by Unknown
Everyone was listening now—Emily, Chris, the assembled teenagers, the tourists, the waitress, the cook, the owner of the tea shop. The fortune-teller in the mohair coat held onto the silence. Emily’s neighbor Victoria, who had earned her living as an actress and now ran a stage school for children, had once told Emily that the rule in the theater is that you can always hold onto a silence longer than you think you can, if you have the audience’s attention. So you should just go for it. Chris had spent his whole adult life performing, albeit in circus shows and street theater. He also knew how to hold on to silence. And when it was time for the silence to end, he knew how to feed a lady her line.
“Why do I need to keep away from water?”
“Because something bad is going to happen. Someone is going to drown.”
The fortune-teller straightened and let go of Chris’s hand. She walked out of the tea shop slowly and gracefully, without looking back.
The teenagers giggled and chattered excitedly.
“You don’t believe in it, do you?” Emily asked Chris. She was feeling a bit spooked.
“No, I don’t.”
“So how did she know your name was Chris?”
“Cor!” said one of the teenagers. “She knew his name!”
“She knew his name! She knew his name!” The buzz went round in respectful, frightened whispers until one of the teenagers started laughing. Then everything started up again, as though the tea shop had been momentarily frozen in time, and had only needed the sound of a child’s laughter to break the spell and return to normal. The teenagers went back to talking about Edmund Zenon and how they would spend his money if they won it. The waitress took her notepad out of her apron and went to a table to take an order. The cook went back in the kitchen, and the tea shop owner got on the phone and called everybody to tell them what had just happened.
“You know her!” Emily said to Chris. “That’s the only explanation.”
“Is it?” Chris laughed. He checked the time on his mobile phone. “I’m supposed to be meeting Ed at the Smell of a Book bookshop on the High Street. Want to come with me?”
“Isn’t he doing a talk? I saw a poster for it when I arrived at the station. I’d rather meet him when there aren’t lots of people around him.”
“The talk should be over now. We’ll catch him on his way back to the hotel.”
On the short walk from the tea shop to the bookshop, Emily saw two posters advertising Edmund’s Don’t Believe the Hype book. The image was the same one he had used on the other posters. All around town, she had seen the same thing: Edmund Zenon in top hat and cape, arms outstretched, floating above the water, his feet just touching the waves.
“What do you see when you look at those posters?” Chris asked her.
“I see…adventure, mystery, intrigue. What do you see?”
He shrugged. “I see a businessman who’s got rich by dressing up as an entertainer.”
When they arrived at the bookshop, it was packed. The talk was so popular that the start time had been delayed by half an hour as everyone squeezed in. Emily had no chance of a quiet chat alone with Edmund. She could just about see him across the room, dressed expensively but unshowily in a good pair of jeans and a black cashmere sweater.
The mayor was there, the town crier was there; both in their chains of office, livery and tricorn hats, the mayor with his mace and the town crier with his handbell. Alice and Ben were there—the couple from the train. Ben noticed Emily and gave her a thumbs-up. There were more men than women in the audience, several of them wearing black T-shirts with I Believe…in Edmund Zenon printed on the front. They applauded enthusiastically when Edmund was introduced. He began with a joke.
“Now, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve just had a quiet word with the manager. I noticed some of these books on the subject of nutrition have been wrongly shelved. Should be over there with the rest of the fiction.”
Several people in the crowd tittered.
Edmund held up his hands. “Look, it isn’t just the idea that the food you eat can make a difference to your health that’s wrong. My book covers all sorts of delusions. Today I’m going to talk a little bit about faith. Someone came up to me after one of my Don’t Believe the Hype gigs in London the other day.”
“Yo!” said Ben, to let everyone else know he had been there. He put up his hand to adjust his knitted hat and his jacket kinked open. He was wearing an I Believe T-shirt.
“This woman told me her faith gives her strength. You hear people say that faith itself is what’s important, not whether what they believe is true. But you need to have faith in yourself. Not God. Not the Prophet or Jehovah. Don’t be a dupe.”
