by Kim M Watt
“Well, that was a bit off, lad,” Beaufort said.
“Mortimer, apologise!” Miriam exclaimed, dropping the baubles and hurrying over to crouch next to Amelia. She put one hand awkwardly on the young dragon’s shoulder, discovering that it was quite hard to comfort a dragon. They were very spiny.
“Amelia,” Mortimer said, clutching his paws to his chest. “Amelia, I – I haven’t slept, and I know it’s no excuse, and …” He trailed off, looking around the kitchen desperately.
Amelia just shook her head and looked at the floor.
“Well, now.” Alice had been pouring tea and ignoring the drama, and now she turned around with the teapot still in her hand. “No one’s accusing Amelia of any wrongdoing, other than maybe going a little bit behind Mortimer’s back, are they?”
“No! No, exactly.” Mortimer still had his paws up, looking not unlike a large scaly meerkat. “I just – it came out all wrong. I’m so sorry, Amelia, really.”
“But it is exactly what’s happened, isn’t it?” Alice said, going back to pouring the tea. Miriam stared at her, the kitchen suddenly far too hot. Was Alice actually accusing the Cloverlies of being behind all this? “I don’t mean that Amelia has done anything wrong,” Alice continued. “But someone else has.” She set two mugs down on the table and looked at the others. “We’re not really looking for other, non-Cloverly dragons, are we, Beaufort?”
“Well, now. That’s a little hasty.” But he didn’t quite look at her.
“Dragon-scale baubles, scorched van, no scent because the attackers were flying. Beaufort, I know you don’t want to think badly of your clan, but if you’ve been so secretive about our little trade agreement that none of the other Folk – none of the other dragons – know, I don’t think we can get away from it being an inside job. At least partly, anyway. I imagine they need some human help for the eBay listing and so on.” She handed Miriam a cup of tea, and Miriam took it with wide eyes. Alice made it sound so reasonable!
“I didn’t like to admit to you that it was possible,” Beaufort admitted. There was a softly ashamed yellow tinge to his scales. “The idea that a Cloverly dragon could be involved is just intolerable. But you’re right. They’re really the only ones who know.”
There was a little, uncomfortable silence, then Miriam finally found her voice. “You do always say that Folk are just people, Beaufort. People do intolerable things all the time.”
“This is true.” Beaufort examined his mug. “But dragons are terribly old compared to most people. We should know better.”
“I don’t think age has got anything to do with it,” Miriam said. “Anyone can be quite foolish or very wise.”
There was another small silence, an easier one this time, and Alice handed out mince pies. Amelia didn’t move.
“But the baubles,” Mortimer said. “That’s what I don’t understand. Not the fact that they’re stealing them, because that makes sense in a nasty way. But why are they making their own? They’re not easy, you know. You need special tools, you need to get the charms just right—”
“Yes,” Alice said. “And evidently they aren’t getting them just right. I checked that eBay listing again, and they’ve had half a dozen more bad reviews. Someone’s boat blew up so big that it smashed the bathtub. Who knows how many people haven’t even tested them. It could be chaos on Christmas morning.”
“I know I’ve already talked to the Cloverlies,” Beaufort said, taking another mince pie. He’d regained his normal colours. “But it wasn’t a proper interrogation. It didn’t work very well. I think I should try a proper one.”
“Beaufort, no,” Mortimer and Amelia said together, and exchanged embarrassed looks. Mortimer hesitated, then slid his mince pies onto Amelia’s plate. She gave him a most unpleasant stare, which made him flush an even deeper yellow. Her own pretty, deep red colour was starting to come back again though, which Miriam thought was good in more ways than one. She didn’t like seeing the dragons falling out, and it was unnerving having a ghost dragon in your kitchen. She gave Amelia a final pat on the shoulder and sat down again.
“Why on earth shouldn’t I?” Beaufort demanded. “If we’re saying that it has to be a Cloverly, we need to deal with this!”
“Because it didn’t go – it didn’t go entirely well last time,” Mortimer said cautiously.
