They shuffled forwards into the oppressive gloom, Clarissa’s footsteps, even in her soft leather sandals, echoing around the space. The underlying stink of musty dampness mingled with cloying incense tickled Toby’s nose.
“Do your thing with the lights,” Clarissa whispered, and once again Toby performed his spell, casting the darkness out in all but the most stubborn of shadows and cubby-holes. They turned about, examining their surroundings, Clarissa gasping, Toby wide-eyed.
Here, at last, was where the real Lady Amphitrite had lived and worked.
Closest to the entrance, a large round table and thirteen chairs had pride of place. The table had been covered in a red velvet cloth and a single vase of flowers from the garden of The Gamekeeper’s Cottage.
On the walls closest to the table were bookshelves, lined with everything the modern witch might require. Leather-bound volumes of relevant literature and gothic classics, grimoires and spell books, hex manuals and compilations of curses. There were lines of glass bottles containing a weird assortment of creatures—pickled in formaldehyde and therefore far beyond help—skulls, stuffed birds displayed artistically beneath glass domes, chests full of dusty wands and ritual equipment, piles and piles of differently coloured candles, and neatly folded robes.
Clarissa left Toby sniffing at everything and walked on, gazing up in wonder at the ceiling above her head. Great care had been taken to create this cathedral of darkness.
At the far end of the vast space, standing in front of an empty but ornate log fireplace, stood Lady Amphitrite’s altar. Today, covered in a black cloth, a gold chalice took centre stage among a scattering of seashells and relatively fresh summer flowers, flanked by a number of coloured candles and a seasonal platter of fresh fruit.
Above the fireplace, a magnificent portrait of Lady Amphitrite—or somebody who looked awfully like her—had been hung. The eyes, as portrait eyes tend to do, followed Clarissa and Toby around the room as they investigated further.
A large pentagram had been painted on the floor in front of the altar. Clarissa stooped to examine the symbols. She didn’t recognise them, but they weren’t dissimilar to the icons on Old Joe’s floor. She straightened up and surveyed the room once more.
A single door in the centre of one of the long walls was the only thing they hadn’t checked out.
“Toby,” Clarissa called softly, and he stopped sniffing at the robes and pattered across the floor to join her. She indicated the door and he nodded once and walked beside her until she could lay her hand on it. She licked her lips, took a deep breath and turned the handle. It opened easily into a small hall, the smell of damp stronger than ever.
“It’s so cold in here,” Clarissa shivered.
“It reminds me of the basement in Temperance House,” Toby agreed. “Cold that seeps into your bones.”
Three doors to choose from now. Toby tilted his head listening as Clarissa turned the handle of the one closest to her. A bathroom. Functional, old-fashioned. The walls had been painted white, but it had an old blue suite, straight out of the 1960s. A towel hung from the rail and Clarissa reached for it.
“Wet.”
The word hung heavily in the air.
Lady Amphitrite had her own bathroom back in the cottage, one that she evidently used a great deal. Why would she have used this one before she’d left for Temperance House this morning?
They reversed out of the bathroom and studied the two remaining doors. Tentatively Clarissa reached out and opened the one nearest to her. It creaked a little, but there was no movement beyond.
Toby lit the room up. A bedroom. Currently in use, judging by the clothes scattered on the floor and the unmade bed.
“Lady Amphitrite?” Toby asked as Clarissa crept inside.
“I don’t think so,” Clarissa frowned. “She seems to have verged on OCD with her levels of tidiness. This place is a mess.” She climbed over a pile of clothes on the floor, and then uttered a little shriek and backtracked. “What’s that?” She pointed at a furry shape on the floor.
Toby, hackles rising, slunk forwards, his chest low to the ground, his nose working overtime.
He stopped. Sniffed again. Yowled and shot backwards.
Clarissa screamed and clutched her hands to her face. “What is it? What is it? Is it alive?”
Feeling slightly ashamed at showing a yellow streak, Toby advanced again. This time he prodded it with his paw.
“It’s a wig.”
“A wig?” Clarissa removed her hands from her face, but she still looked terrified.
