Hugo and I had an understanding. It was as if he knew I was allergic to his fur and so had established early on that I was a provider of food and shelter, not tummy rubs. For them, he went elsewhere. He had bonded with my sister Zuzu, but her fancy new apartment is a stark white minimalist dream. The black hairball was not welcome, and not primarily because he molts, big time. The apartment was her private sanctuary. A place where she had the Baron all to herself.
In the past, my sister collected hearts like I collect Murino glass fish. Excited at first with the prospect of a new find, only to leave it to gather dust on the sideboard before moving onto the next one. Inspector Lovington was different. With him, she was a predatory, obsessed, full-on bunny-boiler. It wasn’t just his money, or that he was the fourth son of a baronet, a dashing police officer, or ridiculously handsome. This was la grande passion! Words like love and lust failed to touch the sides. Their relationship was hotter than the Carolina Reaper pepper. I was happy for her, but to be honest, being around them was… well, nauseating.
I had tried convincing Rosie to take Hugo with her, but as she rightly pointed out, she was starting her new business, ‘Dungeons and Vegans’, and didn’t have time to look after another living creature. Fortunately, Luke was old enough to fend for himself. Not that he was at home much these days; now he too had found love with Tilly.
The last escape route for my feline friend rested with Mum. She was very fond of the fluffy demon. Hugo loved her culinary skills. I would miss him, though, if he went.
The unexpected early start meant that I was in town before the tourists poured out of the various temporary B&B rooms the local residents offered for the Regatta at this time of year. The Cat and Fiddle pub was full, as were the small hotels along the coast on the mainland. The Wesberrey Regatta drew pleasure boats and racing yachts from all over the world. The death of one of these visitors would throw a cloud over the rest of the week.
Wesberrey’s small harbour, reaching from the ferry landing along the front of Market Square and past the marina and industrial concrete seawalls of Stone Quay, lay packed with vessels of all shapes and sizes. Nautical bunting flapped at the seagulls gliding on the breeze. They hovered aloft, awaiting their opportunity to swoop below and snatch a discarded morsel of fish. Not that there would be many morsels left after the resident feral cat colony staked their claim.
Poor creatures. The dense carpet of boats beneath them should spell rich pickings, except these were not fishing vessels moored with their catch after a long night on the open sea. These boats traded in champagne and canapes.
I strolled along the front to the ferry port. Bob McGuire was resting on a stripy deckchair in between runs to the mainland. Bob knew everything about the comings and goings in the harbour.
“Hi there, Bob. Gorgeous day, isn’t it? I bet you’re busy this week.” I took off my cardigan and lay it down on the stone wall beside him. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Looks like you’re making yourself at home already, Vicar!”
I placed my rear end on the draped polyester, rested my palms on the wall, and lifted my face to the warm sky. The sun glowed through my closed eyelids. “Did you hear they found a young woman’s body washed up on the beach by the lighthouse?” I asked.
“Yup, that I did.” Bob leaned down under his chair and produced a tartan flask from a canvas bag. “Tea, Vicar?”
“No, thank you. I hear they think she came from a yacht moored here for the Regatta.”
“Probably. Landlubbers with no sense in their heads and no respect for the sea.”
“Hmm, yes, but have any of them been reported missing in the last twenty-four hours or so?”
“Nope.” Bob poured milky brown liquid into the white plastic cap of the flask and took a sip. “But then it is still early in the day for most of them unless they are racing. Might take a while for someone to notice one of their party isn’t in the bed they’re supposed to be.”
The thought that her friends and family might not have missed Ellen yet was heartbreaking. She had only been in my head for a few minutes, but she felt so alone, so isolated. Maybe all departed spirits feel like that. She must have loved ones who, when they find out about her tragic fate, will mourn her loss deeply.
Bob threw the dregs of his drink against the harbour wall and screwed the cap back on his flask. “Are you taking the ferry to the mainland today then, Vicar?”
I shook my head. I wanted to walk around the harbour front, see if I could sense Ellen anywhere. If she was on a yacht, there would be others on board, a crew member at least who might explain what happened to her. I just needed to find what boat she had been on.
