Witches' Diaries

by Morgana Best

  The massage went on and on, and I thought it would never come to an end. Finally, I said, “I don’t like my head massaged.”

  “You don’t?” he said. “How strange. Still, I do have a few clients who are overly sensitive like you and don’t like their heads massaged. All right then, come over now, and I’ll dry your hair.”

  There wasn’t much hair left to dry, but Raymond held the dryer on it for so long that I thought my hair might catch on fire.

  Then he stood back to admire his handiwork. “Much better, much better. I’m a genius, if I do say so myself.”

  “You are a genius,” I admitted. “I didn’t think it would look this good.”

  “Product.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m going to put some product in your hair. I think I’ll use this styling dust.”

  Raymond sprinkled some all over my face. I think he was aiming for my hair. I sneezed violently.

  “Maybe I’ll use some styling gel instead,” he said.

  I left the hair salon with a headache, sinus trouble, and a sore neck, but at least nobody would now mistake me for a cricketer from the seventies or a football player.

  Chapter 14

  It might seem strange to some, hosting a formal dinner party after a woman had been murdered, but she wasn’t a very nice woman, and we had already ordered the candles.

  “Candles, Agnes,” Aunt Dorothy said breathlessly. She was setting the table. “Candles.”

  “We don’t have to burn them tonight,” Aunt Agnes snapped. “This dinner is in very poor taste.”

  “Candles,” Dorothy repeated. She wasn’t listening to Agnes at all.

  “This is the perfect opportunity to do some sleuthing,” I told Aunt Agnes.

  “Exactly,” Aunt Maude agreed. “We can use tonight to gather clues about the suspects.”

  “Why would they want to attend a dinner party after one of their own has died?” Aunt Agnes rubbed her chin.

  “Because a dinner party was included in the package,” Aunt Maude replied. “So, a dinner party our guests shall receive. Besides, I think they all brought dresses and tuxedos especially for tonight. It would be a shame if we didn’t get to wear costumes.”

  Aunt Agnes snorted. “Yes, why not have a grand old time. It’s hardly as though a woman has been murdered!”

  “Priscilla can hardly object,” Aunt Dorothy replied. “It’s not as though she’s here, so she doesn’t get a say.” She waved her arms around like windmills and pointed to the sky. “She’s in the great hereafter, up there. Or, maybe she’s down there.” She pointed to the floor.

  We finished setting the table and peeled off one by one to get dressed. I spent a good hour on one eyebrow alone, and it was perfectly shaped. I spent another hour on the other eyebrow, and it was perfectly shaped too, only it looked nothing like the first. Eyebrows are sisters, Dorothy liked to say, not twins. I suppose I’d just have to walk around looking perpetually surprised thanks to one eyebrow being much higher than the other.

  There was a knock on the door, and Lucas called out. I ran to the stairs and flew down them.

  A formal dinner required men to wear a tuxedo. I knew as much, and yet my jaw still hit the floor when Lucas stepped into the dining hall. He was dressed in a white dinner jacket, black bow tie, and a black silk pocket square.

  “It’s too much,” Lucas said before I could close my jaw.

  “No,” I said. In truth, I’d never seen any man look this good in real life. “You look perfect.”

  All of a sudden, I felt self-conscious about my dress. It was from the eighties, and velvet, and smelt slightly of mothballs. I didn’t want anyone to think I was mutton dressed as lamb, so I’d tucked myself into the ugliest dress I could find in the attic. That was a mistake. I could tell now that this dress was a mistake.

  “Wait there,” I said. I thought about coming up with a crafty lie, but I could not think of anything in time. “I need to change because… of reasons.”

  “Your hair is… different. I like it. But you need to change?” Lucas appeared confused.

  “Yes,” I muttered, “because this is not my dress.”

  It was my dress, but how could I walk into the dining hall of Mugwort Manor on Lucas’s arm wearing a dress that made me embarrassed?

  Lucas raised his eyebrows. “Then why are you wearing it?”

  “It’s Priscilla’s.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “It’s her dress.”

  “Priscilla’s dress?”