“I’m not sure if it’s a big wig or not.”
Clarissa inched forwards and prodded the thing with her toe. Toby was right. It wasn’t alive. She bent down and, with her finger and her thumb, lifted it up to take a better look at it. A black pageboy wig.
Clarissa grimaced and Toby sniffed it again.
This time when he yowled, he jumped at it and snatched it from Clarissa’s grasp. Shaking it hard, as though it were a rat and he was trying to break its neck, he threw it at the wall. It slithered down to the floor.
“Wha—?”
“The Pointy Woman! It smells of The Pointy Woman!”
“Oh, my life!” Clarissa shot backwards to the relative safety of the door, her fists balled up under her chin. “What… what does that mean? She’s been here?”
“She certainly has.” Toby moved more quickly, sniffing at every item littering the floor. A dogtooth suit, underclothes, blouses, another wig… “This… these are the smells I associate with The Pointy Woman. Remember?”
“Yes.” Clarissa, feeling a little bolder, stepped back into the room to peer around once more. “You said she smelled of cellars—”
“Of dark fusty places that rarely see daylight. Like an old cellar full of antiquated books, dried herbs and the mummified corpses of rodents.”
“Somewhere without any fresh air,” recalled Clarissa.
“With a scent of the sea and the dry huskiness of something deeply sheltered.”
“She’s been living here.” Clarissa stared down at the unmade bed. “Sheltered by Lady Amphitrite.” She moved to the bedside table and examined several large plastic containers residing there. “Wizard Harlowe’s Horrid Headache Remedy.”
“She must get bad ones,” Toby said, remembering how The Pointy Woman had stumbled out of the library after killing Lady Amphitrite. “She looked proper poorly in Temperance House.”
“She has enough pills here to start her own pharmacy.” Clarissa returned the pot to the bedside table and glanced at the door. “What if she comes back and finds us? We’re sitting ducks.”
“Hopefully Mabel and Merrybutton are keeping her busy,” Toby replied.
Clarissa drew in a shaky breath. “Let’s check what’s behind the last door and get out of here.”
Toby led the way and they paused in front of the final door. Having been lucky on the previous three occasions, they expected this door to open easily too. It didn’t.
“Locked,” Clarissa said.
“To keep someone in or us out?” Toby wondered aloud.
“Let’s find out.” Clarissa brandished her wand and tapped the door. No charm on this one. The lock fizzed, sparked and clinked and the door swung open, away from them.
“Levis est vita mea!” Toby cried for the last time, and the room lit up, revealing Grace Catesby tied to a bed by her arms.
“Clarissa?” Catesby blinked up at her rescuer with disbelieving eyes. Clarissa had removed Catesby’s gag with great care, and carefully smoothed her fringe away from her forehead before wrapping the woman up in her arms. Pale of face and dishevelled of hair, Catesby was thinner than Clarissa had ever seen her. Positively scrawny.
But she was alive!
“Yes, it’s me. And Toby. Oh my goodness Catesby, I’m so pleased we found you.” She squeezed her friend tightly, overcome with emotion.
Toby jumped on to the bed and performed canine first aid. This amounted to a good face was
hing and a sniffing all over to check for obvious injuries. It appeared that Catesby needed a good meal—and a barf, poor thing, she certainly smelled interesting—but other than that there was no immediate cause for concern.
“I have so many questions… but we have to get you out of here first. Get you somewhere safe,” Clarissa flapped around, rubbing the rope burns on poor Catesby’s arms. “Can you walk? Can you even stand?”
Catesby groaned as she pushed herself up off the bed. Clarissa took her elbow.
“Let me help you,” she said as Catesby stumbled, “slowly now,” but in her head, she was screaming, hurry!
“How did you find me?” Catesby asked, throwing an arm around Clarissa’s shoulders as they moved towards the small hallway, limbs entwined as though participating in some strange three-legged race.
“With a little luck—”
“And some amazing detective work,” Toby chipped in.
