by Kim M Watt
“Gert, duck!” Alice shouted from the floor, and the other woman, who’d just pulled herself out of the loveseat, dived back down with her arms clasped protectively over her head. The bauble shot outside, still screaming, and now trailing burning fragments that spun off and landed on the carpet, scorching it. The screaming rose to a crescendo, the light inside the ornament burning so brightly that Miriam could barely look at it. Then it blew apart like a mini-supernova, flames and shrapnel peppering the garden, and winked neatly out of existence, leaving the day feeling pale and somewhat empty.
No one moved for a long, fragile minute, then Gert lowered her arms and said in an aggrieved voice, “This was my favourite Christmas jumper. Look at that. Ruined!” She displayed a hole burned neatly into the sleeve from the debris the bauble had left behind.
Alice propped herself up on her elbows and said, “You could probably darn it.”
“It’ll never be the same,” Gert said with a sigh.
“Never mind that,” Teresa said. “What about poor Jasmine’s living room?”
They looked silently at the soot-smeared walls and the burn marks on the carpet, the oily smudges on the ceiling and the cookies strewn across the floor. Someone’s tea was overturned on the coffee table, and there was a pineapple upside down cake on the floor, upside down. A light dusting of icing sugar coated every surface. Smoke still drifted in the air.
“Can someone help me up?” Carlotta said.
A liberal application of soapy water, and an even more generous application of elbow grease later, and the living room was looking almost back to normal. Rosemary and Carlotta had managed to get most of the grease off the walls while arguing about the best way to do so, and Pearl and Teresa had dusted the icing sugar off everything. What biscuits hadn’t been tidied up by Primrose while the Women’s Institute had been otherwise engaged were tidied up more traditionally, and now there were only the scorch marks on the carpet left to show that they had recently been under attack. Miriam, Priya and Rose were still doing their best to make the marks presentable with the help of a pack of old razors Jasmine had found in the spare bathroom, but Miriam secretly thought that it was a lost cause. That was the problem with cream carpets. No forgiveness for the mishaps of life. Although, admittedly, exploding baubles were right up there with dragons for unexpected circumstances.
“Those things are deadly,” Jasmine said, for about the twentieth time. She had finally stopped shaking, but her face was still a little pale, and Alice poured some Scotch into her tea while she was looking the other way. Gert had insisted that she needed some for medicinal purposes, to counteract the shock of having her favourite Christmas jumper so wantonly damaged, and most of the others had agreed it was a wonderful idea. Miriam had refrained. She still wasn’t entirely sure she was over the Metaxa.
“They are terribly dangerous,” Alice agreed. The newspapers she’d brought with her were spread on the coffee table, not that anyone needed any more proof after their first-hand encounter. Miriam had glanced over them while taking a break from scraping the carpet. They weren’t quite what she’d term quality papers – one of them had a two-page spread featuring a woman who had apparently been kidnapped by mermen, and another featured several women who weren’t wearing much more than mermaids – but they all featured the same story.
Christmas Baubles of Death!
My Christmas Baubles Burned My Gran!
Bauble Hell!
Miriam thought the last one might be a play on bloody hell, but she also thought that she might be giving the writers too much credit.
“So what do we do?” she said now, giving up on the carpet. It looked a lot better than it had, anyway. She got up and stretched, hands in the small of her back. “I checked my email before I came over, and we’ve had three order cancellations already. I’ve emailed back to explain that they aren’t our baubles, but I don’t think anyone cares.”
“Would you risk it?” Pearl pointed out, and Miriam sighed.
“I suppose not. And it’s not as if we can actually send any at the moment, anyway. But this is going to devastate Mortimer. And where are the dragons going to get money for gas bottles for the rest of the winter?”
“We’ll cover it,” Priya said. “Won’t we?”
There was a general mutter of agreement, and Miriam inspected her cookies sadly. The icing was all smudged, giving the snowmen unfriendly leers and turning the stars into smeary sponges. There was also a generous amount of dog hair sticking to most of them, so she sighed and dumped them in the rubbish bag they were using for cleaning.
