What The Cat Dragged In (The Celtic Witch Mysteries Book 1)

by Molly Milligan

  We bought our drinks, and I paid for one for Billy too. Alston’s lip curled. “Don’t encourage his laziness,” he said.

  “It’s Sunday,” I said. “We’re all supposed to be lazy. What else would he be doing today?”

  Alston huffed but he made an extra-large pot of tea for me to take over to Billy. Billy invited us to join him. I couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse him before Maddie had accepted, and so we found ourselves all sitting around the table.

  “So,” Billy said, not even waiting to go through the pleasantries of talking about the weather and so on. “Robert Cameron, eh? There’s a thing!”

  Maddie leaned forward eagerly. Out of the influence of our house, she was now keen once more to talk about the body. Although, I thought, maybe not the ghost. “Did you know him?” she asked.

  Billy snorted, and showed his chipped, yellow teeth. “I ain’t so old! But .. okay, yeah, so I did know him, sorta. He died when I was only small, see. Just a boy, like. But everyone knew him, back then, they did.”

  “What did they know him for?” I asked. “Do you know what sort of man he was?”

  “Oh, yes,” Billy said. He poured himself a cup. “Everyone loved him.”

  That floored me. I glanced sideways at Maddie. “He was a nice man?” I queried.

  “Oh, the best. He was one of them that always helped others. He was so nice. He didn’t have a family of his own, really, but he probably didn’t have time.”

  He had time to have a daughter, I thought, but I kept that to myself. Who knew why he wasn’t with the mother of his child. There were a thousand reasons and didn’t necessarily bring blame to either party. “What did he do as a job?”

  “I think he was a teacher,” Billy said. “But that weren’t the main thing. He was always doing sports. He was the coach on about a hundred different teams. He volunteered every night with the kids, teaching them stuff. Encouraging them. Getting them working together. Oh, he was tireless. I reckon as everyone had been taught by Robert, at some point, one way or another.”

  “Wow,” said Maddie. “He sounds amazing.”

  “He was, he was,” said Billy, nodding his head. “But it was such a shame he never got to see his biggest project ever finished.”

  “What was that?” Maddie asked.

  I thought I already knew.

  My intuition was proved correct.

  “That sports centre,” Billy said. “That was his thing, right enough. He had such plans. It was him what got the project off the ground. We didn’t have nothing here before that. He got people on board and it was him as got the council to finally do it. But then he died before it was finished.”

  Maddie was elbowing me frantically and I knew exactly what she was thinking. We still had a fair bit of our drinks left, and Billy was keen to keep talking, so we stayed where we were for a little while longer. The conversation went on to other things: the building of new houses, the rate of change in the local area, the lack of decent public transport – all the stuff I’d heard a million times.

  Finally we were able to take our leave and we hustled to the door, but it was not to be.

  Jemima Rideout was on her way in, and as soon as she saw me, she tapped my shins with her stick and nodded to a table by the big windows. “Ah! Bron! I wanted to see you. I was going to call in at yours, later, on the off-chance I’d find you. Saved me a trip. Marvellous. Sit down!”

  I made the customary introductions between my cousin and the retired journalist. Jemima bonded instantly with Maddie as soon as she said, “Oakland? Oh, really, what part? I knew a man in Old Oakland … well, when I say ‘knew’, you know what I mean. Artist. Made the most amazing mechanical automata from old bicycle parts. He was quite mad, of course.”

  They then spent a few minutes talking about things I could make no sense of, reminiscing about areas I’d never heard of, and I got a small understanding into how Maddie must be feeling from time to time when everyone else around her was talking about matters to do with Llanfair or Wales.

  But Jemima noticed that I was glazing over. She tapped the table with her impeccably manicured fingernails. “Two things I wanted to see you about, Bron. Firstly, papaya. Did you pick some up after I’d mentioned it? Only I do have some put aside for you.”

  “I – er, thank you. No, I didn’t.” I didn’t meet Maddie’s questioning gaze. Don’t ask, I willed.

  “And secondly, I found this for you.” Jemima flipped open her capacious handbag and rustled around in it. “I’ve printed it off the web so do forgive the quality. I absolutely won’t replace the ink cartridges until they have quite run out. They are robbing so-and-sos and I won’t be held hostage.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but that didn’t matter. She flattened out a large sheet of paper onto the table. In the centre was a grainy photograph, printed out, with wavy grey and white lines running across it.

  “Here’s your man,” she said, and tapped the tall person in the centre of the group. He had an impressive sixties bowl-cut hairdo and a very retro tracksuit on. “Robert Cameron, a few weeks before his death.”

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it, how we know when he died, so everyone else must have known when he died, yet his grave is empty. Did they not notice that he wasn’t being buried there? The gravediggers would have been filling in an empty hole.”

  “Unless he was buried, and then he was dug up again, later.”

  Maddie’s words unsettled me. “I’ll speak to Adam,” I said. “I am sure their clever forensics people can tell if the earth has been disturbed.”

