Amanda Cadabra and The Strange Case of Lucy Penlowr

by Holly Bell

  ‘Did you notice anything about the book that Kro was carrying or hear any rumours about what it could have been?’

  ‘No, not I.’

  Thomas nodded as though in acceptance.

  ‘Did you ever hear the family refer to that night again afterwards?’

  ‘Not in my hearin’. You’d ’ave to talk to one of the ’ouse servants. Course they’ve all gone, after ....’

  ‘Yes. Have you any idea what killed Mis— Aunt Agacine?

  ‘Spell I ’spect. Can’t say what for sure.’

  ‘What happened to the wounded?’

  Pasco seemed pleased to be able to say, ‘They recovered.’

  ‘And Aunt Agacine? What was the cause of death on the death certificate? Do you know?

  ‘Erm ... I ’ave to think back ... inhalin’ smoke, I think it were.’

  ‘Do you think it was that, Pasco?’

  The man snorted derisively.

  ‘’Course not. She fell in battle.’

  Thomas waited to see if anything else might be forthcoming. Finally,

  ‘Is there any more you can tell me?’

  ‘Long time ago. I din’t think in on it until the Arlodh asked me,’ he said with a nod towards Kyt. ‘That’s all I remember, young master.’

  ‘Thank you very much indeed, Pasco. You’ve helped a great deal. And I assure you what you’ve told me will not be included in any official records.’

  ‘Hm.’

  Kyt spoke. ‘Thank you, Pasco. It all helps to put the past behind us.’

  ‘Hm. Well, you ‘ave the future to think of, Master.’

  ‘We have the future to think of, Pasco,’ Kyt insisted. ‘Whatever happens, this remains your home. You are a Flamgoyne of Flamgoyne. The last of that name that I know of. This estate is where you stay for as long as you wish.’

  Pasco seemed mollified by this speech.

  ‘Hm. Well, thank you for that Master Kyt. But what’s to be done about the upkeep? That’s still the question. The land’s untended, and only so much I can do to maintain this house.’

  ‘There’s enough money for now at least. Just keep the parts of the house going that you need for yourself. We’ll work it out.’

  As they came down the front steps, the Trelawneys observed a man with a camera standing on the other side of the gates. On closer proximity, he was seen to be of medium height, fit and attractive with dark brown hair. He was dressed in a leather jacket over a white rollneck and black jeans.

  ‘Can we help you?’ asked Kyt, with his usual friendly manner.

  The visitor’s merry eyes sparkled as he greeted the Trelawney men.

  ‘Hello. Please. I noticed your so beautiful castle,’ he said in a Russian accent. ‘My wife and children will love to see this. Is it ok for me to take a photo?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Kyt replied amiably.

  Thomas turned to his father. ‘Can we open the g—?’ Unnervingly, the gates parted. ‘Right. That should give you a clear shot,’ he said to the photographer. ‘I’m Thomas, by the way.’

  ‘I am Ilia.’

  ‘Kyt.’

  ‘Is this your castle?’ enquired Ilia.

  ‘Yes, it’s, er ... yes,’ replied Kyt.

  Thomas asked if Ilia were on holiday.

  ‘On business, just taking a little look at your lovely, er ... “duchy” I must say, yes?’ Ilia checked with a twinkle.

  Kyt chuckled ‘That term should keep at least some people happy.’

  ‘Are you here long, Ilia?’

  ‘I fly home today.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kyt, ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed your visit to Cornwall and will come again.’

  ‘Oh yes. Ok. You like to see?’

  He showed them the shots, clear and sharp. Thomas and Kyt had to admit, framed as he had photographed them, Flamgoyne looked rather romantic. Appealing even. They praised Ilia’s results.

  ‘Are you a professional?’ asked Thomas curiously.

  ‘No, just hobby. So, I go now. Thank you, er, Kyt and Thomas.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Ilia,’ Kyt responded.

  ‘Safe journey home,’ called his son.

  Thomas dropped Kyt back to his own car then drove straight to Hogarth’s.

  Chapter 37

  Looking for Answers

  Mike was up a ladder again, this time painting the upstairs hall and ceiling at the top of the stairs. The furniture in the sitting-room was now standing away from the walls, and there was the smell of oil-based matt.

