Amanda Cadabra and The Flawless Plan

by Holly Bell

  During the week, the song, Roses of Picardy kept playing in Amanda’s head. She found herself singing it, surprised that she knew the words, as she rinsed off the stripped banisters with methylated spirits. When she found herself dancing to it on the landing of the Reiser’s house, she stopped and sent a text.

  Hi Majolica, please may I request Roses of Picardy for next Saturday? Will email you the file. Thanks, Amanda.

  ***

  Trelawney got up to stretch his legs, after a long afternoon of typing, signing, and reading reports after the hectic Halloween week. The morning had been spent in court and had set back his schedule. He was staring out at the oak tree in the car park, now bare of leaves, when his phone provided a welcome interruption.

  ‘Miss Cadabra, what a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Hello, Inspector, well I thought you wouldn’t pick up if you were busy, so that’s good.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked genially.

  ‘I was calling to ask if I might claim a waltz on your dance card,’ she answered in a jovial tone.

  ‘Certainly, I shall append your name with delight. Any in particular?’

  ‘It’s a song that’s been going through my head for days on end: Roses of Picardy.’

  ‘I don’t know it, I’m afr—’ Suddenly it was playing in his mind: Roses are shining in Picardy, in the hush of the sil-ver dewww. Roses are flow’ring in Picardy, but there’s never a ro-se like you! And the ro-ses will diiie with the summertime, and our roads may be faaaar apaaart, but there’s one rose that dies no-t in Pic-ardy! T’is the ro-se that I keep in my heart. ‘Actually…, I must have heard it somewhere. It’s strange you should mention it. May I ask, do you recall the first time you noticed it ear-worming you?’

  ‘Yes, in the church hall. I was in the cellar, I think ... the first time I was there,’ Amanda replied.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I heard the song that’s been on my brain when I went into the hall for the first time. I was there early. It was empty, and I heard this song: “Mademoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous, …”’

  ‘” … Hinky dinky parlez-vous,”’ finished Amanda.

  ‘You know it?’ asked Trelawney.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Amanda, surprised that the words had just come out of nowhere.

  ‘Did you see anything on that occasion?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, but it made no sense at all,’ she replied.

  ‘I saw something too when I heard Hinky Dinky ... and it made no sense at all.’

  ‘Let’s talk about it on Saturday,’ Amanda suggested.

  ‘Yes. Meanwhile, I think I’ll ask Majolica for Hinky Dinky to be played at the dance. Would you care to take the floor with me for a 2-step?’

  ‘I would indeed. It will cause a scandal, no doubt,’ she commented in daring accents.

  ‘Standing up with the same lady for two dances,’ he replied in the same vein. ‘Quite. I’m game if you are.’

  ‘You’re on,’ declared Amanda, surprised at how well he knew his dance etiquette history but rightly attributing it to his mother’s efforts. ‘See you on Saturday. Oh, best to download and email the file to Majolica. Then she’s got no excuse not to play it!’

  ‘Roger that,’ Trelawney acknowledged.

  ‘Over and out.’

  Chapter 28

  What They Saw

  The following week, the reappearance of the new class favourite was greeted with enthusiasm. ‘The return of the prodigal,’ commented Amanda to Trelawney as he guided her down the room. They were learning the quickstep, at which Trelawney seemed as adept as the waltz that they’d repeated the previous week.

  ‘The novelty, more like,’ he responded.

  ‘Still having private lessons at the Mrs Trelawney School of Dance?’ asked Amanda merrily.

  He chuckled. ‘That has a wonderfully Victorian ring to it. My mother would like that, seeing as it’s the antitheses of everything that she is.’

  ‘Any news on the other parental front?’

  ‘No, my father was busy again, but I hope to see him this week.’

  ‘Still having ideas about our spy?’ Amanda fished.

  ‘Yes. Tell me, was everyone who came to Week One here last week?’

  ‘Yes. No. Dr Karan Patel was on call, and couldn’t come.’

  Trelawney nodded.