“I admit the results weren’t particularly useful, but I don’t think I pushed hard enough.” He scratched his chin. “Yes. I should have been firmer.”
Miriam exchanged glances with Alice, wondering what a dragon interrogation looked like, and Mortimer said, “I’m not quite sure that was the problem.”
“Well, I intend to resume my investigation,” Beaufort said, sounding enormously satisfied. “I still don’t think a Cloverly would be deliberately hurting anyone, but it’s time to take this seriously. Someone must know something.”
Mortimer took a mouthful of tea and helped himself to a new mince pie, chewing carefully before he took a deep breath. “Alright. Yes. I think we do need to try again. But can we do it subtly this time?”
“Well, I wasn’t rude last time, if that’s what you mean,” Beaufort said. “I don’t know what more I can do.”
Mortimer sighed, and took two more mince pies. Miriam went back to lighting baubles, since the immediate crisis seemed to be over. Dragons investigating dragons felt rather safer than her investigating anyone. And less likely to result in arrest.
“So what do I do?” Amelia asked. “Should I stop with the scales? Only I’m not sure that’s a good idea. There’s a real demand for blankets at the moment.”
“You should carry on as normal, Amelia,” Alice said. “But maybe see if you’re not getting as many scales, or if there are certain dragons who aren’t trading with you who were before.”
“I still don’t know how the group interrogation went wrong,” Beaufort said. “I’m very disappointed in that Poirot fellow.”
“I don’t think it’s meant to be an instructional show,” Miriam observed. “Ooh, this is a new design.” She cupped the bottom of a bauble that had just unfolded into something like a pirate galleon, all square sails on the mainmasts and little trysails on the bow. It was even adorned with a dragon figurehead.
“Ugh, that one shouldn’t be in there,” Mortimer said. “It doesn’t work.”
“It’s lovely.”
“It goes upside down as soon as you let it go. I couldn’t get it quite right.”
“That’s a shame.” Miriam released the bauble, and it bobbed in a stately manner across the kitchen, perfectly stable. It was so perfect and lifelike that she half-expected to see a swarm of tiny sailors scrambling up the rigging. “It looks like it works.”
Mortimer blinked at it in surprise. “It kept capsizing.”
“I fixed it,” Amelia said, her eyes on the ship. “It was too pretty to throw away. It just needed ballast.”
Mortimer’s shoulders slumped, and the yellow rushed back, deepening to ochre as he muttered a thank you.
Another pot of tea and most of a ginger cake later (Miriam didn’t even count the mince pies, just noted with some wonder how rapidly they were vanishing), the boxes were packed.
“Now, just to hope these ones don’t go missing, right?” she said cheerfully. Things still felt a little unreal in the warmth of the kitchen, with the sun collecting in the windows.
“Don’t even joke about it,” Mortimer said. “I’ll never catch up if we lose these ones too.”
“We won’t,” Alice said, and lifted her handbag onto the table. She dug inside for a moment, then waved a little plastic packet at them. “This is going with them.”
“What is it?” Beaufort asked, squinting.
“A GPS tracker. I’ll attach it to one of the parcels, and if it goes anywhere it shouldn’t, we’ll know.”
“A what, exactly?”
“It’s like an electronic scent,” Mortimer said, looking impressed. “Alice can follow it from her computer.”
“My phone, actually,” Alice said, and popped the tiny device out of its packaging. It was barely the size of her little fingernail. “Apparently, the battery should last for at least a week, so we’ll have plenty of time to track it down.”
“Where on earth did you get that?” Miriam asked.
“It’s a good thing the post is still coming in,” Alice replied, as she taped the tracking device carefully to one of the packages, hiding it in a fold in the paper where, Miriam imagined, no one would even notice it. “I ordered it online. Nasty little website, all full of things you can use to spy on your spouse. Seems rather a waste of time bothering if the relationship’s at that point.”
Miriam watched her smooth the paper down carefully and tape it in place, and wondered if she’d ever actually have the courage to ask Alice about her missing maybe-dead-maybe-not husband. She didn’t think so.
