by Rachel Green
“Yes.” Michelle hesitated. “No. Well, not exactly. It was a man’s voice on the phone but it was one of those distorted ones like you see in films. Sort of Mickey Mouse meets Terminus Robot?”
“I know what you mean.”
“He said that if I didn’t tell him where Shirley had hidden the cash he’d leave the police an anonymous tip about the knife.”
“Wait, what cash?”
“I wish I knew. He seemed to think Eddie Burbridge had a fortune hidden away and Shirley knew where it was. He thinks she told me.”
“Or he thinks you can call up her spirit and ask her.” Meinwen’s smile pretended humour but her eyes were cold. It was a dig at Michelle’s ability but there was nothing she could do to gainsay it, short of proving her wrong and she couldn’t.
“I haven’t tried.” That was certainly the truth.
“Have you any idea what this fortune is? Or where it comes from?”
“Not a clue. Eddie Burbridge came to Laverstone from London and bought Enfield house for cash, so he wasn’t exactly short of money. He built up an construction company from scratch in five years and now it has as big a turnover locally as some of the multinationals.”
“The construction is a cover for money laundering then?”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know.” Michelle shuddered. “What I do know is I wouldn’t have liked to get on the wrong side of him. You hear tales, you know?”
“Actually, I don’t. Was he a bully then?”
“The sort who’d only leave your knee caps intact if you offered him your brother’s as collateral.”
“I see.” Meinwen leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “So what exactly are you asking me to do?”
“Clear my name, really. Stop whoever-it-is from blackmailing me and find out who it is.”
“And would you like me to also find out where this missing money is and prove Vera murdered her supposed friend?”
“Yes please.”
“You don’t ask for much. What will you be doing in the meantime?”
“My calendar’s booked solid for the next month.” Michelle relaxed as her favourite subject–herself–came up for discussion. “I’ve got so many bookings I’ll have to start working mornings if I’m not careful.”
“How wonderful for you.” Meinwen stood and gathered the cups. “So while you earn the wage of a minor celebrity, I’ll grub about in the muck risking life and limb on your behalf. At some point I might even find a minute or two to open my shop and actually serve a customer or two.” She returned to the kitchen and Michelle followed. She knew she was supposed to feel guilty about putting all this on the woman but she couldn’t. She felt lighter than air, relieved in a way that she thought she’d never be again after answering that stupid phone this morning. They were right. Confession really was good for the soul.
Meinwen led her to the front door and opened it. “I’ll let you know what I find out.” She paused. “Wait. Do you have a car?”
“Yes, of course.” Michelle pointed at her Mazda parked at the curb. “Why?”
Meinwen lifted her coat off the peg, grabbed her bag, her keys and her phone and stepped outside. “I need a lift somewhere.”
Chapter 25
Meinwen climbed into the passenger side of the car and put her voluminous carpetbag between her feet in the foot well before buckling the seat belt. She stared primly ahead while Michelle got in, fussed with the controls, adjusted the mirrors and clipped in her own safety belt. She checked the mirrors again before switching on the engine and a third time before pulling away from the curb. “Where did you want to go?”
“Not far. I’ve memorized the route.” Meinwen tore her eyes from the road to spare a glance at her driver. “Turn right at the end of the road, then left at the t-junction.”
“You could just tell me, you know. I’ve lived in Laverstone for years. I know my way around quite well. Pretty much anywhere you could name, I could get you there.”
“We’re going to the Witchcraft Museum.”
“The one in the middle of the park? I can drop you at Plover Street. That’s the closest I can get, I think. I didn’t realize it was actually about witchcraft, though. I thought it was just full of local history junk. Flint arrowheads and bowler hats, that sort of thing.”
Meinwen leaned toward the driver and spoke without looking away from the road. “The one in the park is, as it happens, though we’re not going there. The Witchcraft Museum is a little bit outside Laverstone, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Actually, would you mind if we just stopped at my shop first? It’ll only take a minute. I haven’t been there all morning and I just want to check the mail and put a message in the window.”
“Okay. I’ve plenty of time.” Michelle took the next right to circumnavigate the market and was soon pulling to a stop at the back of Goddess Provides.
Much to Meinwen’s annoyance, Michelle followed her into the shop and began touching things. She scowled. It would be rude to do it in front of the woman but she’d have to put everything her new client touched into a saltwater bath to remove the bad aura she left everywhere. It wasn’t her fault, but still…
“Do you always get that much post?” Michelle nodded at the pile in Meinwen’s hand.
The witch shrugged. “Not often, but enough for it to not be unusual.” She began sorting it into piles of shop business, personal business like looking for missing persons or lost jewelry and junk mail, which was by far the largest pile. She was left with a small packet made from newspaper and string. There was neither her address nor a stamp on it, and no return address. It had been stuffed through the letterbox by hand.
She opened it carefully, curious of its contents but cautious, too. There were people in Laverstone who objected strongly to her presence and had sent a range of unsavory threats and warnings ranging from a note made from letters cut from the newspaper to packages containing dog excrement. Human excrement too, once, but that had been personal and she’d marched straight round to his mother’s. This packet was neither, but she knew its source immediately.
