by Ishbelle Bee
“Sister Martha at the convent told us about the Aztecs. She said they performed human sacrifices and ate hearts.”
Boo Boo shouts, “I want to eat a heart.”
“Indeed?” Mrs Charm raises an eyebrow.
“We have already met Mr Wormhole, and he seemed rather distracted.”
“Yes, poor fellow, I am sure that some great tragedy has befallen him in the past. Or perhaps some misalignment with the hemispheres of the brain. His sermons are notoriously appalling. I have been trying to help him with his stage presence and speech deliverance.”
We stay with her for an hour and she tells us about her life as a Shakespearean actress in London. Her most memorable role was as Queen Titania playing opposite a drunk Oberon who fell off the stage and was carried back on by the fairies. Improvisation, she says, is the key to great acting.
We wave goodbye and make our way along the long winding path to the Beetle Estate, the bees swarming over a great heap of crimson roses that grow in a mass by the lakeside. Boo Boo tries to pull some out and cuts her hands on the thorns, examining the blood curiously and then licking it. There is a rustling from the bushes, the roses waggle about and Mr Loveheart appears, grinning, thankfully not holding a head. He is dressed this time in peacock blue. His hair is sticking up on end rather messily.
“Hello again. We haven’t been properly introduced. I am Mr Loveheart,” he says.
“My name is Pedrock and this is my sister Boo Boo.”
Boo Boo steps forward and shakes his hand. “You are the funny man with the head.”
“Yes, I am,” and he bows very low, winking at my sister. Then we hear a shotgun go off and men shouting, “COME BACK HERE, YOU LUNATIC!”
“If you’ll excuse me, some locals are trying to shoot me,” and he scampers off back into the bushes.
“Goodbye. Nice to have met you,” I call out.
“I like him,” says Boo Boo.
The Beetle residence is a grand, cream-coloured house with a very tidy lawn that stretches to the rim of the lake. It is serene, if a little characterless. The manservant escorts us to the garden where Lady Beetle sits under a large, pink, lacy parasol, writing what appear to be invitations. The manservant introduces us and Lady Beetle looks up from under her parasol, inspecting us. She has dark little eyes and is quite pretty. She hands me an envelope.
“Please give this to your Uncle. We’re having a little party next Saturday. It saves me the trouble of posting it.”
Guardian the dog cocks a leg at the back of her chair. Mercifully she doesn’t see him.
“Thank you,” I respond, keeping a firm eye on Guardian.
She seems a little inconvenienced at our presence and sighs rather affectedly. “I am rather busy today, children, and my son Horatio has been sent to Cambridge to visit my sister. He will be back for the party and I am sure you will meet him then.” She turns her eyes away from us and continues writing her invitations. “I am sure,” she says without glancing at us, “that you can see yourselves out.”
And so we do.
The walk to the Professor’s house is through deep woods, the light from the sun almost blanketed by the thickness of the trees which cover our heads. The air is cool and eerie. Guardian chases a rabbit through the undergrowth, wagging his tail happily. Boo Boo picks forget-me-nots and makes a chain and puts them wonky in her hair. Finally, we come upon the house, which is a crumbling medieval keep with a tower, surrounded by a moat with a little wooden bridge.
“The wizard lives here,” says Boo Boo. She points a finger at the tower.
We cross the bridge and walk into a courtyard where a gentleman with white hair and gloves stands. He is pacing up and down, smoking a pipe. Seeing us, he stops suddenly and moves towards us. “Can I help you?”
Guardian growls softly and places himself in front of Boo Boo.
“Are you the Professor?” I ask.
“No, I am an associate of his. My name is Icarus Hookeye. And your dog doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Oh. I think you are having dinner with my Uncle tonight.”
“Grubweed? Yes, I have some business with him.” He eyes me coolly.
“We have come to introduce ourselves to the Professor.”
“It won’t be possible to see him today. As you can see, I have been waiting for some time.”
He sounds irritated.
