The Mother's Day Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  "I'm betting he doesn't bring it to the school."

  "No, I meet him at a cottage on the Natterjack estate. There's an old woodsman's place - Gingerbread Cottage - about half a mile from the house in Cissbury Wood. It's isolated and hard to find, unless you know where it is."

  I looked at Shirley.

  She nodded. "It's worth a try."

  I turned to Griffiths. "Get your coat, you're coming with us."

  "But…" he quavered.

  "No buts. Now it's payback time. You want redemption. This is the way. Shirley will take you down to the car. I'm going to use your phone to make a call."

  Griffiths stood up like a man who hasn't got anything better to do.

  Shirley said: "This way, buster, and don't try any of your tricks with me unless you want to feel your balls pop out of your ears."

  Griffiths shrugged reluctantly into an old jacket.

  Shirley grabbed his arm and hustled him outside.

  I watched him go, then reached for his telephone.

  Chapter 18

  Fifteen minutes later, I swung the MGB onto the drive leading to Natterjack Grange.

  I pulled up outside the house. Two glass jars with flickering candles stood on either side of the front door.

  Shirley said: "If my Ma's not here, I don't know what I shall do. After I've croaked you, that is."

  I said: "It won't come to that."

  "You’d better hope…"

  In the jump seat, Griffiths said: "I've got cramp in both my legs and a crick in my neck that'll take days to straighten out."

  I said: "Stop moaning and consider yourself lucky to be here."

  "How lucky?" he whined.

  "About five years of time in jug lucky."

  Shirley said: "We don't even know whether that Zach is here - let alone whether he's with Ma."

  "We're about to find out," I said.

  Shirley and I climbed out of the car.

  I leant through the open door and said to Griffiths: "You stay there and do something useful."

  "What can I do that’s useful jammed into this tiny seat?"

  "Massage some life back into your legs. You're going to need them."

  I closed the car door and locked it.

  Shirley and I didn't look back as we walked up the steps to the front door.

  I tried the door and it opened first time.

  We stepped into a big hallway. There were oak-panelled walls and moulded ceiling cornices with little cherubs in the corners. Tasteful. In the old days, there would have been a couple of liveried footmen with powdered wigs. The place was lit by thick church candles which guttered in the draught from the open door. The heavy musk of burning incense hung in the air.

  From somewhere in the house the twang of a stringed instrument sounded a few discordant notes. It didn't think it was a guitar. Or a banjo. The instrument fell silent and voices started up a low rhythmic chant.

  Aaaah-um, aaaah-um, aaaah-um.

  I couldn't see the number making the top ten.

  I motioned to Shirley and we walked silently towards the chanting.

  We entered a large room with a high vaulted ceiling and a stone-flagged floor. There was a large circular Persian rug in the centre of the room but no furniture. Dim lighting came from candelabra standing on the floor around the edge of the rug. A billowy white smoke arose from an incense burner in the middle of the room.

  Nine young women sat crossed legged around the burner. They held their hands together in front of their noses in a praying posture. The women wore colourful saris in bright reds, yellows and purples. The saris had extravagant designs with stars and planets, clouds and rainbows.

  The twangy notes started up again. They came from an old man sitting at the far end of the room on an elevated platform. He had a bald head and a beard that came down to his navel. He looked like he'd put his head on upside down.

  The notes came from a sitar - an instrument with a long neck which looked like a banjo that had grown up. George Formby would have been impressed. But I couldn't see the bald bloke knocking out I'm Leaning on the Lamppost at the Corner of the Street.

  Not that he planned to try. He plucked a few more strings and everyone started on the aaaah-um routine again.

  I looked around the room. I had to find Christabel. I couldn't see whether she was one of the women sitting around the burner.

  Shirley whispered: "So what's the plan now, big brain?"

  I said: "Let's see what happens."

  The session was becoming more intense. The sitar player's fingers worked up and down the neck of his instrument. The notes came faster and more discordant. The aaaahs and the ums grew louder. The cross-legged women swayed from side to side as they chanted.

