Wine, Witches and Song (The Everyday Witches of Wildham-on-Sea Book 1)

by Molly Milligan

  Bernie sipped at her too-hot coffee. “It appears that once he was knocked out cold by the book, his skull was bashed in with rocks before they were piled up around him.”

  “There you are, then,” I said, glad that I had not seen the act of murder in my scrying. “The book was not part of the actual killing.”

  “That is what we’re arguing. Now, guess who the book actually belongs to.”

  “Vin Paston.”

  “No, guess again.”

  I thought about the events of the week. “Ron Thompson,” I said, concocting a convoluted explanation in my head that tied Ron and Vin together with the fraud and the spiteful letter.

  “No, no. Charlotte Paston.”

  I was underwhelmed. “Oh, right. That’s what they both said, anyway. So they weren’t lying?”

  “It seems not. Anyway, the historians are done with it and so are our scientists. Now no one knows what to do with it.”

  “So where is it now?”

  “It’s been returned to its rightful owner – it’s gone back to Charlotte. However that might be rescinded. The argument was the same as you’ve just mentioned – that it wasn’t used for the killing blow – but really, it needs to be in a museum, something like that.”

  “What is it, exactly?”

  Bernie shrugged. “I don’t know. A load of music, or something.”

  “You don’t know? Aren’t you interested? It could be vital to the investigation! Who wrote it? It certainly ties Charlotte to the murder, doesn’t it?”

  “Or it could have been stolen from her bedsit, as she claims. As her fingerprints are not on it, and she was never seen with it, what else can we say or do? Her parents corroborate that it is a family heirloom and it’s named in wills going back generations, according to the solicitors’ office, but that is it.”

  “What sort of music is it?”

  “I haven’t a clue. Thanks for the coffee, by the way.”

  “You’re welcome. This case is a nightmare, isn’t it?”

  Bernie nodded. “We just need hard evidence. Real evidence, not grainy CCTV and a strange feeling. Oh – I had a little chat with Liam. He confirmed what you told me. As did our colleagues in London.”

  “So he’s off the hook?”

  “Mostly.”

  I waved her out, and watched her go. I then went on my morning walk, and when I got home I tried to do some work, but my brain just wouldn’t shut up.

  It was no use.

  I had to see this book for myself.

  Chapter Eight

  I had never had a conversation with Charlotte Paston. I did not know her. But most people knew me, if only by sight or hearsay, and that usually gave me a way into speaking to someone.

  I remembered that Angie had told me where Charlotte lived – in a bedsit above the butcher’s in the High Street. On the way through town, I bumped into Donny who was tidying up the spring bulbs display. “Awful lot of daffodils around town this year,” he said, innocently.

  “There are,” I commented.

  We grinned at one another.

  The High Street was busy as it was around lunchtime. I found a small, narrow door to one side of the butcher’s shop and when I pushed at it, it opened into a narrow passage. I felt like I was trespassing but I followed it to the end where there was a set of metal steps that led up to a newer, white plastic door at the top. I clambered up and knocked.

  Charlotte answered and she looked at me in confusion. I could see a hint of recognition in her eyes, but she couldn’t work out why I might be there.

  “Hi, I’m Jackie Hardy. I’m a local freelance features writer,” I said.

  She blinked and nodded. “Oh, yeah, I think I’ve heard of you. Um – sorry, no, I don’t want to talk to the press.” She started to close the door. She was small and round-shouldered, but she was wiry and strong.

  “I’m not here about the murder,” I told her plainly. “I don’t do those sorts of stories. I write nice, fluffy, light stuff for women’s magazines and lifestyle journals. I actually want to talk about a manuscript I’ve heard you own.”

  She stopped trying to close the door in my face, and stared at me. “How did you hear?”

  “It’s my business to hear interesting things that happen. Also, I can’t lie, my sister is in the police. She mentioned it because she knows I am into that sort of thing.”

