldn’t find a single rat,” he said when he rejoined us.

  “Good. So you won’t have to put down poison,” I said.

  He harrumphed and puffed out his chest. He drew a file out of his brief case and harrumphed again. “Rules have to be followed. Rule 19 lays down that any report of rats must be followed up with preventive measures even if curative measures are not required.”

  Jimbo nudged me. “What does all that mean?”

  I translated from the French for him and toned down the long words. “He’s going to put down poison, anyway.”

  “But what about the foxes and the squirrels?” Jimbo asked.

  “Don’t worry about it. Felix will sort it out.”