  “They probably can,” Jemima said. “But in my experience, they won’t. Forensics expertise is expensive, complicated, time consuming and generally outsourced from the police to private companies. As he died of natural causes, although there is a question over why he was in the garden, there is no suggestion of foul play in the manner of his death itself. I rather imagine the whole thing will be soon swept aside. Why would the police waste any resources in investigating this further?”

  I could hardly say that they had to, because I was getting pestered by his ghost.

  “Who are the other people in this photo?” Maddie asked.

  I squinted at the image a little more closely.

  The man on the left had a black suit and dog collar on. “That’s a vicar, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Jemima said. “He has passed away now. And then on the right is Iolo Pritchard. He must have been a friend. I don’t know anything more about him. And on the far side, next to Iolo, is another man who is a mystery to me. The caption on the photo just said John, Blacksmith.”

  “No surname?” I asked.

  “No. Perhaps he is, or was, a blacksmith.”

  I peered at the figures. Iolo was a skinny man, much like Dean, and as soon as I thought that, I realised it could be the druid that Dean had been talking about. Iolo was an old-fashioned Welsh name. It wasn’t terribly popular but it wasn’t uncommon. As for ‘John, Blacksmith’, I could well believe that he was a blacksmith. He had the muscular forearms associated with that trade. He was staring directly into the camera. He actually unsettled me even more than seeing Robert Cameron did, but then, smiths were notorious for their magical ways.

  “The vicar, the dead man, the druid and the smith,” I murmured to myself. It seemed an odd quartet, and a significant one.

  “I beg your pardon?” Jemima said.

  “Sorry, nothing. Thank you so much for this! It could really help. May I keep it?”

  “Of course,” she said. “And I shall be round at some point with that papaya.”

  Seventeen

  “Right,” I said to Maddie as we walked back to our house. “I have to do something. I have a name and now I have a photo. There must be some way of laying this ghost to rest. I’m going to have a good look through all our books, and maybe tonight I’ll go …” I petered out.

  Maddie looked at me. “Journeying?”

  “In a sense.” I gla
nced all around me, and edged closer to her as we walked. “It’s rather hard to talk about this stuff. Matters of the heart and the spirit are, essentially, beyond words. Putting them into sentences seems to diminish the experience. I’m going … hedge-riding.”

  She had no clue what I was talking about. I knew that as soon as she said, “Can I come? Should I come? Is it dangerous?”

  “No, no and … sometimes,” I answered, with complete honesty.

  “What can I do?” she said. We were nearly home now, but she stopped walking and I stopped too. “I’ve done as much online as I can – it’s all too long ago. I don’t know the people here like you do. I feel useless.”

  “You’re not. You’ve been brilliant so far. It’s so nice just to talk to someone,” I told her.

  “I’m the slightly stupid sidekick?”

  “No, not at all. We’re not some crime fighting duo.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “We’re not. We’ve just got to solve the mystery of why this man died in my garden and work out how to get his ghost to stop haunting us, that’s all.”

  “And we’re witches, too. Come on. This is classic,” Maddie said, and I could see the building excitement on her face as she spoke about it. “I hadn’t thought about it properly before. But yes! We’re solving a mystery! We’re going to do it! But,” she added, growing serious again, “I am not the silly sidekick.”

  “Of course you’re not. We’re partners.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “For real?”

  “For real. Um, is this the part where we put our hands out in fists and say something inspirational or motivational?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I haven’t seen many films,” I explained, “on account of the equipment malfunctioning at random times. But I am pretty sure this is the bit where the loud music kicks in.”

  “I can hum a bit,” Maddie said. “I’ll do ‘Eye of the Tiger’, okay?”

  “Fine by me,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t recognise it anyway.

  We linked arms and went home to plan our next move.

  ***

  Our next move went very badly wrong.

  In fairness, Maddie did say that she thought it was a bad idea.

  But I promised her that I would be careful.

  I left her browsing our books in the living room. I lit a fire for her to take the edge off the chill, and told her she really had to construct herself an altar or create some kind of safe space. Dilys wandered in and agreed with me, and she set about the house looking for a suitable table.

  My mission was to talk to Barry Harris.

  Rachel had been raised by him and had taken his name. Even though she was now married and had children of her own, she had not taken her husband’s name. Indeed, her husband was rarely seen in Llanfair. He worked away a lot, and no one quite knew what he did. The rumours spoke of things like international mercenary but I’d seen him, once, and vacuum cleaner salesman looked far more likely.

  Barry Harris was another matter. He was one of those genial men that everyone knows, somehow and somewhere. He generally wore brown and grey, occasionally livened up by a little light blue. He had retired from a long career running a hardware shop, and was still known as the go-to man if you had any questions about do-it-yourself or home improvements. He spent hours in his garden making wooden things. If you needed a bird box or a table, a garden gate or a novelty sundial, he was your man. He asked nothing but the cost of materials and a small donation to a children’s charity.

  Everyone loved Barry.

  As far as step-dads went, he looked pretty much perfect. I didn’t even think he was hiding some dark secret. Rachel clearly adored him, and her mother, his wife, did too. There were never any hints of strife in that household.

  I knew where he lived. I managed to get to his house without being waylaid by other people more than a few times. When I got there, there was no answer when I rang the doorbell, but I knew to go around the back and call out. There was an answering cry from the huge shed that ran the full length of the bottom of the garden.