“Miranda?” Catesby twisted away from Clarissa in panic. “Where is she? If she comes back—”
“Don’t worry. One of our friends is keeping her busy,” Clarissa said, and took Catesby’s arm once more.
We hope, Toby thought, following them out into the main room where Lady Amphitrite’s portrait stared down at them with evident disgust.
“When she comes back here and discovers me gone—”
“She’ll come after us,” Clarissa nodded. “But that’s okay. We’re ready for her.” She reconsidered this. “Well, we’re nearly ready for her.”
“We will be ready for her,” Toby added, his voice firm, shepherding them towards the main entrance and the stairs back up to the family tomb.
He stopped at the door as Clarissa helped Catesby to climb the first step.
“I was beginning to think I’d never see daylight again,” Catesby said.
“It’s raining cats and dogs out there, you might not want to see it when we get there,” Clarissa told her.
“Hey? Guys?” Toby called up to them. Clarissa swivelled slightly so that Catesby had to grab the wall in order to maintain her balance.
“What if we… erm… set this place alight?”
Clarissa’s stared at him in shock. “Toby! I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Arson is a really serious offence. They used to hang people for such things.”
Toby gulped. “Presumably they don’t anymore?”
“Well no, but—”
“Only… we don’t know what’s down here. What magick has been stored up in the potion bottles and the books, and among those symbols on the floor?”
“You can probably assume there’s nothing good there,” Catesby concurred.
“Exactly!” Toby met Clarissa’s eyes. “One small stray magickal spark could do some significant damage down here….”
“And eliminate some seriously bad intent,” Catesby agreed.
Clarissa, still supporting Catesby’s weight, looked from Grace to Toby and back again, her mind replaying the image of The Pointy Woman’s wig on the floor of the bedroom, and the leather-bound volumes and grimoires. They were right. Who knew what evil lay latent within the covers of those books, waiting to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world?
“Burn it,” she nodded at Toby, and hauled Catesby up the rest of the stairs, through the tomb and out into the storm beyond.
They waited, ignoring the rain that plastered their hair to their scalps and soaked through their clothes within seconds. They each leaned against a crooked gravestone, Catesby with her face turned up to the rain, her mouth open catching the drops falling from the dramatic sky above. Clarissa’s heart began to beat painfully against her rib cage as lightning shot across the sky and thunder rumbled, all the while waiting for Toby to make an appearance.
At last he pelted out from between the columns.
“Fire in the hole!” he yelled and slid to a stop in front of them. They huddled together and watched as the inside of the tomb was rocked by an explosion from below ground. A bright ball of flame lit up the inside like Santa’s grotto, rolling and twisting in anger. One of the columns collapsed and flames began to lick at the iron gate.
Clarissa turned her cheek to the heat.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
While Catesby drank her fill of tea in the bath, Toby keeping her company and regaling her with stories of his exploits—which he may well have been embellishing—Clarissa began lifting boxes from the bed in Old Joe’s bedroom.
When she’d moved in, she’d purposefully taken the back bedroom, Old Joe’s spare, as it seemed somehow disrespectful to jump into her grandfather’s shoes too quickly. She’d moved all his personal possessions in here and stored them for the time being until she had the strength to go through the items and decide whether to bin them, keep them, or send them to a charity. It had never been a chore she’d felt up to tackling before, and she wasn’t in the mood tonight either, but needs must.
She had offered Catesby her bed, and that meant that unless she wanted to sleep on the sofa—which she wouldn’t have particularly minded—she needed to create some space in Old Joe’s room and make up his bed.
She piled the boxes high in the corner next to Old Joe’s wardrobe. Seeing his possessions there, a thin sheen of dust covering many of the items, brought a tear to her eye. She dashed it away, impatient with herself.
“I’m tired,” she told herself. “That’s all. It’s been quite a day.”
And tomorrow would be another day. She badly needed to head over to Honeystick Farm and talk to Dom. Perhaps he could raise Winifred Breazeazy on Skype for her again and she could ask her outright about The Four Stone. One way or the other, she had to get to the bottom of all this in the morning.
