“Somebody who didn’t want to be caught with them might have hidden them there.”
Felicity put a hand to her mouth.
“A thief?” she said, worried.
“Perhaps,” Annabelle shrugged. “But that’s not for you to worry about anymore. As far as you’re concerned, Felicity, that box is now my responsibility. You can forget all about it. Are you ticklish?” Annabelle tickled Felicity in the ribs to bring some levity to a conversation that had turned more serious than she would have liked.
Felicity wriggled and giggled. “No!”
“Are you sure?” Annabelle tickled Felicity some more.
“Ah, no, stop!” Felicity started to run across the tufted, wiry grass outside the church.
“Good!” Annabelle started to chase after her, glad to see the girl behaving more like the youngster she was. After a while, they slowed their pace and began walking down the path, breathing heavily. Annabelle returned to the subject of the box. “Leave the jewelry with me, Felicity. I’m not sure if I’m good at solving mysteries, but I most certainly would like to try!”
“You won’t tell anyone where I found the box will you?”
“No, I promise, “Annabelle replied. “Your secret is safe with me.”
As they got closer to the cottage where Felicity lived, she started waving.
Annabelle looked over and saw a woman, her dark hair piled up haphazardly and held back by a scarf wrapped around her head. She was standing by the garden gate in a faded red sweatshirt, grey padded waistcoat, and torn jeans.
“Who is that, Felicity?”
“My aunt. She’s waiting for me. Thank you Annabelle. I’ll go now. Bye.”
Annabelle felt she was being dismissed, but nodded and watched the girl run across to the woman. She opened the gate to let Felicity through and they walked into the house together, her arm around Felicity’s shoulders.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANNABELLE HAD PLENTY to mull over as she walked back to Roger’s house. She still wasn’t sure of her bearings, but the wild, unfurling landscape of the island was compelling, and she decided to take a leisurely walk off the main path but in a direction she hoped would eventually lead her to the village. She could then turn right at the crossroads and make her way home.
Her fears of getting lost were quickly dismissed as she saw there were plenty of other people leisurely strolling ahead of her and in the same general direction – many of whom she recognized as having just bidden her farewell at the church doors. She followed the ramblers, careful to pace herself so she didn’t catch up with them. She’d had enough small talk for a while and wanted to think in peace. Soon she found herself within sight of the small but charming cluster of buildings and roads that comprised the village center.
As she walked, Annabelle considered how pleasant it was to spend so much time out in the fresh air. In Upton St. Mary, she loved to use her Mini Cooper to get around and though she would not exchange for anything the satisfying experience of revving her little car’s motor as she traveled through her parish, she found herself just as invigorated by the process of walking across the wide dales and hills of this Scottish isle.
She allowed herself a small smile at the prospect of returning home with glowing skin and a trim figure. Her smile quickly faded, however, when she realized that her physical accomplishments in Scotland would probably disappear in a matter of moments back in Cornwall after being subjected to Philippa’s insistent (and irresistible) pleas to divest her of her warm, fragrant, mouthwatering, freshly baked cakes.
As her thoughts turned to the friends and parishioners she had left behind in Upton St. Mary, Annabelle felt a slight twinge of regret that they were not here. Annabelle pushed the thought from her mind as she reached the outskirts of the village, though a slight pang of homesickness remained somewhere deep inside her chest. She wondered how Inspector Nicholls and his new dog, Molly, were getting on.
The village was busier than it had been on her “tour” with Bonnie and Felicity the previous day. Much like Upton St. Mary on Sundays, the village gatherings didn’t end at the church – they continued in the pub. Almost everyone, it seemed, was headed in the direction of the stone-walled Pig and Whistle, their spirits high and their voices loud in anticipation of a good time.
Annabelle followed the crowd into the pub and was met with a dense wall of bodies clad in coats, gloves, and wooly hats. As soon as she entered the musty room, filled already with the smell of beer, she saw that it was even more crowded than the church had been. Cheers, appreciative pats on the back, and raised glasses greeted her arrival, and she found herself shuffled quickly through the bodies toward the bar.