“Too right. Global conspiracy!” someone shouted from near the front. “What about Palestine?”
“I said dupe,” said Edmund Zenon sharply. “Don’t be a dupe.”
Chris rolled his eyes at Emily and edged back through the door, holding it open so she could follow him. But Emily decided to stay and listen. During Edmund’s talk, which lasted for around fifteen minutes, Emily learned that he disapproved of everything that could possibly give anyone any comfort or relief, whether physical or emotional. If she wanted to make a list of his potential enemies, she might as well just write down everyone. Edmund was charming and he spoke eloquently, without notes. But there was something empty in his message. Emily wondered why it mattered so much to him what other people believed. She remembered what Peg had said about magicians seeing trickery everywhere because they used trickery themselves.
“If you take homeopathic medicine or flower remedies, if you pray to God or cross the road when you see a black cat, if you go to church or the mosque or the synagogue, if you eat yoghurt because you think it will make your digestive system healthy, if you take vitamin C because you think it will prevent the onset of the common cold, then you’re kidding yourself. Don’t believe the hype!”
“Mind you,” whispered a woman standing next to Emily, “vitamin C does help if you take it in big doses at the first sign of a cold. And as for yoghurt—”
“Can you hear me at the back?” called Edmund.
“Ooh, yes! Thank you!” said the woman. And then, quiet enough for only Emily to hear, “But hearing isn’t the same as believing, is it?”
“I wish he’d do some tricks,” whispered Emily. “I love close-up magic.”
“Shhh!” one of the men in black T-shirts said.
A table at the side of the room had been stacked with books so Edmund could sign them after his talk was finished. Judging by the size of the crowd, he would be there for at least another hour, with no chance of Emily getting to talk to him alone. She decided to leave him to it and go back to the hotel.
CHAPTER NINE
PLEDGE AND PLUNGE
On her way back to the hotel, Emily passed a shop in the High Street called A Little of What You Fancy. It must have been the only shop in Torquay that didn’t have one of Edmund’s posters in the window. A postcard-sized sign said MADAME NOVA WILL TELL YOUR FORTUNE. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Emily saw wands, capes, wings, wigs and moustaches on display. A sign in the middle of the door said, SORRY! NOW CLOSED FOR LUNCH. At four o’clock? Emily pushed at the door, just in case, but it didn’t open.
She walked past the tourist office. She walked past a shop called Faith & Hope—and she stopped outside when she saw yet another poster in the window: Edmund Zenon walking on water, of course. Why were all these people so keen to put up posters advertising…advertising what, exactly? Edmund Zenon’s presence in Torquay. Big deal. It was as if he’d taken over their minds! Emily peered into the shop and saw that Faith & Hope was a charity shop that collected and sold books, clothes and bric-a-brac on behalf of the local hospice. There were two customers she recognized as Hilary and Trina, the woman and teenage girl who had been holding the placards outside the hotel.
She opened the door and went inside. “Hello!” she said, as if people from London always called out a cheery greeting when the
y went into a shop.
The volunteer behind the till nodded. Hilary and Trina looked round but they didn’t acknowledge her. Emily went and stood by a shelf of VHS videos, positioning herself so she could see what they were up to. Hilary was browsing the racks of fungal-smelling secondhand clothes, watched closely by the volunteer. She held up a pink, strappy sundress against herself. “This one, Trina?”
“Urgh. I don’t want a dress,” Trina said. “Hilary!”
Emily caught Trina’s eye and smiled.
“Well, you need something. This one?” Hilary held up a white, voluminous sundress. “Trina? This one?”
Trina scowled and fanned her hand in front of her nose. “This place stinks.”
The volunteer was offended, as well she might be. She looked at Emily for sympathy. But Emily pretended to be fascinated by a Fawlty Towers video.
The doorbell jangled again. Emily, Trina and Hilary looked round to see a woman wearing an expensive-looking dark purple mohair coat and sunglasses. The fortune-teller. She was carrying a stack of books and a folded-up dress in a large carrier bag with “A Little of What You Fancy” printed on it in cursive script. At first she didn’t see that there were customers in the shop—those dark glasses couldn’t be helping much.
