Murder Ghost Foul: The Complete Mystic Springs Paranormal Cozy Mystery Series

by Mona Marple

  “Why did you send that, that, thing in here?” I asked. As the necromancy teacher, Bryan Derby had always made me feel uncomfortable. It was hard to tell sometimes whether he inhabited the world of the living or the world of the dead.

  “The dead are not to be feared,” he said, and lowered himself into a chair. “Go on, do what you have to do.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “It isn’t safe for you to be out here alone,” Bryan said. “I sent the dead to protect you, but if that makes you uncomfortable, I’ll do the job myself.”

  “Protect me?” I asked. There was no way I was going to continue my search of the office with Bryan Derby watching me. Strangely, I hadn’t felt in danger until he - and the dead shadows - had arrived.

  “We wouldn’t want a second murder, now, would we?”

  I swallowed and closed my eyes for a moment, attempted to get my breathing under control.

  “Please, continue,” he said, and then, to my surprise, he pulled an electronic tablet from his pocket and looked down at it. “I have marking to do, I won’t disturb you.”

  I watched him for a few moments, waiting for the punch line, but none came. Bryan Derby took out a stylus and occasionally annotated the digital documents. He was a highly involved teacher, with the toughest standards in the school. Summoning the dead was not to be taken lightly, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to graduate his class unless they were truly capable. I wasn’t sure what was more shocking from the night so far - the murder or the fact that Bryan Derby used an iPad.

  I’d scraped by his subject, my assignments always returned to me covered with his pen and ink comments and corrections - no digital tablets then. But I’d never summoned the dead since graduating. Necromancy, I believed, was a power you were born with, not something you could learn.

  As Bryan continued his marking, a swarm of shadows circled around him and the low chatter of their whisperings filled the room. It was Latin, I knew from being told, not because I spoke the language. Mr Derby’s skill was so great that he summoned the long-dead warriors of old merely by thinking of them. They were with him constantly, guiding him, protecting him, obeying him.

  The thought made me shudder. He could have given a silent order for Sid Snipe to be killed and wouldn’t have had to lift a finger himself. Although, that made no sense. The shadows would kill supernaturally. They had no need to use a letter opener.

  As I realised that Bryan was uninterested in me and my little search, I moved to the far corner of the office and sat, legs crossed. I closed my eyes and drew a circle around me, spending longer on this step than I usually would because I had more need for protection than I usually did.

  In my bag, I had sage, a wildflower, and a tiny vial of tears. I carried these with me everywhere out of habit, training from my childhood.

  You never want to be somewhere unprepared, my mother had told me, and even during my time at Winifred’s, when I was told day after day that my type of magic was uncultured and outdated (how could they suggest that my traditional witchcraft was outdated while Bryan Derby waltzed through the corridors with an army of dead warriors at his beck and call?!), I always carried these things.

  I used my hand as a container and ground the sage and wildflower together, then added a drop of the tears. Not my tears. Magical tears, bought from an elderly witch three towns over who assured me that they were of world class quality. I wasn’t too sure. Rumour had it her favourite son was serving hard time after being caught in a stolen car with a single gun and a whole lot of drugs. There was every chance the tears were her own.

  I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and said the spell aloud:

  Powers guide me in the night

  Give the gift of one true sight

  In this room death happened fast

  Show me now what came to pass

  At first, nothing happened, then I felt my body begin to rotate. Around and around I spun as I travelled back a few hours, then landed with a thud in the same spot on the floor of the office.

  The vision was distorted, as if another power didn’t want me to have full sight. I couldn’t worry about that. The vision would only last a few moments and I had to pay attention. I didn’t have the ingredients to repeat the spell.

  Sid Snipe sat at his desk, smoking a pipe, his legs up on the desk. The desk was tidy, not a sheet of paper in sight. At the sound of the door opening, he turned, gave out a laugh.

  “Good evening, old sport!” Sid said. No clue in the greeting, he called everyone that.

  The vision pulled back then and I forced myself to concentrate, to stay with it. When it came back into focus, my view was more close up. A piece of paper, a hand, and a pen.

  The pen!

  The distinctive pen!

  “This is all wrong,” Sid’s voice came out, agitated, as his meaty hand scrawled his name across the paper.

  “It’s for the best, you’ll see,” came a voice in response. I froze with fear, for I knew that voice. It was the voice of the man currently guarding me, watching me, claiming to be protecting me.

  In my panic I lost the vision and tried desperately to claw it back.

  Once more, time had jumped forward and I found myself face to face with Sid’s corpse. I gasped, then forced myself to be quiet, to listen, but there was only silence.

  I felt foolish for not realising earlier that the pen must belong to Bryan Derby. Covered in skulls as a nod towards his love of the dead.

  The vision disappeared and I opened my eyes, returned to the room.

  Bryan Derby stood before me, the shadows spread out on either side of him. He offered his hand and pulled me up. Even as I stood, he was considerably taller than me. A simpering man who I’d never heard raise his voice. In some ways, that made him more scary than the teachers who were constantly shouting, who couldn’t control their classroom without raising their voices. By contrast, there was Bryan Derby, necromancer, who could even control the dead without needing to shout.