Michelle looked over her shoulder. “Who’s sent you an old key?”
“Joseph, the man who was murdered this morning.” Meinwen pulled an envelope from her desk drawer and dropped the key inside. “It’s my belief he was killed for this.”
“By whom?”
“I wish I knew.” She dropped it into her bag and pulled out another envelope. On the envelope she wrote, in her best cursive handwriting, Closed due to bereavement. Open again on Thursday. She taped it to the glass of the front door and headed out again, shooing Michelle in front of her before locking up.
They both remained silent as the retraced their route past the market. It looked busy for a Tuesday but not all the stalls were occupied. Michelle turned right onto Old Oxford Road and accelerated through the traffic lights. They changed to red just as she past the point where it would have been safe to stop. Horns blared, startling Meinwen out of her thoughts. Michelle glanced across at her. “Thanks for taking on my case, by the way. We forgot to discuss your fee.”
“I don’t generally ask for money.” Meinwen frowned at they passed a construction site. “Was that the old supermarket being torn down?”
“Yes, it was sold months ago. I think they’re putting luxury apartments there. It’ll be quite nice, if the posters are anything to judge it by. Better than the old supermarket, anyway. That was an eyesore.”
“Did you happen to catch who was building it?”
“Burbridge Construction. I know. It’s ironic, isn’t it? He might be dead but his construction company lives on. I wonder if they’ll get fewer plans pushed through now he’s no longer the mayor.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Think about it. Burbridge Construction has gone from strength to strength, winning almost every contract they submit a tender for and building pretty much anything they like, where they like
. Is it a coincidence that the head of the company was also the mayor? I think not.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t like that.” Meinwen waved through the window at Maggie Paget, out taking her chicken for a walk. She claimed it strengthened the chicken’s legs and helped it lay, and who could argue with that? “Such things are decided by a committee of council members, surely?”
“Several of whom are associate directors of Burbridge Construction.” Michelle tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a corrupt system that made a few people very wealthy indeed. I did my research when Eddie died and his wife wanted to come to me for a reading.”
“But surely there’s a governing body to oversee such nepotism?” Meinwen tore her eyes from the road to look at Michelle. Her arms were rigid, as if she were stopping the steering wheel from attacking her. The tips of her fingers were white with the pressure of her grip. “Are you entirely comfortable with driving?”
“Of course.” She took a deep breath and her arms became a little less rigid. “I passed my test months ago.”
“Months?” Meinwen bit her lip and concentrated on the road ahead. She was just in time to see the road sign announcing the national speed limit, and indication that Laverstone was now behind them.
“So where is this museum?” Michelle nodded toward the dashboard panel. “I’ll need to stop for petrol if it’s much further. The light’s come on.”
“Another few miles yet.” Meinwen dug into her handbag. “I take it you need money for the petrol.”
“Not at all.” Michelle glanced at the tenner Meinwen was holding out. “Actually I won’t say no. I was going to charge it but I’m pretty close to my limit.”
“Spiritualism not paying as well as you’d hoped?”
“It’s not so much that as not having enough bookings. I mean, I charge two-fifty for a full séance but they’re few and far between. I’ve sat in St. Marples’s reading tarot before now but the stall rent is fifty quid a day so you need to do two readings before you even break even, and then there’s your coffee on top of that.”
“You could take a flask.”
“What’s the point? Once you’ve got your flask out everyone assumes you’re rubbish anyway.” Her head swiveled as they passed one of the green road signs. “Where is this museum? We’re on the road to Exeter now.”
“A little while yet. Just keep on this road.”
“Yell if you see a service station.” She fumbled her phone out of her handbag in the driver’s door pocket and spent the next minute manipulating it with one hand with only the occasional glance at the road to keep them on course.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to be on the phone while you’re driving.”
“It’s perfectly legal as long as nobody sees you”
“I can see you.”
“Nobody important, I mean. Nobody official.” She braced the phone against the steering wheel and scrolled through several messages. “How long is this going to take, anyway? I could do with being back by about two. Three at the latest. I’ve got a reading to do at Steeple Vale Retirement home at four. Lovely old dears there. They come to me for a reading and then make bets against who’s going to snuff it first. They bought me a bottle of bubbly last month because I was bang on the nail.”
Meinwen side-stepped the question. “You can’t use Tarot to predict when people are going to die.”
“Why not? It doesn’t say anything against it in the little book you sold me.”
“It’s unethical.”
“Is it? Seems to me there wouldn’t be a death card if they didn’t want you predicting deaths.” She grinned as she glanced across at Meinwen. “There’s a petrol station. Give me that tenner and I’ll fill up. It’s not much further, is it?”
“Not far, no.” Meinwen relaxed as they came to a halt. “Just a little further.”
* * * *
“Boscastle?” Michelle was fuming as she drove at eighty miles an hour across the northern tip of Dartmoor National Park. The road they were on had been a dual carriageway for the last ten miles and even at the speed Michelle was driving at they were still being overtaken by bigger, sleeker cars. “If you’d told me we were going to Boscastle fifty miles ago I would have turned around then and there.”