  “You’re into music?”

  “Uh – well, history.”

  She hesitated and I tried to make myself look as unthreatening as possible. It must have worked because she relented and stepped back. “Sorry,” she said. “You can come in, but the place is a mess.”

  “Don’t you worry. You haven’t seen my house,” I said politely, but she really wasn’t joking. I had to step over a pile of junk mail on the floor by the door, and I followed her down a dark corridor into a very large room. When people had said “bedsit” to me, I had thought of something small and pokey. But this room was huge, and divided by a folding screen and a curtain, which I assumed hid her sleeping area.

  And while it was messy, it wasn’t dirty or unclean. She simply had a lot of stuff crammed into this room. There were two more doors at the far end, which I assumed to lead to a kitchen and bathroom.

  She motioned for me to sit down. I found a small patch of the sofa that wasn’t covered in books, and perched. She didn’t offer me a drink. She just looked at me again, sighed, and went to a bookshelf where everything was piled up in towers, rather than neatly arranged in library-lines. I squinted, trying to make out her aura.

  Ominously, it was faded and far less vibrant than the last time I had seen her. But it was still there, and still showed all the colours, just in pastel tones now.

  She brought a large square object over to me, and placed it into my hands. Then she turned away, as if she didn’t want to see what I thought of it.

  The cover was plain and I touched it lightly. “How old is this?” I said in a whisper.

  “Hundreds of years. It was probably written in the 1520s.”

  “Shouldn’t I be wearing gloves?”

  “No, not as long as your hands are clean. Some people argue that gloves do more damage because you don’t know how hard you are pressing.”

  “Right. I’m almost scared to open it up.”

  “You should be,” she said in a tiny voice.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  She had. She could have meant more than one thing. Carefully I opened it up at the first page. I was no musician but it was recognisably music. There were also beautiful illuminations in square boxes. I turned each page carefully.

  “Whose book is it?” I asked.

  “Keep going.” She came to my side and stood over me. “Stop. There. Do you see?”

  We were about two-thirds of the way through. The handwriting had clearly changed, and further down the page was a note. I squinted at it and struggled to decipher it.

  “MAB. Queen of the fairies?”

  “No, that’s someone’s initials. Look again.”

  “M, A, B... Bolleyne.”

  “Mistress Anne Boleyn.”

  “Oh my god – you’re right,” I said in awe. When I looked harder, I could see a few marks after the M and the A. Yes, it said Mistress Anne Boleyn. Or, well, Bolleyne. “What else does it say? Nowe thus. Is that right?”

  “Nowe thus,” Charlotte said. “That’s what it says. I don’t know what it means.”

  “So could this possibly be Anne Boleyn’s actual book?”

  She laughed. “Some of them say yes and some of them say no. I don’t know. It’s mine, for what it’s worth, but it’s done its work with me. I think it should go to a museum.”

  “What do you mean, it’s done its work?”

  “Oh, don’t listen to me. I get these stupid ideas. Anyway, there it is. Take it away with you if you want to study it. I don’t care.”

  I closed the book carefully. “I could not possibly go anywhe
re with this. It’s priceless! How did you get it?”

  “We’ve always had it in the family.”

  “Are you descended from her? From Anne Boleyn?”

  She laughed. “With the surname Paston? No. Of course not.”

  You could be, I thought, with name changes and marriages. Maybe. “Then how did your family get this book?”

  She turned away and walked to the window which looked out over the backs of shops and flats from the street behind. “I don’t know. We’ve always had it. I was given it. But I don’t want it.”

  “Why not?” I wanted to ask if it was magical but I had to go carefully. It wasn’t overtly so, but the illuminations were stunning and I wasn’t sure if my artistic response was overriding my magical response. I also didn’t know if Charlotte believed or not. “Why don’t you want it?”

  “It’s just ... I’m done with it. It can move on now.”

