Witching in a Winter Wonkyland: A Wonky Inn Christmas Cozy Mystery

by Jeannie Wycherley

  “Hey,” I called, plodding through the grass towards them. “I brought you your tea.”

  Grizzle jumped and stepped away from Rudie.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” I said as I reached him. I noted his watery eyes. Had he been crying? “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I am. I’m getting a cold.” He sniffed hard. “Your wretched ghosts gave it to me.”

  I doubted that. They had the flu, not a cold, and given the way his mouth turned down at the sides, he definitely looked a little sad to me.

  “Funnily enough, I have a doctor on the front lawn. I’m sure he could recommend something to kill a cold.”

  Grizzle growled at me. “I want nothing to do with your witchy quackery, thanks very much.”

  I suppressed a smile. He didn’t know how aptly that description fitted the magickal medical practitioners in front of Whittle Inn. I handed over my cup and saucer. “It looks like you and Rudie are getting on like a house on fire.”

  Grizzle accepted the brew. After regarding the liquid suspiciously, he sniffed it a few times. “I hope it’s sugared. The rainbow-haired witch in the kitchen seemed a little preoccupied.”

  “She’s trying to keep an eye on dinner. But she’s not a witch.”

  Grizzle snorted. “I’d have thought you knew your own kind.”

  I shook my head not wanting to get into an argument. “You like reindeer?”

  “I love all animals,” Grizzle said, and his voice became less belligerent. “I don’t discriminate.” He smiled at the reindeer fondly. “But yes. This boy is something special.”

  “Were you looking after him in the cave?” I pushed for information.

  Grizzle shrugged and turned his face away so I couldn’t study his expression. “I didn’t see who killed that woman. I can’t help you.”

  “But did you see anything else? Anything that can help the police?”

  Grizzle turned back to me. “I don’t think there was anyone else. Not before you. Just her. And then you.”

  “That makes no sense.” I pursed my lips, a little annoyed with the faery for not being more co-operative.

  “Sense or not, that’s the way it was. Believe me, if I could turn back time, I would. I liked living alone in that little cave, away from the fortress and their busy, busy, meaningless routines and military nonsense. And then when this fellow showed up, I finally thought I had it all. Someone I could take care of, all to myself.”

  Now I understood why Grizzle appeared so upset. He’d found an existence that worked well for him and it had been taken away from him the moment whomever had killed Linda followed her to the clearing.

  “You enjoyed the company,” I repeated softly.

  “And now you’ll find out who he really belongs to and I’ll have to let him go. Then what?” The bitterness had seeped back into Grizzle’s voice now. “I can’t go back to the cave. Hardly a secret now, is it? You or that nosy Irish witch will be visiting me every five minutes.”

  “Aww. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it?”

  “I’d hate it!” Grizzle spat at me. I backed away from his vitriol, hurt by the turn the conversation had taken.

  Grizzle’s face flushed. “I’m sorry,” he jumped in quickly, before I could turn to leave.

  “It’s okay.” I shook my head. “I do understand that pull of needing to be alone and in familiar surroundings and yet still wanting company. We’ll have to see what we can do to find you somewhere.” I gestured at Rudie. “And maybe I won’t find his owner. Given I’ve had no luck so far you might have to keep looking after him.”

  “Oh you will. Soon enough.”

  He seemed very certain.

  From the distance came the sound of the smoke alarm again. I needed to head back to the kitchen. “That might be your lunch,” I told the faery. “I need to go and check on Charity.”

  Grizzle nodded with indifference, so I retreated. Halfway back to the inn I turned around. Grizzle was sharing his tea with the reindeer.

  I’m pretty certain Google hadn’t suggested hot sweet tea made for nutritious reindeer food, but Rudie lapped it up.

  Bishop’s Cottage did not belong to Whittle Estate and so I had no prior knowledge of it or the tenant, save the fact I’d walked past it from time to time. Probably dating from the early twentieth century, and made from traditional red brick and a slate roof, I imagined it must once have been pretty. Certainly the garden—a small patch at the front that led around the side to the rear—had the air of something that had been well-tended until probably relatively recently. The front door had been painted post-box red but was now in need of freshening up. There was no doorbell, so I knocked.