“Which is precisely why I didn’t.” Meinwen allowed herself a small smile. “You did ask if there was anything you could do for me and this is it. I already had the trip arranged but my driver was unavoidably detained.”
“I don’t blame him. He obviously knew you better than I did.”
“Obviously, but you did offer. You should never make an offer you’re not prepared to follow through with.”
“I know but when you asked me for a lift I expected it to be to the post office or something. Not a…” She looked at the sat nav application she’d pulled up on her phone. “Ninety mile trip. And that’s only one way.”
“Ninety miles? Really?” Meinwen tut-tutted. “I thought it was only fifty or sixty. I suppose it comes of looking at a map. Maps seem so small in comparison to the real world.”
“They are. That’s why they’re called maps. If they were actual size you’d never be able to stuff them in the glove compartment.”
“There’s really no need to be rude.” Meinwen pulled her tapestry bag onto her knees and gripped it with both hands. “Mind you, I shall be pleased to get there. I can feel that last cup of tea pressing against my bladder walls.”
“Lovely. Thanks for that mental image.” Michelle rubbed one eye, yawned and tossed her hair back away from her face. “Only another twenty miles, now. There’s no way I’m going to make my appointment with the Steeple Vale ladies now. The sat nav estimates our arrival at half-two.”
“That will give us plenty of time.”
“For what? What exactly are we going to the Museum of Witchcraft for? Is there something there that will prove I’m telling the truth about not killing Shirley? Something even the police will believe?”
“We’re not going because of your case.” Meinwen reached into her bag and drew out the key he’d first set eyes on only eighteen hours before. “We’re going to find out something about this key. I honestly believe Joseph was killed because of it.”
“So I’m driving you what will be close to two hundred miles on a case that isn’t even mine?”
“Don’t think of it like that. Think of it as an act of charity for a poor old man who never did anybody any harm.” Meinwen looked at a wind farm in the distance. Cornwall had embraced wind power while the rest of the country was still squabbling over whose turn it was to put the kettle on. “Besides, everything is connected. Joseph found this key on the canal bank where Eddie Burbridge was murdered and he was murdered in turn. Who’s to say your Shirley wasn’t murdered for the same thing?”
“Anything’s possible” Michelle glanced at the object Meinwen was holding up. “What’s it a key to, anyway?”
Meinwen risked another glance at her. “A witchfinder’s traveling chest.”
Chapter 26
“Is there a petrol station down here?” Michelle eased off the accelerator as they topped the brow of the hill. In the distance the cold waters of the Celtic sea scintillated with the setting sun but was soon lost to view among the houses lining the road.
“How should I know?” Meinwen leaned back to see the petrol gauge over the crook of Michelle’s arm. “It’s not run out again?”
“It will soon.” A car park appeared on their left and Michelle pulled into it. Apart from a man with a dog and two people eating sandwiches it was deserted. November was not a good month for tourists, though to judge by the sheer size of the car park it was popular during the warmer months. “Ten quid doesn’t get you very far these days. We need to put at least that much in again to get home.”
“I’ll get us a pay and display ticket.” Meinwen opened the door and just luxuriated in the seemingly novel condition of not having her legs crushed by her own tapestry bag.
“I’ll
be right back.” Michelle held up her phone. “I have some appointments to cancel and I need to tell Graham where I am.”
Meinwen gave her an upward nod and went to get a parking ticket “Two-sixty for up to four hours?” She looked around the deserted area. “It should be free this time of year.” Shaking her head, she fished in her purse for the correct change and took the rapidly-printed sticker back to the car. Michelle was standing under some trees arguing into her phone.
She stuck the permit to the inside of the window and breathed in. The air was sharp, as if it was full of ice just waiting to fall but there was the tang of salt from the sea. They were too far away, and the estuary between the harbor and the sea too zig-zagged, for her to hear the pounding of the waves against the jagged Cornish cliffs. If there was time before the light failed she’d encourage Michelle to take a walk along the long, and probably muddy, path above the harbor to the cliff tops.
Michelle was still talking, though the shouting had subsided. Meinwen closed the passenger door and walked around to the driver’s side, then reached in and pulled Michelle’s keys from the steering column and locked the door.
She walked across to the other woman and handed them over. “Come on. They’ll be closed before we even get there.”
“Graham, I have to go. No, this is important. Look, we’ll talk about it when I get back, okay?” She dropped the phone in her hag and hurried to catch up. “Men. Who’d have them?”
“There’s a reason I live alone.” Meinwen led the way to the bottom of the hill, past several forlorn gift shops and a grocer’s with crates of seasonal vegetables outside. They crossed a small road where a bridge to their left led to a small cottage and a mill that had been converted into craft units. “It’s down this way, toward the harbor.”
“Is this really Boscastle?” Michelle detoured around a dip in the path full of muddy water. “I was expecting something more impressive.”
“This is impressive.” Meinwen paused and turned a full circle. “This town has stood here since Uther Pendragon fought Golois at Tintagel, down the road a-ways. The harbour itself is famous for its tricky passage between the two hills and that shop over there,” she pointed to what was hardly more than a door in a flint wall, “sells the best ice-cream this side of Naples.” She shrugged. “In the summer, anyway.”