  “I didn’t want to talk about the murder,” I said carefully. “But I can’t avoid it. This was used in the event, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” she said in an angry rush, “so you can see why I don’t want it, right?”

  But she didn’t want it back before, I realised. She had been heard saying she didn’t want it. I said, “I understand why you would want to give it to a museum and I think that’s the best thing for it.”

  “So you’re not going to take it away with you now?”

  I stood up and put the book carefully on the arm of the chair. “No,” I said. My alarm bells were ringing. There was something about this book that I needed to investigate, but I was also – strange though it sounds – scared of it. Perhaps that’s a little strong. But I was definitely wary of it. There was an energy in it, now I stepped away, a confused one, like a tangled mess. If I didn’t look at the book, I could feel it.

  On a more practical note, I didn’t want to be caught in town carrying what was essentially a murder weapon. I was suddenly suspicious of why Charlotte wanted me to take it away. If she was involved in the killing of her former partner in music, then she would naturally want to deflect attention elsewhere. I didn’t know how she might try to pin things on me, but I didn’t want to find out, either.

  So I refused to take it.

  She remained at the window with her back to me. I said, “Do you want me to put it away somewhere safe? Back on the shelf?”

  “Leave it wherever.” She didn’t turn around.

  “Okay, it’s just on the arm of this chair.”

  Silence.

  “Charlotte, can I get you anything? Help you with anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m always around. If you need...”

  “I know you’re a witch,” she said in a small voice.

  “Ah. Right, so you know that I can...”

  “And I don’t want anything to do with you or your sort. You’ve brought more trouble than it’s worth to my family already. You’ve seen the book. You won’t take it. I know why you won’t take it. I don’t blame you. I’ll get rid of it somehow. Now go.”

  There was nothing more that I could say, so I left.

  SANDRA CALLED ME IN a rush of breathless enthusiasm as I walked home. “I’m not going to tell you anything!” she declared.

  “Okay ... so why are you ringing me?”

  “Oh! To tell you to buy the paper tomorrow! You’ll be very impressed by me. Bye now!” She ended the call before I could even reply.

  I suspected that she had looked into the matter behind the anonymous letter. I wondered if she had discovered it was from Vin Paston. I sent her a quick text to tell her that I was “pretty sure” that Vin had written it, but I didn’t get a reply. I still had the original in my possession, sitting on my kitchen worktop.

  My mind kept returning to the book and to Anne Boleyn. I had told Charlotte that I was interested in history, but my actual knowledge of the far past was hazy. I had a recollection that she was one of the wives of Henry VIII who had been beheaded, but I couldn’t remember exactly why. Was it because she didn’t provide an heir? Or had she done something else? I tapped away on my smartphone as I walked, and soon got lost in the whole “Divorced, beheaded, died: divorced, beheaded, survived” thing. Anne was the first “beheaded.” And her heir had been Queen Elizabeth the First.

  I wasn’t looking where I was going and I ran slap-bang into Evangeline Dot. She was standing right in the middle of the pavement and must have seen me coming. She had literally put herself in my way. I trod on her foot, and I yelped in surprise.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  I jumped back and fell into automatic apologies, the typical default-British mode, and she simply stared at me until I ran out of things to say.

  “You haven’t come to see me yet,” she said. “Do I have to tell you what you need to hear, right here, out in the open? In daylight? Where people might hear? And there was worse than mere humans to overhear this...”

  “I haven’t come to see you because I’ve been busy,” I said, snappily. Then I reminded myself she was old and needed my sympathy. I tried to muster up a gentle smile.

  “I do not need your patronising comments.” She spoke as if she was answering my thoughts, and I froze.

  “Er...”

  She laughed. “No, no, I can’t read minds. Just faces.”

  I was starting to feel a bit alarmed. This one-sided conversation was almost exactly like she could read minds.

  “No,” she carried on. “But I’m good at reading people. Better than you, at any rate. Your stupidity will get us all killed.” And she pushed past me, and stamped away, and I felt hot and cold and shivery all over.

