Mrs Crouch left the room briefly to gather up the teapot, milk and cups. Clarissa plucked a fork from the pile of cutlery on the coffee table and tucked in. The quiche was delicious. Crumbly pastry, perfectly baked, and nicely cheesy but with the smokiness of the bacon cutting through. Would it be piggish to take another slice, Clarissa wondered?
Mrs Crouch must have read her mind. “Take as much as you like. I haven’t managed to get my appetite back yet. I can give you a doggy bag to take home with you as well.”
Toby pricked up his ears at that. A doggy bag? A bag full of food for doggies? How absolutely splendid!
Clarissa swooped on her words for a different reason, using them as an opportunity to talk about Mrs Crouch’s health again as a way to steer the conversation towards what she eventually wished to discuss.
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling quite yourself yet,” Clarissa began. “I have to admit, when I found you upstairs that night, you seemed in a bad way.”
“I owe you a great deal.” Mrs Crouch took a seat in her own armchair and helped herself to a pink macaron. It remained on her plate, lonely and untouched. “And Mr Kephisto, for undoing the hex, of course.”
Clarissa nodded, pleased they were finally talking about what was important. “Can you remember what happened that night? Only…” Clarissa waved her fork in the air, “I saw DC Plum the other day and he said you’d told him you had no recollection about the events that evening.”
Mrs Crouch pulled her lips together in a thin line and frowned. “I had to say that. DC Plum is not of our kind. He wouldn’t have believed me had I told him the truth.”
Clarissa wiggled her head in a vague yes-no action. “No. Probably not.” There was a truth to Mrs Crouch’s assertion, of course. Clarissa liked DC Plum, they’d been out for a few drinks together, but she hadn’t yet spilled the beans about who she really was, or what she was capable of, or even given him any details of the world she inhabited.
She wasn’t sure she ever would.
Clarissa hesitated, unsure how Mrs Crouch would take her next question. “But you do remember, though?”
“I do,” the older woman replied, and returned her plate to the coffee table, the solitary pink macaron still uneaten.
Toby regarded it with interest.
Sighing, Mrs Crouch continued, “I really do owe you an explanation about that night. It’s just so draining to think about it.” Mrs Crouch flapped a weak hand at her pale face.
“I completely understand,” Clarissa replied hurriedly. What sort of an ogre asked a poor old lady to remember such a traumatic event? “You don’t owe me anything—”
“No, you’re wrong. I think I do.” Mrs Crouch placed her hands in her lap and looked down at them. She stroked the dark liver spots on the back of her right wrist, as though seeing them for the first time. “It was late,” she began, without looking at Clarissa, “but I wasn’t particularly tired. I’d gone upstairs, intending to read in bed, but perhaps I dozed off… I don’t recall. But something woke me.”
“A noise?” Clarissa had been working late on a story for the paper that night. She recalled the rumbling sound she’d heard.
Mrs Crouch blinked at Clarissa. “I suppose it must have been. I remember… I thought I heard someone downstairs, so I got out of bed and crept along the landing. I stood at the top of the stairs and listened.” Mrs Crouch gazed up at the ceiling. Her bedroom was at the front of the house, above the living room. Clarissa watched the older woman replay the events in her mind.
“Everything was very quiet. I decided I must have imagined it… I went back into the bedroom and then I heard a creak on the stairs.” She pointed out into the hallway. “One of my stairs has always made that groaning noise. Before I could turn around, she was on me, and I don’t remember what happened then.”
“Did you have a fire that night?” Clarissa pointed at the hearth.
“Possibly. I don’t recall,” Mrs Crouch shrugged.
“Only, when I arrived, I noticed something had been burned in the grate.”
“Then I must have.”
“But there weren’t enough ashes for it to have been a fire,” Clarissa continued. “It looked like a letter had been burned. Or a photograph maybe.”
Mrs Crouch stared at Clarissa for a second, and a fleeting emotion crossed her face. Sadness? Bitterness? Confusion? Frustration? Clarissa couldn’t tell.
“I really don’t know what that might have been.”
“And the wand strike?” Clarissa twisted in her seat to point at the bookcase. “Was there a fight? Did you come back downstairs?”