  I waited for some time, spotting movement through the dappled glass of the side window. Eventually a man with a walking frame and wearing a stained jumper unlocked the door and pulled it open, peering out at me through his thick spectacles.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” I began. “Are you Roy Lear?”

  His face changed and he gazed at me with eyes full of hope. “Linda?” he asked.

  My insides crumpled in horror, and I shook my head. “I’m Alfhild Daemonne. From up at Whittle Inn.”

  “Oh.” His face fell. “Yes, I’m Roy Lear.”

  “You were expecting a visit from Linda?” I asked. “Linda Creary?”

  He perked up again. “Yes. Are you a friend of hers?”

  How could this poor man live in this village and not be aware of what happened?

  “Not exactly. She was staying with me.” I faltered. It wasn’t my place to break the bad news to him, was it? “What… How… Are you a friend of hers?” How much of a friend could he be if he didn’t recognise her? He’d imagined I might be her. And yet, all those letters he had written to her.

  “I’m her grandfather.”

  “Her grandfather?” I reeled with the news. Now suddenly everything made sense. The letters I’d read in Linda’s flat in London, all from Roy, had told her about a man called Dave. I’d thought it odd. They described things Dave had gotten up to as a child. Holidays he had enjoyed. There had been photos enclosed with some of the letters, depicting a gangly kid playing on beaches or riding a pony. A later photo showed him in the army cadets.

  Roy had written to her often but hadn’t know what Linda looked like. And he didn’t know she was dead.

  I stepped away from his door. “Can you excuse me for a moment? I really need to make a phone call.”

  Forty minutes later I’d made a pot of tea and we were sitting in Roy’s living room with George and a family liaison officer named Lisa. I’d called George because it seemed wrong for me to proceed with giving the bad news to an old man with obvious health issues, and also because George had been at a seeming loss as to whom Linda’s next of kin might be.

  Well here we were.

  For his part, Roy had taken the news relatively well. His rheumy eyes had watered for a while, and he’d accepted a tissue from Lisa, but he seemed more disappointed than anything else.

  “I didn’t really get to know her that well,” Roy was telling us. “She wasn’t a great letter writer really. Didn’t respond to most of mine. Just dropped a few lines every now and again.” He pulled half a dozen slim envelopes from beneath the books on his side table.

  “You hadn’t been in touch long?” George asked.

  “About nine or ten months. She’d been doing some research into who her real parents were and got lucky when she managed to track down some details of my son. She found his birth certificate and that led her to me.” He exhaled noisily. “Dave was born and brought up in this house.”

  “Dave was her father?” George confirmed.

  “Yes. Yes. No doubt about that. Of course Dave’s been dead for thirty-five years now, nearly thirty-six. She would only have been a few years old when he passed on, but in any case, he and Linda’s mother were never together.”

  “Why was that?” I asked, curiosity getting the bett
er of me even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to be asking questions.

  “Ah well, you see, Dave was in the army. He was based at Aldershot while he was doing his training and he fell in with this local lass, and she found herself in the family way. He did the right thing, asked her to marry him, but she wasn’t too keen. As far as I know he intended to support her, but the split was acrimonious. She never really followed it up, didn’t come to him for money. And then a few years later he died.”

  “How sad,” I said.

  He nodded, his eyes far away.

  “Was he killed on active service?” George asked, his tone softening.

  Roy offered a wry smile. “No. As it happens. He had a road accident while on leave in Gibraltar. The army were kind though. They brought him home. He’s buried in the churchyard. He has a military headstone if you want to have a look.” Roy seemed proud of that.

  George nodded. “I’ll certainly pay my respects to him,” he said. He studied his notebook again and cleared his throat. “So, Linda didn’t know anything about her father? Her mother hadn’t told her anything?”

