by Adele Abbott
“Hi. I’m Jill. What’s yours?”
“Everybody calls me Sticky.”
“It suits you.”
“Can you let me out?”
“I’m not sure that’s allowed, is it?”
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”
“Do you promise not to run away?”
“I’m a stick insect. How would I do that?”
“Point taken.” I was about to open the lid, but then hesitated. “Do you bite?”
“Of course not.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay then.” I opened the lid. “Out you come.”
“You’ll have to put your hand in here.”
“Why?”
“So I can crawl up it.”
Gross. I’d never been particularly fond of creepy crawlies, but I was committed now, so I put my hand inside the cage, and gave an involuntary shudder when Sticky began to crawl up my arm.
“Keep still or I’ll fall off.”
“Sorry.”
When he reached my elbow, he stopped.
“Thanks. It’s good to get out of there.”
“Are you sure you don’t bite?”
“I promise, but I do like muffins.”
“Stick insects don’t eat muffins.”
“Only because no one ever gives us one.”
“I’m not sure about this.”
“Go on. Just a little bit.”
“Okay then.” I broke off a small piece and put it on my arm next to him. In no time at all, he’d gulped it down.
“Is that all I get?”
What was it with the animals in this place, eating my muffins? Last time it was Jimbob the gerbil, now it was Sticky the stick insect. At this rate, I’d have to start ordering two of them.
Sticky turned out to be good company. For a stick insect, he had a lot of interesting tales to tell. Given a choice of spending half an hour with him or with Mr Ivers, I would have chosen Sticky every day of the week.
When I got back to the office, I hurried up the stairs, and I was just about to walk through the door when I remembered Mrs V’s video shoot, so I knocked first.
“Come in.”
I poked my head around the door.
“All clear, Mrs V?”
“Yes, come in, Jill. I’ve finished recording for the day. Would you like to see what I’ve done?”
“I’d love to, obviously, but I don’t have time at the moment. I’ve only popped in for a few minutes, then I have to go to Little Tweaking.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe, yeah.” Not a chance.
Winky was lying on the sofa. “Where’s my salmon?” he demanded. “I’m starving.”
“So, you do want it today. You weren’t interested yesterday.”
“That’s because I was busy.”
“What were you up to, anyway?”
“Nothing to concern yourself about. By the way, have you posted a job vacancy?”
“You’ve been on my computer again, haven’t you?”
“Only for a couple of minutes. So, did you?”
“Yes, for a private investigator.”
“That’s a joke, right? Who’d want to work here? For you?”
“Plenty of people. I’m expecting a ton of applications.”
“You’re clearly delusional.”
Before I could respond, my phone rang. It was Margaret Plant’s agent, Georgina Walpole.
“Jill, it’s Georgie. I just wondered how your meeting with Margaret went.”
“Okay, I think. She’s clearly very upset at having lost the manuscript.”
“I realise it’s early days, but any thoughts so far? Any leads?”
“Not really, other than it’s obvious that whoever took the manuscript must have come through one of the neighbouring gardens. As soon as I’ve finished on this call, I’m going to go and speak to her neighbours.”
“The main reason I called you is that I’m getting a lot of flak from Alistair Furlong, the head honcho at the company that publishes Margaret’s books. He’s demanding to know when he can expect to receive the final manuscript.”
“I take it you haven’t told him that it’s been stolen?”
“No, I just fobbed him off. He wanted to talk to Margaret, but she hates the man and refuses point-blank to have anything to do with him. There’s a limit to how long I can put him off, so time is of the essence.”
“Understood. Don’t worry, Georgie, I’m on it.”
“Good, because to make matters worse, Richard Watkins, who is one of Margaret’s main competitors in the mystery genre, is doing a tour to promote his new book at the moment. He’s scheduled to do a signing here in Washbridge on Saturday. He’s even gone as far as to suggest that Margaret has retired, making him the King of Mystery, which is a complete joke because the guy’s a hack who has no talent whatsoever. Anyway, Jill, I must get going. You’ll keep me posted?”
“Of course.”
By the time I’d finished on the call, Winky had disappeared out of the window, so I put his salmon out, ready for when he came back.
“Mrs V, I’m going to talk to Margaret Plant’s neighbours, and then I’ll probably head home.”
“Okay, dear. Tomorrow, I’m going to record a video of me making a jumper.”
“Fantastic. When you’ve done that, there is something I’d like you to do, please.”
“Of course. The video shouldn’t take too long.”
“Can you see if you can track down Andy Roberts, Phil Black’s stepfather? I believe he’s living somewhere in France, but that’s about as much as I know.”
“I’m on it.”
***
I’d planned to start with Mr Stanley Trotter who lived in the house that backed onto Margaret Plant’s property, but after knocking on the door and ringing the bell several times, there was no answer. I’d even peered through the front windows but there was no sign of life.