She would find The Four Stone and she would bring Miranda Dervish to justice.
Somehow.
If only she didn’t feel so exhausted.
She rested for a moment, placing a small box on the windowsill and peering outside at Chamberlain Drive. She could see the rain falling relentlessly in the circle of light thrown from the nearest streetlamp. The dark tarmac of the road glistened, and water gushed from her guttering. Something else that sounded as though it needed fixing, if only she had the cash.
That did for her. She perched on the edge of the bed and cried quietly, hiding her face in her hands, until an odd noise caused her to look up.
A scuffling sound emanated from the box on the windowsill. Clarissa jumped to her feet and approached slowly, her eyes straining to see inside.
Skiffle scuffle. Skiffle scuffle.
Frowning, Clarissa leaned over the box, expecting to see a bird or a mouse, nothing much bigger than that or she’d have noticed it before, but there was nothing of the kind. Old Joe’s shaving mirror, a reflective glass circle on a hinged stand, wobbled to and fro.
Clarissa plucked it out of the box, and as she stared into it, Old Joe’s kindly, whiskered face appeared in front of her.
“Grandfather?” Clarissa asked.
“Yes, my darling.” His face smiled back at her, full of loving concern. “Why are you so down? You need a pick-me-up. Perhaps a little glass of something.”
Clarissa laughed, blinking back tears. “I just need… I don’t know… I just need all this to be over.”
“And it will be soon.”
“Do you think?” Clarissa asked, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
“Find The Four Stone. Gather your friends around you. Stay strong.”
“But—” A movement in the street grabbed Clarissa’s attention. Someone walking underneath the streetlight. Clarissa’s stomach churned. Not Miranda Dervish?
But no. Too large. Not pointy at all.
As Clarissa watched, the woman turned into Mrs Crouch’s gate and scurried up the path. Just her neighbour coming back from the shop.
Clarissa faced the mirror once more, but Old Joe had disappeared. “Grandfather?” she called. “Are you there?”
When he didn’t reappear, she slumped back onto the bed.
“Hmph.” Why had he chosen that moment to appear? To cheer her up? To pass on a message? What was it he’d said? She sat up and frowned, rubbing her forehead.
Find The Four Stone. Gather your friends around you.
And then Mrs Crouch had appeared.
Did Old Joe want Clarissa to talk to her neighbour?
Instinctively, Clarissa knew that to be the case.
Mrs Crouch looked out at Clarissa in surprise. Still dressed in her raincoat and wearing her outdoor shoes, a bag of shopping lay at her feet.
“Hello there, Clarissa. Is everything alright?” She peered behind her neighbour. “No Toby this evening?”
“He’s still indoors. We have a... erm… a guest.”
“I see.” Mrs Crouch hesitated, unsure whether to invite Clarissa inside or not.
Clarissa crossed her arms in front of her chest. She hadn’t bothered with a raincoat; the air was still too warm. She’d dashed down from the front bedroom and paused only long enough to pull on a pair of trainers, the kind that have Velcro fastenings rather than laces. She’d then raced down the path to intercept Mrs Crouch, trying to dodge raindrops on the way. Now, she huddled under the mantel of the front door as water ran down her face.
“You look pale,” Mrs Crouch was saying.
“It’s been a long, and absurdly difficult day,” Clarissa replied. “And I could do with some sleep, but… I think we need to have a little chat.”
Mrs Crouch regarded Clarissa with evident suspicion. Their previous ‘little chat’ hadn’t gone well, after all.
“I’m really sorry about last time. I was under some duress, but even so, it was wrong of me to attack you and … mistrust you,” Clarissa took a breath. “Things have come to light, and I don’t know the truth of what is going on… but I apologise. I really hope—”
A smile broke out on Mrs Crouch’s face. A look of pure relief. “Oh, of course. Nothing to apologise for. I understand! But look at you!” She beckoned Clarissa across the threshold. “You’re soaking! Come into the living room—”
Bark Side of the Moon: A Paranormal Animal Cozy Mystery (Spellbound Hound Magic and Mystery Book 3) Page 15
