A Little Bit Witchy (A Riddler's Edge Cozy Mystery #1)

by A. A. Albright

  He smirked and looked at Bathsheba. ‘Ask the old lady. She knows all about Vlad’s Boys.’ He reached across to another table and threw a menu at me. ‘Now, either order something or go into the next carriage, because these seats fill up fast.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Whoever does the hiring for the rail service should be taken out and shot. I’ll have a red smoothie, too.’

  He snorted. ‘You don’t want one of those.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Bathsheba whispered. ‘It’s got an awful lot of iron in it. For senior citizens, only. It’ll give you a tummy ache, dear.’

  ‘Oh.’ I looked over the menu. I wasn’t used to eating this early, and would probably only get a coffee, but I was curious to see what was on offer. And maybe a very small part of me wanted to make him wait, too. The menu seemed to be divided into three sections. The first was titled: Standard. The second was titled: Special Diets. The third was titled: Vegan.

  The standard menu was fairly, well, standard. I could get a toasted cheese sandwich, a croissant, some porridge or a full Irish breakfast. I flicked through to the vegan menu. There was a toasted vegan-cheese sandwich, a vegan croissant, porridge with a choice of soy, almond or oat milk, or a vegan Irish Breakfast.

  The special diets menu only had two items. There was the red smoothie, or something called a Special Irish Breakfast. According to the menu, it was served extra rare.

  I closed the menu and handed it back to him. ‘I’ll just have a coffee.’

  Gunnar grunted, then walked off into the kitchen area.

  As he walked away, Bathsheba turned to me. ‘He’s a troubled young man. You’ll find out all about him and his ilk if you decide to stay in town.’

  I was going to ask her more when he returned with our drinks. Bathsheba’s smoothie looked like it was bursting with berries, but she was probably right about the iron. It had a metallic smell that turned my stomach. Perhaps it was turning her stomach, too, because she had yet to touch a drop.

  ‘Not to your taste?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’ll have it in a minute,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to eat when it’s dark.’

  Seeing as I was still half-asleep, I went ahead and downed my coffee. I’d just finished when the door to the next carriage opened, and a couple of dozen people milled through. ‘I’ll move next door for a while,’ I said. ‘So someone else can have my seat.’

  I couldn’t be sure but I think she smiled, somewhere beneath the scarf, hat and glasses. ‘You go on, my dear. Enjoy the journey.’

  I brought my belongings into the next carriage. There was a shelving area close to the door, and I stowed my suitcase there while I looked around. There were plenty of seats empty, but I couldn’t be sure if they were only temporarily vacated, while their occupiers were grabbing breakfast.

  In one of the empty seats, about half way down the aisle, a guy gave me a grin that made my knees turn to jelly. He sat with his legs wide apart, patted the seat next to him and said, ‘You can sit next to me. I promise I won’t bite, darlin’ – unless you want me to.’

  Oh dear. I really hoped there were other options. Yes, I found him devastatingly attractive, but I wasn’t altogether sure why. He was attractive in a way that had never turned me on before. He was long-haired and skinny, which just didn’t do it for me. He looked like he loved himself, too, which definitely didn’t do it for me. And also – just a minor point – there was a woman sitting across from him who glared at him and hissed, ‘What are you doing, Jasper? You said I was your forever girlfriend!’

  I was just about to go and hide in the loo, when a female voice called out, ‘You can sit here!’

  I looked in the direction of the voice. A tall woman was standing up at the back of the train. She had braided, dark hair, and she appeared to be wearing … I squinted, wondering if all of those eye tests had been wrong after all. The woman definitely seemed to be wearing what I thought she was – some sort of jumpsuit, with a silver breastplate on top.

  But hey, what did I know? I was a twenty-nine year old who wore flat boots every day, and I’d worn the same style of jeans since I was fifteen. I hadn’t left my fashion sense behind – I’d never had one in the first place. Silver breastplates could be the latest thing.

  I shuffled along the centre aisle, glancing through the windows as I walked. It was still dark outside, and there were plumes of smoke, rising all around the exterior of the train. Maybe this thing really was as old as it looked. I could just picture the engine room right now – some poor guy shovelling coal like crazy, wearing a flat cap and a red neckerchief.