I left Bob to his work and settled my mind. I planned to walk up and down the jetties and try to feel Ellen’s presence. Six months ago, I would have slapped myself for thinking such nonsense. I had no other leads to follow, and though I doubted it would work, it was all I could think of.
Bob was right. As I passed by the expensive vessels packed along the front, the only people milling about above deck were crew members testing equipment, scrubbing the decks or preparing brunch. I toyed with the idea of calling out to them to enquire if they had a spare bed on board but decided that was an ambiguous opening question and might not elicit the desired response. Even with my dog collar, I was not immune to suggestive overtones. Instead, I simply asked if they had an Ellen Findlay on their passenger list. It surprised me how many could not answer that question without referring to their duty logs, but then I suppose one charter is much like any other and names and faces blur.
The rising noon sun beat red hot above my head, and I was running out of wooden pathways to explore. By now, most of the charters had taken to the sea. They filled the channel with their rainbow sails. Only a handful of yachts remained nestled at the far end of the dock. I sped up to reach them before they cast off. As I turned onto the last jetty, my phone rang.
“Jessie, is that you?” It was Zuzu.
“Er, yes. It’s my phone. You called me.”
“No, I mean is that you on the harbour. Turn around and wave!”
I pivoted one-eighty and on the opposite side of the road stood my older sister, yahooing across the bay. The dazzling sun bounced off her blonde crown, giving her a saintly aura. Zuzu breathed out sunshine.
I rushed over to the bench where she had parked herself to watch the flotilla. This part of the marina was a few hundred yards away from the pristine apartment she rented with the Baron. The area could rival the French Riviera for affluence and style. A small enclave of refinement on our eclectic island.
“I didn’t expect to see you hanging around on the harbour front. What a pleasant surprise! It’s not been the same since you moved out.”
“Do you miss me, little Sis?” Zuzu ruffled my hair and tweaked the end of my nose.
“Ow! That hurt!” And it did. “Don’t make me regret walking over here. Next time I’ll walk away.”
“Nah, you can’t resist a good gossip. It’s a stunning view, isn’t it?”
“Yes, all those white sails against the shimmering blue. Beautiful.”
“Indeed. All that money! Do you know what’s wonderful about today, Jessie? Eh? I am here and all those handsome, rich men are out there, and I have zero desire to court any of them. I mean, think about that for a second. I’m thrilled with what I have. I am… not sure I can even say it, content.” She tugged at the sunglasses on the top of her head and slipped them onto the bridge of her nose.
“Well, the Baron is quite the catch. You have a lot of reasons to be happy.”
“Oh, he is gorgeous. And intelligent, wealthy, loving and so good in bed. I am amazed he has the energy to get up at the crack of stupid to go poking around dead bodies after the workout we have every night. But that’s the point, Jessie.” Zuzu adjusted her Gucci shades and peered over them. “When he leaves in the middle of the night, I know he’s coming back. And, I want him to. I miss him when he’s not around. He invades my ev
ery thought. I consider him in every decision.”
“And you have never experienced this before?”
“Nope.”
We sat in silence for a while, letting this revelation sink in. I loved my sister and had often marvelled at her ability to ‘find ’em, fool ‘em and forget ‘em’. She had many conquests and left a long shadow of broken hearts, but I had never thought about why she didn’t commit to anyone. I had been in love a few times. To be honest, they were more infatuations, and those were mostly in my youth before I donned the clerical collar. I had my heart broken by them all, except one young man called Hugo, who I met at drama school. It took years to shake him off. He was cute but stubborn, and borderline obsessed with me. I had named the black feline refugee after him because when we first met I saw him as another pest I couldn’t shake off.
“So,” Zuzu was first to break the silence. “How are things with you and the handsome headmaster?”
“Yeah, all is fine.” Lawrence had asked me out just before Easter. We had been on a few ‘dates’. The Old School House proved too expensive to make our regular meeting place, which limited the opportunities for any privacy. It was still early days and both of us were mindful of how our relationship would be seen by the community we both served. It may appear a tad Jane Austen, but tongues wag.
“Have you tasted his wares yet?” Zuzu nudged my arm.