“I can’t remember.”
“And what about The Five Stone?” Clarissa asked. “The one we found in the kitchen?”
Toby sat up, yawning in anxiety. Clarissa sounded harried.
Mrs Crouch looked uneasy. “I don’t—”
“You can’t tell me you don’t know anything about it,” Clarissa frowned at the older woman. “While you were in hospital you implied you did.”
“Nonsense. I was high on drugs. Or something.”
“Really?” Clarissa shot back. Is that how this would be? A convenient case of amnesia? She slumped back into her seat.
“I really don’t like what you’re insinuating here, young lady.” Mrs Crouch’s eyes flashed.
“I don’t think I’m insinuating anything,” Clarissa growled. Toby pricked up his ears, suddenly enormously uncomfortable. He didn’t appreciate the way this conversation was progressing. He didn’t like to hear Clarissa and Mrs Crouch arguing.
Mrs Crouch wagged her finger at Clarissa. “You have a suspicious mind.”
“I have every right to be suspicious!” Clarissa cried, incredulous at the idea she might not. “My grandfather was killed in an attack very similar to the one that supposedly unfolded in your house—”
“—not supposedly—”
Clarissa ignored her. “And while you were in hospital, you intimated you might be a secret agent.”
“Now be careful,” Mrs Crouch glowered. “Loose tongues—”
“Cost lives,” Clarissa rounded on her. “But it’s Old Joe who’s dead and you are not, and I can’t help wondering who has the loose tongue!”
Mrs Crouch reeled in shock. “Clarissa, you don’t know what you’re saying!”
Clarissa jumped to her feet, brimming over with the fury and the frustration of the previous few weeks’ inactivity and inaction. “Maybe you are a secret agent, Mrs Crouch. A double agent! Whose side are you really on? Perhaps the Ministry of Witches needs to know what you’ve been getting up to.”
Clarissa clicked her fingers at Toby, the sound sharp in the sudden silence. “Come on, Toby. We’re leaving.” She stormed out of the room, Toby following uncertainly.
“Clarissa?” Clarissa heard Mrs Crouch calling after her, but she vented her feelings further by slamming the front door so hard it made the whole house vibrate. She stalked down the path, Toby following at a safe distance behind her, his tail between his legs.
Clarissa took a seat on the park bench and dumped her huge sack of a leather handbag into the space beside her. She stuffed Toby’s lead into the bag, exchanging it for the newspaper she’d just this minute purchased at McLoll’s, along with a pair of cheap sunglasses. Fortunately, it was a beautiful afternoon and the sun shone bright and warm in a cloudless blue sky.
She wouldn’t look too much of an idiot as she donned her disguise.
She slid the glasses, a pair of imitation Ray-Bans, up her nose, imagining to onlookers she would appear ‘Goth-chic’ with her tight black rock band t-shirt, ripped black jeans and platform-soled Dr Martens. It occurred to her that donning the glasses in this way—just so she could await word from someone she’d never met that might lead to the apprehension of the woman who had killed her grandfather—made the world a much darker place, in more ways than one.
Clarissa was here on a mission. Earlier this morning a note written on the back of a Corker’s Pies leaflet had been pushed thr
ough her letterbox. On one side it listed the prices of a range of pies and pasties and sweet treats—Toby had salivated over those—but on the other, there had been instructions to head to the park. That’s all it had said. Meet me at the park at 2 p.m. Clarissa had taken it to mean that someone from the Ministry of Witches had some information for her and would meet her there.
Assuming that person would want to remain incognito, Clarissa had provided her own—rather limited, admittedly—disguise.
Now she peered over the top of her sunglasses, searching for Toby among the neatly trimmed foliage, but he’d disappeared.
Or so she thought.
Leaning back on the bench, trying to relax, she unfolded the broadsheet newspaper. The pages acted like a sail, instantly catching the breeze, and she had to fight to keep hold of them. She battled with the thin leaves, finally folding the newspaper over into a manageable square that she could hide her face behind. So preoccupied had she become with sorting out her camouflage that she failed to hear Toby scampering up to her. His voice, by her knee, made her jump.