  ‘No Amanda?’ he asked, finishing his current patch, then descending.

  ‘She’s still out with Gran. Painting the town, or something, red, I shouldn't wonder.’

  Hogarth led the way downstairs to the kitchen and put his brushes in a jar of white spirit. He stripped off his vinyl gloves and switched on the kettle.

  ‘Make up the fire so we can have tea in comfort,’ he bade Thomas cheerily.

  Finally, he came in with the tea-tray, having removed his overalls, and joined Thomas by the fire. Trelawney reported what Pasco had said.

  ‘Good,’ replied Hogarth jauntily. ‘Let’s dissect it all this evening with Amanda, shall we?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Looking forward to starting work in Sunken Madley soon?’

  ‘I am,’ Thomas confirmed.

  ‘This is good practice.’

  ‘Hm, a sort of pre-partnership effort.’

  ‘Have you, er ... told her yet? About that thing you can do. The extent of your intuitive abilities?’

  Thomas felt himself flushing a trifle as he replied,

  ‘Do I really need to ... I mean, at the moment?’

  ‘Your call,’ Mike replied in relaxed tones. ‘It would certainly help your working relationship if you could learn to open up to one another a little more,’ he encouraged.

  ‘Of course,’ Thomas replied vaguely.

  ‘How about the fact that the Flamgoynes and Cardiubarns intended the two of you for one another before she was born, and they decided they’d produced a lemon?' asked Mike, in a by-the-way fashion.

  ‘No ... I haven’t mentioned it. It hasn’t come up. And there hasn’t been the right ... moment.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you’re still right about that one, and it is perhaps not the fortuitous time. However, leave it too long, and it could come up at an inconvenient point,’ ended Hogarth on a gently cautionary if enigmatic note.

  Thomas looked at him uncertainly. Mike steered the subject onto a side-line.

  ‘But the Trelawneys have taken your new partner to their hearts, have they?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Thomas replied with a smile, glad to have an easy question to answer.

  ‘Not surprising though, is it?’ asked Hogarth casually.

  ‘Not really. For all Miss Cadabra's antisocial tendencies, inability to read people, frequently missing the obvious, peculiar detachment and that terrifying creature she hangs out with, she can be rather sweet. Of course,’ Thomas interrupted himself hastily, ‘at other times, she can be .... When I first met her, I didn’t think she was sweet at all!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, then when I met her fresh from her witch's cave that day. But since then ....’ Suddenly feeling out of his depths, he took up a business-like tone, insisting, ‘Of course, what I mean is, I’m glad she’s my partner, and I look forward to working with her. Even if she does have a delinquent companion who’s either out, on the pull or in, getting high!’

  Mike laughed but thought about that phrase, ‘Rather sweet’. What he would have called a declaration of passionate adoration in any other man. So, Vera and Harry had been right. They’d tried to hint at Thomas’s emotional state of affairs but he, Mike, had denied it at the time. Well, there were some things about which one never minded being wrong.

  He watched Thomas looking into the fire in perplexity, hoping, as humans had from the dawn of consciousness, to find answers, or at least clarity there. They were
so much alike in many ways those two, Thomas and Amanda, reflected Mike. Both so serious, so anxious to do the right thing, yet so optimistic. So much capacity for light-heartedness, seeking always to understand rather than judge. Yes, not so very different. After all, in the absence of anyone else, what was the small-town policeman if not the village witch? The caretaker, the voice of reason and justice, the protector, the keeper of watch and ward. A role as old as the first elder at the first campfire. A role that, long before our dying sun’s last gasp and the earth was absorbed, surely humans would take to the stars.

  Chapter 38

  Flossie and Amanda on Bodmin

  ‘Does your furry friend go with you everywhere?’ Flossie asked Amanda, as they took the road north out of Parhayle, at about the same time as Thomas and Kyt were approaching the gates of Flamgoyne.

  ‘Pretty much,’ she admitted. ‘I promise he won’t get hairs on your back seat.’

  Ha, thought Tempest. He didn’t complain about his human’s hairs all over his bed. Of course, she fondly imagined it was her bed. Humans could be almost endearingly simple-minded. It was one of the things that made them such entertaining pets.

