by Katie Penryn
I turned to Felix. “This is going to be a long apprenticeship. I’m overwhelmed.”
He gave me a quick sideways hug. “You can manage it if you tackle the book on a need-to-know basis. You don’t have to learn everything in twenty-four hours.”
“Just as well because I couldn’t. I’m exhausted.”
“Enough,” said Felix. “Close the book and try it for real.”
I shut the Book of Spells and pushed it aside. I locked the Chinese box manually. Taking a deep breath I cleared my mind. I was opening my mouth to speak the magic words when Felix gave me a nudge. “Uncross your fingers.”
I gave him a shove back. “You broke my concentration. Now I’ll have to psyche myself up all over again.”
“Believe in it,” said Felix moving aside to give me more space.
I took another deep breath and focused on the lock of the Chinese box. I spoke the magic words and envisaged the symbols. Click went the lock and the cylinder slid out of its housing.
“Wow, it worked,” I said in amazement.
“Of course, it did. You’re a witch. A bona fide witch and you can work spells. Now get over it and on to the next one.”
“First, let me see if I can unlock the door to the study.”
I cast the spell again and clunk went the chamber of the lock on the study door as the key turned.
My eyes must have been starting out of my head. Felix chuckled. “You look like a rabbit caught in the headlights.”
I hurried over to lock the door again saying, “It’s so awesome. I can’t believe it. I could have done with magic when I was taking all those tedious law exams.”
“It wouldn’t have worked. Remember you can’t use magic for your own benefit. But believe in your power. Now on to the next one. The one for freezing someone in place. We need that in case we run into anyone while we’re in the target houses.”
We found the right page, crossed our fingers and Felix taught me the spell.
“Felix, thank you for being so patient with me.”
“Think nothing of it. It’s my job.”
“It says here that the person has to be in my sight and I have to click my fingers to end the spell. Okay? Shall we try it?”
I closed the Book of Spells. “I’ll call Jimbo in. And practice the open lock spell at the same time. You hide under the desk until he’s gone.”
I concentrated, cast the unlock spell on the study door and went to find Jimbo. “Would you bring me some tea, please?” I asked him.
That gave me time to return to the study and await his appearance. Jimbo was only as long as it takes a kettle to boil. As soon as he closed the door and turned round to face us I cast the freeze spell…and he froze.
Felix stuck his head out from under the desk. “See, it works. Let’s move about a bit and see if anything happens.”
We walked around the desk, jumped up and down, called out to each other and to Jimbo, but he didn’t move a muscle.
“Success,” said Felix. “Let the poor guy go now. We’ve proved our point.”
Felix crouched back down out of sight.
I clicked my fingers and Jimbo said, “Here you go, Penzi. No sugar.”
He put the mug down on the desk and walked out as if nothing had happened.
I locked the door again.
Felix gave me a big friendly hug. “We’re on our way. We’ll check both houses out tonight.”
I have to admit I stayed in that hug a little longer than necessary, but only because I needed the reassurance, of course.
Chapter 21
At midnight Felix and I set off for where Harry Llewellyn, the ex-boyfriend, lived. I parked the car a few doors down and we walked the rest of the way. He had to be out because no car stood outside his house. All well and good.
As we approached his rickety gate, Felix said, “Watch out, I saw the curtain twitch across the road. What shall we do? We don’t want a witness to our breaking and entering.”
“Don’t give it a thought,” I said crossing over to the nosy neighbor’s house and standing by her gate. As soon as she twitched the curtain again to look out at me, I cast the freeze spell. I waited to make sure she didn’t move before catching up with Felix who was now at Harry Llewellyn’s front door. Felix felt around for the key but he couldn’t find one. Of course, that was no problem for me, not for me the new witch of Beaucoup-sur-mer, and I was on the point of casting the spell to open locks when Felix tried the handle. The door opened.
In we went.
“No lights,” said Felix. “Flashlights only. We don’t want anyone reporting suspicious behavior or alerting the ex as he returns home.”
We made straight for the living room on the right of the hallway. Searching his computer was our top priority. While Felix settled himself down in front of a brand new laptop, I conducted an amateur search of the rest of the house. No one could ever call the ex house proud. His bedroom was a tip with dirty clothes and stinky trainers all over the floor. He hadn’t changed his sheets since Christmas. The frowsty smell turned my stomach and I was heaving as I opened the bathroom door. One look and I shut it again quickly. Too disgusting. Kitchen next. Again filthy chaos. All for nothing as I hadn’t turned up anything pertinent to our investigation.
I returned to the living room to see how Felix was getting on. He sat crouched over the laptop, a picture of the deepest concentration, as he scanned the lines of data zooming down the screen. At his side was his silver hip flask. As I watched he uncapped it and took a gulp of scotch without losing his point of focus.
I cruised around the small living room, checking out the ex’s music, an old guitar with broken strings, a carpet of empty beer cans. A quick look at his book shelf — mostly computer games. As I turned I knocked over a higgledy-piggledy stack of books on the corner of his desk, a motley collection of tattered westerns and a few non-fiction hardbacks, the latter all from the local library. I hoped I had re-stacked them in the correct order. As I laid the last book on top of the pile, the front door opened.
