Florence wafted over to me, the faint scent of smouldering cotton tickling my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose, trying to stop myself sneezing. “What are you drawing?” she asked, leaning closer.
“It’s not a drawing. It’s a … a … a mind map.”
“Oh a mind map,” Florence repeated knowingly, but at a guess I’d say she’d never heard of one before.
“It’s to help me think straight.”
Florence stopped waving her feather duster around and looked at me, her face grave. “You do have a lot going on at the moment, Miss Alf. How is Mr Hoo?”
I shook my head. “No better. Millicent has taken him home and she’s keeping an eye on him there for me.” I sighed and wrote down Mr Hoo’s name on my paper, then drew a heart around those words, wondering which circle I could link him to. It would have to be the water, wouldn’t it?
I looked again at the word Astutus. It sat like an island in its own circle, awaiting a solution.
Then I glanced up at Florence again, remembering—
Remembering how she had spied on Kat for me, when I wanted information about what was happening to the bride in the run-up to the vampire wedding. And remembering how she had snuck into the mysterious Mr Wylie’s room when he had stayed at the inn in March ostensibly claiming to be some sort of travelling businessman using Whittle Inn as a base from which to meet with clients. Florence had been able to establish that he carried an empty briefcase. No businessman was he.
Fabulous Fenella had been absolutely rubbish undercover, but Florence had been wonderful.
I could send her to The Hay Loft.
At first glance it seemed like a genius solution. I wrote her name on my piece of paper with a flourish and looked up at her and grinned.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Miss Alf?” My housekeeper’s voice was loaded with suspicion, and the feather duster twitched nervously between us. Her control over the tools of her trade was always impressive.
I frowned. Because that would be the challenge, wouldn’t it? Florence knew about dusting and laying fires and baking. She could beat a rug to within half an inch of its life. Her meringues were light and heavenly. Her hot chocolate spirited me away to magickal realms.
But she’d died in the 1880s. She didn’t know the first thing about computers.
I slumped in my chair and pouted, staring at her name in the circle on the page in front of me. Florence was the only solution I had to the issue of gaining access to information about Astutus. Her circle looked lonely. It required a companion. Because she couldn’t do this alone.
I needed to locate a partner in crime for her.
And I knew just where to look.
Located on the Isle of Dogs in London, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Canary Wharf is a huge area of commercial estate, and the main financial centre for the United Kingdom. Many of the UK’s tallest building are located in these 97 acres of what has been described as ‘prime and contemporary real estate’. With acres and acres of office and retail space, you can only imagine the sheer number of workers who spend their Monday to Friday inhabiting a desk in the area. Best guesstimates suggest somewhere in the region of 105,000 people.
That’s a huge number.
Think of it—105,000 people going about their business. But not really their business. They’re usually undertaking someone else’s business, earning pennies in order to earn enough so they can pay extortionate rent for a house or flat that is over an hour’s travel away from their desk. Or if they have a mortgage, they likely live two hours away.
I’d spent six months working in a bar in the area, before deciding the sheer hysteria and wide-eyed desperation of the mainly young, absurdly ambitious and power-hungry employees was not for me. I’d headed into the West End instead, where rather than plotting their next move in the cut throat world of finance, people liked to chill a little more. They’d kick back and forget their woes.
What I’d learned during my six months tenancy in this particular corner of the Big Smoke, was that much of that naked ambition was rendered hopeless. Occasionally the resulting despair and stress manifested itself in depression and other mental illnesses. On more than one occasion I’d received the sad news of the passing of a punter who had chosen to take matters into their own hands and end their misery.
And that sordid and distressing memory was what had brought me back to the Isle of Dogs. The one thing I’d learned well in the last twelve months was that my capacity for calling ghosts to me was endless. To that end, I was here to channel my inner Penelope Quigwell. I intended to locate my own technical wizard.
After tacking my mind map to the wall of my office, I’d roped Florence in to my plan. She’d agreed to travel with me—I’d had to swear on Charity’s life that I wouldn’t lose her—and thus we had ventured by train to the capital, and after that taken the tube. Florence’s face was a constant source of amusement to me—her wonder as she beheld every piece of technological wizardry that the twentieth century had thrown our way. Of course she knew of motor cars, trains and tubes - but she had never ridden on them. The prevalence of electric light, the flashing information boards, the digitally operated ticket machines, sliding doors, elevators, escalators, the sheer number of people and cars—these things all excited her. And… pigeons.
Florence was entranced by the pigeons. She’d spent the whole of her short life—twenty-two years—in our little rural backwater in Devon, apart the occasional foray to the nearby towns of Abbotts Cromleigh, Durscombe or Honiton. She had never even made it as far as the city of Exeter. Whittlecombe, situated as it was in the forests of East Devon, attracted dozens and dozens of varieties of birds—everything from sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes and wrens, to owls, kingfishers, starlings and robins. Seagulls were ubiquitous, but pigeons? There were few.