  In the break she saw him helping Ryan and Kieran with one of the step combinations. However during the second half, Majolica taught them all the 2-step, and everyone was confident that they had grasped it. No sooner had the end-of-lesson applause died away than Majolica made an announcement:

  ‘And now, keep your dance shoes on as we go into the special extra hour of our get together on this Remembrance Day.’

  The lively conversation in the hall quietened to a murmur. Earlier that day, at precisely 11 o’clock in the morning, a hush had becalmed the streets, shops, cottages and the school of Sunken Madley, as its inhabitants had stood in silent respect for the fallen in general and for those, in particular, whose names were inscribed on the monument on the green. The village, although remote in its way, bore its own scars of war, right back to the Wars of the Roses and the Battle of Barnet that had destroyed the church, wounded The Grange, Sunken Madley Manor, and the Priory, had leveled cottages, and laid low civilians and soldiers alike in the orchards and woods about. In the last century, two more wars had added to the sad roster of the honoured dead, now once again among them in thought.

  Miss de Havillande mounted a box before the stage.

  ‘Fellow villagers and visitors. There is not one among us here today whose family was not touched in some way by the conflict that came to its merciful end on this day 11th November in 1918.’ There were nods from the crowd.

  The Community Board in the library bore what photographs families had of great-grandfathers, great-uncles and great-aunts who did not return: Gordon de Havillande; Francis Hanley-Page; Arjun Patel of the Indian Expeditionary Force; Hiranjan Sharma of the Gurkha Rifles; Pawel the Royal Mail delivery driver’s great uncle Aleksander Mazurek, pilot; George Whittle; Irma Uberhausfest’s cousin, 19 years old, German infantry, perished in the mire of the Somme; Ollie Kemp who joined up at 16, lying about his age, then shot as a deserter fleeing the horror for which he was unprepared. The rector back then had risked being defrocked by insisting on Ollie’s burial in the hallowed precincts of the churchyard, interred with full honours beside his grandfather. Near him lay nurse Armstrong-Witworth who perished when her ambulance was hit by a shell. The list went on. Amanda knew their faces as well as those of their descendants, studying them as she had every autumn, reaching for some sense of what it had been like to live through such perilous years, how the smiling faces among them found light in those dark times.

  ‘Please take a glass from the table at the front,’ Miss de Havillande invited. She waited and then raised her goblet, and, quoting from Laurence Binyon’s poem written at the start of the Great War, she spoke the lines, ‘”At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”’

  ‘We will remember them.’ the audience responded and sipped.

  ‘Now!’ said Miss de Havillande briskly. ‘They would not wish us to hold their memory in sadness. They died for our freedom that we might live in peace and happiness. Therefore, let us celebrate life with song and dance. Mrs Woodberry, if you would be so good, strike up the band!’

  On cue, It’s a Long Way to Tipperary began playing. It was followed by the beguiling waltz of Roses of Picardy for which Amanda found Trelawney at her side. She began in proper waltz frame, her upper body rotated away to the left, but as they danced it seem unnatural and she turned to face him. It was as though she had danced every day of her life. Amanda heard his voice close to her ear. She looked up and he was singing in a light baritone: ‘Roses may fade with the summertime …’

  For a moment he seemed to have a moustache and be wearing a peaked cap with a badge o
n it. Then not.

  The dance came to an end. Somehow they were both breathless. But there was no time for comment, as Trelawney’s request was beginning, Mademoiselle from Armentières. They stepped jauntily around the hall. He seemed to know every word. The lyrics, though bawdy, were often funny. He looked down at Amanda as she threw back her head and laughed, and, suddenly, she was clothed differently. He felt her long skirt against his trouser legs. Her hair was short, curling around her ears, and then she was back in her usual gear.

  At the conclusion of the dance, Trelawney drew Amanda’s arm through his and led her out of the side-door. They looked at one another.

  ‘Did you see…?’ they both asked at once.

  ‘I’d have sworn I didn’t know all of the words to Hinky Dinky Parlez-vous,’ said Trelawney.

  ‘And I know I can’t waltz that well!’ stated Amanda.

  ‘And you were suddenly dressed in a long skirt and your hair —’

  ‘ — and you had a … it must have been a military cap on!’