  When I reached the seat I sank into it, smiling gratefully at the woman. ‘Thanks so much,’ I said. ‘This train is a lot busier than I thought it would be, considering it’s going to a town I only heard of last Friday.’

  She smiled at me. ‘I know. I keep saying they need an extra carriage, but no one ever listens to me. I’m Gretel, by the way.’ She extended a hand.

  ‘I’m Ash,’ I said, shaking her hand and glancing at the two seats opposite.

  Each seating area in the carriage was arranged like a booth, with two long seats facing one another and a table in between. There were two guys across from us. One was a teenager, with short blond hair. He was slurping a carton of chocolate soymilk and reading a comic. He gave me a brief wave, then returned his attention to his comic.

  The other guy … well, I had no idea what he looked like, because he was wearing the exact same get-up as Bathsheba had been. Sure, his glasses were a different style, and his scarf, hat and gloves were woollen, but just as with Bathsheba, I couldn’t see an inch of his skin.

  I looked at the woman again. She wasn’t just tall. She was practically Amazonian. She seemed to be leafing casually through a magazine, but there was something alert about her. Every few seconds, I could have sworn I saw her eyes dart to the window.

  I pulled my e-reader from my bag and turned it on. I had some good books on there. Surely one of them would be exciting enough to take my mind off the fact that this whole morning was a little bit odd. I opened up a fantasy novel I’d been reading, and tried to concentrate on the words. But all the while, the events of the last few days were going through my mind. My special notebook. My lunch with Arnold. And now this train.

  I’d long grown used to odd. My life had been filled with it, after all. But usually I had people telling me that I was the strange one, that I was seeing weirdness where it simply didn’t exist. Since my meeting with Arnold, though, I’d started to wonder.

  I had done an internet search on the Daily Riddler. There wasn’t a single mention of it online. I did find the town of Riddler’s Edge, though. Apparently it had a population of two hundred and three. And yet there was a busy train making its way there, each and every day.

  When I was a kid and I was trying not to notice odd things happening around me, I used to play an old song over and over in my head. You probably know the one: Row, Row Row Your Boat.

  So I sang it now, inside my mind, hoping it would calm me down the same way it had back then. I’d gotten as far as the Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily line, when the covered-up man opposite me began to sing in his sleep. His voice was low and even as he sang, ‘Life is but a dream.’

  My eyes darted towards him. Judging by the way he was sitting, slumped in the seat, it was fairly safe to assume he was sleeping. But was he? I glanced at Gretel.

  ‘You okay?’ she asked.

  I bit my lip. ‘This might sound strange,’ I whispered, shuffling closer to her. ‘But … did I just sing out loud?’

  Her brow furrowed. ‘No.’ She nodded at the covered-up man. ‘He just sang out loud. He does that sometimes, in his sleep.’

  ‘In his sleep? Are you a couple?’

  A burst of laughter escaped her. ‘Me? And Dylan Quinn? As if! No, I’ve just been on the train with him before, that’s all.’ She glanced out the window. Daylight was beginning to creep its way through the clouds. Her alert expression increased, and she gave
me a tight smile and turned back to her magazine.

  I looked back down at my e-reader, trying to find some other way to calm down. I mean, so what if that man in black just happened to finish off a song that I was only singing in my mind? It was probably just a weird coincidence. Right?

  The train stopped a few times; no one got off but three more people got on. As the morning wore on and the light grew stronger, Gretel suddenly sat up and tapped the man she’d called Dylan on the arm.

  ‘Wake up, dummy,’ she said. ‘It’s light out.’

  He jerked in his seat, then sat up. After a moment or two, he pulled off his glasses, his hat, his scarf and his gloves. And while he took it all off, I … well, I stared.

  I mentioned that my attraction to that long-haired guy in the carriage was bizarre, considering he was not my type – and clearly a creep. But this man … I gulped. This man was definitely my type. As he pulled off his hooded sweater, I could see just how closely the T-shirt he wore beneath was moulded to his torso. His hair was as black as coal, and his eyes were very nearly black, too. His lips were so deeply coloured that I wondered if he was wearing make-up.