Here in London they were everywhere. As we walked the short journey from the Underground station to Canada Square, Florence stopped in the middle of the road, turning around and about, as cars rushed by her, and pigeons scavenged by the kerbs, cooing and fluttering if a vehicle came too close.
“Florence!” I called to her the second time I had to stop and turn back for her. She remembered herself and hurried after me, looking behind her as she came. “Keep up, keep up,” I hissed, and a woman close by stole a sly look at me—obviously new to the capital otherwise she would have ignored me completely.
“The birds, Miss Alf,” she said. “They’re so pretty.”
“You think so?” I asked in surprise. “Most people think of pigeons as vermin, Florence.”
“Oh surely not? Such a noble looking being.”
“Mmm,” I said doubtfully. “Nice in a pie.”
“Miss Alf!” Florence began to chastise me then pulled up short, looking at the enormous buildings that filled both our visions. Skyscrapers, that even to my eye, soared impossibly tall, reaching for the heavens in the cloudless sky.
I watched Florence ogle the buildings, tipping her head right back to follow the line of each, her face a picture, but not as much as the one or two people we had met along the journey—among the many thousands we had mingled with in fact—who had recognised a ghost when they’d seen one.
That had truly been fun.
Some of them had turned pale and looked away, others had watched in silent fascination. One or two had tried to approach her, but I’d warned Florence about keeping her head down. We had a job to do, a mission, and nothing could detract from that.
“How do they make the buildings so tall?” Florence asked.
“They use cranes,” I replied, and then realizing she probably wouldn’t know what one of those was either, continued, “that’s like a giant steel machine that can hoist heavy loads. They create scaffolding and the shell of the building using the crane and then…”
When Florence still looked puzzled, I whirled about. I could see a dozen or so cranes on the horizon and I pointed them out to her.
“They’re like some kind of iron pre
historic vulture,” she mused in fascination and I nodded. “But, Miss Alf.” She turned to examine the buildings more critically. “Who on earth do they have cleaning all the windows?”
“I expect they hire a small army of people like you, Florence.” It seemed easiest to answer that way. I wanted to get down to business and then head back to Devon as quickly as possible.
Florence regarded me with barely concealed scepticism, so I smiled innocently and walked on, hoping she’d follow.
“Miss Alf?” She trotted up behind me. “What exactly are we looking for?”
I halted once more, standing in the middle of a plaza. The architecture was clean and crisp, the ground beautifully laid out, the stainless-steel benches and concrete planters symmetrical and ultimately bland. There seemed to be no room for creativity here, no abstract thought. No warmth.
“We’re looking for someone who previously worked here. Someone who gave up.”
“Gave up their job?” Florence asked. “Why would we find them here then? Wouldn’t they have moved on?”
I stared up at the shining edifices above me, remembering the desperately unhappy men and women who had occasionally frequented my bar. The ones who had sat alone and wept after a bottle of red wine. Those who had nothing left to give, nowhere left to turn. Those who thought they had no future ahead of them.
“Gave up everything,” I said softly. “Gave up life.”
Together Florence and I spent the next hour or so scouring the general area. For some strange reason, I’d imagined we would find the ghost lights of the unfortunate quickly and easily, but it rapidly became apparent that this wasn’t going to be the case.
My intention had been to target Canary Wharf for a variety of reasons. I’d expected that the number of deaths on this patch of land would be few and far between and this would mean I wouldn’t be inundated with ghost lights in the way I had when I visited the Tower of London for example. Secondly, I needed a very particular type of ghost. One who had the most up to date IT skills, and where better to find them than here in the financial heart of Europe?
But it looked like I’d miscalculated. I found a grand total of five ghost lights. Two of those were construction workers killed in unfortunate accidents during the building of the complex, and two of them were homeless people who’d died during the hard winter the year before. The fifth was an elderly CEO who’d had a heart attack while chowing on his lunch one sunny spring day. He was a nice guy, it transpired after a quick chat, but his IT skills were pretty basic and confined mainly to emails and excel spreadsheets. Not quite what I had in mind.
I perched on a wall, my feet and back aching with all the mindless wandering I’d been doing. Workers poured out of the buildings close by, heading for places to grab a sandwich and I began to feel increasingly disheartened.
“I got it wrong,” I sighed, and Florence turned her attention back to me. She’d been watching a group of women walk past in impossibly high stiletto heels.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss Alf.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t know much about suicide, but I suppose if people are suffering with depression or some kind of mental breakdown, then they’ll tend to opt for privacy at the end.” I didn’t like to dwell on the myriad ways people chose to end their lives. “I’d imagined all the fed-up workers threw themselves out of windows and made strawberry jam on the plaza.”
“Eww.” Florence shuddered.
“I know.” I looked around. “Let’s just be glad that’s not the case. I suppose none of the windows open in these big high-rises anyway. Health and safety and all that.”
Florence thought about that. “In my day, we didn’t have all that health and safety stuff that you worry about at the inn all the time. But people,” she paused before whispering, “finishing themselves off,” before resuming in her normal voice, “was quite rare too. Not unheard of, Miss Alf. But such things were kept very hush hush. It brought shame on the family, you know?”
