by H. Y. Hanna
The woman flushed. “It’s… it’s not a hundred percent confirmed, but I want to make sure I take every precaution, you know.”
“Yes, of course. Is it your first baby?” asked Caitlyn politely, thinking that would explain the woman’s anxiety. She looked old to be having a first baby—somewhere in her late thirties or early forties—but that wasn’t so unusual in this day and age.
“Yes. I… I mean, maybe,” said the woman, her face clouding over. “I mean, if I am pregnant. I’ve been trying for years, you see… my husband and I… we’ve tried everything: artificial insemination, IVF, even intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection… but nothing’s worked!”
“Oh… I’m sorry,” said Caitlyn lamely. “I didn’t realise—I’m sorry, I feel awful about congratulating you earlier—”
“No, that’s all right. You see, I’m sure this time it’ll be different—this time I will get pregnant!” the woman said fiercely. “I went to see a woman… She was wonderful! She told me she’d helped lots of couples with infertility issues… She’s a witch, you see…” The woman glanced sideways at Caitlyn, as if checking her reaction; then, obviously reassured, she continued in a confidential tone: “She specialises in custom spells for people and she cast a fertility spell for me, using special candles and ritual oils, and she told me that I would be pregnant within a month...” She laid a reverent hand on her abdomen, her eyes bright with hope. “It could be working already…”
Caitlyn stared at her, a suspicion forming in her mind. Custom spells… special candles… ritual oils… It all sounded horribly familiar. Surely this couldn't be…?
“Excuse me but… you’re not Lawrence Ford’s wife, are you?”
The woman looked surprised. “Yes, I’m Susan Ford. How did you know?”
“And the… er… witch that you went to see—was that Minerva Chattox?”
“Yes, that’s right! Do you know her? I happened to pop into the village post shop last week and bumped into her by the pub. It was a wonderful stroke of luck, really. I’m hoping to see her again this week—”
“Er—haven’t you heard what happened?”
The woman looked at her blankly. “No… What do you mean?”
“Minerva Chattox is dead,” said Caitlyn gently.
The woman gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “Dead! How? Why?”
Caitlyn hesitated, unsure how much to reveal. She didn’t know what the official line was, whether Inspector Walsh had announced a full-scale murder investigation to the press. Even if he had, he might not want to reveal details of the murder to the public. In any case, she was also nervous about upsetting Lawrence Ford’s wife. The woman already seemed highly strung and emotionally fragile.
“Um… she drowned in a pool of water,” said Caitlyn.
“Oh no! Did she fall in? Was it some terrible accident?”
Caitlyn hesitated. “They’re not sure yet. The police are investigating.”
“When did this happen?” asked Susan Ford, looking horrified.
“Just yesterday morning. I’m surprised you didn’t hear on the village grapevine, though.”
“I wasn’t feeling very well yesterday so I didn’t go out at all. I would have stayed home today but I had to bring our dog in for a dental clean. I’m just waiting to pick him up now.” She shook her head, looking dazed. “I can’t believe it… dead! What am I going to do now? Minerva was going to recast the spell for me.”
Caitlyn looked at her, puzzled. “Recast it?”
Susan Ford compressed her mouth in an angry line. “Yes. Because Lawrence ruined the first spell! He got angry when he found out that I’d been to see Minerva—he doesn’t believe in magic and witchcraft, you see, and thinks that it’s all nonsense. So when he saw the payments to Minerva… But the thing is, we spent thousands on the fertility specialists too and that never got us anywhere, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t let me try this!”
She folded her arms across her chest. “And then, to make it even worse, he went to see Minerva at the village pub and started calling her a cheat and a liar and all sorts of horrible things. Right when she was in the middle of casting my spell too! So, of course, the aura was poisoned by all his negativity and the spell was ruined! Minerva rang me afterwards and told me, you see—she was so upset because she said it was a complex spell which required all of her concentration, and so many different herbs and oils that she had had to source especially… and it was all coming together… and then Lawrence barged in and polluted the ‘sacred space’...” She clenched her fists. “I was furious with Lawrence when Minerva told me! He had no right to go and interfere like that—he totally botched the spell! The only good thing was that Minerva told me that she could re-cast the spell for me. She would need to get more of the special herbs and oils again, which would cost more money again, of course—”
Of course, thought Caitlyn cynically.