“You should have bought a magazine.”
Startled, Clarissa dropped the newspaper and stared into her dog’s amused eyes.
“I fancied reading a decent newspaper.” She flapped the paper and staunchly defended her choice.
“There’s a magazine in the window called Dog’s Choice. That sounds good. I’d like to read that.”
Clarissa sniffed. “Well I wouldn’t. I want to see what’s going on in my world, not yours.”
“You already know what’s going on in your world. People are being mean! To each other, to animals and to the environment. And the people in charge of the people who are mean are letting them get away with it.” Toby lifted his nose into the air. He’d recently taken to listening to BBC Radio 4 in the living room during the night while Clarissa slept upstairs, and now assumed he knew all there was to know about everything. Clarissa found this most annoying. “Nobody cares about anything unless it directly impacts on themselves,” he finished.
“That’s a pretty cynical view, Toby.” Clarissa regarded the pooch with concern. She hoped he wasn’t becoming too jaded. The side effects of being a spellbound hound, while mainly positive, appeared to be taking their toll on him in some ways.
“That’s how it appears to me.” Toby folded himself into a sitting position in front of her, his paws neatly lined up, eyes sparkling at his favourite human. “But you won’t read the truth in that rag. Not unless you turn it the right way up, at any rate.”
Clarissa tutted and hastily rearranged the paper so that she could read the typeface.
“But what do I know? I’m just a dog.”
“True,” Clarissa sniffed, and lifted the newspaper in front of her face once more. “Now go away, I’m supposed to be incognito.”
Toby snorted. “Is that why you’re wearing those sunglasses and reading that paper? You look like someone out of a bad spy film.”
“Go away.” Clarissa widened her eyes at him.
“You’d be better off—”
“Go!”
“I’m just suggesting—”
“Away!”
A man jogging past them at that moment shot Clarissa a startled glance. He ran past, looking back over his shoulder and regarded Toby with some trepidation.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Toby said. “That man thinks I’m a loose dog who’s haranguing you. He’ll report me to the authorities, and I’ll be taken into custody and we both know what happened to me last time.”
“Go away or I’ll personally deposit you back in the Sunshine Valley Pet Sanctuary myself.”
Toby wiggled his eyebrows in amazement. “That’s not a very nice thing to say, is it?”
Clarissa could have wept with frustration. “Toby! Just take yourself off for a little walk and give me fifteen minutes. That’s all I ask. This meeting is important. If we can persuade the Special Agent from the Ministry of Witches to give me some information about The Four Stone then we may well be able to track it down.” She flapped the newspaper at him. “It’s important. You know that.”
Toby stood and gave himself a good shake. Hair flew around him and landed all over Clarissa’s jeans.
She tutted. “Please!”
“Alright. Alright, I’m going. It’ll cost you though.”
“How much?” Clarissa gritted her teeth together.
“A sammich.”
“What flavour?”
“Ham.”
“Ham?”
“That’s my favourite—”
“Favourite favourite. I hear you.” Clarissa nodded. “Plain ham?”
“With pickle.”
“Deal.” Clarissa raised the paper to cover her face again. “Now bog off.”
Clarissa peered over the top of the newspaper as Toby bounded happily off to some scrubland behind the groundskeeper’s storage unit. She trusted him to stay out of trouble for the time being. Once she felt happy he wouldn’t be coming back any time soon, she relaxed, running her eye down the snippets of articles on the quarter of the page she could see. Political unrest in a small South American country, fires in Australia, a scandal in some minor European Royal household, student protests in the Far East… all stemming from people being mean to each other as Toby had said.
That dog was far too astute for his own good.
But he had a point. As a journalist it was important to point out the shortcomings of those wielding positions of power, and not to shy away from it. If she ever managed to get another job, she would bear that in mind.
She shook off her burgeoning feelings of despair, reminding herself instead exactly why she’d come to the park today.
Clarissa was on a mission.
Should she get up and walk around? Would that make her more approachable to a Special Agent? Or should she remain here on the bench and trust that any witch worth their salt would recognise another witch for what they truly were?
Not that she’d recognised that Mrs Crouch was a witch, mind you. Not even after living next door to her for a few weeks.