  “Bron, love! Come on down. What can I do for you?”

  “I love the smell in here,” I told him as I stepped into his workshop. There was a dangerous-looking calor gas heater in one corner, and he slid the door closed to keep the warmth in. The whole atmosphere was thick with the comforting scent of wood.

  “That’ll be the varnish,” he joked. “Don’t breathe too deeply, now.”

  “I was wondering if you’d be able to make me a new cage,” I said. I didn’t really need one but it was a plausible excuse to be visiting. “Something that will take a medium-sized dog, like a spaniel. I don’t have anything that size.”

  “Is it urgent?” he asked, getting out a tape measure, a pen and a piece of paper.

  “No, it’s just to put aside for if and when I do need it.”

  He began to sketch something out, and ask me questions about what went where. Once we’d agreed the dimensions he put in a little more detail.

  This was my chance.

  “Did you hear about that body I found in my garden?” I asked. It was a perfectly natural thing to say, I told myself. It would be strange if I didn’t talk about it.

  “I did,” he said, not looking up. He was concentrating on his task. “Must have been a dreadful shock for you. You all right, like?”

  “Yes, yes, fine, thank you. They know who it is, now.”

  “Mm. I saw it in the paper. Cameron.”

  “Did you know him?” I asked. “He seemed to have been a local man.”

  He nodded, and made a note on the paper. “Oh, yes. Everyone knew him. What a shame.”

  “How well did you …”

  The door slid open and someone entered, saying cheerfully, “Well, that was an icy one! I won my age class, of course. Dad, I just popped round to ask you – oh. Oh! You!”

  Rachel Harris stood in the doorway. She was dressed in layers of technical outdoor running wear, with a race number pinned to her arm, and she had a cloth tube covering half of her face. She pulled it down. Her face was white with pink spots on her cheeks. She glared at me.

  “I just came around to order a new cage for my animals,” I said, glad that I had a good cover story. Rachel was not someone I wanted to cross.

  “Oh.” She continued to look hard at me and I decided to retreat.

  “Thanks once again, Barry. Like I said, no hurry on this one.”

  “Of course. I’ll give your aunt a bell when it’s done. Oh, and I am sorry about what happened. You’ll feel a bit funny for a while, I’d imagine.”

  “What happened?” Rachel demanded.

  “You know, love. It was Bron’s garden that they found … that body in.”

  “And she was talking about it, was she?” Rachel stepped towards me and again I felt that threat rising from her. She knows, she knows, screamed in my mind.

  I spread my hands wide, trying to smile, nodding towards the door.

  “Of course we were talking about it,” Barry was saying. “I was checking she was all right. Such a shock, really, isn’t it? And do they know why he was there? Had he been there all this time?”

  “Dad, I don’t think any of us want to talk about this! Do you, Bron?” she said, with such menace that I wanted to run without saying goodbye. I made it to the door which was still open.

  Before I could bid farewell, Barry said, “Poor old Robert. What an end.”

  “There is no poor old Robert!” Rachel snapped.

  “Er, well, thanks for the work, and, er, I’ll be off…” I raised my hand to Barry, and got outside.

  But Rachel followed me, pulling the door closed behind her. I was still trying to smile in a nice, normal, placatory way. I probably looked like a maniac by this point, grinning like a skeleton. “I don’t care if you found the body in your own damn bed,” she hissed to me, the energy throbbing and pulsing around her. “I don’t want you meddling or poking or asking anything, because there is not
hing to ask about. So a man died in your garden half a century ago? So what. Leave it alone. Leave my dad alone, too. I’ve got too much to do without worrying about you upsetting him. All right?”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine!” I said, and I was annoyed now. “I don’t know what your problem is! There’s no call to come threatening me, you know. I think you’re overreacting. Why?”

  I knew I shouldn’t have said anything but really, the woman was completely yanking my chain by this point.

  Her eyes were yellow now, and something reached out from her, something on the unearthly plane, and I had to shield myself quickly and firmly. Thank goodness I had had lots of practise in that. “You are up to something,” she said. “I can feel it. There is a curiosity about you and I …”

  “What?”

  “Your aunt is the one who sees the future,” she said. “Not me. You go and ask her. Ask her what will come of all this.”

  She turned around and hauled the door to her father’s workshop open with such force that it slammed back.

  I tried hard not to run back home, but there was a definite “jog” to my step.

  Eighteen

  I was keen to see what Maddie and Dilys had been up to while I was out. I was also very keen to get as far away from Rachel Harris as I could.

  I didn’t think she was a bad person, not in my heart. But then, what was a “bad” person? Was there anyone who really sat there thinking up ways to be evil just for the sake of it? Putting aside people with illnesses and mental issues like psychopaths, wasn’t everyone just doing what they thought was the best thing? I guess we all have different motivations – money, pride, love – but does anyone really want to harm another?

  So I resolved to put aside the idea that Rachel Harris was some malevolent being who was just out to get me.

  Instead, I needed to see things from her point of view. Was she protecting something or someone?

  Yes, that seemed fairly obvious. She doted on Barry, the man who had raised her. She’d want to protect him.