Intrigue in the Village (Turnham Malpas 10)

by Shaw, Rebecca

  Sylvia nudged her. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About getting a card and signing it for poor Don.’

  ‘I . . . of course. Count me in. If he lives that long.’

  ‘Maggie! What a thing to say.’

  ‘You don’t fall on your head from a great height and then prance about like a spring lamb. You’re usually in your box in no time at all. Goodnight.’ Maggie left the three of them looking appalled and went home. Home? Was that what she called it? She could hardly bear to put the key in the lock and see where it had all happened. Tabitha, for some reason best known to herself, was sleeping in the middle of the carpet and Maggie stood on her tail. Tabitha gave the most horrendously agonized yowl and fled for her cat flap.

  The gin and orange had had no effect on Maggie’s nerves so she went straight to the sideboard, fished out the brandy and poured herself a double, for purely medicinal purposes. She sat down in her rocking chair, reached forward and poked at the fire to improve the blaze. By mistake she missed replacing the poker on her fire iron stand and it crashed on to the tiled hearth, the sound reverberating around the cottage and scaring the living daylights out of her. Was every object trying to warn her that she’d gone too far this time and meddled in things she frankly didn’t understand? Or was there nothing to understand? She’d only meant her seances to be a bit of fun, a change from the telly.

  Sitting there with her feet on the fender and the brandy glass cuddled in her hands, Maggie contemplated her position. Had she become a medium without knowing it? Had she really got influence? She recalled the seance when she’d . . . well, whatever it was, she’d felt different, more involved. She swallowed the last of the brandy. Perhaps practice made perfect? The rocking chair swung back and forth furiously. She’d pretended for so long, but now it might be for real. If that was so, then she had the kind of power she’d never possessed in her life. Old Fitch got his power through money. Was she getting hers through the spirit world? There was only one way to find out; have another seance and see if it happened again. The brandy began to take effect, the rocking chair slowed its pace and Maggie fell asleep.

  She woke when Tabitha jumped on her knee.

  ‘You stupid cat! Frightening me like that!’

  Tabitha’s eyes appeared unusually large and knowledgeable, far too intelligent for a normal moggie. The hairs at the back of Maggie’s neck prickled slightly, and she felt goose pimples on her arms. Tabitha stared at her, purring as she kneaded her claws into Maggie’s flesh. Surely Tabitha wasn’t a witch’s cat, was she? Her Dave had found Tabitha, extraordinarily thin and soaked to the skin, straying on Exmoor when they were on holiday, and brought her to their caravan to be looked after. Maybe it was all Tabitha’s fault. Perhaps she really was a witch’s cat and had been guided to Dave by the spirit world. Was Exmoor significant? No. It was just an old moor like any other. Could have been Ilkley Moor or Dartmoor or the moors where them Brontës lived and died.

  Maggie sprang to her feet, put Tabitha in her basket by the fire, placed the fireguard around it and made her way up to bed. The bulb in the bathroom flashed and went out the moment she switched it on. Well, she wasn’t going hunting downstairs for a new bulb at one o’clock in the morning, she’d get washed in the dark. Maggie peeped out of the bedroom window before she shut the curtains. The village was as peaceful as it always was. From her window she could see lights on in Willie Biggs’s cottage. They’d be watching one of those late-night films Willie was so fond of. The Rectory’s bedroom light was on too. There wasn’t a sound. It was amazing how quickly she’d got used to the quiet of the countryside. Dave would have loved it here. Oh, Dave! Why did he have to die so unexpectedly, so devastatingly? It wasn’t fair. She wondered if the Rector had got back yet and if he had, what news of Don he had brought.

  Then a thought sprang into her head and comforted her. She never pretended to get any messages to do with the weekender who came so regularly, and that was because she knew nothing about the woman at all. When she was pretending to be a medium she used information she already had in her head about the people concerned, like with the dinner ladies, so she couldn’t have become a real medium. The Senior sisters, for instance, had concocted their own interpretation of what she’d said. Maggie grinned at the memory of finding the wedding cake on the school doorstep.

  She was on the verge of sleep when she remembered that Don’s fall had had nothing to do with anything she knew about him and Evadne was made up, a figment of her imagination.