When she noticed she wasn’t alone, the fortune-teller looked startled—frightened, even. She took a step backwards. Emily wasn’t sure who had provoked this reaction? Hilary? Trina? Emily? Was she frightened of all three of them?
“Hello!” said Emily in her friendliest tone. The fortune-teller took another step back.
The volunteer put out her hands to accept the donations. She spoke cheerily, as if it wasn’t unusual for a customer to behave as if she had fallen through a wormhole into the wrong dimension, only to be faced with three of her deadliest foes. “Madame Nova! Whatever did you say to Jackie Churchill and her bridesmaids last night? My Larry heard them talking about it in the Lamb and Dragon on the High Street after!”
“You’ll know what I said, then, if you heard it from Larry,” said Madame Nova, regaining her poise.
“Drowning, though! Was that it? You said something about one of them drowning? You didn’t mean it?” The volunteer put out her hands again, coaxingly.
Madame Nova took a step closer to the till. She handed over her bag of clothes. “I was having some fun with the girls. I hardly remember what I said.”
Hilary had been listening to this. “You were trying to warn them about something? What did you think was going to happen?”
“Just having a little fun,” Madame Nova said, without looking at Hilary. She nodded to the woman at the till and left the shop.
“Whoa!” Trina’s black-painted eyes were wide as a Disney princess’s.
“She said something about drowning to me just now,” Emily said, hoping she wasn’t going to get ignored again. “Well, she said it to my friend. We were having tea in the tea shop down there, and she came in and read his palm.”
“She never!” Trina said, fascinated. Emily was struck by the similarity in age of this girl and the teenagers in the Cup O’ Rosie—and how carefree they were, and how pinch-faced and pale this girl was. “She say how it’ll happen?”
Hilary gave the white sundress on its hanger to Trina and motioned that she should take it up to the till. “No one’s going to drown.”
“I don’t believe in it,” said Emily. “But she was quite convincing. She warned my friend not to go into the water.”
Hilary whirled round, almost tripping over two overstuffed plastic bags at her feet. “It’s not dangerous to go into the water, if you do it for the right reasons.” She picked up the bags and went to the till to pay for the sundress.
There was an orange candlewick bedspread rolled up and stuffed into each bag. The volunteer put her hands out for them, assuming they were donations. “You want me to take those for you?”
“Thank you, no. I’m afraid we’ll be needing them.” Hilary paid for the sundress and left the shop, Trina following after her.
“Something’s going to happen,” said the volunteer to Emily. “You can feel it—all the kids are excited. Not just because they’re off for the holidays. There’s a festival feel in town. I dunno what’s going to happen but it’s got to be something good, hasn’t it, if it’s to do with that magician.”
Emily, freshly arrived from the metropolis, thought that if teenagers congregating in a tea shop trying to do magic tricks passed for a “festival feel” in Torquay, then she wouldn’t want to be here when the town was experiencing a slump. “What about all this talk about drowning?”
“That’s just Madame Nova. She’s got the shop next door but one. The things I’ve seen going on after hours when I’ve been on my way home!” She waited for Emily to ask what she’d seen. Emily didn’t like gossips and wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. But she wouldn’t have been doing her job as a future crimes investigator if she didn’t at least give a tell me tweak of her eyebrows. So that was what she did. The volunteer whispered, even though they were alone in the shop. “She gets dressed up.”
“Isn’t it a dressing-up shop?”
“She puts on wigs. Giant wigs. Like you’d see in a pantomime.”
That was nothing! Most nights Emily couldn’t get off the tube at Clapham Common and wait for the 137 bus to take her home to Brixton without seeing a least one person wearing a comedy wig. Wednesday night was cabaret night at the Two Brewers on Clapham High Street. So was Thursday. So was Sunday. Actually, she was pretty sure Tuesday was cabaret night, too, come to think of it. But Emily didn’t have time to stay and chat about comedy, cabaret, Clapham or wigs. She wanted to catch up with Hilary and Trina and find out why Hilary had reacted so defensively at the mention of drowning. She put the Fawlty Towers video back on the shelf, gave the volunteer a reassuring smile and left the shop.