  He wiped his eyes, looked my way, and gave me a little grunt that I guess could have been a greeting. Then he folded his arms and slumped back down.

  ‘Do not go back to sleep, Dylan,’ Gretel said, tapping him on the arm again.

  ‘Oh, for the goddess’s sake!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why shouldn’t I go back to sleep? I’m tired after all that prodding and poking at the hospital.’

  Gretel’s eyes narrowed, and she nudged her head in my direction while she stared at Dylan. ‘This is the new reporter,’ she said, emphasising every single word. ‘You know – Arnold’s latest.’

  Dylan’s eyes shot open and he looked me up and down. I watched a vein pulse in his neck, and a hungry look entered his eyes. Oh my.

  ‘Hi. It’s em … it’s nice to meet you,’ he said, licking his lips.

  ‘And this,’ said Gretel to me, ‘is Detective Dylan Quinn. He works out of Riddler’s Edge garda station. And right now, he’s about to head off to the dining car and grab himself a nice smoothie. Aren’t you, Dylan?’

  His eyes didn’t leave my face, but he stood up and shuffled out past the comic-reading kid. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, I think I really need my smoothie.’

  As soon as he was gone, Gretel’s whole demeanour relaxed. ‘Sorry about him,’ she said. ‘He’s not too keen on having to get the early morning train.’ She seemed about to say more, when we heard the detective’s voice booming from the dining car.

  ‘Hurry it up, will you Gunnar?’ he was barking.

  Gretel stood up. ‘Actually, you know what? I think I’ll just go and get myself something, too.’

  As I watched her walk away, I noticed that she had a truncheon hanging off her belt. I peered more closely. It was definitely a truncheon. Maybe she was a garda, too. The train lurched, and she tripped over. Over what, I wasn’t sure. It seemed like she’d fallen over her own feet.

  As she’d fallen, though, the truncheon had flown off her belt. It bounced along the floor of the carriage, and landed at my feet. I picked it up and was about to bring it over to her, when I noticed it wasn’t as similar to a garda truncheon as I’d first thought. It had more of a taper to it. My hand tingled, and the truncheon began to waver in front of my eyes. I closed my lids, and opened them again. The truncheon wasn’t wavering, not exactly. It was just doing that thing that objects seemed to do when I suffered one of my migraines – it was as if I was looking at it through a kaleidoscope.

  ‘Ash?’ Gretel was standing beside me, reaching out for her truncheon. ‘Are you all right?’

  I handed it back to her. ‘Yeah. Yeah, sorry. Just spaced out for a second. Don’t mind me.’

  She looked at me for a moment more, but the detective’s voice bellowed out of the dining car again, so she turned tail and ran.

  I was just about to sit back and pretend to read my book again, when I heard a blood-curdling scream, followed by someone crying out, ‘She’s dead! Someone’s poisoned Bathsheba Brookes!’

  4. There Has Most Definitely Not Been a Murder on the Riddler’s Express

  I sat up, staring in the direction of the scream. The Amazonian woman was barging through the door into the dining carriage, so I did what any nosey reporter would – I leapt out of my seat and followed.

  The dining carriage was deathly quiet, while people stared down at Bathsheba’s body. Dylan Quinn and Gretel were closest, and they both seemed to be examining the body whilst the others kept a respectful distance. It made sense for Dylan to be there, seeing as Gretel had told me he was a detective. But what about Gretel? I was sure her truncheon wasn’t garda issue.

  I edged my way closer. The old lady’s body was covered with a rash, and boils were everywhere. She looked like she’d been exposed to something toxic. She’d removed her sunglasses and gloves at some point, and done so willingly, because they were sitting neatly on top of the table where she and I had been sitting.

  ‘Has back-up been called?’ I asked, sinking to my knees to take a closer look. I’d seen plenty of poisonings during my time at the Daily Dubliner, but none where the body looked like this. But the person who shouted out that Bathsheba had been poisoned sounded certain of the fact. ‘Her coffee flask will need to be tested,’ I said. ‘And she had something called a red smoothie to drink, so that’ll need to be looked into, too.’

  Gretel looked at Dylan, her perfect brows lifted in question. He let out a low growl of irritation. ‘Deal with her,’ he said to Gretel.