I nudged Felix, “He’s home.”
“Do your magic stuff then,” he whispered back without taking his eyes of the screen.
I crept over to the door and looked out into the hall. The ex was kicking off yet another pair of trainers. As quick as a wink, I cast the freeze spell. Poor fellow froze with one foot in the air. I didn’t have enough experience with the spell to know whether he would stay like that or topple over. I waited an anxious few moments but the spell appeared to defy gravity. I tiptoed back to Felix feeling a bit stupid when I realized I didn’t have to tiptoe.
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Almost finished. I haven’t found anything yet except his internet service was down this month.”
“Hurry up. I have no idea how long that spell lasts.”
Felix took a sip of his scotch. “Nothing doing.”
He switched off the laptop and put his flask in his pocket.
We edged our way around the ex, who stood like a stork in our way, and we slunk out of the front door.
“Wait,” said Felix as I pulled the door closed behind me. “He’s still frozen.”
I peeped round the door, clicked my fingers and pulled the door to before the man had even got his foot back down on the floor. We crouched down and fled the premises. I’d driven two miles before I remembered I hadn’t released the nosy neighbor from her spell, and so we had to turn around and rush back to her house. I opened the car window, fixed my eyes on her and clicked my fingers. The curtain dropped and we zoomed off to the next target, Edna’s business rival.
*
We drove through the dark in the sand dunes of the reclaimed coast north of Beaucoup-sur-mer. Houses were few and far between in this undeveloped area. As Quentin Williams was working as an estate agent I didn’t expect he would stay there long. It was only a matter of time before he came across somewhere more appealing as he would have first dibs on any new additions to their book.
&nb
sp; His cottage lay right on the sea front surrounded by sand and scruffy salt air resistant shrubs. It was barely more than a fisherman’s shack with a boardwalk surrounding it.
Felix turned to me as I parked up out of sight behind a high dune. “Those boards’ll creak. We’ll have to go carefully.”
“What do we know about this man?”
“Nothing except he has a temper. Whatever happens we mustn’t engage with him so keep your wits about you. You may have to cast a spell on the fly.”
I climbed out of the car into the soft sand.
We trudged through it up to the front door. This time there was no key and the door was locked. Felix peered through the windows while I worked my magic on the door lock. “No sign of anyone.”
“Here’s hoping,” I said as I inched the door open and stepped inside.
Once again I left Felix to tackle the technical side of things — a PC this time. I nosed around the spotlessly clean and tidy kitchen. Nothing of interest. I’d try upstairs. As I put my foot on the bottom step a light clicked on upstairs. I shrank back into the shadows. A man with a towel wrapped around his waist appeared at the top of the stairs. Mr Quentin Williams I presumed. That would never do. Half asleep as he was, he hadn’t tucked the towel in properly. My freeze spell caught him as it dropped to the floor and poor Mr Williams froze starkers.
I couldn’t suppress a giggle. I had to fetch Felix. Of course, he was as irritable as all get-out to be disturbed in the midst of his sleuthing, but he followed me out into the hall.
He burst out laughing. He laughed so hard he was doubled up with pain. “That’s so cruel,” he snorted between guffaws.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” I giggled.
“I hope not. I don’t think the High Council of the Guild of White Witches would approve,” he said as he straightened up and made his way back to the computer.
A careful search of the rival’s living room revealed nothing. He was a tidy man, possibly OCD. There wasn’t a loose paper in sight. Every bill, every note, every business letter was stuck on a spike. I flicked through them noting that he paid his bills on time and had recently joined the local library.
Five minutes later Felix switched off the computer. “So much for that. Absolutely zilch.”
“So what do we do now? Both of them have come up clean.”
Felix stretched his arms above his head and windmilled them to loosen up. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with some sleep. We’ll think about it in the morning.”
*
I woke up early the next morning. The rest of the household was still asleep. I had a brilliant idea, my subconscious had been working overtime while I was asleep. I threw on my dressing gown and charged down to the living room where Felix was still asleep in cat mode on top of the piano. I pulled the cushion out from under him and he fell in a heap of angry spotted fur on the floor.
“What in the hell?” he spat.
“Now, now, Felix. Watch your morning manners.”
“Oh it’s you, Penzi. I guess that’s just about all right. I’ll let you off this time, but don’t do it again.”
“Come and have some milk and tuna while I tell you my idea.”
He sat up on his haunches and began to wash.
“Felix, this is serious. Come along.”
“Penzi, my darling, a cat can’t go anywhere before he’s finished his toilet.”
“When you’re ready then,” I said leaving him and going to the kitchen.
It was too early for Jimbo to be up and so no fresh croissants from kind Monsieur Brioche. I had to make do with toasting the remains of the baguette from the day before and smearing it with honey. This was a hazardous undertaking as the honey was supplied by Madame Brioche’s sister — from her own beehives — and no one had told her about separating the combs for human consumption from those left for the bees. I was picking out the nineteenth bee grub when Felix deigned to join me.