I don’t know what else to say to him so we leave and he watches us go. As we cross the bridge Boo Boo points again at the tower and I see the face of a man peering down at us from the upper most window, partially obscured by shadow.
The forest vegetation is thick about our ankles, suffocating the sunlight. Custard yellow toadstools ripen amidst a mass of furry, greenish moss. Creepy crawlies spy on us from the knots in trees, those hidden and secret spaces. Watching us, antennas twitching.
We are under insect surveillance.
Icarus Hookeye comes for dinner
When Icarus Hookeye arrives the moon has risen and is hanging like a mirror in the black velvet of the night sky. Uncle Philip greets him with a firm handshake and escorts him into the dining room where Mrs Treacle’s rabbit pies sit steaming alongside heaps of buttered mash potatoes and a shredded cabbage.
“First dinner, and then business,” says Uncle Grubweed. He spoons an excessively generous portion of mash onto his plate while Sally the maid pours red wine into the gentlemen’s glasses.
“And where is Mrs Grubweed?” enquires Mr Hookeye.
“She is feeling a little frail this evening and keeping her father company upstairs. It is no particular loss, she is a woman of very few words.”
That’s an understatement, I think.
Cornelius is kicking the leg of Prunella’s chair.
“Daddy, tell Cornelius to stop!”
Uncle Philip stands up and smacks Cornelius round the back of the head so hard his head falls forward into his dinner. Prunella and Estelle are laughing. Cornelius runs out of the room, covering his face.
I am sat next to Mr Hookeye. I notice he has turquoise eyes which remind me of coloured glass, as though he were a character in a stained glass window.
“I am quite glad I have never had children,” he says, looking directly at me.
Mr Grubweed replies, “Mine are little brats. I am hoping to get these two,” (pointing to Prunella and Estelle) “married off in the next few years. Horatio Beetle will do very nicely as a son-in-law. We Grubweeds may not have an illustrious ancestry, but we’ve got money. Lady Beetle can’t turn her nose up at that.”
“Do you teach at the university?” I ask Mr Hookeye.
“No. I am a doctor. I am the Professor’s personal physician.”
“How is the old fart?” Uncle says.
“In a foul mood, it seems.” He gives my Uncle a knowing glance.
“Well, I’m sure his mood will pick up within time.”
“It had better,” Hookeye says, glaring disapprovingly at the cabbage on his plate.
The conversation over dinner goes into some length over Lady Beetle and her son, Horatio. Lady Beetle is a widow whose husband died of a stroke a few years ago. My Uncle describes her as a handsome but cold woman and Horatio as the “prize”. He is looking forward to the party at the Beetle mansion, where he can show his daughters off.
When pudding arrives, Mr Hookeye is already looking bored and declines and so my Uncle takes him into the study to discuss business. We children are left with the towering trifle. Boo Boo eats only the custard layer and feeds the sponge to the dog. I very much want to listen to what Uncle and Mr Hookeye are saying and so excuse myself and put my ear to the study door which is slightly ajar. They are arguing about something I can’t make out. The Professor is angry with them both for something. Uncle shouts, “That old devil, he’ll drag us both to hell!” and then the door is shut and I run back to the dining room where I find Prunella lying on the floor with Boo Boo holding the trifle dish on her head and Estelle screaming. Uncle comes
running in shortly after with Mr Hookeye.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?”
Prunella stands up, wiping trifle from her face, crying. “That nasty little bitch, Daddy. She attacked me!”
“Yes, Daddy. Prunella is telling the truth,” cries Estelle. “I saw everything.”
Uncle Grubweed picks Boo Boo up and takes her upstairs and tells her to go to bed. Guardian follows and slumps himself outside the door. I follow and wait a while before going into Boo Boo’s room. She is sitting on her bed, playing with her frog puppet.
“Boo Boo, what happened with Prunella?”
“She kicked Guardian,” she says, and looks away from me and continues playing quite happily with the puppet.
I go back downstairs and find Mr Hookeye smoking his pipe in the herb garden.
“Quite a bad-tempered little sister you have,” he says.
