Spell or High Water

by ReGina Welling

  Of course, Penelope’s escalating campaign against me could very easily be seen as an admission of her guilt. But I knew her, and it could simply be a distraction for her. If she had loved Corey as much as everyone else did, then she would be sunk into grief – I had to acknowledge that. So when I had popped back into her view, I had given her a handy target to spitefully attack, to take her mind off things.

  The next day, I set out in my mission to unearth the truth about Zach Williams. I started the old-fashioned way, by looking deeper into his business and his personal life from a distance. The internet had made this so much easier. No more poking around in the public records office or the back rooms of libraries. I knew all the tricks of google and I had access to various online databases too. Plus, as he was a limited company, much of his accounts were posted at Companies House. You didn’t need to be an expert hacker to quickly dig up a ton of information about someone.

  Less than two hours into my searching and I knew more about this guy than his own mother probably did. For a so-called ‘internet expert’ he had left one hell of a trail behind him in cyberspace. No wonder, then, that his company wasn’t actually doing very well. I would have rather trusted my website creation to my next-door neighbour’s son than this wannabe.

  His turnover was large, but his profits were very small. Part of that could have been clever accounting to minimise his tax liability, but overall his business looked deeply unhealthy. He had a variety of websites all promoting different services – website development, search engine optimisation, marketing campaigns – and the one that made me laugh which was data protection and online security advice. He used similar branding and names for all these different branches. Everything was a variation on his own name, Zach. There was ZachTech, ZachSecure, ZachDev.

  Then I found ZachSells, and it all fell into place.

  My heart hammered as I cross-checked, printed, made notes, and grabbed everything including my handheld voice recorder.

  I ran out of the house and headed for the offices of Zach Williams. That man had some serious explaining to do.

  I slammed the voice recorder down on the desk in front of him. He hadn’t even managed to stand up from his chair when I burst into his office.

  “Hey, what? You can’t just…”

  “I can, and I am. I’m recording this, Zach Williams. For the benefit of the tape, this is Jackie Hardy.” I gave the date, too, just like I’d seen on cop shows and everything, even though it was a digital recorder and didn’t even use tape. “Okay, so tell me about ZachSells.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. Please leave. I have an appointment coming up.”

  “And I’m the Queen’s chief bum-wiper. No, you do not. You have nothing. Your business is failing because you are rubbish at it.”

  “Hey, hey, harsh! Have you come in here to abuse me? Did I cut you up at some lights or something?”

  “Probably, but it’s not about that. Look.” I had my mobile phone ready and I showed him the preloaded website. “That’s your seller’s shop on EBay, isn’t it?”

  “It looks like someone’s shop.”

  “It is yours, ZachSells. And what really interests me is the rather nice porcelain vase you’ve got there. Sevres, is it not?”

  “I guess so,” he said stubbornly. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yes, you would. You told me about your interest in china. Your interest in the Aldershaw-Pike’s china, in fact. You were stealing their stuff and you’re selling it online! That’s why you were at the house so early that morning.”

  “I have never stolen a thing in my life,” he flared up, hotly, and got to his feet. He started to point his finger at me. “I am not a thief, and you can bloody well lie-test me if you need to!”

  “Ah. That’s as good as a confession,” I said calmly.

  “It is not.”

  I smiled at him, in a way calculated to infuriate him even further. “You said you weren’t stealing, and actually, I believe you. But you haven’t denied selling the goods, have you? Now, who was doing the stealing? Daphne the maid? No, she’s honest. Sophia the sister? I doubt it. Corey…?”

  He went white.

  “The accused has gone very pale,” I said into the voice recorder, “and looks both shocked and guilty.”

  He sat down with a thump. I called the police.

  Obviously I didn’t call the emergency number. Instead I spoke to the everyday non-urgent operators, but due to his connection with the manor house, I was told that someone would arrive shortly. Zach stayed silent the whole time, with his head in his hands, until I was surprised by my sister coming in through the door.

  “Bernie! I thought they’d send an office bod.”

  “They would, but there’s something about your involvement here that sets off all my alarm bells.”

  I told her everything, and then Zach told her exactly the same, but with some extra confessions. He was one of those gushing criminals, who, once caught, decide to throw everything in – not just throwing the towel in, but all the laundry alongside. He blurted out the whole thing, from how Corey had been taking small items from the vast manor house, and he had been selling them online and splitting the proceeds with her.

  “But why would she do such a thing?” I asked.

  “She didn’t like to ask her husband for money. She didn’t make a lot, selling those crappy wood things, and she was too proud to beg for an allowance from him, so it gave her independence.”

  Bernie formally arrested him and took him off to the station. She shot me a dark look – I was in for it, later.

  But right now, I was more than doubly annoyed. It explained why Zach had been at the house, and explained why he’d gone to the police immediately. He’d had the idea that it would prevent them from looking too hard into him. He suspected someone might have seen him there, so he wanted to be sure he was a witness, not a suspect. It also meant he was definitely not involved in Corey’s death.

  I was back to square one.

