5 The Witches of East Malling

by steve higgs

  From the bottom of a cupboard, where I had a large, plastic box stuffed with odd bits of clothing I rarely wore, I found an old rainproof top. It was quite creased but no one would see me and the rain would take the creases out.

  I performed some stretches in front of the mirror by my front door, then opened it to discover that I had grossly underestimated the intensity of the downpour now occurring outside.

  Tough luck, fatty. Get on with it.

  With the gym instructor’s voice echoing in my ear, I set off on my planned route. I didn't bother with music, I was going to use the next forty-five minutes or more to consider the witchcraft case.

  My hair was soaked before I reached the end of my road. What did I know so far about the case? The instant answer was very little. I had looked through some of the paperwork Mick had put together before I fell asleep last night though. His research on lightning striking people was comprehensive if nothing else. Lightning strikes are rare, but when they do occur what the person actually suffers is called flashover where the lightning passes not through the body, but around the outside, travelling over the skin via sweat or rainwater to discharge into the floor. However, lightning can pass directly through a human body. When it does, it leaves an entry and exit wound to mark where the lightning both entered and left the victim. In his pack were printed pictures of people with Lichtenberg scarring – elaborate spider's web patterns where blood vessels have ruptured by the passing current. The effect was oddly pretty but probably very painful.

  My breathing was becoming laboured as I slogged along a dirt path through the woods going up Bluebell Hill. There was a hint of daylight to brighten the area, without which I would have no light at all under the canopy of trees where the steady rain fell in fat blobs. I acknowledged that the rainproof top was pointless. It had fought valiantly for a few minutes but was now just a sodden mess, stuck to my skin and weighing me down.

  I was focusing on the lightning strike evidence because it was currently all I had, but also because I felt that it might prove to be the most important element of the investigation. Mick had said that he found evidence of other lightning strike victims where the lightning had entered the chest rather than anywhere else but had also said that it was highly irregular. I needed to talk to a Fulminologist then, show them some pictures and get their opinion. Mick said yesterday that if the scientists concluded that his father could have been killed by lightning then he would pay my fee and be done with it. I wanted to take a closer look at the stepmother though. I told myself that she could be completely innocent. I doubted it though.

  I reached the halfway point of my run. There is a viewing point near the top of Bluebell Hill that walkers or hikers go to because it gives great views over the Kent countryside. Today, all I could see was grey clouds and murky, smudged outlines where the heavy rain obscured visibility. Somewhere behind it all, the sun was slowly coming up. I had the return leg to complete. It was mostly downhill, which you might think is easier than going uphill, but it isn't. It is quicker, but that is not the same thing. One can attack an uphill stretch, going downhill one had to constantly watch one's footing lest it goes out from under you. I have heard it said that if one runs downhill faster than you can fall then you will not fall. I am not sure the persons saying that have it right though and was in no mood to try it out this morning.

  By the time I got home, I was just as wet as if I had been swimming. I stripped out of my wet things on the stone floor of my porch, threw them in the washing machine and dripped my way upstairs to find the Dachshunds just getting up.

  I took them back downstairs and shooed them into the garden. Dachshunds do not like rain. They do not like it to the point that they will happily poop in my house rather than go outside when it is raining. Had I not stayed at the back door yelling instructions at them, they probably would have done exactly that. They were not quick about it though, they thought that if they just kept trying to get back inside that I would give in and let them, so by the time they were suitably empty, I was cold. The November air had a distinct nip to it and I was naked.

  As I closed the patio door I heard a rumble of thunder in the distance. The dogs barked at it. They were quite brontophobic. I glanced around but I saw no further flashes.

  An hour later, I was clean and dry and warm and sat at the computer terminal in my office with Dozer on my lap. His brother was asleep in a dog bed next to the desk. Neither one liked the storm that was now raging outside so were keeping me close.

  My computer had grown two extra screens while I had been away. Jane had been upgrading undoubtedly. I was having trouble getting used to them. I had never had more than one screen before and wasn’t entirely sure how to make this set up work. I assumed that I could have several pages open all at once and use the mouse to drag and drop them on the screens to the left and right of the one in front of me but was having no luck doing it. They just kept pinging back. I would ask Jane about it when she came back to work.

  I wondered then how long she would take off. It was Monday tomorrow though and I was not going to expect her. If she turned up, super. If she didn't then it would be just like it was a month ago before I had hired her and I would manage.

  I leaned forward to lift my mug of tea from its coaster on the desk to an accompanying grumble from the dog sleeping on my lap. Ignoring him, I knuckled down to do some research. Searching for lightning research centres showed me very quickly that the United Kingdom had a big one in Cardiff in Wales, right across the other side of the country and hardly convenient. Later, I would see if I could find someone there to speak to. Other than that, I found databases of persons injured or killed by lightning in the UK and lots of pictures, but nothing that was helpful.

  I switched my angle of attack and looked into the stepmother. Most people have a social media profile even if they don't know it. There are some nefarious apps one can obtain that will find the intended person where they pop up on other people's profiles. Mabel Cotton though had her own Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other accounts. An hour of fiddling around between the various pages, and by using my iPad and phone to have multiple pages open when I still couldn't get the screen sharing thing to work, allowed me to build up a picture of her life.