  It was four o’clock before she finally fell asleep through total exhaustion, and when, at about six o’clock, Tabitha crept under the blankets and cuddled up to her, it felt comforting, like a kindred spirit . . . Kindred spirit indeed. A cat! What nonsense. But she didn’t throw her out, as she normally would have.

  The next morning was Sunday and the only way Maggie was likely to find out about Don was to go to church. By a quarter to eight she was dressed and ready. Checking her face in the mirror she had to laugh despite her anxiety. Fancy, her, Maggie Dobbs, lifelong sceptic, off to church! Her Dave would have laughed if he could’ve seen her. Deep down she wondered if she was drawn by fear, but near the top of her consciousness, she acknowledged she genuinely needed to know about Don, and that was all.

  At seven fifty-five, Maggie entered the ancient doors of her parish church for the first time and crept down the aisle. There couldn’t have been more than thirty people in the congregation and she felt each one of them was staring at her. She decided to sit near the back, two rows behind the worshippers sitting furthest from the altar. She knelt like she’d seen on the telly but didn’t know what she was supposed to say, so she silently mouthed, ‘Please help Don.’ Then in case there were other seriously ill men called Don she added, ‘Don Wright, that is.’

  Maggie sat up and settled to listening to Mrs Peel on the organ. She glanced down and read the words embroidered on her kneeler. ‘Forgive our sins.’ Had she sinned? At this moment, contacting the dead didn’t seem like pretence.

  The Rector arrived with the choir and the whole panoply of the Church at its most majestic held her attention. During prayers, Peter made a special mention of Don and prayed for his quick recovery. Maggie sighed with relief. At least he was still alive. She felt better until the closing prayer, which was delivered almost poetically by Peter, like an actor on a stage: ‘Keep us from falling into sin, or running into danger . . .’ Danger. What a word to choose. Maggie got that creepy-crawly feeling in her insides, and by the time the service concluded, she was a bag of nerves all over again.

  She hadn’t realized that Peter would be shaking hands with everyone at the door; there was no escape for her. Those intense blue eyes of his looked straight into hers and she felt this overwhelming need to ask him if she was consorting with the devil by holding seances. He gripped her hand and said how pleased he was to see her, that Kate Fitch had said what a good job she did at the school and how delighted he was that she was so quickly becoming a valued part of village life.

  Confronted by such crystal-clear Christian affection, Maggie scuttled off to the safety of her home, completely nonplussed.

  Her regular seance night came around all too quickly. Maggie followed the same routine except that, having shaded the light on the low table by the fire and placed the chairs around her table, she got out a wine glass that had once belonged to her grandmother, gave it an extra special wash and polished it until it shone, placed it upside down in the middle of the table and then around it, in a large circle, she placed in order the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, written out in her own hand, bold and unmistakable.

  This was the same but different. She might not get any results, but as it would take much longer than the trance, they’d get their money’s worth.

  They all expressed surprise at the changes.

  Maggie explained. ‘Thought we needed something a little extra.’

  ‘But what do we do?’ asked Linda.


  ‘I know.’ Greta Jones placed a finger on the upturned wine glass. ‘We all do this and ask a question and it spells out the answer.’

  ‘How can it? It can’t speak,’ Linda replied scornfully.

  ‘It moves to each letter and spells it out.’ Maggie said this with a smile.

  Venetia was scornful. ‘Who pushes it?’

  ‘The spirits guide it.’

  Linda, still unemployed, had reached new depths of scepticism. ‘I bet. You’ll just push it.’

  Maggie looked shocked. ‘I most certainly will not.’

  ‘Well, I’m not paying five pounds for a load of cheating,’ stated Linda, arms folded and lips pursed.

  The Senior twins said together, ‘We will! It could be interesting.’

  ‘Go on, Linda,’ said Greta Jones. ‘Give it a whirl. You might hear something about a job.’

  Linda brightened and nodded her head. ‘All right, then.’

  The weekender hadn’t come this time, something about staying at home to do the decorating. Instead, Angie Turner accompanied Linda, who hadn’t asked if that was all right.

  Maggie was annoyed, but didn’t say so. Five pounds was five pounds when your washing machine had just packed up. With their money tucked up safely in Dave’s jug and put away in the cupboard, Maggie sat down with the others.