“There,” Alice said, giving the box a final pat. “Never even know it was there.”
“Very clever,” Miriam agreed, just as there was a sharp knock at the front door. She jumped up and hurried down the hall, already spying the yellow and red van blurred through the glass door panes. “It’s DHL!”
“Perfect timing,” Beaufort said cheerfully, then tucked his tail out of the way as Alice and Miriam hurried back and forth with the boxes, stacking them at the door while the driver ferried them out to the van. He accepted a mince pie and a slice of ginger cake happily, and drove off with his mouth full and one hand on the wheel. It was all over and done within five minutes, leaving the kitchen suddenly empty and full of drifting wisps of tape and packing paper.
Alice pulled her phone out and set it on the table, opening the tracking app while the others gathered around her. Amelia looked quite like herself again now, and Miriam noticed that Mortimer kept passing her mince pies and cake, so that was alright. She wasn’t sure how dragons settled grievances, but she felt it was probably best that they weren’t allowed to escalate. Certainly not in her kitchen.
“There we go,” Alice said. “Look, he’s off into town.” Sure enough, a little green dot moved steadily down the map of the main road, then stopped outside the bakery.
“Well. After we gave him cake, too,” Miriam said, hands on her hips, and they stared at the phone and the unmoving dot until the screen turned itself off.
“Well, that’s not very exciting, is it?” Beaufort said.
“It does do the job, though.” Alice turned the phone back on. The dot still sat outside the bakery.
“Maybe he stopped for coffee,” Miriam said. The bakery doubled as a small deli, and there were a couple of little tables tucked in one corner. It had better coffee than the bookshop, but not such a nice smell.
“Following him would do the job, too,” Beaufort said.
“Beaufort, we are not discussing this.” Alice gave the High Lord a look that made Miriam squirm, and he puffed red smoke. “You’re not running around the place following people. And on such a clear day, too. Absolute foolishness. Anyway, look. He’s off again.” The green dot moved down the road, then stopped in front of the butcher’s.
“Well, that was enthralling.”
Alice glared at Beaufort, but this time he just grinned, and after a moment she smiled back. “Alright. So it’s not that exciting. But it does work. If anything happens to the parcels, we’ll know.”
“What’re we going to do if it does go off-route?” Miriam asked.
“And how do we know what his route is?” Mortimer added.
Alice opened her mouth, then shut it again, looking very uncharacteristically at a loss. “Well. I don’t exactly know what his route is,” she admitted. “But we can find out where the DHL hub is, and if it doesn’t go to that address for sorting, we’ll know it’s gone missing.”
“And then?” Amelia asked.
“And then we see where it goes. We can go take a look at where it ends up from a distance, and decide whether to tell DI Adams or deal with it ourselves. It’s the best we can do.” Alice seemed to have recovered herself, and Miriam relaxed. She didn’t like Alice looking doubtful. It was like waking up in the middle of the night to find your bedroom had been completely turned around, and now you were sleeping with your feet where your head should be and the dresser on the ceiling.
“More tea?” she suggested.
“More tea is always a good idea,” Alice said.
“Let me know if it moves,” Beaufort said, and curled himself up on the rug in front of the AGA, tucking his paws and tail in neatly like a large green cat, albeit a winged one that was smoking slightly. A moment later his breathing settled into soft, rumbling snores.
“I wish I could do that,” Mortimer said sadly. “It takes me an hour and three meditation exercises to get off.”
“There’s your problem, then,” Alice said. “Skip the meditation and have a hot toddy instead. Works for me every time.”
“I’m not sure that’s the healthiest advice,” Miriam said, and collected the mugs. “Who’s for more mince pies?”