Hilary and Trina were heading back up the hill in the direction of the hotel, with the town behind them and the sea to their left. It was no longer raining.
Emily fell into step with them. “Are you going back to the Majestic?”
“You staying there?” Trina pulled the sleeves down on her hoodie and shivered. “I bet it’s nice inside.”
“It is nice. Depends a bit which room you’re staying in.”
“Could I come and have a look?”
“We have work to do,” said Hilary.
“Are you going out demonstrating? With the placards?” Emily was trying to be polite.
Trina looked down, kicking the toe of her shoe into the pavement as she walked. “Nah. She’s got something else planned.”
Hilary was brisk. “Look, it’s perfectly safe, with the Colonel doing the immersing.”
“Immersing?” said Emily. “You mean, putting something under water?”
“Come down to the beach with us,” said Hilary. “See for yourself what it’s all about.”
“Why can’t I be the one doing the immersing?” said Trina. “I’m strong. I could do it.”
“You may have to,” said Hilary. “If the Colonel packs up and leaves us.”
This startled Trina. “Is he gonna?”
“You’d think Good Friday would give prime pickings if someone was out looking for souls to save. But people are only thinking of Easter eggs and Edmund Zenon.”
“Did you know that woman in the shop?” asked Emily. “Madame Nova?”
Hilary ignored the question and spoke to Trina. “Hold fast to your family, whatever happens, whatever they may do. No matter how wickedly you think they’ve behaved.”
“I can’t. They’ve disowned me.”
They were passing the last shop before the beach, a sweet shop called Sweet Harmony. A hand-painted sign of a Jersey cow with coquettish eyes swung gently above a window displaying toffee, fudge and coconut ice. The fudge was a sweet confection made locally from clotted cream and boiled sugar. The toffee was available in licorice, treacle and the standard caramelized sugar flavor. The pink-and-white-striped
coconut ice was made from desiccated coconut and sugar boiled up and pressed into blocks. That looks horrible, thought Emily.
“That looks nice,” said Hilary. “You’ve been ever so good since we got here, Trina. Do you want some toffee?”
“I need some new eyeliner.”
“No, you don’t. You wear too much as it is. You can have some toffee.”
“I don’t want toffee.”
“Fudge, then. Coconut ice?”
Trina shrugged her shoulders. Hilary and Trina went into the shop. Emily followed them. Behind the counter there was a motherly woman in a pink-and-white-striped apron. Behind her, inevitably, was a poster showing Edmund Zenon walking on water.
“Those are everywhere!” said Emily, as Trina loaded the pocket of her hooded top with packets of fudge and coconut ice.
“Well, there was a lovely young man called Chris who came round to my shop yesterday. Told me something exciting was happening and I could be part of the magic.”
“Yeah?” Trina was impressed.
“How can you refuse when it turns out he’s only asking you to put up a poster!”
A lovely young man called Chris. So that was it. Madame Nova had known Chris’s name because he had visited her shop and asked her to put up a poster. And when she had used his name as part of her fortune-telling routine and all the kids in the tea shop had got excited, Chris hadn’t wanted to give away the “secret” about how it was done. Not even to Emily.
The motherly woman prattled on. “Immersive theater, he called it. I went home to my husband, Barney, and I said—”
Hilary cut her off. “Yes, well we’ve got our own bit of immersive theater to be getting on with. But ours isn’t blasphemous. So good day to you.” She left the shop.
Emily paused at the door to ask one final question of the woman behind the counter. “What did you think when you saw the poster?”
The woman smoothed her apron, tipped her chin up and smiled happily. “I thought: Finally! Something exciting’s about to happen in this town, and it includes me. And it’ll bring more customers to my shop.”