  “Demelza asked me to try it on. Just to see if it would suit Priscilla. She said we looked similar.”

  “You look nothing like Priscilla,” he added.

  “No, after her death,” I stammered. “We had the same pallid, sickly complexion. That’s why I needed to try this dress on. Anyway. It looks great. I had better go and put on my actual dress now.”

  I ran up the stairs and ducked into my room.

  Mutton dressed as lamb. I had no idea where I’d heard that phrase. Perhaps some ex-boyfriend had used to make fun of my fashion. In any case, I had suddenly found myself feeling horribly self-conscious for no apparent reason at all. I was not exactly sure when it started. Maybe when Moxie Maisie stepped off that bus in all her Amazonian goddess glory. It was hard not to feel a little tired, a little run down, when standing next to a woman so bright and radiant.

  Her face was like the moon, big and round, while my face was long like a horse. Mr Ed, my grandmother used to call me. Whenever we stayed at her house, she’d wake us all up at six in the morning for breakfast singing:

  “A horse is a horse, of course, of course

  And no one can talk to a horse, of course.

  That is of course unless the horse

  Is the famous Mister Ed!”

  It was not a memory I had shared with anyone, too mortified that they would see in me the same horsiness that my grandmother had once found so painfully delightful.

  Thankfully, I found a dress after some digging. Not so thankfully, I had not worn it since I was a teenager, before I developed a bosom, hips, and a bottom. I managed to get into the dress with the help of Aunt Maude. I held the post of the bed, like I was a lady in a Hollywood film who needed a corset tightly laced, and sucked in my breath while Aunt Maude did up the zip.

  It was a curious dress because it had both a zip back and a button front. Maude and I both decided, without speaking to each other, not to touch the buttons. I looked at myself in the mirror, sweating over the fact it looked like the seams would burst at any moment.

  “You look lovely, dear,” Aunt Maude said.

  “Lies do not become us, m’lady,” I replied, which for some reason made us both giggle. I think I had cut off circulation to my brain.

  Returning to my dashing boyfriend, I took his arm, and together we entered the dining hall. If I felt self-conscious about my too small dress, I didn’t need to—for some reason, Dorothy had thought it hilarious to tell our guests that it was a costume party. Not only that, but she’d told each guest a different costume theme for the party.

  Colonel Mustard was dressed as a French maid, Moxie Maisie as the Statue of Liberty, Eli as Robin Hood, Demelza as Cleopatra, and Finn as a cowboy. Lucas frowned when he saw Finn, perhaps noticing how good Finn’s bottom looked in his jeans. Perhaps not. Lucas elbowed me in the ribs.

  “What?” I said innocently.

  “Don’t ogle the guests,” he replied.

  “Who am I mean to ogle then?”

  “Me,” Lucas said with a wink.

  “What the devil is going on here?” Colonel Mustard boomed. “Are we not all supposed to dress as French maids?”

  “Sure, sure,” Finn said. He was the first guest to catch on to Dorothy’s joke. “But I couldn’t get my hands on a French maid’s costume in time. Tell me, Colonel Mustard, where did you find yours?”

  “A gentleman is sartorially prepared for any situation,” the Colonel said. “Any situation.”

  “You all look ma
rvellous,” Aunt Dorothy said. She was dressed as the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Aunt Agnes was the Tin Man, and Aunt Maude was the Lion. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told everyone it was a costume party, when it wasn’t. And I told everyone a different theme, too. I didn’t want anyone else coming as the Scarecrow.”

  Demelza thought the joke was very funny, but Eli was clearly annoyed.

  “I don’t like being made fun of, you know,” he said as we all took our seats. He jerked his head towards Lucas. “I would have come as James Bond too.”

  “I’m not James Bond,” Lucas said. “I didn’t know about the costume party joke. I just came as myself.”

  Finn snorted, and Lucas scowled.

  “Sure,” Finn said. Then, “I like being a cowboy.”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  “Yes,” Finn retorted, “it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Boys,” I said. “Should we start with the first course?” They were as bad as the aunts.

  “We need to feed Bertha first,” Dorothy replied.

  “B-Bertha?” I stammered.