  Chapter Seven

  I had hoped that Zach’s revelations would take Penelope’s ire and redirect it from me, and onto him. It was not to be. Inexplicably, the family decided not to press charges against him, and even Bernie was baffled about that. She came around that evening, ostensibly to tear a strip off me, but really she just wanted to rant about Penelope’s strange attitude.

  “It gets even weirder,” Bernie told me in exasperation. We sat outside in the pleasant evening air, watching the sun set over the sea. If we had been here on holiday, we would have had cocktails. As we lived here, she had a can of cider and I had a glass of white wine, and we’d emptied a bag of snacks onto a plate between us. “I went to the house and spoke to everyone together and then separately, and Sophia wanted to throw the book at him.”

  “Quite right.”

  “But Penelope didn’t and then, suddenly, Sophia rang us and said that she didn’t want anything to go any further, either.”

  “They are hiding something,” I said with conviction.

  “You’re going to tell me that they killed Corey, aren’t you? If you do, you had better have some actual reasons, and plenty of hard evidence.”

  I took a drink of wine because I couldn’t answer that, and she knew it.

  “But you are right,” she went on. “They must be hiding something. There’s a reason they don’t want to press charges.”

  “Maybe Sophia was in on it. Maybe family fortunes are crumbling.”

  “They certainly don’t want the police hanging around the house.”

  We talked at it from every angle but nothing got away from the fact that none of them had a reason to kill Corey. Penelope had not been in the gardens but she had been in a beech wood, and therefore nowhere near the place that Corey died.

  I had been convinced that Penelope was not magical. I could always tell. But now I started to doubt myself. Because the Yow-Yows had called that night, and the hyter-sprites had blessed Corey and attacked me, and something just
didn’t add up.

  It was now three days since the body had been found, and the coroner would soon be completing their report. I really didn’t want her to go down as “unexplained”. I also woke up to find that my contract to cover the garden party that was coming up had been cancelled. No reason was given, but I didn’t need one.

  Penelope was stepping up her campaign against me.

  That didn’t make sense. I had helped her by exposing a man who had been stealing from her! This was getting beyond a joke.

  I broke a cardinal rule of mine, and I went to speak to the grieving spouse, Alex.

  If I had been a real private investigator or an official detective, naturally, he would have been top of my list. But I wasn’t supposed to be meddling, remember? And I might have a background in journalism, but believe it or not, we do get taught some ethics. “Bothering someone deep in mourning with intrusive questions” is most definitely not ethical.

  I had to consider he might know something about the death, though; I had to even look at the horrible possibility that he might be directly involved. So I girded my loins, and set out for the manor. I was lucky. There were no cars visible outside, and I grabbed a gardener in the hedgerow and asked if anyone was home.

  “Only Mr Aldershaw-Pike,” the man told me.

  It confirmed what I’d scryed earlier, using the glass of orange juice I’d had with my breakfast. I thanked the man, and went right up to the front door and rang the bell.

  I’d been expecting the butler or some lackey to answer, but instead I came face to face with a dishevelled and wan young man – Alexander Aldershaw-Pike himself.

  My heart went out to him. Loss and love were rolling off him, thickly, cloying the air with his grief. I immediately regretting making this call.

  “Come in,” he said dully. “Which one are you?”

  “Sorry?” I followed him into a spacious hall with a white tiled floor and beautiful portraits on the walls. A wide staircase with a thick red carpet swept up to the upper floors, but he led me to one side and into a large public dayroom with wide French doors that were half-open to let the summer air in.

  “Are you from the funeral parlour? Or the caterer’s? Or something to do with the will?”

  “Oh – sorry, none of those things.” I felt supremely awkward. I fudged around a bit. “My friend Gloria runs the art gallery and she stocks Corey’s work…”

  “Oh. Oh.” He sat down heavily and ran a hand through his hair. “Just ask her to keep hold of it. If anything sells, put that money to charity. I’ll sort it out in the future. I just can’t think straight right now.”

  “I understand,” I said gently. “I’ll let her know.”

  “Ha. You understand,” he muttered bitterly. “I bet you don’t.”

  I didn’t reply, because he was right. He hunched over, not even looking at me, and I let him have a moment to gain control of himself. I heard a strangled sob. He shouldn’t have felt the need to hide his emotion, under the circumstances. I didn’t approach him because I didn’t want to crowd him. Instead I went to a table by the open doors, and looked at the garden. Then something on the table caught my eye. It was a small book of local tide tables, and it was open, with one corner of a page turned down.

  It marked the day of Corey’s death.

  That was it. I was utterly sure.

  “Alex,” I said gently, “do you know how she died?”

  He lifted his eyes and stared at me, aghast. To be honest, I was shocked at my own boldness and tactlessness. “Good god,” he choked out. “It was … suicide … everyone knows that. I don’t know why. We’ll never know why.”

  “What if it wasn’t? What if she was lured to her death?”

  “How, and why?”

  “Have you heard of the Yow-Yows?”

  “It’s a folktale,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  “What about the hyter-sprites?”

  His expression changed. He swallowed, hard, and looked away from me. “More stories,” he said.