“Tell Father Boyce he can stay on holiday!” someone called out from the crowd, to roars of laughter.
“There’s no more room on the boat, Vicar, you’ll have to stay with us!” shouted another.
The drinkers parted to reveal a young, pretty, blonde woman waiting for her behind the bar with a big smile on her face.
“Sorry, Vicar,” she said, in her light, strong Scottish accent. “It can get a wee bit rowdy on a Sunday lunchtime.”
“Oh, it’s rather jolly,” Annabelle said, exchanging a shaky smile with the grizzled man in a fisherman’s sweater and overalls who was drinking a pint of beer next to her and leering.
“I heard you led everyone in a right merry sing-song at the service today,” the girl said.
“It was just a few hymns, nothing unusual. ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful,’ that kind of thing. I think it was the novelty of it all that excited everyone more than anything.”
“Aye. That, and the fact that Father Boyce is a rather dour sort. He could make a waltz sound like a funeral march.”
Annabelle chuckled along with the girl.
“My name’s Mairéad, by the way. I’ve been on the mainland for a few years, but now I’m the landlady here, sort of – I mean, my dad owns the pub. I look after it when he’s on the other island.” She offered her hand over the bar.
“Ah yes, Harry. I met him and his bagpipes in church,” Annabelle said, shaking the girl’s hand.
“I hope he didn’t bother you too much,” Mairéad replied. She nodded back over her shoulder to point out her father who had dispensed with his bagpipes and was now laughing heartily with regulars at the other end of the bar. “Anyway, what can I get you, Vicar? It’s on the house.”
“Oh, it’s alright. I just popped in for—“
“Ah, come on!” Mairéad insisted. “Just a wee one. A whisky, perhaps?”
Annabelle hesitated for a second, but Mairéad’s smile was too sweet and kind to deny. “Oh, alright then!” she said. “But just a small orange juice, please. No ice.”
Mairéad nodded and turned around to get Annabelle her drink. Seconds later, the orange juice in her hand, Annabelle took a small sip as she scanned the pub. Compared to the serenity and wide, open spaces of the land outside, the noise and laughter of people crammed shoulder to shoulder inside the fusty bar was a stark contrast.
For a split-second, she thought she noticed the distinctive, mussed-up, thatch-colored hair of the man who had beaten a hasty retreat from the pub the day before, but she lost him in the mass of moving bodies. Just as she was about to make her way through the crowd and mingle some, a voice called her name from across the bar. Carefully easing herself among the tightly knit bodies around her, she saw Harry Anderson, who had made his way to her end of the counter.
“Hello, again,” Annabelle smiled, placing her glass down on the wood grain.
“I see you’ve met my daughter,” the man bellowed, and Annabelle suddenly understood why he had developed such a strong, projected voice. It was noisy in the pub. Playing the bagpipes probably helped, too.
“Yes, Mairéad. She seems like a lovely girl.”
“That she is. That she is,” the man said, nodding wistfully. “More mature than I’ll ever be! Ha!”
Annabelle laughed. “You seem to be at the center of
everything. Might I ask you something, Harry?”
“Of course! I’d soon go to hell if I didn’t let you, wouldn’t I!? Ha!”
“Is there anyone on the island who knows about jewelry? Or antiques, perhaps?”
Harry Anderson furrowed his brow and scratched the stubble on his cheek with thick, strong fingers.
“Let’s see… Perhaps. What kind of jewelry?”
Annabelle was about to describe the items before quickly remembering that she had photographs on her phone. She fished it from her pocket and pressed and swiped to bring up a picture of the diamond necklace. She turned her phone around to show the pub owner.
“That’s a lovely little thing if ever I saw one,” Harry mused as he looked over the picture. “Must be worth a pretty penny. Yours?” He scrolled through a few more of the photos.
“Um,” Annabelle murmured as she thought of something to say, “Yes. No. Not really.”