The couple who lived in the house to the left of Margaret’s property were Mr and Mrs Comfy who looked like a couple of bookends, dressed in their matching jumpers. They both came across as a little fussy and had an annoying habit of finishing one another’s sentences.
“We rarely see Margaret these days,” Mr Comfy said. “She keeps herself—”
“To herself,” Mrs Comfy chimed in. “We used to invite her over—”
“For a cup of tea, but she always declined.”
“She did come over, but only the once. That must have been five years ago.”
“It was four, Mildred. Definitely four.”
“I do believe you’re right, Marmy.”
Marmy?
“So, neither of you have spoken to her recently?”
“No. We have tried, but Margaret can be very blunt.”
“Rude even. Whenever we’ve tried to talk to her, she has more or less made it clear that—”
“She was too busy, so after a while, we didn’t bother anymore.”
“Have either of you spotted anything unusual in the last few days?”
“What kind of thing?”
“Any strangers on the street for example.”
“Now you mention it, we did see someone—”
“Hanging around in the road a few days ago.”
“What were they doing?”
“He was standing on the other side of the road. He kept looking at his phone.”
“Can you describe him?”
“He was tall.”
“Very tall.”
“Middle-aged.”
“And he had one of those weird sheepy beard things.”
“Sheepy?”
“You know. Like a beard, but not quite a beard.”
“Do you mean a goatee?”
“That’s it. And glasses.”
“Did you see him go into any of the houses?”
“No, he just walked up and down.”
“And kept checking his phone.”
; “Then he left.”
“Was he in a car?”
“No. He was on foot.”
By the time I left the Comfys, my neck ached from glancing back and forth between the two of them.
A Mr Montgomery lived in the house on the other side. Unlike the Comfys, he was a man of very few words.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Are you sure? It’s quite likely the burglar gained access to Mrs Plant’s garden through one of the neighbouring properties.”
“Still didn’t see nothing.”
Resisting the urge to correct his double negative, I persevered. “Do you know Margaret well?”
“No. I’ve no time for the woman.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Yes. That hedge of hers. I’ve been asking her to cut it back for at least four years, but does she take any notice? No. It’s like talking to a brick wall. It’s stolen half of the light from my conservatory.”
And that was pretty much all he had to say for himself. Was it possible that Mr Montgomery had stolen Margaret’s manuscript as payback for the ongoing hedge dispute? Maybe, but it seemed unlikely because he was in his seventies, and probably not capable of getting through the hedge and climbing through the kitchen window.
Chapter 9
The next morning when I came downstairs for breakfast, Jack was standing in the middle of the kitchen, acting very strangely. He was looking to his left, and then to his right, and then back again. He hadn’t even noticed me.
“Jack, are you okay?”
“I think this room is haunted.”
“By your parents, you mean? Have you been talking to them?”
“No, it wasn’t Mum and Dad.”
“It wasn’t my parents, was it?”
“No. I couldn’t actually see anyone, but while I was pouring out the muesli, a spoon floated out of the drawer, across the room, and landed on the table over there.”
“It was probably my mother, trying to mess with your head. It sounds like the sort of thing she’d do.”
“What if there are other ghosts in this house that we don’t know about?”
“Did you feel a chill when it happened?”
“Now you mention it, no I didn’t.”
“You were late coming to bed last night, and you did a lot of tossing and turning, so you’re probably still half asleep.”
“I know what I saw, Jill.”
“O—kay. Why don’t we see if it happens again? Where’s Florence?”
“Outside playing with Buddy.”
“Was she in here with you when the spoon thing happened?”
“No, she didn’t come downstairs until just afterwards.”
“So, she didn’t see it?”
“No, she didn’t but that doesn’t mean I imagined it.”
“I believe you.” Not.
Jack was clearly still feeling uneasy as we ate our breakfast. After each spoonful of muesli, he kept looking around, obviously expecting something to come floating past him. In an attempt to take his mind off it, I decided to tell him about Mrs Babble.
“She stopped me yesterday on my way out of the house. She seems to know you.”
“Her name doesn’t ring a bell. What do you mean, she knows me?”
“She knew you don’t go out to work and asked if you were looking for a job. She spent half the conversation telling me how she wasn’t one to gossip, and the other half gossiping. Mind you, she did have one juicy piece of gossip. Not that I’m the sort of person to repeat it.”
“Fair enough.”
“Okay, you’ve twisted my arm, but you mustn’t tell anyone else. According to Barbara Babble, both of the Stock sisters are seeing the vicar.”
“Seeing?”
“She didn’t elaborate, but I got the feeling they were both romantically involved with him.”
“Both of them?”
“That’s what she said. The thing is, neither of them knows that the other one is also seeing the vicar.”