“So what’s this brainwave?” he asked jumping up onto the table beside me and sticking a paw in my honey. I smacked it away. “You’re a cat not a bear. But maybe you can shift into a bear. Can you?”
“Certainly not. I’m a feline and proud of it. Tell me your idea. Don’t keep me in suspense. I barely slept last night for worrying over what we could do next.”
“You were snoring your head off just now.”
Zig and Zag opened their eyes and wagged their tails. “Tell him, Penzi, please,” they said in unison, finishing with a soft woof.
“I didn’t know you could talk. Talking cats and now talking dogs. I might as well be living in Dr Doolittle’s house.”
“Do you know him?” asked Zag.
“Of course she doesn’t,” said Zig.
Felix hooked a piece of my toast off the plate, skittered it along the table and knocked it onto the floor where he joined it and began licking the butter and honey off the top.
“Felix, if you would pay attention for a moment, I’ll tell you.”
“Meow,” was the reply.
“It’s about the library. Both those men are members of the local library. If this library is anything like the one back in Notting Hill Gate it will have a computer section for the use of the public.”
“So what?”
“So we could—”
“Don’t tell me. I’ve got it.”
Felix the cat morphed into Felix the man. The fastest I’d ever seen him do it. He clasped me round the waist and pulled me onto my feet. “You’re right. You’re brilliant. The murderer could have disguised his purchase of the rohypnol by using one of the PC’s at the library.”
“How are we going to check?”
“We’ll go to the library now and find out what their system is for signing up as a member and take it from there.”
*
It was a short drive. We were there when the library opened. We took the steps up to the front door passing two stone lions guarding the top of the flight. Felix patted them both on the head saying, “Leopards rule,” and we entered through the floor to ceiling glass doors.
We found out that to join the library one had to fill in an index card and produce identification, which we did. The receptionist, a Madame Blanche, took the cards off us.
“If you wait a moment, I’ll give you your library cards. I have to enter the information into our system before you can borrow a book or use the computers,” she said tapping away on her keyboard.
A couple of minutes later and we both had laminated library cards. Madame Blanche tucked our applications away in a filing cabinet of card sized sliding drawers.
When she saw us watching her she said, “We keep the cards in alphabetical order, but the computer system works on membership number.”
“So you would need to find someone’s card and note their number before you could access their record on the system?” asked Felix.
“Exactly. We have two separate records. Would you like to borrow a book now?”
“We’ll have a look,” said Felix drawing me away from the desk.
When we were out of earshot he asked me, “What do we do now? If I’m to check the access log for the computer system, I need the membership numbers off those cards for our two remaining suspects. Can you freeze more than one person?”
Chapter 22
We waited until after midnight and the town had quieted down. I drove Felix to the library and dropped him off round the back in the service area. He was quite right. I could see the cat flap from the car. A library is the perfect place for a mouse. It’s warm. A plentiful supply of paper to tear up for nests and leather bindings and glue to chew. No wonder they kept a team of cats on site. I hoped Felix wouldn’t come up against this feline security patrol, but he’d said he would shift up to man-mode as soon as he was through the flap. He said he’d ring me when he was ready to leave.
I didn’t see much point in going to bed for four hours as I would be hung over from lack of sleep when it was time get up. I watched some late nigh
t TV which bored me to death. Read a few pages of my book and generally chafed at the long wait. The night air hung heavy and still inside the house. I weighed up the dangers of going for a walk on my own at that time of the night. The dogs would be with me for protection. I wouldn’t go far — just up our street towards the Esplanade, along it and back. Home territory almost.
Although the air was as sultry outside as in, a gentle wafting of onshore breeze caressed my face as I stepped out with the dogs on their leashes. We sauntered along the sea wall our sense of smell assailed by the seaweedy smell of the rock pools below. The tide was soon to be on the turn and the pools would be underwater by the time we returned. The moon had yet to rise. A small pool of light lay beneath the solitary lamppost in the center of the paved area above the beach. All else lay in darkness. I caught the smell of cigarette smoke before I saw the red glow in the dark over to my right. Someone else hoped to breathe in the fresh air coming off the sea. Someone sitting on one of the many benches along the sea front.
“Good evening, Ms Munro,” he called out to me. “Out for a stroll?”
“Good evening,” I called back not quite sure who it was.
He rose from his seat and approached me. “May I join you?”
I couldn’t think of a polite reason to give him for leaving me alone and so I nodded. He took up station alongside the dogs. If he was puzzled by my habit of walking only on the lines between the slabs of stone, he didn’t comment. Apart from a few exchanges about the heat we spoke little. We strolled down to the end of the Esplanade. He fished a couple of beer cans out of his bum bag and handed me one. As I fumbled with trying to flick mine open and hang onto the dogs, he put his beer down on the curb, took the dogs off me and tied them to the special hitching posts erected by the council for keeping dogs off the beach.