  Mabel was not hiding her insurance payout. In fact, she was bragging about it. She had received, very recently, a cheque for one and a quarter million pounds and had announced it to her friends via Twitter with the hashtag RichAsF! There was quite a bit of back and forth between her and three other ladies. I was having trouble pinning the information down and would need to go to Land Registry to prove it, but they all appeared to live in East Malling and met at the Golf Club there regularly. They were going today if the feed on Facebook was to be believed. I looked out the window at the rain pouring down. Another crack of thunder punctuated my thoughts on the matter. No one was playing golf around here today.

  Mabel's three friends were Edna Hinckley, Dorothy Myers, and Barbara Tremont. They each had other friends of course, which made it hard to pick out any threads of conversation. There was no grand statement to say that Mabel had killed her husband, but I did follow one exchange from six days ago which ended abruptly when Mabel had quipped about the girls looking forward to getting their cheques. She may have meant it as a joke and horrified the other ladies, but I wondered if there might be more to it than that.

  I picked up my phone and called Mick. The phone rang and rang and then went to voicemail. I hated leaving voicemail messages so I would call him back later instead. As I put the phone down though, it started ringing. He was calling me.

  ‘Good morning, Mick. Thank you for calling me back.'

  ‘That’s quite alright, Tempest. How may I help you?’

  ‘I wanted to know where your stepmother was when your father died.’

  ‘Playing golf. Or, at least, at the golf club in East Malling. She was with three friends. Not that she needed an alibi because it was recorded as accidental death, but she had one if she
needed it. I thought it suspicious that she would be at the golf club on a day when there was a storm and I asked her about it, but she said that one didn't cancel plans with friends because of a little inclement weather.'

  I thought it was odd, suspicious might be the wrong word, but definitely odd. I thanked Mick for his time and disconnected. I needed more tea. Dozer complained as I plopped him into the bed next to his brother. I figured he could snuggle up with him and sleep, but both dogs saw that I was heading to the kitchen and followed me just in case it was second breakfast time.

  It wasn’t.

  While the kettle boiled, I called my parent's landline. I had the phone on speaker, so my hands were free to clean my mug, dry it and fetch a fresh tea bag from the cupboard. I had left my parents in Cornwall on Thursday night. They had last seen me leaving the pub late at night after an adventurous couple of days that had seen mum get kidnapped and tied up and my father and I fight some dead pirates while discovering the whereabouts of over half a billion in gold, silver, and jewels that had supposedly sunk several centuries ago. I had plugged in my lifeless phone that night as I was climbing into bed to find worrying messages from my friends back here. They were all missing, so I had thrown everything into the car, grabbed the dogs and raced across the country that night to find them. All I sent mum and dad was a text which they didn't see until the next morning. They actually said that they hadn't noticed I wasn't in the fold-out bed in our hotel room until mum read the text on her phone.

  I hadn’t called them since and they hadn’t called me, so I did not even know if they were home or still in Cornwall. I got my answer when the house phone picked up.

  ‘Hello?' Mum said after reciting her phone number.

  ‘Good morning, mother.’

  ‘Oh, Tempest. How are you?’

  ‘More or less recovered from the week I took off to recover.' I answered realising as I did so, how true the statement was. My planned restful week in Cornwall had been nothing of the sort. ‘I just called to check in really. After I raced back here from Cornwall, I haven't spoken to you and I wanted to see if you were back.'

  ‘Yes, we got back yesterday afternoon. We wanted to stay on in Cawsand but we couldn't remain at the Sea Pilgrim pub because they closed it. The police that is. Impounded might be a better word. Anyway, we were not in a rush so we drove along the coast for a bit and found a nice B&B that we had stayed in before you were born. Do you know what?'

  ‘What, mother?

  ‘It was the same couple running it almost forty years later. They are getting on a bit now though. Are you calling to see if there is a roast dinner?’

  ‘Not at all. I have plenty of food here. I really was just checking to see if you got back okay.’

  ‘Yes, yes. We are back safe and sound. When will we see you?’

  ‘Next weekend? I have work to do, I need to find a proper office space to work from. It is not practical to work from my house and I have a case that demands my attention.’

  ‘Next Sunday?’ she asked.

  ‘That works for me. I will be over for 1400hrs.’

  ‘You mean two o’clock.’

  ‘No, I don't.' I heard her sigh, then a quick goodbye and she was gone. If there were any ill-effects from her brief spell in captivity last week and the distinct likelihood that her captors were going to murder her, then it had not surfaced yet.

  As I stirred my tea, a fantastic flash of lightning lit the air, splitting the clouds in two it seemed. Before my heart beat again, the thunder hit, and the two small dogs began barking their discomfort once more. The sound was loud now, the storm right on top of us. I made a decision.

  I knew that Mabel and the other ladies were going to be at the golf club today, but they would be in the clubhouse, not out on the fairways and greens, so I could listen to their conversation or pose as a new member and strike up a conversation with them.