“There is one guy who might be able to help you. I’ll have a word with him and get back to you if you like.”
“That would be fabulous, Harry. Thank you ever so much.”
Harry smiled and nodded at the throng that filled his pub. “Your service got people in such good spirits, you’ve probably done more for business than the last pub quiz! Ha! It’s the least I can do for you!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANNABELLE SIPPED THE last of her orange juice and decided that she should probably start making her way back home. It was nearly one o’clock, and she had built up quite an appetite. Putting the glass down on the bar and giving Mairéad a goodbye wave of thanks, she pushed through the mass of bodies out into the fresh air and left the noisy hubbub behind.
After the stuffy heat of the pub, its air thick with the beer and bitters it served, the fresh air outside seemed wholly purifying. She turned in the direction of home, but when she was mere feet from the pub, a figure silently stepped out from an alleyway to right in front of her. Annabelle looked up and found herself face to face with Pip Craven, his dark, serious eyes holding hers. Up close, she could see that his iconic chiseled visage was a little softer and the skin at his jaw now sagged slightly, but he was still immediately recognizable as the rocker of his youth.
“You’re the Vicar, right?” he said, in his broad Birmingham accent.
Annabelle blinked rapidly, finding herself unexpectedly starstruck and a little intimidated. She was standing very close to the man who had provided the musical accompaniment to much of her adolescence. A memory of her father yelling at her to turn down the volume of the Craven Idols’ heavy metal music as their long guitar solos and overall emphatic sound crashed loudly from her bedroom popped into her mind. Though Pip was far from the striking, angry young man of his album covers, his eyes, in particular, still carried the brooding magnetism and intense energy that had won him millions of fans the world over.
“Ah… Yes,” she said, slowly coming to her senses.
“I heard church was good this morning,” he said calmly.
“The congregation seemed to enjoy it,” Annabelle said, looking around her before finding her gaze magnetically drawn back to him.
With his eyes still fixed on her, Pip slowly put a piece of gum in his mouth and started chewing it. “Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“Certainly,” Annabelle replied. She felt self-conscious but flattered to find herself the object of Pip Craven’s curiosity.
“You’ve seen a lot of deaths, right? I mean, you do a lot of funerals. You know bodies and such. Hear about how people die a lot.”
“Well, I—”
“What’s the most inexplicable death you’ve ever come across?” Pip leaned in close to her, his curiosity evident in his tone and those dark, charismatic eyes. “I mean, the strangest one. The one that didn’t seem to make sense. Or was just plain weird.”
“Hmm,” Annabelle said, frowning briefly at the macabre question. “I really couldn’t say.” The question struck her as odd, and an unhealthy interest in death was something she didn’t like to encourage.
“What about vampires? Do you know anything about those?” A slight smile came to his lips. Pip seemed to be amused at the thought. Annabelle felt quite queasy.
“Er, no. But I know quite a lot about—“
“Yes—?” Pip urged, leaning in even further.
“Bats,” she said. “We had some in the belfry at one of the churches I interned at as a theology student.”
“Did anyone get bitten? Draw blood?” Pip’s eyes were wide and his neck fully-extended forward.
“No, no I don’t think so. We called in the animal protection people, and they told us not to touch them.”
Pip looked disappointed. “What about graves? Ever had any strange goings-on in the cemetery?”
“Well, once somebody thought it was a good idea to leave some dead crows by the church gates.” Pip gasped. “We’d clear them away, then more would appear the next night. It went on for a week before we found out they were being electrocuted when they landed on the power line that ran along the street.
“Oooohhhh!” he said, drawing the word out so that it became a moan of satisfaction. “That’s good! That’s very good!” Slowly, a wide smile spread across Pip’s face. Annabelle immediately regretted telling him anything.
“It most certainly is not good!” chided Annabelle, her sense of awe at being in the presence of someone famous completely vanishing. “The poor birds were being killed unnecessarily! As Billy Brevil told me after they learned about the food chain at school, crows are important! We had quite a dearth of them for a while, although the farmers were happy enough, I suppose.”