  I heard the sound of cloven hooves outside. “Dorothy, what’s that noise?”

  “Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?” Dorothy replied.

  “Dorothy, please tell me there isn’t a cow in the manor.”

  “Because they lactose. Do you get it? Lack toes. Very funny.”

  “Dorothy,” Lucas said—but he could not continue with his train of thought for a cow stuck her head through the window. “That’s a cow.”

  “It’s Bertha, the neighbour’s cow,” Dorothy replied. “She’s part of our costume. We could hardly come as characters from the Wizard of Oz without the famous cow.”

  “There is no famous cow in The Wizard of Oz,” Colonel Mustard yelled.

  “Yes, there is,” Aunt Maude said, “at the start. When the twister comes and whisks Dorothy and Toto away to the magical Land of Oz, a cow goes flying past.”

  “That’s Twister,” Finn replied.

  “Exactly,” Aunt Maude said.

  “No.” Finn shook his head. “The cow is in the movie, Twister.”

  “Then what is Bertha doing here?” Aunt Dorothy asked.

  “That’s exactly what the rest of us want to know,” Eli said. He seemed very bitter about being Robin Hood, and I couldn’t figure out why until I saw the callouses on the tips of his fingers as he picked up his glass of wine.

  “Eli, are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Well, I could hardly be Robin Hood if I didn’t know how to shoot a bow and arrow,” he sneered. “I spent all morning practising archery, and now I have terribly painful hands.”

  “You can hardly blame these sweet old dames for your stupidity,” Colonel Mustard said. “Do you think I spent the entire morning dusting?”

  Finn nodded. “The Colonel is right, Eli. I didn’t spend the morning tending cattle.”

  “Maybe you should start,” Eli said as Bertha stuck her head through the window and munched on Dorothy’s Scarecrow costume, which was made mostly of straw.

  “This is ridiculous,” Eli said. His face was growing redder and redder.

  Demelza placed a hand on her ex-husband’s arm. “Are you okay, Eli? You’ve not seemed yourself lately.”

  “I’ve been perfectly myself,” he snapped. “It’s the rest of you who are absolutely balmy.”

  Moxie Maisie, who had been quiet for the evening so far, frowned. “Please don’t snap at Mother in such a manner.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eli said. He did seem genuinely sorry—not that he’d snapped at his ex-wife, but that he’d upset his stepdaughter. “That said, this whole dinner is utterly ridiculous. My fingers hurt, that cow is chewing very loudly, and Finn’s jeans are far too tight.”

  “Hey,” Finn said.

  “No,” Lucas replied, “I actually agree with Eli on that one.”

  Suddenly, Eli grabbed his stomach. “What have you awful old witches fed me for dinner?”

  “We’ve not had dinner yet,” Demelza replied.

  “No,” Colonel Mustard said, “we were all too busy listening to you whine about your delicate little fingertips.”

  “If I don’t get something to eat right now,” Moxie Maisie shrieked, “I will eat that cow.”

  “You leave Bertha out of this,” Aunt Dorothy yelled.

  Eli grabbed his stomach. Nanoseconds later, he fell to the floor with a thud. Half of us screamed, and the other half screamed a bit louder. Moxie Maisie jumped from her seat and rushed over to her stepfather. She spent some time bending over him. Then she stood, her face pale, tears welling up in her big eyes.

  “Dead,” she screeched. “My stepfather is dead!”

  Eli. Dead. Yet another of our guests had bitten the dust.

  Aunt Dorothy sighed. “This won’t be good for business.”

  Chapter 15

  I looked around for Lucas, and he signalled to me he was on his phone. When he ended the conversation, he hurried over to me.

  “I’ve called the detectives,” he said.

  “Any chance it could be natural causes?” I asked him.

  “I doubt it. Did you see Eli drink or eat anything here tonight?”

  I shook my head. “Do you think he was poisoned?”

  “That’s the logical conclusion, given that there are no signs of injury,” Lucas said, “unless somebody stuck a needle in him.”

  “What poisons can kill somebody so quickly?”

  Lucas looked thoughtful. “There are several, including strychnine, but he doesn’t have the symptoms of strychnine poisoning.”