  I searched the East Malling golf club and confirmed that they took day members in. All I would need to pay for entry to the club was green fees for the day. I choked when I saw the price though. It was almost two hundred pounds just for a day membership. Nicely exclusive then. No need to worry about the local oiks turning up.

  I called Big Ben. ‘Ben.’ I said when he answered. ‘I need to borrow your golf clubs.’

  ‘No problem. What for though. You can’t play. I tried to get you to play before, but you always said you were rubbish.’

  ‘I am rubbish. I need to spy on some people at a golf club and they will be part of my disguise.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ He conceded.

  ‘I'll be over shortly.' I disconnected. I needed to clean myself up and change my clothing if I was going to an expensive, exclusive golf club. I was content that I could fit in but right now I was wearing slobby clothing that I had thrown on to do housework and research in.

  East Malling Golf Club. Sunday, November 6th 1304hrs

  The storm was unusually ferocious and prolonged. In the relatively flat open countryside of the south-east of England, we didn't get intense storms. No hurricanes or tornadoes to worry about. A lightning storm with gale force winds was as hairy as it got, but while a tree might occasionally fall it was rare for there to be any loss of life. This storm was being persistent though. Usually, the storms we got were brief, this one was into its fourth hour and was still going.

  I knew where the golf club was. I had never been there but had driven by the entrance gateway many times. I followed the signs to the clubhouse and parked as close to the entrance as I could. Then I dashed to the door through the puddles before the sky soaked me for the second time today. Big Ben's golf clubs were on my passenger seat I realised when I got inside. I wasn't going back for them though. There was an umbrella in the bag, but the wind was blowing so hard I worried it would just turn inside out and break.

  A bell chimed above my head as I went in and I saw that I had unwittingly run into the shop. There was no shop assistance visibly in attendance, so I poked around wondering if there would be a way through from the shop to the main clubhouse. There was, of course, hidden in a corner. Had I looked up at any point I might have noticed the large sign pointing the way through to toilets, changing rooms and clubhouse.

  I walked along a corridor lined with oak panelling to arrive in the front entrance that I had somehow missed in my dash from the car. It was double height with a vaulted ceiling and a marble staircase leading up to the level I was on.

  I could hear faint chatter coming from around the corner. Following it led me into a bar and restaurant area that reminded me of the Ritz: It was palatial. Huge chandeliers hung from the ceilings, the expensive room was decorated like the inside of a palace might be if an important guest were coming. A pianist was tinkling away in the far corner and the room had a large terrace that gave a lofty view down onto the eighteenth fairway and green.

  Naturally, there was no one outside on the terrace today and the glass doors to access it were shut against the harsh weather. The room was busy though. Small groups of men or women or men and women, families and all manner of ages, although I estimated the demographic to be middle-aged and upwards in general. One had to be successful in life to be able to afford to be a member here, so it did not surprise me that there were fewer young people around.

  I knew what the four ladies looked like from their social media profiles. Another example of technology intruding into our lives uninvited. I spotted them as I made my way to the bar. Fortuitously, they were eating lunch at a table close to the bar so I sat as near to them as I could and ordered a diet coke.

  It was hard to overhear their conversation amid the babble of background noise and the tinkling of the piano. I picked out the odd word though and I was able to watch their body language using the mirror behind the bar.

  Mabel was sitting nearest me and thus had her back to me. Hers was the one face I could not see. She was clearly enjoying herself though. An upended bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket by her left elbow. It seemed
like she had either had the whole thing herself, or it was not the first bottle. The other ladies had glasses in front of them in various stages of emptiness, but Barbara looked like she had not touched hers. She looked nervous or worried or maybe she was just sick, but if so why come out to lunch at all.

  I sipped at my coke and wished the other patrons would choose to be quiet so that I could hear what the ladies were saying.

  I continued to watch, trying hard to disguise my attention. If they or anyone else was aware of me observing them, I couldn't tell, but I was left alone by everyone including the barman. Time ticked by in an uninteresting way and the ladies finished their meals. Well, I should qualify that. The plates were cleared but Barbara had barely touched her food and the glass of champagne that she had not drunk was swept up by Mabel. Mabel was telling her off for something, wagging her finger and making a big point about it.

  ‘Are you a member here, sir?' A voice asked from behind me. I turned my head to find a giant bushy moustache attached to a face etched with thin red lines. The moustache was grey turning to white and the gentleman sporting it looked to be seventy or more. He was wearing a tweed suit that was mostly green but had intersecting lines through it in hues of dull yellow, brown and red. The trousers ended at the knee where they tucked into long socks that were tan in colour and finally they disappeared into a pair of wellington boots.

  ‘I think you know that I am not.' I replied to his rhetorical question. ‘I was curious about the place. I recently moved here and wanted to see it for myself.' I lied smoothly. ‘I had planned to play a round today, but the weather...' I indicated to the windows.

  ‘I'm afraid we have very strict protocols about non-members always being accompanied in the clubhouse by full members, sir.' He was being very polite. ‘I really am sorry, but must ask you to leave, sir. The club will be only too pleased to receive your application for membership whenever you are ready, sir.'