“—but at least it would have given me a second chance. I was supposed to see her again this week to give her the extra payment and also tell her which sex I wanted for the baby…” She turned wide, despairing eyes on Caitlyn. “But that’s all lost now!”
Caitlyn hesitated, wondering what to say. Half of her wanted to echo Lawrence Ford’s words about Minerva being a fraud and tell Susan that she had had a lucky escape not to lose more money, but she also felt bad about tearing down the other woman’s illusions and destroying her last vestige of hope.
“It’s all Lawrence’s fault…” Susan Ford continued, almost to herself. “If he hadn’t gone to bother Minerva, if he’d just left her alone to complete the spell… And he was so proud of it too! He came home afterwards and told me that he warned Minerva if she came near me again, he’d kill her!”
Caitlyn stared at the woman. “Your husband said that?”
Susan Ford paused, as if suddenly realising what she’d said, especially in the context of Minerva’s recent death. She shifted uncomfortably. “Oh… well, I’m sure he didn’t mean it literally. It’s just one of those things you say, isn’t it, when you’re really angry. And Lawrence can get really nasty when he’s angry—I mean, not violent, nasty,” she added hastily. “Just… you know, saying terrible things.” She gave a nervous laugh. “He’s a lawyer, after all, and words are his weapons, you know.”
Perhaps, thought Caitlyn. But what would the lawyer have done if he’d found out that Minerva had not only ignored his warning but had cleverly twisted things to Susan so that he was actually the one who was blamed? Would he have decided to use more than words to vent his anger?
“Um… were you and Lawrence together yesterday morning?” asked Caitlyn casually.
“No, we’d had a terrible row the night before; that was when Minerva rang me and I found out that Lawrence had ruined the spell. I’d asked him about it as soon as he got home and I was livid: he didn’t just admit it—he was proud of it! Anyway, we had a huge fight and I made him sleep in the guest bedroom. The next morning—yesterday morning—he went out for a walk very early and didn’t come back until nearly lunchtime.” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Was that when Minerva…? You don’t think that Lawrence—”
“Do you know where he went on his walk?”
Susan Ford shrugged. “Probably in the forest. He’s an amateur mycologist and—”
“A what?”
“He’s really into mushrooms,” Susan explained. “He’s got shelves of books on all sorts of wild fungi and he loves going foraging every autumn to find and collect specimens. Not to eat, necessarily, just to study and catalogue.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a bit of a naff hobby, if you ask me. But he can spend hours in the forest hunting for mushrooms and totally forget the time.”
Which makes a convenient excuse to disappear for the whole morning of the murder without an alibi, thought Caitlyn. She wondered which part of the forest Lawrence Ford had been walking in. Given that the woods covered a large part of the Fitzroy estate and stretched around to the back of the Manor, it would have been easy enough for
the lawyer to slip unnoticed to the area around the outbuildings and lie in wait for Minerva by the icehouse. In fact, he could even have arranged to meet her there on some pretext.
And if he had been in the habit of wandering in the forest, hunting for mushrooms in the undergrowth, he could have easily come across the icehouse and realised the value of such an old, disused structure, hidden by overgrown trees and shrubs, as a place for hiding a body…
“Look, you’re not really thinking that Lawrence has anything to do with Minerva’s death, are you?” asked Susan with a nervous laugh. “I admit, he’s a total prat sometimes, but he wouldn’t do anything like commit a murder! I mean, he’s a lawyer, for heaven’s sake! He’s all about upholding the law, not breaking it!”
He wouldn’t be the first lawyer who broke the law, thought Caitlyn, but she refrained from voicing her thoughts.
“In fact, I know he was building a case against Minerva. I heard him speaking to a girl on the phone, asking if she would testify—she works up at the Manor and was some past client of Minerva’s, I think.”