I had heard that. “Thank goodness those days are past. I think people are increasingly aware now. More sympathetic to those who suffer, in whatever capacity.”
Florence nodded. “I knew a fellow, a friend of my fiancé actually, who… you know? We were all very shocked.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that.” I was. However, I couldn’t help asking, “How did he do it?”
“Threw himself in front of the Exeter to Paddington Express.”
I winced. “Ouch.”
From somewhere close by I heard the high-pitched scraping of iron against iron, and the juddering and rumble of an engine passing over a railway crossing. There was an overground line near here as well as the underground. Maybe a station. Packed full of commuters, some of them not particularly happy. If you wanted a speedy exit after a really bad day…
“You’re a genius, Florence! Come on!” I took to my heels and raced towards the source of the noise.
His name was Ross Baines.
Florence squatted next to him on the tracks so she could chat with him, and I winced every time another train rattled past me, temporarily obliterating them from my view. But each time the engine had rushed past, there they would be, my smouldering housekeeper and a rather wan looking spirit in a sharp suit, clutching a battered leather briefcase.
His ghost light had been easy to spot as soon as we arrived on the platform. There were several here, but his had burned the brightest. He’d obviously only recently died. He had the bemused expression of a spirit who hasn’t quite managed to get to grips with the enormity of his passing.
Florence was being gentle with him, but he had already told her to mind her own business.
I watched impatiently from the edge of the platform, hopping from foot to foot. Several people were giving me side-eye, probably thinking I intended to throw myself in front of the next arriving train myself. I unintentionally reinforced this view because I kept issuing instructions to Florence, thereby looking for all the world like I was chattering to myself, as far as any uninitiated onlookers were concerned.
I ignored the fact that any observers possibly thought I was a tree short of a forest, because it was a case of ‘needs must’. I couldn’t physically get down on the tracks to talk to Ross because of the trains. I had to leave it to Florence. However Ross looked properly aghast at the apparition in front of him. I guessed it was the first time this ghost had met another ghost, and he obviously wasn’t quite ready for what he was seeing.
“Get out of here,” Ross was saying to Florence, attempting to push her away, and Florence cast a worried glance my way.
“Let me help you up,” she offered.
“I don’t want to get up. I’m quite happy down here.” He was a softly spoken man, blonde with some hints of salt and pepper, and blue-eyed. He must have been somewhere in his mid-forties.
“How can you be happy here?” Florence asked, bemusement all over her pretty young face. “Here is nowhere. You’ll keep getting run over by trains.”
At that moment another engine rattled through the station and I lost sight of them again.
When it had sped past, Ross and Florence were still in the same position.
“You’re aware you’re a ghost, aren’t you?” Florence asked politely. I’d warned her that some people had real trouble appreciating this salient fact.
Ross glared at her, but then his face fell. He nodded sadly. “It was all over in the blink of an eye. One second. Standing on the platform. I just couldn’t take any more. It got to me. The pressure. The managers. Even my colleagues.” He looked around at the tracks and the platform and shook his head. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“I’m sorry,” Florence soothed. Ross did appear glum.
“I should have just walked away. I have all the skills I need to start afresh somewhere.” He reconsidered. “Had. Had all the skills.”
“Did you work back there?” Florence asked. I’d briefed her on what we neede
d to know. “In those huge glass towers?”
Ross ran a hand through a floppy fringe and frowned. “I did. Merman, Coleville and Bach.”
“Accounting?” I called across.
“Banking.”
“IT?” I asked hopefully.
Ross glared at me. “Financial security, although what business—”
“Quite right,” I said hurriedly and gave Florence a double thumbs up.
Florence took a deep ghostly breath and offered Ross her best coquettish smile. “We really need your help, Mr Baines.”
“I’m not sure what help I can be to you. This is my new daily existence.” He waved his hands around at the concrete reinforced platforms, and the tracks running east and west.
“You must be so bored,” Florence sympathised. “I know I was. For many years. But I found a new role. You can too. We can help you if you help us.” Florence indicated me. “Or Alf can help you cross over. If that’s what you want. To the world beyond.”
Ross looked up at me, regarding me with fresh eyes. “She’s still alive? Not a ghost like us?”
“Yes,” Florence confirmed. “She’s a witch.”
“A witch?” He laughed in disbelief. “I’ve heard it all now.”
“You’re a ghost talking to a ghost.” Florence’s response was tart. “I’d say that clarifies your world view enormously.”
I watched the lines on Ross’s forehead wrinkle as he considered his options. “What’s in the world beyond?” he asked.
“Nobody knows. Till they get there. That’s a chance you have to take.”
This time when he met my eyes I knew Florence had convinced him. He nodded, and then pushed himself to standing, bending down to retrieve his briefcase.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” he said, and I caught my breath yet again as another train screamed past us and swallowed Florence and Ross up in its greedy mouth.
“A new guest?” Charity peered into the office from the doorway. Florence and Ross had their heads together over my laptop.
The Mystery of the Marsh Malaise: Wonky Inn Book 5 Page 9