“Don’t speak about Boo Boo like that,” I say, surprised by the anger in my voice.
“England puts angry little girls away in madhouses.” And for the first time he smiles, rather pleased with himself.
That night I hear whispering in Boo Boo’s room again. I hear laughing like bells. I dream I am back in the world of water, on the little sailing boat. The water is a mass grave of bodies, shifting in heaped piles of corpses. Bobbling, green and slimy. The sky above me is darkening, clouds become black chimneys. The sun is being eclipsed. The policeman is with me on the boat, standing next to me. Before the sun disappears I see another boat navigating through the dense rolls of rotten flesh. On its mast hangs a moon-shaped lantern, which glows liquid soft blue light and its white sail is covered in red hearts. Mr Loveheart is its captain and he is waving at me.
I wake up to the sound of screaming. I immediately go downstairs to investigate. It is Mrs Treacle who is hysterical. She is standing in the kitchen over the dead body of Mr Icarus Hookeye. His decapitated head is positioned a few feet away from him, next to a wicker basket of potatoes, with a look of astonishment fixed in his eyes.
State of shock?
An urgent telegram is sent to Scotland Yard for the assistance of the police. The reaction of the household is unusually varied. Cornelius, Estelle and Prunella are quite excited by the strange death and are eventually confined to their rooms for their own safety with their mother. Grandpa thinks it is hilarious and is brought downstairs to sit in the living room as he wants to hear everything that is going on.
Uncle Grubweed panics and leaves the house to inform the Professor. Mrs Treacle and Sally refuse to go back into the kitchen, and Boo Boo is quiet as a mouse, playing with Guardian near the woods.
Someone in the house is a murderer. Someone has chopped Mr Hookeye’s head off.
I wonder if it rolled along the floor? I wonder if the murderer had been tempted to kick it like a ball through the window?
I wonder why I am thinking such things.
Detective White and Constable Walnut investigate
the death of Icarus Hookeye
Constable Walnut and myself are travelling in a very unsteady pony and trap driven by the pub landlord’s son. It amazes me that the contraption hasn’t collapsed and we haven’t all fallen into a ditch. It’s kept going by sheer force of will.
The telegram arrived late morning and we dispatched immediately. Detective Waxford was supposed to be assigned the case, as he has previous experience with this village and its inhabitants. But he has a broken foot, due to chasing and capturing an infamous pickpocket of Camden, who made the mistake of “fingering” Waxford, hopeful for a gold pocket watch. Instead he was pursued, thrown into a slop heap outside a butcher’s yard and arrested. Waxford, a short Welshman, barrel-shaped with a dark beard, is renowned for his fiery temper, dogged persistence, and great love of poetry. Waxford has previously visited the village Darkwound on four separate occasions, and I am fully aware of the “missing people” cases which have amassed over the years. I have the notes of Waxford’s journal on his previous cases and have read over them on the train. I am curious if there might be a connection.
Over the last five years in the village of Darkwound there have been three cases of grave robbings, eight disappearances and three sets of body parts found in the woods. No arrest has been made despite a vigilant investigation by Waxford. There has simply not been enough evidence. His frustration is apparent in his journals, and he has pointed to three individuals whom he finds suspicious. Waxford’s prime suspect was initially Lord Loveheart. Surprise, surprise. Waxford had described him as “a nut”, “off his head” and “clinically insane”.
In his first interview, Mr Loveheart had pretended to be dead. And that, by all accounts, was the most productive of their interviews. So exasperated was Waxford with him that he nearly shot him outside the Vicarage.
It has been many months since I have seen Mr Loveheart, although we had been sent an invitation to his birthday (we were stuck in Wales at the time). I order the landlord’s son to drive by Loveheart manor en route to the Grubweed residence.
Waxford’s second suspect is Mr Grubweed, the retired undertaker, who now is incredibly wealthy. Waxford had suspected Grubweed of criminal activities as he had been involved in fraud when he was in London – some rumours of illicit grave digging, but nothing solid to arrest him.