“Of course we’ll look after the dragons,” Alice said. “But by far the best thing we can do is to find out who’s behind all this. This is most certainly personal now, with the DHL van going missing too.”
“You don’t think they sent that exploding bauble deliberately, do you?” Jasmine asked. “Oh, how awful!”
“No,” Alice said. “I doubt they realised who had ordered it. I think they just can’t actually make very good baubles.” She patted Jasmine’s knee, then looked around expectantly. “Did anyone find out anything interesting?”
“Someone’s growing pot in the library basement,” Carlotta offered.
“That’s Miss James,” Rosemary said. “She’s been doing that since the sixties.”
“Mrs Ross, the wife of that bookkeeper type, seems to have quite a lot of gentlemen callers,” Priya said. “I was chatting to her neighbour, and she said they’re only ever there in the day, when Mr Ross is at work.”
Gert snorted. “He’s a bookbinder, not a bookkeeper, and she makes stained glass wind chimes. How do you think they afforded that fancy house?”
Everyone thought about that for a moment, then Pearl said, “Quite enterprising, really.”
“Takes all sorts,” Rose agreed. She was still scraping the carpet, peering at it a little short-sightedly. Miriam thought she might dig through to the floor beneath before too long, so she handed her a cup of tea and took away the razor. Rose accepted the tea and said, “We did see a silver Audi.”
“Yes, but not the right one,” Carlotta said hurriedly.
“How do you know it wasn’t the right one?” Alice asked. “Where did you see it?”
“In the village square,” Rose said. “It was a bit hard to see from behind the tree and all, though.”
“Behind the tree?” Alice leaned forward, clasping her hands on her lap. “The Christmas tree? What were you doing?”
“We thought we should be a bit covert about things,” Priya said, exchanging glances with Teresa. “But, um, it didn’t work.”
Alice frowned. “They saw you? Who was it?”
“Um. Detective Inspector Adams.”
Alice stared at her for a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching. “And you, Rose and Carlotta were hiding behind the tree?”
“And Pearl and Teresa,” Priya admitted, twisting her cardigan through her fingers. “We may have looked a little suspicious.”
“Detective—” Alice stopped, and laughed. “The poor woman must think we’re all quite dotty. Well, serves me right for being so paranoid. There’s probably half a dozen silver Audis in the area.” She laughed again, not quite convincingly, in Miriam’s opinion. She couldn’t imagine Alice being paranoid. “Anything else?”
“Frank from the turkey farm was at the butchers,” Teresa said. “He had all these sacks of grain and was throwing handfuls at Maisie, accusing her of stealing his turkeys so she’d get all the business.”
“Ooh,” Rosemary said. “Had he been on the sauce?”
“Probably. Maisie hit him with a leg of lamb and almost knocked him out, then got her boy and his friend to take him home to cool off.”
“Well, that’s all very interesting,” Alice said. “But did anyone uncover anything that could be a lead?”
The women looked at each other, waiting.
“I think that’s it, Alice,” Rosemary said. “I’m very sorry.”
“Don’t
be sorry,” Alice said, although Miriam thought she actually looked quite sorry herself. “Process of elimination, isn’t it? It’s not like they’re going to send us a note explaining themselves.”
“Oh!” Miriam said, jumping up. “Oh, I can’t believe I forgot!”
She rushed from the room and into the hall.
“Miriam,” Alice called from the living room. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I got a note! I got a note!” She grabbed her coat and hurried back into the living room, digging in the pockets. Ugh, why were there so many pockets in this jacket? Of course, it was much better than not enough pockets, which was so often the problem with women’s clothing, but it did make things hard to find.
“What note?” Alice asked.
“I was going to tell you, but then I forgot with the bauble and everything. It was like a threat! It told us to stop following them, and not to talk to the police. But it was all spelled terribly, and the writing was awful, too.” Miriam moved on to the pockets in her trousers, frowning. “I did bring it.” She glanced up at the windows as she searched, and froze.
“Miriam?” Alice said.