  ‘Now. We want absolute silence when we begin or nothing will work. Everyone puts a finger on the wine glass, only a light touch remember, the glass has to have room to move. It’s one hundred years old, full of history, and very sensitive. We’ll sit quietly, thinking of questions and I’ll ask the first one to get the ball rolling. Ready?’

  There wasn’t so much as a tremor in the fingertips laid gently on the base of the glass. It was another cold night and the fire was more than welcome, but Linda noticed how the flames wavered about the walls and she wished they didn’t. Five minutes without speaking was beginning to take its toll on her. Just as she was thinking it was all a con, Maggie asked, ‘Is Don still holding his own?’

  Within seconds the glass was moving right across directly to ‘Y’, then ‘E’, then ‘S’. A sigh of relief went round the group.

  Angie asked the next one. ‘Am I going to win the lottery?’

  The wine glass hesitated, then stopped again in front of the letters ‘Y’, ‘E’ and ‘S’. Angie let out a cry of delight.

  Greta Jones said, ‘It’ll be ten pounds. Don’t get too excited.’

  ‘Then again,’ snapped Angie, ‘it might be ten million.’

  ‘Oh yeah!’

  Each of them in turn asked a simple question, so that only an affirmative or a negative answer was required. Maggie felt she was losing their attention. ‘Is there a message for any one of us tonight?’

  The glass rocked slightly and Linda became convinced the table had rocked too. The glass spelt out a sentence this time, slowly. Tantalizingly. L-i-n-d-a-m-u-s-t-a-s-k-p-am-f-o-r-a-j-o-b.

  Maggie called out, ‘Linda must ask Pam for a job! Pam. Who’s Pam?’

  Greta Jones said, ‘Not Pam, Pat. It’ll be a waitressing job. She’ll be short-handed. I did say.’

  Linda shivered with fright. ‘Really? I’ll ask her first thing in the morning. Oh God. I feel all squirmy inside.’

  ‘Shh! Someone ask something else.’

  This time a Miss Senior asked her mother if she had any more advice for the two of them. But the answer was jumbled and they couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Disappointed, Maggie asked the next question, prompted by she knew not what. ‘Dave? Do you have a message for me?’

  There was a long silence, once or twice the wine glass rocked, Linda was convinced the table had rocked again. Then hesitatingly the glass spelt out g-e-t-t-h-e-n-e-w-w-a-s-h-i-n-g-m-a-c-h-i-n-e-o-n-t-i-c-k-b-e-f-o-r-e-i-t-s-t-o-o-l-a-t-e.

  Maggie was horrified. She blanched. Her finger was glued to the glass and wouldn’t come away. The others took their fingers off and Linda and Venetia began to laugh.

  ‘Honestly!’ said Venetia. ‘What a laugh. That’s ridiculous. Who pushed it? Come on, who was it?’

  Maggie stuttered. ‘But it’s true, it’s broken down, they can’t mend it. It’s too old. No parts. They told me today.’

  ‘My lord!’ The Senior sisters clutched each other.

  Linda muttered, ‘It’s real then.’

  Angie cried out, ‘This is dangerous.’

  Maggie said, ‘What did it mean “b-b-before it’s too late”?’

  ‘Too late for what?’ asked Greta Jones.

  A deathly silence descended on them all. In the light of the lamp it was possible to see seven ashen faces, which not even the glow from the fire could colour. Eyes were wide, flicking from one to the other, seeking a grain of comfort.

  Angie was the first to speak. ‘Come on. Spill the beans, someone. Confess.’

  But each in turn shook their heads. In fact, when Angie looked into their faces she could see none of them were guilty. She swallowed hard.

  Maggie stated firmly that she thought they’d done enough for tonight.

  ‘No. No. Let’s have one more turn.’

  Reluctantly, Maggie nodded.

  So they started again but everything was confused once more and nothing made sense. Suddenly, out of the jumble came recognizable words: t-e-r-r-y-i-s-w-e-l-l-an-d-h-a-p-p-y.

  ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Mrs Jones shouted. ‘After all this time. Wait till I tell Vince! Oh my God!’ She was quite out of control. Mopping her face with her tissue, fanning herself with her hands, laughing hysterically, filled with happiness. ‘Now that really is it for tonight.’