  “I believe Linda’s mother—and I’m ashamed to say I don’t recall her name after all these years—died when Linda was about twelve or thirteen. Linda was fostered after that.”

  That much we knew.

  “Then she just went on with her life… until finally she decided to try and track down any extended family she might have. That led her to me.”

  “But you hadn’t met?” George asked and Roy shook his head. Tears welled up in his eyes again.

  “And now we never shall.” He blew his nose. “I did hear someone had died in the forest, but then Joanne who lives next door told me it was a Beast or Big Cat or something. She said there’d been a hunting party. I didn’t put two and two together.”

  “No reason why you should have,” George said. “I can assure you that it wasn’t a Beast or a Big Cat that killed your granddaughter.”

  “Do you know who did?” the old man asked. “Have you caught them yet?”

  “Well I kind of have some good news about that,” George replied. He flicked back several pages of his notebook. “I attended the post-mortem a few days ago and we had full results yesterday. We’re just waiting on tox screens right now, but don’t expect anything significant from those.” He glanced up at Roy. “Meaning she wasn’t taking any medication and had no history of drug abuse.”

  Roy nodded. “I’m a big fan of those forensic programmes, young man. I know about tox screens.” He gave a short wheezy laugh. “Besides, it sounded to me like she worked hard at her job and didn’t have much else going on in her life.”

  “Apart from holidays,” I said.

  “That’s right! Apart from her holidays.” Roy pointed into his small kitchen and following the direction of his finger I noticed three or four of postcards on display on his fridge, held in place by magnets. “She sent me cards from the places she visited. That was nice of her.”

  “Sadly we think she suffered some sort of heart arrhythmia. The autopsy found evidence of heart disease and the thickening of her arteries. We think that she fell and hit her head while out walking.”

  “Heart arrhythmia?” Roy frowned.

  “Like a heart attack,” George said. “We’re not entirely sure of the sequence of events. She had a skull fracture here,” he indicated the left-hand side of his forehead, “but not significant enough to have killed her had she received treatment straight away.” He sighed. “It was a cold night and the cause of death is being given as hypothermia with extenuating circumstances of heart disease and a fractured skull.”

  “You don’t think anyone else was involved?” I asked in surprise. Grizzle had been right. There hadn’t been anyone else in the forest with Linda that night.

  George nodded. “That’s correct. We are now treating this as an unfortunate accident.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped, my hands over my mouth. “How terrible. If only I’d found her sooner.”

  Roy reached out to pat my hand. “Don’t do that to yourself. The one thing I’ve found after all these years is that ‘what-ifs’ and ‘if-onlys’ will never bring your loved one back. What’s done is done and we simply have to grieve in or own time and make the best of it.”

  “A wise old man,” George said as I clicked my seatbelt into place next to him. He’d offered to give me a lift back to the inn. I’d have plenty of time to help Millicent with the final preparations for dinner, although to be honest, after my harrowing afternoon in Roy’s company, I almost felt like throwing myself in a hot bath and weeping for a few hours with only Mr Hoo for company.

  “I can hardly bear to leave him all alone there,” I said, trying to hide my snuffles.

  “You are an old softie, Alf.” George inserted the key in the ignition and smiled across at me. He looked exhausted himself. “Lisa will make certain he’s alright.”

  I nodded. “Thanks for coming. I didn’t think it was right for me to break the news.”

  “You did the right thing. And it helped to tie up a few loose ends.” He stared at me with a certain suspicion. “How did you find out about Roy anyway?”

  I grimaced. I hadn’t come clean about my trip to Linda’s flat in London, or to finding the letters. I shrugged. “It was something Mr Bramble said. You know Mr Bramble?”

  “I do.” George waited for more, but I pretended to fumble with a tissue and eventually he started the car and we drove along Rectory Lane looking for somewhere to turn. To our right the pretty church yard lay behind a low wall, some of the graves neglected, others carefully cultivated. We performed a U-turn at the Church gates and George paused to give another car the right of way. He glanced at the church yard now to the side of us, probably thinking of Dave Lear.