Miriam swallowed hard, feeling suddenly sick, and quite possibly like she was going to start hiccoughing again. “Um, are we sure about the silver Audi thing?”
“Why?” Alice got up quickly enough to knock the coffee table with her knee, spilling tea onto the newspapers.
“Because there’s one right there.”
The women scrambled to their feet and stared out the big bay windows to the little front garden and the street beyond. The silver Audi was at the kerb on the other side of the road, the heat of its exhaust smoke making plumes in the chilly air. It was liberally caked in mud, looking almost like one of those old two-toned cars, but there was no mistaking what was underneath.
“Well, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to see what they’re up to,” Alice said, and grabbed the poker from the fireplace on her way to the door.
“Hold up,” Gert said, and grabbed the coal shovel before anyone else could.
Rose armed herself with the fireplace tongs and rushed after them, and Miriam groaned. She didn’t want to confront bauble thieves while armed with nothing more than household implements. But she couldn’t stay here, either. She picked up her cookie tray (it was already badly dented, so there was no reason not to use it again) and hurried to the door.
The ladies of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute marched across the lawn, Alice leading with the poker swinging in one hand, flanked by Gert and her shovel and Miriam with her cookie tray. Following behind them came the seven other women, armed with umbrellas and golf clubs and saucepans and, in Jasmine’s case, her phone. She was filming and giving an excited commentary as they went.
The silver Audi was parked between Gert’s old Rover and Priya’s 4x4, and as they approached it backed up rather urgently, crunching into the Rover.
“Hey!” Gert bellowed. “That’s my car!” She broke into an ungainly jog, and the car lurched forward, almost making it out of the gap before nudging the 4x4 and stalling.
“My car!” Priya shrieked, and now everyone was running after Gert, who was brandishing the shovel over her head like a war club. The car gunned its engine, shot backward, hit the Rover again (eliciting an outraged howl from Gert), then shot forward and out of the gap just as the women charged across the road. Miriam hurled the cookie tray at the windscreen, and the car swerved wildly, the engine screaming in protest. Gert smashed a tail light with the coal shovel, and Alice got a glancing blow in that dented a side panel admirably, then the car was fishtailing down the road with Rose sprinting after it, spouting curses and gesticulating furiously with the fireplace tongs. She finally stopped as it revved around the corner, apparently still in first, and shouted, “That’s right! You run! And don’t come back!”
Miriam picked up her mangled baking tray, hoping she’d still be able to run like that in thirty years. Although, considering she didn’t run now, the odds didn’t seem good.
Alice shouldered the poker and looked at her thoughtfully. “Did you see them?”
Miriam tapped the tray against her leg. “Sort of.”
“Was it the men from the marketplace?”
Miriam shook her head. “This sounds really silly, but I’m not even sure they were men. Or women.” She looked at the other women, standing in the street with their makeshift weapons. No one was laughing. “Did anyone see them properly?”
“They were wearing hats,” Priya said, straightening up from inspecting the damage to her car. “I saw that.”
“And scarves,” Pearl offered.
“I saw the driver’s hands,” Gert said. She had patches of red high up on her cheeks. “Or maybe they were gloves. Weird gloves.”
Alice smiled slightly. “I don’t think so.”
No one said anything for a moment, then Teresa said, “Their heads were too big.”
Jasmine had been looking at her phone, and now she waved it at them. “It’s all blurry. I mean, they are. Nothing else is. Just them.”
“Like the dragons?” Miriam said, her stomach tight and uncomfortable. “The way they don’t show up on camera?” Not that the strange occupants of the car had been dragons, no. But she was horribly certain that she’d been right to think that they weren’t human, either.
Jasmine nodded without answering, and Alice sounded oddly breathless as she said, “Okay. Okay, so we know that now. Can you see the number plates?”
“No,” Jasmine whispered. “It was too muddy.”
Alice nodded as if she’d expected nothing else. “Well. No good staying out here freezing. Let’s head back in.”
Miriam found the note lying on the hall floor under the coat rack as they trooped back into the house, and they gathered at the kitchen island to stare at it.
