“Really?” I asked. “How weird.”
I’d searched high and low for Gwyn but, as was generally the case, if she didn’t want to be found there was no way I was going locate her. I grabbed my coat and ventured outside.
As I always did, when I needed to think, I headed for the secluded clearing in Speckled Wood. The ground was hard beneath my feet, the frost an almost-permanent feature of the landscape at the moment. Full of pent up angst, I charged along the trail lost in my own thoughts, but about halfway to the clearing I realised I was depriving myself of nature’s blessings. I forced myself to slow down, relax my shoulders, and take note of my surroundings. Half of the trees in the wood were devoid of their summer greenery, the rest, the evergreens, seemed resplendent in their winter trimming. I inhaled the cold fresh scent of pine and found a perfect kind of bliss.
This small wood that formed part of the larger forest around it, and the great outdoors generally, tapped into the essence of me. The air was never purer than amongst these trees, my mind never clearer, my heart never stronger. Like some dancing princess in a Disney movie, I swung my arms out and trailed my fingers against the trunks of trees or caressed the cool tips of branches, pausing to study some impressive spider webs that glittered in the dappled sunlight.
By the time I reached the clearing I felt calmer, more in control. I plonked myself down on one of the wooden benches there, mindful of the cold and damp but not really caring.
I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, my face bathing in the cool rays of the sun. “Glorious benevolence, I thank thee.”
“Why? What’s she done for you now?”
I opened one eye. Gwyn stared down at me. I could never quite get used to seeing her outside. Her translucence was more noticeable out here.
“She has created,” I said. “And that is enough.”
“She sounds a bit like Florence, then,” Gwyn quipped. “Isn’t Florence the most creative person we know?”
I reluctantly opened the other eye.
“You were looking for me?” Gwyn asked.
She had heard me, then. My hands were starting to get cold. I yanked my gloves out of my pockets and pulled them on. These had been a present from Millicent, and they were made from lots of left-over double-knit wool, incorporating myriad clashing shades. Cheerful, totally non-matching and utterly bonkers.
But boy, they were warm.
I sighed. “We need to have a chat, Grandmama.” I patted the bench next to me, indicating she should sit if she could. She did so, her bottom hovering a couple of inches from the seat.
“You said you didn’t know the Cuthberts?”
“That’s correct, my dear.”
“Well, I didn’t know them either.” I fiddled with a loose strand of wool at the thumb, trying to thread it through the glove to the inside. “But now George has suggested that Delia’s murder wasn’t personal to her, that maybe someone was trying to damage the reputation of the inn.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Gwyn nodded. She wafted my hand with her own. “Don’t do that, dear, you’ll make the hole bigger.”
I stopped fiddling. “You’re right that it wouldn’t be the first time. But if it’s not The Mori in this instance, is it personal against me or personal against you, or is it just an attack on the inn?”
“Are you asking me whether I have any enemies you don’t know about, Alfhild?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“Dozens.” This time it was she who lifted her head to the sunshine. She blinked up at the sky beyond the skeletal branches over our heads. She wouldn’t feel the warmth of the rays and that made me sad. “And dozens. Where would we start?”
“What about among the witches who are gathered inside our inn at the moment?” I prompted. “Any fake friends?”
“Fake friends?”
“Like pseudo-friends. Those ones that are as nice as pie to your face and say all the right things, but bitch about you behind your back.”
“I weed that sort of people out of my life, Alfhild. I don’t have time for them.”
I nodded. Knowing Gwyn, who called a spade a spade, that was the truth.
“Those women gathered in our inn have proved their mettle in one way or another. They are women I’ve worked with, many of them on missions for the Ministry of Witches—”
I widened my eyes, hoping I’d hear more about Gwyn’s secret life, but she pressed her lips together as soon as I demonstrated my interest.
“So you trust them all?” It was a rhetorical question. I slumped forward, suddenly aware of my damp robes. My mother would have warned me I’d end up with rheumatism or some such. “If it’s not you, then it’s me, or it’s against the inn.”