  “See anything interesting?” He asked me, with a slow smile, and I realised I had to get away, before it was too late.

  17

  Violet

  George Tattleshack was a brute of a man, all shoulders, no neck. He stood at the back of the room in a pair of dirty overalls, as if he wanted to make it as obvious as possible that he was working and not there for pleasure.

  “George?” I asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can we talk?” I asked. The eyes of the whole room had been on me as I’d walked out of the production booth with Kathi Salt and headed straight for the porter. A wave of a whisper took over the room. It was predictable and infuriating. The majority of the upper class alumni looked down on staff such as George, working hard to earn an honest living. He wasn’t one of them, no matter how often he guided them to the right classrooms during their first weeks at school or how kindly he treated the ones who suffered through seasickness to arrive by Rex’s boat each day. He was an outsider. It had to be him.

  I didn’t think for a moment that George was the killer. His separation from the rest of the school was the exact reason I believed him to be innocent. George was at the school, but not of the school.

  I led him to the production booth, all eyes following us, and closed the door.

  “I know you didn’t do it,” I said, as soon as he took a seat. Unlike me and Kathi Salt, he showed no surprise at the state of the room and I realised with a start that there was a whole part of Winifred’s that he knew better than the students and the teaching staff.

  “And you brought me in here to tell me that privately? How nice,” he said, with an eye roll. He picked up a faded takeaway coffee cup and tossed it across the room into the trash.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “You’re the one meant to be getting the award, right?”

  I nodded.

  “What for?”

  His question confused me. I hadn’t considered it before, and it threw
me. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Well, they’re normally famous or something,” he said, as he sat back in his chair. He was younger than he first looked, and as he flashed me a cheeky grin I realised his accent wasn’t local.

  “You’re Australian?”

  “Guilty as charged,” he said with a grin, which transformed to a frown. “You’re the first person here to notice.”

  “In ten years?”

  “In ten years,” he said. “So, are you famous?”

  “Not really,” I said. Fame was a funny thing. My name had been in the newspapers before I was old enough to be able to read it. “I’m Violet Warren, my mother was either the most powerful witch in modern history or a mad woman, depending which week the newspapers were writing about her.”

  “Sounds like a barrel of laughs,” he said with raised eyebrows. I couldn’t stop looking at what should have been his neck. His form jutted out from his ears to his shoulders, making him look like a muscle head. Buying shirts must have been impossible for him.

  “It was interesting,” I admitted, unsure why I was sharing such things with him. “One week she’d be at the Oscars, the next she’d be in an asylum. She was something of a novelty to the celebrities, I think.”

  “So you are famous,” he said. “Like Macauley Culkin! A child star!”

  “Oh, no,” I said, unsure who Macauley Culkin was. “My name got in the newspapers. My face too, I’m afraid. But not because of my desires. I’ve always been a fan of a quiet life.”

  “This award, then, is that because of your mum too?”

  I gave him a coy smile. The man was smart. “I’m an artist… I do paintings. I’ve done fairly well out of it. I imagine that’s why they chose me.”

  He flashed me that smile again and I realised that if he could make me talk so easily, about my childhood, about my mother, he must have been working the same magic on people for the last ten years at the school.

  “So, ya reckon I can help you out?”

  “I’m leading the investigation into Sid’s murder, and I have a feeling that nobody sees and hears more of what goes on around here than you.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure if I’d seen a bloke get stabbed, I’d have mentioned it already,” he said with a wink. I had the distinct feeling that he was a man incapable of taking anything too seriously - even murder.

  “Yes, I’m not suggesting you actually saw the murder…” I began.

  He reached across and squeezed my arm. “I’m teasing you. Go on, what do you want to know?”

  “Well, it’s a long time since I’ve been here and I’m sure things have changed. What’s it really like here now, George? It’s a big time for the school, with the academy news.”

  He scoffed. “That was never going to happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The academy stuff. Never in a million years,” he said as he leaned further back in his chair.

  “But the contracts were signed, the deal was done,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Good enough lawyers can always find an out.”

  “But who’d ask them to?” I asked. “Sid Snipe was in charge.”

  “And then he died,” George said, then laughed as if he’d cracked a joke.

  “That’s funny?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe not funny… but predictable.”

  “Predictable?”

  “I warned him,” George said. “Weeks ago, when the contracts came. He wanted someone independent to witness his signature, said I were about as independent as they come at school. He weren’t wrong. Imagine if he’d asked one of the teachers? They’d just say he’d forged their signatures, anything to get the contract out the picture.”

  “What did you warn him about?”

  “I told him, they’re not gonna let this go through,” George said with a sage nod. He had a habit of sucking his lips in after a sentence.

  “And what did he have to say to that?”

  “Not much,” George said. “He really did reckon it was for the best, I’ll give him that. I mean, his salary’d increase, so there was that, but I reckon he was doing it for the right reasons.”

  “Who did you mean, when you said they weren’t going to let it happen?”