  Venetia asked if Mrs Jones had ever heard of her two boys since they’d disappeared after all that trouble with the police.

  Mrs Jones put on a brave face when she replied, ‘Not a word. Not a blinking word.’

  ‘That’s wonderful for you, isn’t it?’ Angie said. ‘I don’t understand how it happens.’

  ‘It’s connecting with the spirits, that’s what,’ asserted Maggie.

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Linda. ‘Talk about being interesting. I don’t know when I’ve had such a good night. Better than the telly, ’cos it’s real. I’ll talk to Pat first thing.’

  ‘It’s made my day has this. A message from our Terry. Well, well. It’s been terrible not knowing.’

  Maggie said nothing. One happy customer was all that was needed to make a success of her ‘evenings’. She’d try this again.

  As they picked up their belongings, Maggie asked, ‘Same again next week or back to the usual?’

  With one voice they all said, ‘Same again.’

  ‘Goodnight, Maggie.’

  ‘We’ll make it nine o’clock next week. The nights are getting lighter and we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. In any case, it’s always better in the dark.’

  ‘Nine o’clock it is, then.’

  The absolutely deliciously alarming thing about it all was that on the following Monday morning the postman knocked at Mrs Jones’s door and handed her an airmail letter from New Zealand. ‘Thought I’d hand it to you personally, Mrs Jones. Not often you get a letter from the other side of the world, is it? Good morning to you.’

  It was from Terry. So all that terrible worry that had come to her when Vince had said that if our Terry was sending messages to her from the spirit world, logic dictated he was dead, disappeared. She’d spent a ghastly weekend after he’d said that. But all that was at an end. Joy!

  On the following Saturday night, Angie and her Colin won £254.42 on the lottery with numbers they’d never used before, and Linda got a job immediately waitressing at one of Jimbo’s functions in Culworth.

  The secret of Maggie’s seances was out.

  Chapter 9

  Kate stood in her classroom doorway, watching Mrs Dobbs water the plants in the hall. There was something about Maggie she couldn’t quite put her finger on; a listlessness, a kind of anxiety that hadn’t been there last week, or ever before come to that. ‘Mrs Do
bbs?’

  ‘Yes.’ Maggie turned to look at her.

  ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Sure? Nothing worrying you?’

  There was a hesitation before Maggie answered, ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘I’ve got a letter addressed to you from the education office. I’ve an idea it’s good news.’

  Alarmed, Maggie said, ‘Not my notice, is it?’ She thought of the payments on the washing machine she’d had delivered according to Dave’s instructions. She took the letter from Kate and stuffed it into her apron pocket. ‘I’ll read it later.’

  ‘Of course it can’t be your notice and if it is, which it isn’t, I shall have a lot to say to those nincompoops in the office. Their ears will be burning and no mistake. I don’t want you to leave, believe me. Open it and see.’

  ‘No.’

  Kate was puzzled, Maggie wasn’t her usual self at all. The spring had gone out of her step, and she looked thinner. Added to which she was quiet. If Maggie was in school, then normally everyone knew about it.

  Time after time, Maggie had told herself it was only a game. But when she heard that Angie had won on the lottery, that Linda’s name was on Pat Jones’s list for waitressing, and most worrying of all, apart from Dave’s message, that Greta Jones had received a letter from their Terry in New Zealand on the Monday morning after the seance, she’d become completely overwrought.

  She felt a great leaden weight lodged somewhere just under her ribs and it wouldn’t go away. It was there when she bent over to squeeze the mop in the school bucket, when she put down Tabitha’s dish and, worse, it was always present as soon as she began to eat. Frighteningly, she’d promised them another of her regular evenings, and she couldn’t see how she could get out of it.

  Kate always had time for the children to tell her their news, even though they were at the top of the Junior School age group, because she felt that the children who lived out on the farms needed to catch up on events which had passed them by because of the remoteness of their homes.

  That morning Paul Bliss said, ‘Did you know, Mrs Fitch, that Mr Turner,’ he thrust out his chest and his chin and gave a very good imitation of a strong man posing for a photograph, ‘you know, big Mr Turner, well, he’s won loads of money on the lottery. Loads and loads.’