“You’re discounting what a disagreeable person Delia was. You surprise me.”
“I agree with George that she wasn’t particularly pleasant, but wouldn’t you have to have an exceptionally short fuse to take such umbrage that you killed a woman for being disagreeable? Any of your friends fit that description?”
“Quite a few,” Gwyn said. I shot her a look. She held her hands up. “Nobody can ever know anybody else in every way. You of all people know that.”
“Argh!” I cried. “This is all so frustrating.”
“Don’t take on so,” Gwyn said in her infuriatingly calm way. “Leave it to the police. Your job is to run the inn and keep everyone happy.”
“Not much to ask, is it?” I grumbled.
“You wouldn’t have thought so, would you? You do tend to make a meal of it, my dear.”
I pouted. “I do my best. It would help my cause enormously if all of our guests were happy and loving to each other in the first place.”
“That’s never going to happen, Alfhild. What’s that saying? There’s none so queer as folk, and none queerer than witches.” Gwyn stood and twirled, her long skirts swirling around her. “Besides, I spent a little time with Mrs Cuthbert at dinner that first evening, and even she didn’t have a good word to say about her daughter.”
“What did she say?” I asked, curious about the relationship between the odd pair.
“That she’d tried her best, but her daughter’s behaviour was out of control. She intended to take her home, wherever that was. If I were the police, Mrs Cuthbert is definitely the one I’d be looking at as responsible for this—”
“If anybody could find her.” I held out a hand to prevent Gwyn from suddenly apparating away before I’d had a chance to ask her one more question. “What was she like?”
“Who? Mrs Cuthbert?”
“Yes. Was she as objectionable as her daughter? I never had a chance to speak to her.”
“An older version of Delia, I think. Lived for her animals. That seemed to be her main topic of conversation. How much she loved those animals. Particularly the parakeet.”
That darned parakeet.
“They didn’t strike me as being particularly close,” Gwyn said. “Was that your impression?”
I considered the pair of them. “I don’t think I ever saw them in each other’s company, if that’s what you mean?”
“Presumably you checked them in, my dear?”
But I hadn’t.
I’d met Delia out on the drive. She had referred to her mother, but the first time I’d seen her mother had been later when she’d been sitting with Phyllis, Onnalee and Sybil. “No, I didn’t,” I frowned. I needed to verify that with Charity.
I lifted my head at the sound of a branch cracking down the path. “Someone’s coming,” I said, entirely unnecessarily. Gwyn had the acute hearing of a wild animal.
“It’s your young man. I’ll make myself scarce.” She disappeared from view, but her voice lingered. “Be nice to him, Alfhild. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a grandmother like yours.”
I wanted to point out a few pertinent facts in response, but I sensed she’d fully apparated and I’d be wasting my time. I stood to greet Silvan, smoothing my damp, mossy robes down at the back.
“I t
hought I’d find you here,” he said as he walked into the clearing. He’d donned his heavy outdoor robes, so he looked more like himself. I still couldn’t quite get used to the smooth hair and clean-shaven face.
“It’s too weird,” I blurted.
“What is?”
“How you look. How you behave with your grandmama. All of it. You’re like a different person.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “I expect it is weird, but she’s my granny.”
“Does that mean you have to preserve her image of you as a child?” I was genuinely confused. “Would she not accept the man you’ve grown into?”
He didn’t quite know what to say to that. “I just want her to be happy.”
“Surely nobody can ever make anyone happy by pretending to be something they’re not.” I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but the words just came out of my mouth that way.
Silvan, being Silvan, did not take offence.
“I suppose I’ve never given her a chance. She’s proud of me, and,” he smiled gently, “the child inside likes that. He wants it desperately.”
I studied his face, this man I loved. I felt ashamed that I’d doubted him. Moved that he could confess his feelings in that way.