  ‘But I don’t belie ….’Trelawney stopped. ‘”There are more things in heaven and earth” … I think that I do believe.’

  ‘All right,’ said Amanda, ‘so we’re agreed on what we saw?’

  ‘But why did we see it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, why, and why us?’ she added.

  ‘Yes, no one else seemed to experiencing anything unusual in there,’ Trelawney observed.

  ‘Look, we’re sharing the space with the people who were here back then, just not their time. Maybe that’s all there is to it. We just happen to be … sensitive to it,’ suggested Amanda.

  Trelawney was silent, frowning slightly. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s not it. I don’t think this is about the past.’

  ‘That certainly looked like it to me,’ replied Amanda.

  ‘I mean, I think someone in the past is trying to tell us something.’ Trelawney was feeling his way.

  ‘Wars are bad?’ hazarded Amanda.

  ‘No, more … more ... local than that …. Specific to us, this place, now…. What if it’s ….?

  ‘A warning?’ she said finishing his thought. ‘But of what? There’s no danger here now; no wars, barely any crime, the hall is structurally safe, everyone is medically fit to dance. What could there possibly be a warning of? Or maybe those people were just trying to connect with us.’

  ‘I don’t know … yes, but why?’ Trelawney returned to the question.

  ‘You think they had a message?’

  ‘The first time I was here and heard the song,’ he said with a little difficulty, ‘I thought I saw beds and … and —nurses they must have been — women with veils, and something was wrong with the floor.’

  ‘Yes, I saw that floor thing too,’ concurred Amanda, ‘but I’ve seen the supports in the basement myself. They’re makeshift but they’re good enough, and Mr Branscombe, who is a builder, has confirmed that they’ll hold for now.’

  Trelawney sat down on a stone bench.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Amanda with concern.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he answered, ‘I’m not used to being presented with information in this way. I like nice solid witnesses and informants and members of the public who come into the station in modern dress and say things like, I overheard Jason Smith tell Dale Moggin in the fishmonger’s that they’re planning to raid the till in the bike shop next Thursday.’

  Amanda laughed. ‘You’re doing very well, Inspector.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He stood up. ‘Well we’d better go back in and dance with other people.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Amanda. ‘You can say I had an attack of the vapours and needed some fresh air in which to recover my equanimity.’

  It was Trelawney’s turn to laugh. The next time she saw him in merriment, was at the end of the dance, standing with the Patels. Again he looked in her direction as he was leaving and she joined him outside.

  ‘Having fun with my doctors?’ she asked, gratified to see how well he was getting on with her fellow villagers.

  ‘We were swapping coroner jokes. I thought I knew them all. But Karan had a new one,’ explained Trelawney with a grin.

  ‘Thomas!’ came Vanessa’s voice from the church door as she hurried towards them.

  ‘Next Saturday at 12, yes?’ he asked Amanda quickly.

  ‘Yes, come to the cottage.’

  ‘Oh sorry, Amanda,’ said Vanessa sincerely, ‘Hope I’m not interrupting.’

  ‘Not at all, I’m just off. See you at the Feast,’ she replied with wave and a smile.

  Chapter 29

  The Secret of Sunken Madley

  Amanda was ready when Trelawney rang the bell at her house. Tempest, fast asleep, hanging like a grey fur stole over one arm of the sofa, was not.

  ‘Cup of tea before we start?’ she offered.

  ‘Thank you. I’m good to go.’

  ‘Very well.’ She stepped out and closed the cottage door behind her. ‘Here to our left, is The Orchard, the oldest and most important of Sunken Madley, and where some of our festivities will be held later. But first, let us proceed “in an orderly manner” back up Orchard Row.’

  ‘As a policeman, I would not dream of proceeding in any other way,’ he returned with a twinkle.

  ‘Naturally,’ she replied. ‘This is the house of my best friend Claire Ruggieri, who is a film producer, currently filming in Thailand. You may have seen her name on the credits of such popular movies, and according to Claire, insults to the art form, as Blockbuster! About a karate expert who becomes a movie mogul. And Mindless Dribble, the tale of an airhead who becomes a soccer star. She’s working on Blockbuster! II in the hopes that it’ll pay off her mortgage and she can make good, if poorly paid, movies.’