“I am a Vicar, we don’t go around tasting men’s ‘wares’!” I answered with a girlish giggle that set my older sibling to howl with laughter.
“Well, seems a terrible waste of a man to me.” She snorted. “Jessie, you need to loosen up. Let rip a little. What are you doing down here, anyway? Seeking to save the soul of some saucy sailor?”
“Ooh, lovely alliteration. Your old English teacher would be proud.”
“Mr Kennedy… ah, well, I could tell you a saucy tale or two about him and his extra-curricular activities with the drama club. When I played Roxie Hart in the Sixth Form production of Chicago-”
I closed her mouth with my index finger. “Let’s stop this story right there.”
Zuzu pulled back and shrugged. “As you wish. Hmm… I wonder if I can get a black flapper mini dress on Amazon. Next day delivery.” She whipped out her phone. “I think Dave would love a bit of Roxie.”
I knew the conversation was in danger of being sucked into a rabbit hole of their bedroom antics, so I quickly directed us back to Zuzu’s original question.
“I was actually down here to see if I could find a yacht. The body that washed up this morning, I think she fell off one of them. She couldn’t remember the name.”
“Oh, right, you did that medium stuff with Cindy. Dave mentioned it when he called. That’s the other thing, you know. He calls me all the time with lots of mind-numbing information, and I actually want to listen to him. I don’t even switch off when he talks about cricket. I mean, that must be love, right?”
“That’s what all the poets say.” I quipped.
“Ha-ha, very funny. So, we are speaking to dead people now, eh?”
“I guess so.” Since returning to the island, my sisters and I had learnt little of the mystical family past we were due to inherit. Mum and her two sisters were miserly with any details. They were always so cryptic. I could never understand if their reticence was because of embarrassment, or fear, or over-protectiveness. When Zuzu and Rosie were living at the Vicarage, we would often spend a late night discussing what all this wizardry actually meant and had even given our mother and aunts a suitable nickname. “The ‘Charmed’ are slow at giving up their secrets. Very enigmatic, the three of them. They all have some ability or other. They sense stuff. I guess you do too. Remember, we needed you and Rosie to do that energy work before. Maybe it’s just a strength in numbers thing. Have you had any weird stuff happen?”
“Not really,” Zuzu replied, “but then I haven’t been testing it like you have.” She relaxed beside me, stretching out her legs across the pavement, and she slipped her cotton skirt up to expose her taut thighs to the afternoon sun. Zuzu was several years older than me, and there was not a hint of cellulite. It’s a good thing I am not a vain creature, or I could easily hate my sister. She clocked my envious glance. “Might as well get a bit of a tan whilst we’re sitting here. You must be dying in that all-black ensemble.”
“It is rather hot.” I fanned myself. I could murder an ice cream! “Maybe we could practice a bit of hocus pocus together. See what happens.”
“What? Right now? Here on the marina?” Zuzu waved dramatically in front of her and then grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Why not, eh? I’m not a big fan of your amateur sleuthing ways, too dangerous if you ask me. But this sounds like a fun lunchtime activity. So, should we hold hands or something?”
“I guess,” I replied. “Let’s try to focus on the name of the boat the girl was on. Her name was Ellen Findlay.”
“Got it! Jessie, just one thing. If a handsome vampire appears in a puff of smoke, you can have him. I’m taken.”
“So am I.” I think. “We can give him to Rosie. Deal?”
“Deal.” Zuzu cupped my fingers in hers. We both took a deep breath and waited. “Anything?”
“No, not really. I think I can see a white dress?”
“Can you? That’s spooky.” Zuzu released my hand and sat up. “Do you remember that Athena poster I used to have on my wall back at home? When we were kids.”
“You had a few posters,” I replied.
“True, but the one of Marilyn Monroe on the air vent, remember? That’s what came into my mind when we joined hands. Probably a coincidence, but when you said white dress…”
“Do you think the yacht is called the Marilyn Monroe?”
“Or,” Zuzu puffed herself up and pointed at the mooring in front of us, “she was on the ‘Norma Jean’.”
Across the road, in all her white gleaming majesty, sat a glorious catamaran with the name ‘Norma Jean’ in gold italic lettering across her bow.