He held out his hand and beckoned me closer. “Come here.”
I stepped towards him, a little reluctantly, but he grasped my hand firmly and pulled me closer.
“You’re right, of course, as you so often are.” His face remained solemn.
“It’s a side of you I never knew about,” I told him. “That’s all. I shouldn’t be so judgemental.”
“There’s lots you don’t know about me,” Silvan answered, his dark eyes boring into mine. “And that’s alright. There’s lots I don’t know about you.” He prodded my chest, just above my heart, “But I know that this is true.” He lifted his finger and tapped the side of my head, “and this is strong. And more than anything, this,” he patted his own heart, “belongs to you. I know that I can trust you.”
I melted. I reached up and pulled his hair free of its neat ponytail. It fell around his shoulders, perfuming the air around us with apple-scented shampoo rather than llama dung. I mussed it up a bit more so that he looked a little wilder, although still tame by his usual Wild Man of Borneo standards.
“That’s better,” I said, albeit grudgingly.
“I always knew you had a penchant for a rougher man, Alfie.” He leaned forward and nibbled the top of my ear.
“Pfft, who says I have a penchant for you at all,” I scolded him.
He chuckled softly and crushed me against his chest.
Feeling refreshed and much calmer, I returned to the inn with Silvan a little later than anticipated. Florence had seen to the fires and lit plenty of candles in an effort to drive away the drabness of the afternoon. Judging by the hollering, whooping and general hubbub, all the tournaments were in full swing.
Zephaniah had been collating tables to show the current leaders of each game, with categories for the non-retired witches, non-retired to seventy, seventy-one to eighty, eighty-one plus, and dead. I noted that Gwyn’s name appeared near the top of the bridge table, with Phyllis at the top for poker in her eighty-one-plus category. I might have known. She and Gwyn could only have been such good friends if each was as formidable as the other.
Phyllis glanced up from her cards when she spotted Silvan and me walking in together and I swear her chin dropped down further than Marley’s ghost’s would have done. I cut my eyes at Silvan and headed off, leaving him to it, but distinctly heard Phyllis asking him why he looked like something the cat had dragged in. I tittered quietly to myself.
In the kitchen, Charity and Archibald had been helping Florence prepare afternoon tea by dressing the plates for the tea stands. Monsieur Emietter, obviously not involved in making cakes now that that duty fell entirely to Florence, had started to prepare for the dinner service by taking a nap on his chair by the range. He snored loudly while I inspected the cakes Florence had baked and iced this afternoon.
She’d opted for winter favourites; fruit cake with soft icing, ginger cake with cream cheese topping, and tiny lavender and bergamot cupcakes, piped with soft lilac buttercream, delicately topped with purple roses. She’d also assembled a full range of biscuits on some of our pretty china plates, some plain, some chocolate, and some old favourites.
I reached out a hand towards the chocolate Hob Nobs but Florence stopped me. “Ah-ah!”
“I was just tidying the plate up,” I lied.
“These aren’t for you, Miss Alf. If you’re hungry I can make you a sandwich once I’ve served tea.”
Hunger is an impossibility in my wonky inn. If Florence wasn’t feeding you up, Monsieur Emietter was. No wonder I remained as curvy as I did.
“I wanted to ask you guys …” I said, as Charity lifted a couple of the stands ready to take through to the bar, “… did any of you three check-in the Cuthberts on Monday?”
Florence shook her head. She didn’t tend to operate the reception desk; she didn’t like the computer.
“Mmm, not me,” Charity answered.
“I believe I did,” Archibald said. “It was all such a rush. We were very busy around that time.”
“We were,” I agreed. “And they were together, were they? The Cuthberts? When they checked in?”
Archibald looked at me, his face blank. “Good heavens, that’s difficult to remember.”
Rats.
“No! Wait!” Archibald lifted a finger. “I do remember. It was the younger one. The one that died. I remember now, because she made rather a song and dance about her mother being along in a moment, and did we have a lift because her mother was elderly …”
“She wanted an elevator?”