  “But these were stories that Corey believed in, didn’t she?”

  “Oh, she was always full of nonsense! I loved her…”

  There was a silent “but” at the end of the sentence. He never got to finish it. The door to the hallway was flung open, and Penelope loomed into the room.

  I thought she was going to throw something at me. The nearest thing to hand was a priceless glass lamp. She twitched.

  I shot towards the patio doors. “I’m just leaving!” I babbled. “I was simply passing on my condolences…”

  “Get out of my house!” she screamed at me. “Why is it always you? You betrayed my confidence before, raking over the past and showing my dirty linen to the whole world. And now you’re back, digging into our private affairs! Get out, get out, get OUT!”

  I fled out across the patio and ran down the driveway, not daring to look back, imagining at any moment I was going to be run down by Penelope in a car. And when I got to the road, my fears almost became true, as a Merc roared past me with Penelope at the wheel. I leaped into the hedge just in case.

  She drove on past without slowing down at all.

  Chapter Eight

  I locked my front door and went straight to my library of legends and folk tales. I hunted through the volumes until I had amassed all the information I could find about the hyter-sprites.

  No wonder I had been attacked, I thought, as I looked at the myths. These spindly creatures were perfectly benevolent in the daytime, but at night, they became malicious. They didn’t want to cause a death, but they would vigorously defend their homes, and they were used by parents to get their children inside before nightfall – “or else the hyter-sprites will get you!” And they would, poking and prodding and chasing until everyone was safe in their own houses.

  As for the hyter-sprites’ own homes, they favoured beech trees. When I had gone to see them, the little wood had been full of beech trees.

  Penelope had come home with beech leaves in her hair.

  I knew that the hyter-sprites would not have caused Corey’s death and she was in fact allied to them, carving charms and dedications to them in her work. I began to formulate a possible explanation for events, but I needed to be sure.

  I resolved that I would try to speak to the sprites again, but this time in daylight, when they would be more amenable to an approach.

  Or so I hoped.

  I grabbed a quick midday snack and then headed out. I didn’t have much to prepare; my magic is an everyday sort, making use of whatever is to hand. It’s not terribly sparkly or impressive but it gets the job done. I took my backpack with a bottle of water, some salt in a little plastic tub, a penknife, a candle and some matches, a notebook and a pen.

  As I left the house, I saw Gloria peering through the window of her shop, and I waved. She waved back, rather frantically, and then turned slightly and seemed distracted by something behind me. That was typically Gloria, I thought, and carried on my way.

  I went back to the wood where I had first met, and been attacked by, the sprites. I could feel it was different as soon as I stepped into the cool shade under the branches. There was a welcome being hummed in the leaves. Being here in the daylight made all the difference. I opened my arms and half-closed my eyes, and said, “You knew the girl Corey, didn’t you?”

  I felt beings surround me. I peeked through my lashes and got an impression of long legs, long arms, thin heads, and smiles. Everyone around me was smiling. Something patted my shin. There was an air of agreement. I felt joy and peace, and realised that they communicated with feelings rather than words.

  Oh, I had to bring Gloria here – she would love it, I thought.

  And if they had worked with Corey, then no wonder she was so loved by all. It must have rubbed off on her.

  “How did she die?” I asked aloud, and the feelings around me changed into low, dull, grey-tinged grief and confusion. How could they tell me anything concrete without words? I had to be more spec
ific. I said, “Did the Yow-Yows kill her?”

  There was a feeling of positivity, which was blue-green and stroked my neck. That, then, was a yes. Then I said, “And did Penelope make the Yow-Yows kill her?”

  The blue-green agreement remained. I felt sad and heavy, but it was as I had suspected. None of this would stand up in court. I had to nail Penelope for it, somehow. I said, “What is Penelope up to, now?”

  Confusion raged. Did that mean Penelope was confused, or the sprites were? Then, suddenly, I was alone. Everything around me disappeared in a pop and I stumbled, feeling as disorientated as if I had been swept up from one place and dropped in another. I opened my eyes wide, and sat down before I fell down.

  I took a sip of my drink and tried to come up with a plan. But before I could get anywhere, suddenly the hyter-sprites were back. Either they were very fast, or they hadn’t gone far. And this time, just one approached me, while the others hung back in the trees. It stretched out its hands and touched my head, and I bowed towards it. The fingers were cool and strangely soothing.

  Its message was not.

  The words transmitted directly into my brain: She will raise the storm against you.

  “Penelope?”

  Yes.

  “When?”

  Tonight.

  “She’s going to do to me, what she did to Corey!”

  We tried to stop her, last time. Corey was our friend.

  “That’s why Penelope had beech leaves in her hair! She wasn’t here with you – she was at the beach, and you were all there, weren’t you? You were trying to stop Penelope! She was working with the Yow-Yows!”

  Yes. But we were not strong enough. We were too close to the sea.

  “It’s not your fault. But I promise you,” I said, “I will get justice.”

  The sprite withdrew its hands. The others clustered around me now, and suffused me with their strength.