  Chapter Nine

  Things were getting serious.

  It was unfortunate, then, that I wasn’t entirely sure what “things” were.

  I got home and had to dash straight out again with my laptop, notebook, voice recorder and camera. I had an appointment at the care home on the edge of town. I was there to talk to residents about the animals-in-homes project, and hopefully get some cute shots of senior citizens petting goats and stuff. I didn’t want to work – instead, I wanted to look into the songbook, and Anne Boleyn, and Vin Paston, and Will Howlett, and million other things that I was sure, sure in my heart, were connected.

  But I had to work. I had bills to pay and food to buy. So I put on my professional-head and set about what I needed to do, and in all honesty, I had a lovely time. I was given way too many cups of tea to drink, overdosed on slices of cake, and met a whole array of delightful people with decades of tales to tell – early spring lambs being defrosted and brought back to life in Agas and kitchen ranges, cows that had personalities and character traits they passed to their offspring, geese that would attack strangers but let the postman through the farmyard – truly, the stories from the care home residents were a gift which I treasured and hoped I could pass on with respect.

  I did manage to push everything out of my mind sufficiently to even get a first rough draft of the article written that evening. I was almost positive I’d fall straight asleep when I went to bed.

  I didn’t.

  I was plagued by waking dreams of flames that burned blue, and that hand in the small of my back, relentlessly pushing me onwards in a direction I could not fathom.

  ON MY WAY BACK FROM my walk the next morning, I called in at a small newsagent’s shop and picked up the Thursday edition of the paper as Sandra had instructed me. The front page was all about potholes, which was a perennial feature for the regional press. That, and the ongoing debate about how to run the local car parks.

  But I found what Sandra had been talking about on page three.

  The spiteful letter writer had been right.

  The headline didn’t pull any punches: FOLK MUSICIAN FRAUD CONS THOUSANDS

  Sandra had obviously found hard evidence that Ron Thompson really had been committing fraud. The article explained how his wife’s illness had been grossly exaggerated in order to play on people’s sympathies
. Various fundraising activities had been set up and many thousands of pounds had been raised to make “essential adaptations” to the house in which Ron and Mary lived.

  Unnecessary adaptations, which were never completed.

  Instead the article claimed that Ron and Mary lived in luxury, with a bar and a hot tub and underfloor heating and all the sorts of glamorous things that most people in Wildham-on-Sea could only ever dream about.

  Mary Thompson herself was painted as an unwilling accomplice, tied to her husband’s secret but no active manager of the whole affair.

  The rest of the insular folk music club did not fare so well in the exposé. No one had been willing to speak to Sandra on the record and only one spoke to her off the record. I wondered who that was. This anonymous source claimed that they all knew about Ron and Mary’s dodgy history, and had been sworn to secrecy. In fact, the folk club profited from the fraud as no one had paid any membership dues for years. Ron used the ill-gotten money to pay for the community centre hire, and the refreshments, and for instruments to be purchased for the use of the club.

  They were all bound up in it together.

  And, according to the informant, “I think some people actually enjoy the secrecy. It makes them feel special. They’ve all got carried away. But no one is allowed to leave. He’s scared we might tell, you see.”

  The source went on to talk about the culture of fear in the club, and the absolute power wielded by Ron. It sounded more like a regime in a totalitarian state than a cosy little group who just loved traditional music.

  And all the relevant details had been passed to the authorities, the article said at the end. Arrests were likely.

  I phoned Sandra before I even got home but she didn’t pick up. I left her a brief message.

  Once I was back in my own kitchen, I set about making a big pot of coffee and my phone rang; Bernie flashed up on the caller display.

  “Your Liam’s gone back to London,” she said without preamble.

  “My Liam?”

  “I spoke to Eric at the White Horse. You and that Gloria sound like a right pair of embarrassments. I am going to disown you.”