  Gretel stood up and dropped something she was holding – a long, black gadget with a green flashing light. As she stooped to pick it up, the detective gave her a tense smile and handed it to her.

  Gretel took it quickly, then shoved it into a pocket and out of sight. Seeing as she had been happily brandishing it a moment ago, it seemed like she was hiding it from me rather than the others in the carriage. But why?

  She cleared her throat and looked pointedly at me. ‘Civilians need to keep away from the body,’ she said. ‘Nothing personal, Ash. You should go back to your seat. We’ll be pulling into the station in a few minutes.’

  I looked around the carriage. ‘Why should I go back to my seat? Nobody else is.’

  ‘They are.’ Gretel pushed open the door into the adjoining carriage. ‘See.’ She nodded towards an old woman, sitting in a seat at the centre of the carriage, happily knitting away as though nothing was happening. ‘Hi Norma! Lovely morning, isn’t it?’ Gretel gave the woman a wave.

  Norma looked up from her knitting. ‘Beautiful. Another dead one, dearie?’

  Gretel shrugged her shoulders. ‘Probably just an allergic reaction, same as last time.’

  Norma nodded, seeming entirely satisfied with that explanation. ‘Isn’t it always?’ she said, and turned her attention back to the green scarf she was crafting.

  I eyed Gretel warily. ‘What are you? An undercover garda or something?’

  ‘Or something,’ she said. ‘Just sit down and enjoy the rest of the journey. Detective Quinn has everything in hand.’

  I stood on my tiptoes, peering over her shoulder. The detective looked so different than when he first awoke. Now, he was alert and organised. He held a notebook open in his hands, and was questioning the people in the dining carriage. But wait one cotton picking minute! There was a newcomer in there, a stout man on his knees beside Bathsheba’s body. He must be a doctor, I supposed. And he wasn’t the only sudden arrival. There were three other newcomers, all wearing the same strange get-up as Gretel.

  I was just about to ask what the hell was going on, when the train lurched to a stop, knocking me against the door, the back of my head hitting it with a thud as I fell. But I wasn’t about to let a case of possible concussion stop me. I stood up, rubbing my head and pointing into the dining carriage. ‘When did they get on?’ I asked. ‘How did they get on?’

  Gretel gave me an inno
cent shrug. ‘Just now, of course. The second the train stopped. And seeing as we’ve pulled into the station, you’re probably okay to go.’ She glanced back at Detective Quinn. ‘She and Norma can head off now, can’t they, Dylan?’

  He glanced up at me, then looked away. ‘Yeah, get them out of here. Everyone else stays on.’

  I stood my ground. ‘Look,’ I said, ignoring the dizziness that had come on after the knock to the head. ‘I spoke with Bathsheba when I first got on the train. Surely someone ought to interview me, at least.’

  ‘All in good time.’ Gretel forced a smile while she reached into the luggage area and pulled out my suitcase. ‘They’ll be expecting you at the Vander Inn.’ She placed my case in my hands, and slung my laptop bag over my shoulder, while I stood there, mutely. ‘Well, have a lovely stay in Riddler’s Edge.’

  5. The Vander Inn

  I stood on the platform, watching Norma stride across a bridge that stretched above the tracks. She was wearing her work-in-progress, knitting the green scarf and using it to keep warm at the same time. She was humming happily as she knitted, as if gruesome death was an everyday occurrence here in Riddler’s Edge. Although, given the conversation she’d had with Gretel, maybe it was. What was it Norma had said? ‘Another dead one, dearie?’

  The station itself was yet another oddity in an oddity-filled morning. It was just as ancient as the train, although not nearly as well-kept. There was an empty ticket booth, a toilet I wouldn’t pee in if you paid me, and a bench outside covered by a rotten wooden awning. Even though the morning was dead still, every part of the building creaked.

  I looked down at Arnold’s instructions:

  A room has been reserved for you at the Vander Inn, directly across from the train station at Riddler’s Edge. Cross the railway bridge and turn right. You can’t miss it.

  Gretel had mentioned the place I was to be staying. Even Bathsheba had known who I was when I boarded the train. No doubt the people at the Vander Inn would know my blood type, dress size and favourite colour.