So caught up in her own meandering mind was Clarissa, that she failed to notice a man walking towards her from her right. Red-faced and slightly out of breath, he collapsed on the bench next to her. Clarissa, startled, turned to look at him in alarm. He couldn’t sit there. What if a Special Agent chose this moment to approach her? She’d have to ask the man to move or shift somewhere else herself.
The newcomer, a kind of walking haystack of a chap with long brown hair, slightly grey at the temples and a fluffy greying goatee beard, nodded at her and flapped a hand at his own face. “Warm today, eh?”
“It is.” Clarissa couldn’t find it in herself to be rude to him; she’d have to be the one to vacate the bench. She began to gather her things together, stuffing the newspaper into her bag.
“I’ve been chasing my rotten dog around the park,” he panted. “It’s unlike her to run off. She must have found an interesting scent.”
Clarissa nodded politely. “I’ll keep an eye out for her if you like. What sort of dog is she?”
“A Leonberger.”
“A Leon—?”
“Berger. Leonberger. She’s called Star.”
Clarissa stood up. “Star. Got it.” She took a few steps along the path then turned back to the man. “I don’t know what a Leonberger is. I don’t really know very much about dogs,” she admitted.
The man stroked his beard, his eyes glinting with amusement. “Believe me, if you see her, you’ll know her. She’s a big girl and the clue is in the name.”
“Star?”
“Leon. Like lion.”
Clarissa laughed. “Right. Of course. Okay.” She waved. “Good luck. Hope you find her.”
“Hello, little ant!” Toby, nose to the ground, wagged his tail as a small black ant clambered up a blade of grass, heading for a minute drop of moisture at the top. “Oh! Hello, little ant’s mates. Phew.” Toby stepped back, “There’
s rather a lot of you, isn’t there?” He cocked his head, watching them all beavering away. For the most part they followed a trail towards the groundskeeper’s store, one behind the other, scurrying as fast as they could on tiny legs. Occasionally one meandered off the set route and explored in a different direction, but it generally came scurrying back quickly enough, eager to join its colleagues.
“Busy, busy, busy.” Toby stepped carefully around them and followed their trail from a safe distance. He didn’t want to disturb whatever important work they were doing.
“It’s a shame none of you have time for a chat, but I understand that. Clarissa’s the same when she’s working. I can be talking to her and she’s tapping away on her computer. Tap, tap, tap. She doesn’t hear a word I say.” Toby wagged his tail, a slow uncertain wag. “Not that I’m lonely or anything. I keep myself busy. I’ve been reading some great books, and my levitating skills are coming along nicely.”
“What books are you reading?” A gruff voice interrupted Toby’s one-way conversation with the ants, and he spun about, prepared to bark at the intruder and instruct him to back off.
But instead of that he took a step back and performed a comical double-take. Standing in front of him was an enormous fluffy beast, the like of which Toby had never seen before. Part lion, part bear and part dog, the creature had a thick shaggy coat in rich shades of brown and gold, with a black muzzle and shining gold eyes. He could probably have chomped Toby in three easy bites.
Toby opened his mouth to respond and closed it again, his breath huffing out of his lungs in surprise.
“I just wondered,” the lion dog said, “because I’ve been reading some Dostoyevsky recently and I’ve found him a little hard to get into.”
Toby studied the lion dog’s body language carefully. She, it transpired, didn’t seem tense. She didn’t radiate aggression. Did she genuinely want to discuss literature and not rip him to shreds?
Apparently so.
“Dusty Offski?” Toby repeated, trying to hide the slight tremor in his voice.
“Dostoyevsky. Russian. I’ve been trying to get into the classics.” The lion dog nodded sagely. “Some of that Russian literature is impenetrable. And you know how it is. I can’t buy books from the bookstores myself, and for some reason the library only lends books to humans, so I have to rely on Dom to bring home interesting things to read.” The lion dog sniffed. “He buys them from charity shops, and so they’re the books people don’t want to keep. Hence Dostoyevsky.”
Bark Side of the Moon: A Paranormal Animal Cozy Mystery (Spellbound Hound Magic and Mystery Book 3) Page 2