Miriam supposed that, if you were actually driving the van, the life of a DHL driver was probably reasonably interesting. At least you weren’t in an office or something, which had always seemed to her to be a most miserable way to pass the time. However, watching a DHL driver as represented by a little green blip on a phone screen was entirely uninteresting. Alice had plugged her charger in and put the screen to permanently on, leaving it propped up against the fruit bowl on the kitchen table. Once they’d stared at it for long enough that Miriam was starting to see floating green ghosts in her eyes even when she looked away, she went to find the playing cards. While Beaufort snoozed she and Alice tried to teach the two younger dragons how to play gin rummy, but quickly gave that up in favour of last card, which entailed less explanation. It still wasn’t an entirely easy prospect given that the dragon’s claws weren’t ideal for holding cards, and they kept singeing them when they got overexcited. However, they caught on rather quickly, and there were already some quite literally heated exchanges going on.
“Ha! Pick up five, Mortimer.”
“No – reverse!”
“Reverse back ’atcha!”
“Aw, Amelia!”
Miriam glanced at Alice, and they both smiled. The dragons seemed to have got past the side market problem, for the moment at least. Miriam supposed that there were always going to be problems, trying to bring a clan of old creatures into a modern world, one so soundly ruled by humans that the very existence of dragons wasn’t even considered. But it was good for Mortimer to remember that he was neither the one controlling it, nor the one who had to try to control it. She sorted through her cards. “Pick up two, Amelia.”
“Ha, no – pick up four, Mortimer.”
“Where are you getting these?”
Miriam laughed as Mortimer struggled to pick up the cards, her gaze straying to their DHL blip.
“Miriam, your turn.”
“Umm.” She blinked, trying to be sure her eyes weren’t just tired and playing tricks on her.
“Miriam?”
“Is it meant to be doing that?”
Alice jumped to her feet and snatched the phone up, giving it a quick shake as if she thought it might be a mistake. “Beaufort,” she said sharply, and the old dragon uncurled with a scraping of scales, his eyes bright and wide awake. “I think we have something.”
On the screen, the green blip had left the road and was racing across open country, heading west.
11
DI Adams
DI Adams made her escape from the nippy little dog, the dragons, and the ladies of the W.I., and wedged herself into the passenger seat of DI Collins’ car, setting two Tupperware containers crammed with assorted cakes and biscuits on her lap. Her head was pounding. She wasn’t sure if the headaches were due to the fact that she was still getting used to dragons, her brain and her eyes arguing over what they were seeing, or some sort of stress reaction to the Women’s Institute, but she was going
to start taking painkillers before she got here from now on. She dropped the cake boxes unceremoniously in the back seat, then fished in her bag for some Paracetamol. She swilled two of them down with a gulp of coffee from one of the paper takeaway cups Alice had handed her, burning the roof of her mouth.
“Alright?” DI Collins asked, taking a more cautious sip from his cup. It wasn’t the best coffee DI Adams had tasted, but it made up for it by being impossibly hot. “There’s water in the back.”
“I’m fine.” Or she would be once the painkillers kicked in.
“Big antihistamines.”
“What?”
“Those tablets.”
“Paracetamol. Bit of a headache.”
“Not antihistamines?”
“No. Why?” Honestly, this was no better than being back with the W.I. Things really should have started making sense once they left Miriam’s, shouldn’t they?
“For your hay fever.”
Oh. Right. “Once I’m away from whatever triggered it, I’m usually okay.”
“Must make it hard at this time of year, being allergic to Christmas trees,” DI Collins said, pulling out from between the parked cars and heading toward the centre of the village.
“Sometimes. It depends on the tree. They’re not all as bad as that. And it might have been the incense. Or the candles.”
“Allergic to a lot of things, aren’t you?”
“I have sensitive nasal passages,” she said, and wished she hadn’t.
He snorted. “Whatever you say. Look, my aunt’s a bit ditsy – she reckons she’s some sort of psychic, and makes all these mad concoctions and so on – but she’s pretty harmless.”
“That was rather the conclusion I came to as well.”
“The thing is, something seemed off. Did you notice that?”
Well, there were the two dragons in the room, she thought, and had to swallow an unexpected bubble of laughter. “I wouldn’t have said so. Like I said, Ms Ellis always seems a bit nervous around me.”