  Flossie had deftly paved the way. She had called her friend, Janet, for a chat and mentioned that she had a visitor, who wanted some background about the place she knew as a young child near the school. Flossie thought she might pop in on Alison and see if she had time for a few minutes’ natter. Janet made sure her daughter was alerted to the possibility that a very good, old friend might call, and be sure to give her a cup of tea and the good biscuits and any information she wanted. Flossie was kind and generous to her friends and rarely asked for favours.

  So it was that she and Amanda, upon presenting themselves, were instantly admitted to the office of Mrs Alison Taylor, benevolent helmsperson of Fowey Bridge School.

  As they entered, the lady herself, short, curvaceous and comely, with mid-brown hair, instantly rose. On her way around the desk, Mrs Taylor deftly switched on her kettle, sitting on the top of a filing cabinet.

  ‘Aunt Flossie, how nice to see you. Mum said you might pop in.’

  ‘Nice to see you, my lover, and this is my friend, Amanda. Amanda, this is Mrs Taylor.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Taylor.'

  ‘Oh, Ali, please. Come and sit down’.

  Alison poured the hot water into three mugs jauntily adorned with ‘Santa’s Favourite Teacher’, ‘Teaching creates all other professions’, and ‘Best headteacher 2019.’

  Alison stood by while they brewed.

  ‘How are you, Aunt Flossie? How’s the fishing?’

  ‘Da lowr,’ she replied in Cornish.

  ‘All right?’ said Ali.

  ‘’Zackly. Well done. You teachin’ the language here now?’

  Alison sighed. ‘Trying to get funding. We need people who know it. Here! Aunt Flossie. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to come in one day a week and teach, would you?’

  ‘Well now. I’d have to ask my boys if they can spare me. And I’ve taught my own, of course, but … well, I might be able to.’

  ‘We wouldn't be able to pay you much,’ said Alison regretfully. But Flossie shook her finger at that.

  ‘No, no, I won't hear of it. Passin’ onto the young. If it’s fun and they likes it, and I do too, then I’ll lend a hand.’

  ‘Thank you, Aunt Flossie, you are a treasure, just for considering it.’

  ‘I’ll let you know. Anyway, how's the school? You still teaching as well as ’eadmistressin’?’

  ‘Oh, we all pitch in here, and to be honest, it’s the best bit. Anyone non-dairy?’ asked Alison, looking at her guests.

  ‘Do you have —?’ Amanda began.

  ‘Almond milk, all right?’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘Our Mr Ponya, he teaches P.E., he won’t touch anything that comes out of a cow, so I always keep an alternative for him.’

  She poured milk into the mugs, flicked open the biscuit tin on her desk and presented it to her visitors.

  ‘Oo, garibaldis and fig newtons!’ exclaimed Flossie.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Amanda.

  Alison put the bowl of sugar lumps out for them with spoons, and they helped themselves.

  Having established so amicable an atmosphere, Flossie got down to business.

  ‘Now then, Alison. What we’d like is a bit o ’istory. Goin’ back a bit, but you might recall the business with the old school: Growan ‘Ouse?’

  ‘Oh, oh, yes. That was the ... er ....’

  ‘Dowrkampyers,’ Flossie supplied.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right. Terrible thing, the fire. But, yes, now let me think …. We did have a couple of children who transferred out of that school to us. Before that, we had a few transfers, mostly little ones, to Growan. Couldn't blame them, chance of a private education and I did hear it was good. Smaller classes than we could manage, more individual attention. Yes, there was something about that though … individual attention ...,’she trailed off. ‘But I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. I didn’t have any direct dealings with them.’

  ‘Did you hear anything about it, apart from it was good,’ Flossie enquired casually, dunking a garibaldi.

  ‘I do remember that the parents seemed very relieved when I said we could take their children. Actually, I think a couple transferred there, then came back here. But you can’t enquire too closely, you know. If parents choose one way of education or another, that’s their business.’

  ‘Did you ever see the school in operation, Ali?’

  ‘Growan House? No, I never went there, and we don’t really go beyond the playground and the road. To and fro and sometimes, taking classes out on the Moor, but we didn’t go near there. We go north-west, you see, to the Stripple Stones and King Arthur’s Hall, or the very southern edge of the Moor. Plenty to see and do there.’