  “The old guard, of course,” George said with a nod out towards the dining room. “The ones who’ve been here as long as he had. They all think it’s theirs, that’s the problem. It’s just a school, and it’s falling apart. I see things they wouldn’t believe, in the back corridors and what have you. It can’t keep going like this.”

  “Repairs, you mean?”

  He nodded. “Building like this needs a lot every year just to stop it falling apart. You start cutting corners because the budget’s too tight, it’s hard to get caught up. And you reach a point where it’s impossible, you just can’t catch up at all. It’s got to be done regular. But none of it comes cheap. I get that. I see what the school’s paying out on materials - not even to improve the place. Not to add any new facilities. Just to try and keep it looking as good as it did fifty years ago. It’s rough. I said they’d be better just moving on. Knock it down and get a place purpose built.”

  “I bet that went down well,” I said with a smirk.

  “I don’t see another option,” George said with a shake of his head. He was like an observer, a person watching the madness and wondering why nobody else could see sense. “Other schools have got swimming pools and computer suites, stuff this place can’t even dream about. It’s only hanging around because of the traditionalists. You know, the parents who came here and want the same for their kids?”

  I nodded. He really did know everything.

  “You said the old guard, George. Who do you mean in particular? Who wasn’t going to stand by and let Sid do this?”

  He took a deep breath, glanced out to the dining room. “Bryan Derby was fuming about it, in that quiet way he has. Him and his spooks. Of course, schools aren’t teaching necromancy any more, so he knows his days are numbered if we become an academy.”

  I nodded. Bryan Derby was my first suspect for owning the distinctive pen that had been found beside Sid’s body.

  “Helen Sculley’s barely said a word to him in months, talk about a woman scorned,” George said with a pointed stare. “And Kathi Salt would happily trample over his body to take his job. She don’t care if it’s an academy or not, she just wants a Headship.”

  “What about his wife?” I asked, as Lizette Anderson-Pugh caught my eye. She staggered across the dining room to a table where a half-empty glass of wine had been forgotten about, picked up the glass and downed the blood-red liquid in one sip.

  George shrugged. “You mean, could she have done it? Makes a lot of sense. Lot of people would have taken the chance tonight to have a whisper in her ear, make sure she knew just how close Sid was with Helen.”

  “And who’s your money on?” I asked, getting the distinct feeling that George Tattleshack was a betting man.

  George grinned. “Hell hath no fury…”

  18

  Ellie

  “Crystal!” I shouted as I burst back into the dining room.

  She was up from her seat in a moment, all perfectly pouted lips and concern in her bright eyes.

  “What’s happened? Come on, sit down, have a drink,” she said as she virtually threw me into a chair and forced a glass of water into my hand. My heart thundered in my chest as I replayed the last few minutes.

  “It’s Bryan Derby,” I managed to blurt out. Crystal’s eyes widened.

  “He did it?”

  “I think so,” I panted. “He came into Sid Snipe’s office with his army of the dead. He said he was there to protect me, but…”

  “Did he hurt you?” Crystal asked, her mouth pinched with fury. She may look like a doll, but she was a fighter. I grabbed her tiny wrist so she couldn’t jump up and do something stupid. She may be tougher than she looked, but she was no match for the dead.

  I shook my hea
d. “I got out in time.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, then cupped her face and pulled her in close to me. “Listen to me, we have to stay in here. There’s safety in numbers. Don’t leave me, okay?”

  She glanced towards the door, which I’d left open, then returned her gaze to me and nodded.

  “Did you see anything?”

  I told her about the visions, about the voice I’d heard.

  “So it was Mr Derby,” Crystal said, her own voice breathless with panic.

  “I think so,” I said. The whole thing seemed surreal back in the dining room, with its lights on and its crowd of beautifully dressed people. It was hard to believe that any of it was real. The murder, the visions, the way Bryan Derby’s dead had crowded around me. It was more exciting than the way I normally spent my evenings, that was for sure.

  “He’s up to no good,” Crystal said. “Why hasn’t he come back in here?”

  “Maybe he’s hiding evidence,” I said. “Look, I don’t care what he’s doing. I just want to stay in here, with you. Okay? Where’s Violet?”

  Crystal nodded towards the production booth. “She’s talking to some muscle head in a pair of overalls.”

  “Sounds ominous,” I said. “Do you think she’s okay?”

  “She’s as okay as the rest of us,” Crystal said. “We’re all just here like sitting ducks. We need to get help.”

  “I think we are the help,” I said with a shrug. “The storm’s getting worse. We’ve got to stick it out and not panic.”

  “Do you think he wanted to hurt you?” Crystal asked as she leaned in close and lowered her voice.

  I shook my head. “I think he wanted to scare me, make sure I wasn’t going to discover that he’s the killer. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have done.”

  I’d scrabbled up to my feet and bolted from Sid Snipe’s office, and Bryan Derby had simply stood back and watched me, while his loyal dead awaited his orders. If he’d wanted to harm me, he could have done in an instant. I hadn’t outran him or outsmarted him, he’d just let me go. That thought wasn’t as comforting as it might have been in the daylight.