  ‘I look forward to meeting the delightfully candid Miss Ruggieri in due course,’ remarked Trelawney, remaining tactfully silent on the subject of both movies.

  ‘Yes, she hopes to be home for Christmas. It would be wonderful if she could. Otherwise I’ll be watching Love Actually, White Christmas and Die Hard with just Tempest! Meanwhile …to our left, we just passed the playing fields that back on to Sunken Madley School, founded in 18-something for boys, and then, 50 years later, they happened upon the radical notion of educating females.’

  ‘How shocking. Heaven knows where that will lead,’ said Trelawney with a deadpan expression.

  ‘They’ll be wanting the vote next,’ Amanda responded in kind. ‘We are coming to the ingeniously named High Street, and we’ll turn right now towards the gateway to the village.’

  ‘Sounds grand,’ he commented.

  ‘Oh, believe me, it is … in spirit, that is. On your left, you see the chemist’s.’ Mr Sharma looked up at that moment and gave a nod and a smile. ‘And the next establishment of note is the new salon, Tressed Up, owned by Leo and Donna Weathersby.’

  ‘Leo I have already had the pleasure of meeting.’

  ‘And here is our first coffee stop: The Snout and Trough. Proprietor: Sandra. She won’t be front of house at this hour, and Vanessa, her sister, will be physical-fitness-training a private client in the West End most likely.'

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, she’s very good, I hear, and much in demand. And she is hot.’

  ‘Something only the shallow-minded person in need of her services would notice, of course,’ he responded with a gleam in his eye.

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Amanda.

  They found a quiet corner table and brought their drinks there.

  ‘Mind if I ask a question?’

  ‘Fire away,’ replied Trelawney readily.

  ‘Have you had a chance to talk to your father?’

  ‘Tuesday evening, I’m having dinner with him. After that I should have some news. Hopefully.’

  ‘OK. Well, then, how about you? Any questions on the tour so far?’

  ‘Yes, the one that has been on my mind since I first came here,’ answered Trelawney.

  ‘Oh
?’

  ‘How did the village get its peculiar nomenclature?’

  ‘Ah.’ This could be a sticky one, thought Amanda. ‘That is something few people know, and you won’t find it in any guidebook either.’

  ‘I shall treat it as privileged information,’ he promised.

  Amanda nodded.

  ‘The Wood and the orchards have been here since before records began. Eventually, they were claimed by a baron or a king. About a thousand years ago, the priory — I’ll show you that at some point — was built, and the land given over to the care of the brothers, the Benedictines. Over time, these rented to farmers whose cottages sprang up, and so the place came to be called Monken Orchards. Or simply Monken for short.’

  ‘Understandably,’ said Trelawney.

  ‘It was a time of fear and ignorance and superstition,’ Amanda continued. ‘That is the important thing to bear in mind, as we come to this next part in the story.’

  Trelawney nodded.

  ‘There had long been a cottage on the edge of the hamlet, where dwelt a wise woman. She would have had skill in healing, knowledge of herbs and midwifery, practical knowledge, counsel and comfort. Such people were called pellars or wisewomen. Later, they came to have another name; a word that people were taught to fear. One day, in such a climate of terror, the villagers went to her cottage and brought her forth. They led her to the pond, where they conducted a trial by water. As they shouted and jostled and waved the implements of their livelihood, they cast her in. It is said that she did not struggle, but slipped beneath the surface of the mere into the depths below. Some, realising what they had done, threw themselves in after her that they might, at least, retrieve her body. But she had vanished without a trace. When the mob came to its senses, horrified at their heinous deed, they took covenant with one another never to reveal to the outside world what had taken place. But more than that, when they confessed their wrong to one of the brothers residing in the priory, he laid upon them this task, to which they bound themselves in solemn oath of blood: that henceforth, even with their very lives, to protect ever more the inhabitants of the so-called “witch’s cottage”. In time, the wisewoman’s successor appeared there and hers in turn. During the worst of the witch hunts, the villagers concealed her in cellars and barns, and the Dunkley Manor kept her safe within its hidden places.’