  Flossie nodded understandingly. ‘’Course.’

  ‘I tell you who might be able to help you more. The old caretaker. He lived closer to Dowrkampyer land, and he was out and about far more than us, tending the grounds you see.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, that would be good. Would ’e mind a visit?’ asked Flossie.

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. Lives by himself but likes a bit of company. Let me give him a call.’

  ***

  ‘Like the fall o’ Constantinople, it were,’ reminisced Trevek Williams, shaking his head. It had taken some time to get him there.

  They were on their second cup of tea and were being offered more Jacob's Orange Club Biscuits.

  ‘Oo, aren’t you spoilin’ us!’ declared Flossie, who’d been warming him up during the first round.

  ‘My pleasure, yn sur,’ said the retired caretaker. ‘So, Trelawney, are you? Hm. Well now. So, you and your young friend, ’ere wants to know about the old Growan school and the Dowrkampyers?’

  ‘Please,’ replied Amanda.

  ‘Lost someone did you?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she answered diplomatically.

  ‘Well now.’ Trevek scrutinized his guests carefully with narrowed eyes, finally adjudging them to be of sound character. ‘Long as I ’ave yer word it’s ’tween you and me and the gatepost.’

  ‘You ’ave my word,’ Flossie told him readily.

  ‘Promise of a Cadabra.’ Amanda had an idea that might carry some weight with someone who had cared for the land.

  ‘Cadabra, eh? Well, I s'pose they be respected in these parts. I’ll tell you what I seen.’

  ‘Please. Anything at all, sir.’

  ‘Oh, I seen. I seen plenty. I told the police as I was in my bed and asleep, but that night there were a storm. No rain mind. I were comin' back from a night out wi' me friends up at the Jamaica Inn. I admit I’d had a fair skinful, as is why I didn't say nothin’: drivin’, you see. Though I know these roads blindfold.’

  ‘I'm sure,’ agreed Amanda.

  ‘Anyway.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘I see the sparks — like fireworks. I though
t it might be lightnin’, but I parks up a bit away and creeps up for a better look, see? Like the fall o’ Constantinople, it were. There’s like fireballs flying up the winders. And the ‘ouse top all flames and smoke. And I sees the Flamgoyne jeep and the Cardiubarn Rover parked up. People outside and sparks and commotion. Then a big blindin’ flash like the ’eavens openin’ on Judgement Day, and then some cheldern runnin’ out like bats out o’ hell, and going off in a van. Then people comin’ out and carryin’ stuff. And then come the sirens — the police and fire brigade and such. So, I makes off, ’coz I don’t want no trouble and no questions.’

  ‘Mr Williams,’ asked Amanda diffidently, ‘do you remember what the people coming out were carrying?’

  ‘Lessee .... A big cup thing, shiny, like gold, only it mighta bin the reflection of the flames, see? And, er ... maybe a big candlestick and a thing that looked like a bell. Some like jars too, big jars, and there mighta bin a mirror and then another person with a pile of old books – big old things.’

  ‘More than one?

  ‘Oo yeah I’d say so. Unless they was boxes.’

  ‘Do you remember who was carrying what?’ Amanda enquired.

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t see, flower. What with the smoke and the dark. Next thing I ’ear the cars drivin’ off. Fast too. I ’eard the tyres spinnin’’

  ‘The people carrying things out, were they people from the school?’

  Trevek shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Flamgoynes?’

  ‘Mebbe.’

  ‘Cardiubarns?

  ‘Mebbe.’

  Amanda fell silent, processing what she had heard, and wondering what else she might ask. Trevek looked at her hopefully.

  ‘’Ave I ’elped you, miss?’

  At that Amanda smiled. ‘Yes. Yes, you have, very much indeed. You’ve put my mind at ease. I’m so glad the children got out safely.’

  ‘Yes. I dunno ’ow many was in there mind, but some at least.’

  ‘What happened after the fire?’

  ‘Questions, enquiry. Lotta what they call fatalities. Seems like all the Dowrkampyers … you know? ... what with the smoke ’n all. I kept out of it; everyone around did, and y’know, these things blow over. People forget. And a good thing too, if you ask me. Were any of the children Cadabras?’