This statement only seemed to please Pip even more.
“Thanks, Reverend! I owe you a drink!” he said happily, before turning away.
Annabelle shook her head and took a moment to breathe in deeply as though to cleanse her lungs of the taint left by Pip and his black soul. A slight breeze brushed across her face. She detected the warning signs of an oncoming storm. With the rising wind, Annabelle could almost smell her way to Roger’s house. A faint mixture of something sweet and something savory traveled upon it. She quickened her step and arrived just in time to offer a helping hand with the laying of the table, her stomach growling in anticipation of Mrs. Cavendish’s Sunday lunch, her queasiness at Pip Craven’s inquisition notwithstanding.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I’M AFRAID BONNIE and I will have to miss Evensong,” Roger said, once they had all sat back in order to allow their lunch to go down. “Bonnie’s yet to do her homework, and I’ve still got some work to catch up on.”
“That’s fine,” Annabelle said. “Evensong is always a bit of an anticlimax after the Sunday morning service.”
Evensong was typically a somber affair, attended by only the most diligent of worshippers. Annabelle had almost forgotten about it. In Upton St. Mary, she only conducted it once a month, yet here on the island, Father Boyce had insisted there would be a demand for it should Annabelle be willing.
With a little time to kill before six o’clock, Annabelle settled herself alongside Bonnie at her desk with the goal of lending a helping hand as the girl completed her homework. Bonnie, however, seemed wholly intent on derailing the endeavor at every turn by discussing all and any topic that wasn’t related to the conjugation of the French verbs, “aller,” “jouer,” and “faire.”
“Now why don’t you use all the tenses of the verb “to play” in this sentence about the dog?” Annabelle asked, in her most authoritative voice.
“You’ve got a dog now, haven’t you?” Bonnie asked.
“I do, and I’ll tell you all about him once we’ve finished these exercises,” Annabelle said, firmly.
“I wish I had a dog,” Bonnie replied, dropping her chin onto her hand. “Daddy says that we can get one when I’m old enough to look after it myself. But I think I am old enough now. We don’t need to wait. I mean, what exactly does a dog need but walkies?”
“
A dog requires much more than just walkies, Bonnie,” Annabelle said. “They need lots of care and attention. And love. Feeding them and walking them and keeping them healthy is only a small part. You have to develop an understanding and—“ Annabelle interrupted herself quickly, pursing her lips as she realized how she had been taken in. “Well, never mind. Forget about all that. Come on, let’s do these verbs.” She pointed at Bonnie’s notebook.
“Do you think your dog loves you?”
Annabelle sighed and looked at Bonnie with a mildly disapproving look.
“I think he certainly does a better job of listening to me than you do!”
Bonnie giggled, and finally started following Annabelle’s instructions.
Eventually, seeing that it was half-past five and realizing that her presence was proving more of a distraction than a benefit to Bonnie’s education, Annabelle kissed the young girl on the forehead and poked her head into Roger’s room to announce her departure. She went out into the daylight. It was starting to fade. Making the journey to the church for the second time that day, alone and at dusk, was an entirely different and altogether more intimidating undertaking.
After a few doubtful moments in which she felt she had taken a wrong turn, she eventually determined the faint outline of the kirk’s spires against a darkening, clouded sky, and she relaxed a little as she drew close to the plain, unadorned structure.
In the moment between pulling out her key and placing it into the lock, however, Annabelle noticed scratch marks where the two doors joined. There were deep indentations in the wood, next to the large keyhole, as if something massive had attempted to claw itself in between them. They hadn’t been there earlier. She reached out with her bare fingers in order to touch the marks.
“Oh!” she gasped suddenly, as the door gave way easily at her gentle touch.
She was certain that she had locked it securely earlier, and a brief glance at the latch confirmed it. The wood of the door had splintered and cracked at the bolt. Someone had forced it open.
Horror in the Highlands Page 6