  Aunt Agnes was shepherding the guests out of the dining room and into the living room. Lucas and I followed her in.

  I had just set foot inside the room when the lights went out. I squealed and threw my arms around Lucas’s neck. “Everyone, stay here,” he said. “Agnes, could you light some candles? Pepper, stay close to Agnes. I’ll check the fuse box.”

  I caught his arm. “Be careful. It might be a trap.”

  When Lucas left, I hurried over to Aunt Agnes. The crackling fire provided a good amount of light. Aunt Agnes retrieved a box of matches from a drawer in the English oak desk and lit the many candles dotted around the room.

  When Lucas returned, he wasted no time addressing the guests. “It’s not a fuse, so I assume a tree has come down over the power lines. Did anybody see Eli eat or drink anything in the last few hours?”

  Demelza was sitting, her head between her knees, shaking. Aunt Maude was patting her back.

  “When I went to fetch him for the party, he was eating chocolate fudge brownies,” Moxie Maisie said. “I thought that was strange, because he was about to go to the dinner.”

  “It’s not strange at all,” Demelza snapped. “He was always eating chocolate fudge brownies.”

  “Even before dinner?” I raised my eyebrows.

  Demelza nodded but did not speak.

  “He didn’t have much of an appetite, but he seemed to live on chocolate fudge brownies,” Colonel Mustard said.

  “Nobody is to leave this room until the police arrive,” Lucas announced. “There might be evidence in Eli’s cottage.” He shot me a significant look before slipping out of the door.

  I knew he was going to use his vampire speed to get to Eli’s cottage so wasn’t surprised when he returned only a couple of minutes later.

  Everyone had been sitting in solemn silence. Lucas took me by my arm and drew me away from the others, to stand by a burr walnut, marble topped credenza in the far corner of the living room.

  The atmosphere was rather frightening, the living room filled with flickering candles and everybody’s faces glowing eerily by the light of the fire.

  “There’s white powder all over the brownies,” he told me.

  I was shocked. “You’re kidding! Wouldn’t Eli have found tha
t suspicious?”

  Lucas shook his head. “There’s plenty of shredded coconut on top of the brownies, and that disguises the white powder.”

  “What do you think it is?” I asked him.

  “I’ve taken a sample for testing and, of course, the police will too, but several poisons come in a white powder.”

  “Which ones?” I prompted him.

  He tapped his chin. “Strychnine—although he didn’t have the distinctive symptoms of a strychnine death—ricin, tetramethylenedisuphotetramine…”

  I interrupted him at this point. “What on earth is that?”

  “It’s a rat poison,” he said. “It’s odourless and tasteless and a white powder. There’s also thallium, although that causes hair loss over a period of time. There’s also anthrax, and even explosives can come in a white powder. Arsenic can come in a white powder. So can lead.”

  “Lead?” I repeated. “I thought lead powder was red.”

  Lucas shook his head. “Lead oxide is red before it’s heated, but then it’s usually white.”

  “It was lead poisoning,” Aunt Dorothy said in authoritative tones.

  I jumped and turned around. I hadn’t even known she was there.

  “Why do you say that?” Lucas asked her.

  “Because he was poisoned in the study.”

  Lucas looked as confused as I felt. “I don’t understand,” he admitted.

  “It’s Cluedo, right? Mrs Peacock was killed in the conservatory with the candlestick. Plumb was killed in the study with lead.” Aunt Dorothy nodded vigorously as she spoke. “The only weapons left are the revolver, the dagger, the rope, and the wrench, which we call a spanner.”

  “But the weapon in Cluedo is a lead pipe,” I protested.

  Aunt Dorothy simply shrugged.

  The light suddenly came back on, giving everybody a little fright, and simultaneously, there was a loud knock on the door.

  “The detectives,” Aunt Agnes said. She hurried out of the room.

  Detective Oakes and Detective Mason strode into the dining room, looking solemn.

  They at once hurried over to the victim. They stood for a while, standing over at him, in deep discussion. Finally, Detective Oakes turned around. “What did he eat at the dinner tonight?”