Finally Waxford had pointed a heavy finger at Professor Hummingbird. His note – “I am convinced the Professor is employing Grubweed in some nefarious scheme” – was scribbled in the margins. But, once again, no evidence strong enough to support any allegations of anything criminal against him; a very frustrated Detective Waxford returned to London and was reassigned.
Before we have even arrived at the Loveheart estate, Mr Loveheart leaps out of the bushes and onto the cart.
“Detective Sergeant White and Constable Walnut. I am so happy to see you both again.” In his hands is a bouquet of wild flowers, which he hands to Walnut.
“Thank you very much,” says Walnut, looking genuinely pleased.
“So, you’ve come because of the murder. It’s terribly exciting, isn’t it ? And no it wasn’t me, before you ask. I had nothing to do with it at all.”
“What about the missing villagers?”
“I may have decapitated a few undesirables. I believe they were running a demonic cult in the woods. A lot of singing going on; dreadful business.”
“A demonic cult, you say?”
“Yes. Simply ghoulish! The chanting went on for hours. And the group harmonies were diabolical.”
“There’s a cult next door to Scotland Yard,” Walnut adds helpfully. “Lots of suspicious droning on a Sunday morning.”
“That’s not a cult, Walnut, it’s a church,” I interrupt.
“Well, it sounds unnatural.”
“Did you know Icarus Hookeye?” I ask Loveheart.
The driver looks round. “Do you want me to turn about, sir, and head for the Grubweed house?” He stares at Mr Loveheart, the village madman, with a bemused look.
“Yes, thank you,” I reply.
“I never met him but I heard terrible things about him. He was the Professor’s doctor. Did some work with Grubweed.”
“What sort of work?”
“Transportation of bodies, so dark rumours tell me.”
“For what?”
“Illegal medical experimentation seems a little predictable to me. My guess would be something more sinister.”
“Any proof?”
“Alas, I am not a detective. That is your forte.”
“Anything else, Loveheart?”
“Go and visit Mrs Charm. Her chutneys are wonderful,” and he throws himself off the carriage, nearly catching his foot, and, lucky as a cat, lands quite gracefully into a bed of primroses as our cart judders onwards. Walnut smells his flowers and smiles.
We arrive at three thirty exactly at the Grubweed residence. We are taken straight to the body by Mrs Treacle and her daughter, Sally, the maid. A white bed sheet has been laid over him with a tea towel
over the head.
“I just couldn’t bear looking at it, sorry.”
I remove the sheet and tea towel.
“Suicide?” Walnut remarks. Mrs Treacle gazes at him, horrified.
I slap Walnut round the back of the head and turn to Mrs Treacle. “Who found the body?”
She averts her eyes from the corpse. “I came down at six this morning and found him exactly as you see him, sir. He was a dinner guest and business associate of Mr Grubweed. Stayed the night. His room was on the second floor, with the blue door.”
The head has been cleanly chopped off. I go through the man’s pockets and find a small notebook, a pair of pound notes and a pipe, some tobacco and a key, all of which I remove. There is no sign of a struggle. The head has been taken off in one swipe by an axe or long knife and it was a surprise attack, judging simply by the man’s expression. It would have taken someone strong to get a head off in one blow; it was most expertly done. I search the kitchen for the possible murder weapon, but to no avail.
“Walnut, arrange for the removal of the body to the coroner’s and start a search of the house and surrounding area for an axe or large bladed weapon.”
“Yes, sir.”
I take Mrs Treacle and Sally outside into the herb garden and we sit down on a set of chairs around a table.
“Tell me the events of last night?”
“He arrived at eight and had dinner with Mr Grubweed and the children. I believe he retired for the night about midnight.”
“How?”
Sally answered, “I passed him on the stairs going into his room. I had just been checking on Grandpa. Their rooms are next to each other.”
“Did either of you notice anything peculiar happen during the evening?”
Sally answered, “Not really. Mr Grubweed and Mr Hookeye retired to the study to discuss business after dinner. There was a fight that broke out between the children soon after but apart from that nothing unusual.”