“That is rather scandalous.” Jack laughed. “When I spoke to him yesterday, he seemed like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”
“It’s always the quiet ones, but then anyone who walks down the street in the pouring rain, in a dressing gown and flip-flops, with a pug under one arm, is probably capable of anything.”
I’d just finished my scrambled eggs on toast when my phone rang.
“Come up to the hotel.”
“Grandma?”
“Quickly. I need a word with you.”
“I was just about to go to work.”
“This will only take a minute.”
Before I could object, she’d ended the call.
“I take it that was your grandmother?” Jack grinned.
“She wants a word with me up at the hotel. I’ll get changed first, and then I can go straight to work after I’ve found out what she wants.”
When I came back downstairs, I went in search of Florence and found her in the garden.
“Mummy has to go to work now. Come and give me a kiss.”
She ran across the lawn, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a big, sloppy kiss. “We’re going to draw rainbows at school today, Mummy.”
“Are you, darling? That’ll be fun.”
“I told Miss Soap that I’m going to do mine red, yellow and blue.”
“Don’t rainbows have more colours than that?”
“Mine doesn’t. I like red, yellow and blue.”
“Fair enough. I’ll look forward to seeing it tonight. Love you lots.”
“Love you more.”
I took a leisurely walk across the village to the hotel where Grandma was waiting for me by the entrance.
“It took you long enough.” She tapped her watch.
“Good morning to you, too. I had to get changed for work. Are you still planning to open for guests this weekend?”
“Yes, in fact the first ones arrive tomorrow. We’re booked solid for the next three weeks already.”
“How did you manage that?”
“Surely you know by now that I’m a marketing genius.”
There was no arguing with that.
“Why did you want to see me?”
“We’re going to be run off our feet for the next few days, and I haven’t managed to recruit my full quota of staff, so I can offer you part-time work in the evening in the restaurant.”
“I don’t have time to work for you. I have my own business to run in case you’ve forgotten. I’m really busy at the moment; I have three cases on the go this week. In fact, I’ve just advertised for another investigator.”
“Surely you could spare a little time in the evenings?”
“No, Grandma, I can’t. The evenings are for me, Florence and Jack. You’ll just have to find someone else.”
“This is most inconvenient. Are you sure you can’t drop one of your cases?”
“No, I can’t. Although one of them is already beginning to look pretty hopeless. A young boy went missing some years ago, and his brother, my client, was convicted of his murder.”
“Did he do it?”
“I’m convinced he didn’t. I had him take me to the spot on the river where his brother is supposed to have died, in the hope it might yield some clues.”
“And did it?”
“No. Nothing.”
“You need to speak to Gwen Ravensbeak.”
“Gwen who?”
“Ravensbeak. I don’t particularly like the woman, but she does have an incredible power. She can stand in any location and see everything that has happened there in the past.”
“Is she a witch?”
“Yes, but she doesn’t use magic to do it. No such spell exists, you should know that.”
“So how does she do it, then?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure even she does.”
“Do you think she’d help me?”
“If the location was in Candlefield, I’d say yes for sure. The problem is that G
wen hates the human world. I suppose you could have a word, to see if you can persuade her to make an exception.”
“Where would I find her?”
“She spends most of her time at Candlefield Bowling Club.”
“The one near to Aunt Lucy’s house?”
“That’s the one. If you do talk to her, I wouldn’t mention that you’re my granddaughter. She and I have history.”
***
I’d intended calling into the office before going to see Charlene Vallance, the widow of Mickey Vallance, AKA Webby the clown. Those plans were scuppered when I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine made a very strange noise and refused to start. I tried several more times, but with no joy.
Jack gave me a puzzled look when I walked back into the house.
“Did you forget something?”
“No, the stupid car won’t start.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“How would I know?”
“Do you want me to take a look at it?”
“What good would that do? You know even less about cars than I do. I’ve called the AA; they said they’d be here in twenty minutes.”
“Do you want a coffee while you wait?”
“Yes, please, but watch out for those floating spoons.”
“Ha, ha. I didn’t imagine it.”
“If you say so. Where’s Florence?”
“Upstairs in her bedroom.”
“Playing with the dolls’ house again?”
“Yeah, she’s really into it at the moment.”
Out in the garden, Buddy started barking like a dog possessed.
“What’s up with that stupid dog?” I snapped. Jack and I both went outside to find out what he was barking at, but there was nothing to see. I walked over to him and picked him up. “That’s enough of that. What were you barking at?”
“That thing.”
“What thing?”
“I don’t know what it was, but there was definitely a thing.”
“Show me.”
“I can’t. It’s gone now.”
“If I put you down, do you promise not to bark anymore?”
“I promise. The thing’s gone now anyway.”