  And then the sitar man thrummed some heavy chords.

  And everyone fell silent.

  They sat and bowed their heads.

  The incense smoke billowed towards the ceiling.

  A lamp shone a circle of pink light onto the podium.

  Christabel stepped out from behind a curtain. She was wearing a long white shift dress which fell to her ankles. She moved slowly, one graceful limb at a time, like a stalking cat. She had that dreamy look in her eyes. She held a gold oil-lamp in her right hand. The lamp burnt with a tiny blue flame.

  She held the lamp above her head and chanted: "I am Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory."

  "You are Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory," the cross-legged bods on the floor chanted back.

  Shirley leaned towards me and whispered: "She's mad. She's got a 'roo loose in the top paddock."

  I nodded. "She's got a happy head stuffed with drugs."

  Christabel chanted: "You are the nine muses. You are the daughters of my lover Zeus. You are my daughters. Your power comes from my memory. And I am the goddess of memory."

  Christabel pointed at one of the muses. "Acknowledge my power, Calliope, muse of epic poetry."

  A blonde woman wearing a blue sari decorated with mauve stars stood up: "I acknowledge your power, Mnemosyne."

  "Acknowledge my power, Clio, muse of history."

  A slight dark-haired girl in a scarlet sari rose: "I acknowledge your power, Mnemosyne."

  "Acknowledge my power, Melpomene, muse of tragedy."

  A young woman with teardrops painted beneath her eyes rose: "I acknowledge your power, Mnemosyne."

  "How long is this pantomime going to last?" Shirley whispered.

  "We don’t have time for nine muses now," I said.

  I stepped towards the podium and said: "I am Crampton, the muse of deadlines. And if you don't listen to what I've got to say you'll all spend the next few years in a prison cell. As the muse of slopping out."

  The collective intake of breath sounded like a rush of wind as a fat old lady tightened her corsets. The neat circle round the incense burner broke apart as the bodies shuffled round to get a better view.

  Christabel stepped down from the podium. She glided towards me in her Greek goddess get-up.

  Her eyes were dreamy but her mouth was tight with anger.

  She came up to us and said: "You must leave. Your presence here upsets the gods."

  I said: "My presence here may well avoid the cops. Your pal Zach is in line for one of Zeus's thunderbolts. And you're standing in exactly the right place to suffer the collateral damage. Now do I have your attention?"

  Christabel's brow furrowed.

  "Come into the library," she said.

  She waved her hand at the room. "Resume the position of penance and remembrance," she said.

  The muses shuffled back into a cross-legged position with their hands together in front of their faces.

  Christabel signalled to the sitar player. "Play something calming, Stanley."

  "After all this excitement, I've lost my muse," Stanley wailed.

  We left him looking for it as we headed for the door.

  ***

  "When I first saw Zach, I thought he would be Zeus to my Mnemosyne," Christabel s
aid.

  "You can't rely on Greek gods like you used to," I said.

  We were outside the house on the track leading into the woods. The nine muses had formed up into a line, one behind the other. Each carried a lantern attached to a pole.

  Stanley on sitar brought up the rear.

  It had been half an hour since Shirley and I had marched Christabel into her library for a frank talk. She'd sat sullenly by the empty fireplace as I laid out what I knew about Zach. Her eyes were dreamy. At moments her mind seemed like it was in another place. Perhaps to talk philosophy with Socrates in a Greek olive grove. Perhaps to commune with the gods amidst the snows of Mount Olympus. Or perhaps to wonder how she would pay the rates bill on the mouldering pile of a house.

  At first, she'd resisted the idea that Zach was a drugs dealer who'd abused her hospitality. But I piled up the evidence until she couldn't ignore it. I told her how I'd seen him give orders to other members of the gang. I explained how he was a key contact to other people in the smuggling chain. And I pointed out that she was barely an inch the right side of arrest as all this was happening on her doorstep.

  I think I nearly got to her. But months of drugs had addled her brain. She could only see the world with a smiley face.