“Yes. Of course, that was before we actually had one. I offered my assistance to help her mother up the stairs, and then I was called away and I forgot all about it. I’m guessing there wasn’t a problem at the time, because I would have expected someone to come back to me about it.”
“No, no problem.” I backed away to allow them the space they needed to manoeuvre the plates off the work surface. Charity took the lead, Archibald followed, and Florence brought up the rear. Once my housekeeper’s back was turned I snuck a chocolate Hob Nob off the plate.
“I saw that, Miss Alf!” she called behind her, and I guiltily returned it.
Rotten ghosts.
George and DC Borewick had been called back to Exeter on another case. I found Elise and Ezra in The Snug with a tape measure and torch.
“Hi,” I said, popping my head around the door. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Not a problem,” said Elise. “We’re going round in circles anyway.” She collapsed onto a chair and indicated I take the bench. Ezra leaned against the wall and watched us.
“What’s up?” she asked, rummaging around in her jacket pocket.
“It’s probably something and nothing, and maybe I’ve got this all about-face,” I began, feeling a little silly, “but it has occurred to us today—”
“Us being?” Elise asked, she extracted a packet of mints and offered them to me. I took one. Slightly warm and extra strong.
“Erm, my great-grandmother and myself.” Elise exchanged a glance with Ezra. I guessed they were still a little annoyed that Gwyn hadn’t made herself available for an interview.
“Go on.”
“None of us ever saw Delia and her mother together.”
Ezra pushed himself off the wall. “Is that right?”
I shrugged. “I believe so. It hadn’t occurred to me until my great-grandmother told me that earlier.” I pointed in the direction of the bar. “Not only did we not see them at dinner time or breakfast together, but only Delia was at the check-in.”
“Is that unusual?” Elise asked.
I screwed up my face. “You know, I actually think it is. Generally we like to meet and greet our guests, and of course, it’s an additional layer of security if we see our guests face
to face.”
“So what happened this time?” Ezra wanted to know.
“We were busy,” I shrugged. “It’s as simple as that. Delia had turned up with all those animals and Archibald was trying to deal with a number of check-ins at once.”
Elise and Ezra exchanged a meaningful glance. “That’s very interesting,” Ezra said.
“Is it?” I asked. I didn’t have a clue as to whether this was useful information or not.
“It’s a theory we’ve been working on,” he added.
Curious, I leaned over the table. “Can I help in any way?”
Elise sucked on her mint for a moment, then flicked her eyes at Ezra. He gave a short single nod.
“We think we might be dealing with a shifter of some kind.”
A shifter? I’d heard of them. I’d never seen one. “Wow,” was all I could think of to say.
“We need to take a closer look at all those animals again, Alfhild,” Elise said. “Maybe we could arrange to bring them back down here, and that way we won’t be trampling all over your office.”
Bring down all those cages and baskets and crates again? The Wonky Inn Ghostly Clean-up Crew would be thrilled. “No problem,” I said.
Ezra nodded. “And we need to find that blasted parakeet.”
I helped my ghosts begin to move the animals back downstairs and then it was a matter of cleaning up all the wool and fluff and sawdust and hair and droppings that they’d left behind. Fortunately, I had the best housekeeper in the business, and she was on the case immediately.
Up and down the stairs we went, up and down, until I thought my calf muscles would explode. I took a break, but only so that I could help Charity and Archibald with the dinner service. The weird thing was that some of the animals had disappeared. The white owl was noticeably absent, along with his cage, but also the snake and the spider.
I asked Gwyn to quiz her sorority about it, imagining someone must have decided to adopt a few of the animals. If that was the case, I’d be grateful. They needed homes, and witches provide wonderful homes for their pets.
For the most part.
A Gaggle of Ghastly Grandmamas: Wonky Inn Book 9 Page 14