  “So much death and destruction everywhere.” George sighed, and I stared at him in surprise. It wasn’t like George to complain.

  “Are you alright?” I asked, concerned for his own mental wellbeing.

  “Yes! Of course I am. Sorry.” He checked his mirrors and indicated as he pulled out and we headed back down Rectory Lane, passing Roy’s cottage on the right and eventually turning left at the T-junction to head back towards the village. He glanced at me to offer a reassuring half-smile with his eyebrows raised. “I’m just a bit done-in and I’ve too much work on.”

  “But you must be about ready to leave for your holiday,” I said, not fooled for a moment by his forced cheerfulness. “Are you packed yet?” His face darkened but I continued on regardless. “By this stage of the approach to my holiday in the summer, I’d already packed and unpacked at least three times.”

  “We’re not going,” he said in a small voice.

  “Maybe it’s a girl thing?” I said, not sure I’d heard right. “Is Stacey doing all your packing for you?” I trailed off when he sighed and suddenly pulled the car over. He parked up and glowered at me.

  “She’s seeing someone else.” He slouched in his seat. I gawped at him; uncertain I’d heard correctly. “There. I’ve said it. Does that make you happy?”

  I struggled to process his words. “She’s seeing someone else?”

  “At work. One of my colleagues.”

  Boy. She really had a thing for policemen.

  “George,” I said softly, reaching out to pat his knee. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah.” George rubbed his tired eyes. “This bloke’s girlfriend was at the station yesterday gunning for Stacey. That’s how I found out.”

  I laughed in disbelief. I had a theory that people who insinuated themselves between other couples would often continue that pattern of behaviour in the future. “That’s cruel.” I felt his pain. “But believe me George, I take no pleasure in it.”

  George turned to face me properly. “I’m sorry.” He exhaled slowly and rolled his shoulders back to try to relax the tension in his shoulders. “I know you don’t. That was unkind of me. I apologise.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  He ga
ve me a sharp nod, then released the handbrake. We pulled away from the kerb and headed up the lane towards Whittle Inn once more. “So to answer your question, I’ve cancelled most of my leave and the holiday. I won’t get much of my money back but c’est le vie, I suppose.”

  We arrived on the drive. George stared curiously as Dr Quikke’s cart. A small fire had been built on the lawn and a large iron pot steamed above it. “What is that?”

  “This is Dr Quikke. He’s a quack. But with Millicent’s assistance he’s helping me cure the ghosts of their flu.” Dobbin pricked his ears and ambled towards George’s car, bobbing his head a few times and regarding us from the other side of the glass, his great jaws grinding methodically on ghost grass.

  “Is this a ghost horse?” George swivelled his head to question me and turned back, open mouthed in fascination, to stare at Dobbin.

  “Yes. It’s Dobbin. He’s an old-fashioned Shire horse.”

  “He’s a stunner,” George breathed, his face lighting up. “Wow.”

  “Dr Quikke swore blind he was a complete nutcase, a real problem, but he’s as docile as the day is long.” I shrugged, clueless as to why Dr Quikke had said such a thing.

  “I have to hand it to you, Alf. A visit to Wonky Inn refreshes the parts other inns cannot reach.” He tapped his heart and I laughed in delight.

  “You’re welcome here any time, DS Gilchrist. You know that.”

  George leaned over and we hugged, albeit a little awkwardly given that he was still wearing his seatbelt and the gear stick was in our way.

  “If you’re at a loss for somewhere to be, come for Christmas dinner,” I said. “I’d love to have you here.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he promised.

  I opened the door and swung myself out, then smiled and leaned back in. “Don’t just think about it, do it. Where else are you going to find witches, wizards, faeries, ghosts, ghost horses and Victorian medical men… and a reindeer?”

  “You have a reindeer?”

  “Now that would be telling. But if you come along on Christmas Day you’ll find out, won’t you?” I winked at him and slammed the door closed.