“Terrible writing,” Carlotta said. “And spelling.”
“It looks like they’ve never held a pen in their life,” Pearl said, and Miriam thought of the hunched forms with their oversized heads, half-glimpsed in the speeding car. She shivered.
“And what’s all this stuff?” Rose asked, rubbing some of the brown muck with her finger. It came off easily enough, and she sniffed it.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Miriam said. “It could be anything!”
“Yes, wash it off,” Rosemary said. “You’ll probably catch something.”
“You do forget that I was a biologist,” Rose said. “I’ve had my hands in worse.” A shudder went around the table, and she grinned, then licked her finger. Miriam gagged, and there was a chorus of disgusted protest. “Chocolate,” Rose said. “Not particularly good stuff, though.”
“That is just awful,” Teresa said. “Even if it is chocolate, where’s it been?”
“Good for the immune system,” Rose said, and Teresa flapped her hands.
“Well,” Alice said. “I’m rather glad it is just chocolate, but it doesn’t help us much.”
“Unless it’s the Easter bunny,” Pearl suggested. Everyone looked at her. “What? We’ve got dragons and exploding baubles. Why not the Easter bunny?”
Alice shook her head. “Whoever – or whatever – is involved, this note is an overt threat, whether the bauble was or not. Whoever ‘they’ are, they may be dangerous.”
“Bollocks to them,” Gert said. “That damn bauble ruined my jumper. And they dented my bumper.”
“And mine,” Priya said.
“They can’t get away with it,” Miriam said, surprising herself. “Never mind dented cars or exploding baubles – they’re endangering the dragons.” Her chest felt hot with the injustice of it. When had the dragons ever done anything but make life better for people?
“Agreed,” Carlotta said. “In the old country we wouldn’t stand for such insults.”
“Yeah, they’re a proud lot in Manchester,” Rosemary said, and for once Carlotta just snorted agreement.
“No one messes with the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute,�
�� Priya said, and flicked the note off the table.
“Absolutely right,” Gert agreed.
A ripple of nervous laughter crept around the room, and Miriam pressed her hands to her chest. It was warmer in here that it had any right to be, with the women standing shoulder to shoulder and smiling awkwardly at each other. But it was a good sort of warmth. The sort that started around the heart and could heat the whole world.
“Tea?” Jasmine said. She looked almost her normal colour again. “And I made some pigs in blankets. I just need to pop them in the oven.”
There was a general rush for Tupperware as everyone insisted that Jasmine had done more than enough, and that they’d all brought plenty for everyone.
15
Alice
Alice’s house was on the way back to Miriam’s, so they walked home together, full of sausage rolls and smoked salmon pinwheels and the beautiful little pastries Priya always made, not to mention all the cake and mince pies that had followed. Miriam was chattering nervously, and Alice listened with half an ear, still thinking about the men at the market. She was as near to certain as she could be that it hadn’t been them in the car, but they still bothered her. None of the Women’s Institute remembered selling them anything, and she had to admit that she couldn’t swear she hadn’t been the one to give them the baubles, either. They weren’t local, that was all she was sure of. But plenty of people came to Toot Hansell for the Christmas markets and summer fetes. They were known for them. Everyone had promised to ask around, but Alice couldn’t shake the feeling that they were running out of time. There were no more baubles going out. How long would the thieves keep their captives alive? Were they even still alive now, for that matter?
Her phone rang, startling her out of her thoughts, and she pulled it from the side pocket in her bag, checking the display. Her neighbour across the street. She frowned. He was a startlingly small old man whom she’d given her number to when she first moved in, in case he needed help. He’d used it to get her to the house half a dozen times in the first month, on the pretext of things like not being able to find his glasses, or not being able to reach something in the top of a cupboard, and after the third time he answered the door wearing nothing but a green velour dressing gown she’d had to tell him very severely that he was not to call her again unless he’d actually broken a bone. She still caught him staring at her from inside his house, his eyes level with the windowsill as he hid beneath it. She suspected that he wasn’t even wearing the dressing gown when he did that.