“Oh? Was she unhappy with Minerva?”
Susan shrugged. “I suppose so. Sounded like she was telling Lawrence a great big sob story… but Minerva told me that some people are really ungrateful for her help! They don’t understand that magic takes time to work and they get upset if they don’t see results straight away. That’s what I tried to explain to Lawrence but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
Caitlyn was thinking furiously. Could the girl that Lawrence Ford had spoken to be Louise? It would all fit: she was one of the new staff at the Manor and she had certainly been crying her eyes out when Caitlyn saw her. The only sticking point was how Louise could be a “past client” of Minerva’s if she had belonged to Vera’s anti-witch clique. Surely she wouldn’t be seeking a witch’s services if she was trying to get rid of them? Or would she? People were funny and they could behave in contradictory ways sometimes. Louise could have feared and hated Minerva but still believed in her powers and wanted to benefit from them. In fact, she wouldn’t have been the first person to pretend to follow a group philosophy on the outside, while she secretly rejected it and embraced the opposite.
Caitlyn thought back to the day Louise had hitched a ride with her and the vet: she had looked shocked and upset when Liddell had claimed that Minerva was a con artist, not a witch, and had been very defensive—perhaps too defensive?—when insisting she hadn’t bought any “mystical” objects from the woman. Now she wondered if Louise had been conned and was furious about it.
“Do you know if she agreed to testify?” she asked Susan Ford.
“No, she wouldn’t. Lawrence was really pushing her but she wouldn’t budge.”
For a moment, Caitlyn was surprised, then she reflected that if Louise testified, the girl would have to be publicly identified as someone who had used Minerva’s services. It would be humiliating and maybe even cause her to be excluded from Vera’s clique. It would be the last thing Louise wanted, even if she had felt aggrieved enough to want to prosecute Minerva.
“He tried to use her story to turn me against Minerva, though,” Susan continued, looking disgusted. “Lawrence said what this girl had told him was proof that Minerva was a cheat and a fraud… but I’m sure the girl was probably lying! She’s one of the girls working at the new restaurant, you know—one of the waitresses—and that class of person can never be trusted.”
Caitlyn leaned back, slightly taken aback at the woman’s open snobbery and finding her sympathy for Susan Ford lessening.
“Um… I suppose, since you didn’t know that Minerva had been killed, you wouldn’t know if the police have questioned your husband?” she said casually.
Susan compressed her lips. “Well, they haven’t come to the house, at any rate. I suppose they might have questioned him elsewhere… I’m still giving Lawrence the silent treatment so I haven’t spoken to him since our fight.”
They were interrupted by the veterinary nurse leading a small poodle-mix out and Susan instantly rushed over and began fussing over her dog.
“Dr Liddell is almost finished with Bran,” the vet nurse said, turning to Caitlyn. “He asked me to take you and Nibs into the other examination room first.”
As she picked up the cat carrier and rose to follow, Caitlyn realised guiltily that she had forgotten all about Viktor for a moment.
“Um… what’s happened to the fruit bat?” she asked.
“Oh, we managed to get it into a cage—it was actually quite easy once we worked out that it loved bananas!” she chuckled. She pointed at a door they were passing. “It’s waiting in there now for Dr Liddell to have a look. And you’re right next door.” She gestured to the next consulting room. “Now, if you’ll just wait here, Dr Liddell will be with you in a minute.”
Caitlyn waited a few seconds after the vet nurse had left, then she darted to the door and opened it a crack, peering out into the corridor.
“Mew?” said Nibs, watching her from the cat carrier.
“Hush, Nibs!” Caitlyn admonished him. “You stay there and be a good boy. I’ll be back in a minute!”
With a last furtive look down the corridor to make sure that no one was coming, she slipped out of the room and hurried next door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There was a cage covered with a towel sitting on the examination table in the consulting room. Caitlyn tiptoed over and lifted the edge of the towel to peer underneath. She’d expected to see poor Viktor huddling in fright—instead, she found a fat little fruit bat hanging by one claw from the top of the cage, his leathery wings wrapped around himself and his eyes shut in an expression of contentment as he snored softly. From the look of his plump stomach and the pieces of banana littered around the floor of the cage, Viktor had gorged himself and then fallen asleep.