  Had it not been for Shirley, we'd have lost her.

  Shirley piled in with a passion which shook Christabel out of her acid torpor. Shirl reminded Christabel that if she were banged up on a drugs charge, they'd throw away the key. But if kidnapping was added, there wouldn't even be a key.

  That got Christabel's attention.

  "What can I do?" she'd wailed. "There's only ten of us - me and the nine muses."

  "Don't forget Stanley," I'd said.

  "Oh, he doesn't count," she'd said.

  She was probably right. Here we all were and Stanley was complaining that one of the strings on his sitar had broken.

  But we had a plan.

  In the house, Christabel had been leading the ceremony of remembrance. Apparently, they all sat in a circle, listened to Stanley play the sitar (broken strings permitting), sucked on the spirit of remembrance (LSD), and summoned up all the knowledge of the world (even stuff not in Encyclopaedia Britannica).

  A cynic (not me) might say it was just an excuse to get smashed.

  Anyway, it seemed that in the summer instead of holding the session in the house, they held it in a glade close to Gingerbread Cottage. That was the place Griffiths had suggested Zach could be holding Shirley’s Mum.

  It was a chilly night and the muses would feel a bit of a draught up their saris, but they were going to do the ceremony in the glade tonight.

  The idea was that Christabel would get Zach aka Zeus and any other drug dealer/Greek god lookalikes in the cottage to join in. She thought it wouldn't be too difficult to persuade them. I mean what man is going to turn up the chance of taking a mind-bending drug with an attractive muse for company? Anything could happen.

  While the ceremony took place, Shirley and I would nip into the cottage through the back door and rescue her Mum. Always assuming, of course, her Mum was there. But we didn't have a better plan.

  I'd originally decided we'd take Griffiths with us. He’d eagerly clambered out of the car. He could identify any illegal drugs on the premises. But I changed my mind when I noticed him taking more than a fatherly interest in Terpsichore (muse of dance). So I told him to wait in the car and not touch anything. He pulled a face like a spoilt child. But I guessed he was going to have to get used to taking orders. From prison officers.

  So that's how the Goddess of Memory and nine muses - not forgetting Stanley - happened to be standing in a line holding lanterns on a breezy night.

  And just at that moment, the clouds broke, and a full moon illuminated the scene.

  Christabel turned to the sky and raised her arms. She chanted a bit of Greek. The muses raised their hands and wiggled their heads from side to side. Stanley played a moonbeam riff on his sitar.

  Actually, I thought it sounded better with a busted string.

  Apparently, the general opinion was that the moon was a good omen.

  So how could this plan possibly go wrong?

  I felt a bit like a general giving his army an order to advance when I said: "Let's go."

  Christabel spread her arms in a hallelujah gesture and the muses started up on the aaaah-um chant. Stanley twanged something on the sitar.

  It soon became clear that this wasn't going to be a brisk trot through the woods. Every few yards Christabel turned round and said something in ancient Greek. One of the muses would bow her head and chant something back.

  But step-by-step we made our way along the path towards Gingerbread Cottage. A little brook chuckled beside the path. I pointed to it and Christabel said it led to an ancient well further on in the woods.

  As we approached the clearing in front of the cottage, Shirley and I slunk into the shadows at the side of the path. I wanted to find a way to skirt round to the back.

  The procession of muses reached the edge of the glade. Shirley and I crept closer and peeped out from behind the trunk of a big beech tree.

  We could see the cottage about fifty yards ahead and slightly off to the right. It was the kind of place you read about in children's books of fairy stories. The kind of place with a witch and a black cat. It was a squat little one-storey structure built out of those round cobbles they call flints in Sussex. There were tiny latticed windows at the front and side. Too small, I was pleased to see, for anyone to climb through. The roof was thatched and moss grew over it. There was a crooked red brick chimney. A weather vane in the figure of a cockerel was fixed to the chimney. A small path ran around the edge of the cottage. I guessed that led to the back door.

  Candles were burning and all the windows were lit. As we watched, the silhouette of a man moved across the side window. And then another.