I rose to investigate further, but Zuzu grabbed my wrist. “You aren’t going anyway near the death ship, little sister. I’m calling the Baron.”
All Aboard
Dave arrived twenty nerve-wracking minutes later, riding pillion on the back of PC Taylor’s police motorcycle. Throughout the wait, Zuzu and I maintained surveillance on the Norma Jean, ready to alert the coastguard if they attempted to cast off.
Zuzu sidled up to her beau and slipped a hand under his shirt. “There have been no signs of life above deck. Maybe it’s a massacre?”
Dave wriggled free, his eye twitching. “Let’s not get too excited.” I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the potential mass murder or my sister’s sexual advances. “Thank you, ladies, for keeping watch, but PC Taylor and I can take it from here.”
I wanted to get on board, see if I could feel Ellen’s presence. “Inspector, I would like to join you. We don’t know what has happened and there may be people on the yacht in need of spiritual and emotional comfort.” The thoughtful expression he sported told me that his mind hamsters were falling over themselves on their wheel as he computed the pros and cons of agreeing to my request. I thought it was worth striking another blow. “And,” I whispered, “You saw what happened this morning at the morgue. I promise to share with you if I get anything useful.”
“Fine.” He pulled out of his pocket several pairs of disposable gloves and handed some to me. “If you feel the urge to touch anything, put these on first. And be careful where you walk. I don’t want you contaminating the scene.”
“No, sir, thank you, sir!” I almost saluted him like an eager cadet. Instead, I stuffed the gloves into my trouser pocket.
“I guess I’ll just stay here and work on my tan whilst you all run off and play cops and robbers.” Zuzu stroked Dave’s jaw and blew him a seductive kiss before returning to her seat on the bench. His puppy-dog gaze followed her. I wasn’t the only one with a magical gift. My sister had cast her spell, and it had totally enthralled
this chief of police.
“Erm, the murder ship?” I coughed.
“Yes, yes, of course. PC Taylor lead the way.”
The Norma Jean was one of only a handful of boats left in the harbour. PC Taylor boarded first, then the Chief Inspector, who held out his hand to pull me up. Drawing closer to the cockpit, PC Taylor paused and, miming with the universal finger on the lips with his left hand and cupping his ear with the right, silently announced there was some activity inside. Dave pressed his ear to the door and kept me back with an extended arm. I obeyed. The last thing I wanted was to be rushed by an axe murderer. Deciding it was safe to proceed, Dave straightened himself up, adjusted his tie, and knocked on the door.
Inside, a frenzied kerfuffle confirmed there were survivors. Hopefully not a mass murder then. Dave knocked again. “Open up! It’s the police!”
“Hold your horses! I’m coming.” a grumpy male voice answered from within. Dave knocked again. “Alright, alright.” A weather-beaten face with a nautical white beard and cap opened the door.
“Good afternoon, Captain?”
“Shipton. Captain Jack Shipton. And you are?”
“I am Chief Inspector Dave Lovington of Stourchester Police, this is PC Taylor, and this is Reverend Jessamy Ward. We have reason to believe that one of your passengers may have gone missing.” Dave strode across the threshold, forcing Captain Jack to step aside. “Can you assemble all passengers and crew? I will also need to see your ship’s log.”
“A please would be out of the question, I suppose.” mumbled the captain under his breath. He waved to a younger man in a tight-fitting blue t-shirt and white jeans to gather everyone in the saloon. I imagined that the earlier kerfuffle had been people scurrying to nearby hiding places, as it only took a few minutes to bring the full party back. It was clear from their general demeanour they were anxious, possibly even scared. The women were visibly shaken, and a couple appeared to have been crying.
White cushioned benches rounded the saloon in a u-shape facing away from the galley, across the bow. Everyone took their seats as Dave and PC Taylor stood imposingly in front of the bridge door, ready to begin their questions. I pulled myself up on a white leather-topped bar stool to the side. Not the most lady-life ascent, but it offered me a good vantage point over the scene.
Consecrated Crime: A Rev Jessamy Ward Mystery (Isle Of Wesberrey Book 5) Page 2