Argh! She couldn’t believe that she had been so worried about the old vampire and, all this time, he had been happily stuffing his face and having a nap! Still, she couldn’t leave him here—sooner or later, his real identity would be discovered. She reached for the cage door but before she could unlatch it, the door to the consulting room opened behind her. She whirled around to find the vet standing in the doorway, looking at her in surprise.
“Caitlyn! What are you—”
“Oh! I…um… heard that they found a bat… I’ve always loved bats so I just couldn’t resist popping over to take a look… Bats are so… er… adorable… and… um… fascinating… aren’t they? And I’d never managed to get up close to one so I just had to come and have a peek…” she babbled. “Er… that is, I hope you don’t mind…?”
“No, that’s fine, although I hope you haven’t tried to touch it. Bats have been known to bite and scratch, and they do carry diseases, such as rabies—”
“Oh… no… I’ve only had a peek under the towel.”
“Right. Well, let’s have a look at it…” said Liddell, coming forwards and pulling the towel off the cage.
“Don't you think the kindest thing is simply to release it and let it go?” asked Caitlyn quickly.
“Well, I need to examine it first to make sure that it hasn't injured itself or isn’t suffering from any illnesses. This is a fruit bat and they are not native to Britain, so it must have escaped from somewhere. It’s probably been living wild, trying to scavenge for food, and may have been—hmm…” He broke off as he peered at Viktor through the bars. “That’s strange… I would have expected it to be quite thin and unhealthy but… this one seems to be in remarkably good condition…”
He put on a pair of thick gloves, then carefully opened the cage door. Caitlyn watched anxiously as he reached inside. Viktor stirred and gave a grumbling squeak as the vet gently unhooked him from the bars and lifted him out of the cage, then quickly wrapped him in a large towel. It was a bit awkward with the long, leathery wings flopping everywhere and the fruit bat ended up half in, half out of the towel, but it was so placid that Liddell relaxed slightly.
“
It’s very docile…” he murmured in surprise.
Probably because it’s in a banana coma, thought Caitlyn, mentally rolling her eyes.
The fruit bat gave a sleepy squeak and looked around, blinking myopically.
“He’s a cute little chap, isn’t he? Hmm… it’s odd—I’ve had the occasional client bring in a bat they’ve rescued but it’s always been a Pipistrelle or a Noctule—you know, one of the native British species. I’ve never had a fruit bat come in until recently, and then all of a sudden, I seem to be inundated with them! There was one brought in suffering from smoke inhalation and a blow to the head, and then James told me about one that had been attacked by a terrier… and now this!” He looked closer at Viktor. “And you know… the strangest thing is… I think this is the same bat as the one that was brought in previously—”
“Uh… does it look all right?” cut in Caitlyn, keen to stop that train of thought.
“Oh yes. Very good body weight—much better than I’d expected, and no signs of any fleas or mites—”
The fruit bat gave an indignant squeak and glared at the vet.
Liddell laughed. “How odd—it’s almost as if he understood what I said and took offence at the suggestion that he might be hosting any parasites!”
He grinned at Caitlyn, who gave him a weak smile in return. She cast a surreptitious glance around the room once more, still looking for some kind of escape route. Then she heard the vet give a startled exclamation and turned back to see Liddell bent over the fruit bat, peering at its face.
“My goodness, he’s got the most enormous fangs!” he said, staring at the yellow things on either side of the bat’s mouth. Caitlyn realised that they were Viktor’s new fangs, looking incongruously large protruding from the edges of his mouth.
“The poor thing… they just have somehow become very overgrown, although I can’t understand how. Bats don’t have continuously growing teeth, like rodents, you know, and if anything, they suffer more from their teeth wearing down than anything else… Ah well, never mind… we’ll fix them so that he’s more comfortable—”