  "At least two people inside," I whispered to Shirley.

  But as I said it, the front door opened and a third figure stepped out. He stood in the pool of light thrown by the muses' lanterns. It was Zach. He had the taut body posture - clenched shoulders, balled fists - of a man who's been interrupted from something more important.

  He stepped towards Christabel. "Hell, Christie, what is this circus?" he asked.

  Christabel moved towards him and entwined her arms around his neck. She moved to kiss him on the lips. He accepted the kiss like it was loose change rather than a hundred-dollar smacker.

  She said: "Join us, my god Zeus, in the ceremony of remembrance. Take some purple haze with us. Let us lie together as our minds grow as vast as the universe."

  Zach pushed Christabel away. "Hey, you know I'm no god. It ain't a good time for this. I've got some boys – Jock and Toby - over for poker."

  Christabel pushed closer again: "I've got the yellow sunshine with me now." She pulled something from within the folds of her gown and handed it to him. "Think what you will feel like with this inside you and you inside me."

  His eyes opened wider and he moved his head to one side while he thought about that. Decided it wasn't an unattractive offer, after all.

  "Perhaps I could stay for a while," he said.

  "And bring your friends, too. There are nine muses here to entertain them."

  "Yeah! These guys have never had a muse before. But they'll try anything once."

  "Let Erato teach them about love poetry and Polymnia sing them the divine hymns," Christabel said.

  "Guess it beats losing their money at poker. But what's that sound?"

  "It is Stanley playing the music of the spheres on his sitar."

  "Not that guy. But he wants to get a proper guitar, like Elvis. No, I mean that bell ringing in the woods."

  I'd just picked it up, too. It grew louder and seconds later a police car with blue flashing light and clanging bell appeared on the path.

  It skidded to a halt at the edge of the glade.

  Holdsworth jumped out of the front passenger seat while two u
niformed plods scrambled out of the back.

  We'd hardly taken that in before another cop car roared down the path. It pulled up behind the first and Ted Wilson leapt out.

  A cloud passed briefly across the moon.

  The muses screamed and scattered.

  Christabel threw her head back and shouted something in Greek.

  And Zach's head darted from side to side, like a hunted man. "Christ, this is a set-up," he yelled.

  Shirley grabbed my arm and yanked me towards her.

  She slapped my face. It stung. And hurt. Not just on the flesh. Shirley had never hit me before.

  Shirl's eyes were dark with fury. "You promised, no cops," she screamed. "You promised. We're finished, big time journalist. Get that. It's the F word. Finished. Sums you up, useless as a dead dingo."

  She slapped my face again and ran into the cottage.

  Mayhem broke out in the glade.

  Zach fled into the wood.

  Jock and Toby tumbled out of the cottage's back door and took off in different directions.

  Ted and Holdsworth shouted accusations at each other.

  Christabel fell to her knees. Perhaps to pray. Perhaps to hide. Perhaps to search her memory about what to do in this situation.

  The uniformed plods didn't know whether to arrest the muses or ask them to dance.

  Shirley hustled out of the cottage. Her face was streaked with tears. Her body shook with emotion.

  "Where's my Ma?" she yelled. "She's not here."

  No, of course not. Zach would be too clever to hide her in the cottage. Especially when the boys were round for poker. Only he would know where she was hidden.

  And he had fled into the woods.

  I took off after him.

  Chapter 19

  Behind me the noise of the ruckus outside the cottage faded as I plunged into the woods.

  So did the light from the muses' lanterns and the cop cars' headlamps. I smashed into the branch of a hazel tree as I blundered forward. The damned thing whiplashed back and stung me across the side of my face. It hurt - but not as much as Shirley's slap.

  I realised I wouldn't find Zach by crashing about like a rutting boar in search of a mate. I stood still and listened. The wind whistled through the trees' canopy like an out-of-tune hornpipe. It was an eerie sound. The kind that would have a more suggestible soul than me looking nervously around for the ghost that came with the wailing.