The Witch's Stone

by Dawn Brown

  She sighed inwardly. It sounded so silly when he put it like that. “Yes. I ate dinner in the kitchen about half an hour earlier, and there was no poker.”

  “Are you sure? You might have just missed it.”

  “I think I would have noticed a big poker in the middle of the table,” she snapped.

  “Now, Hillary,” Bristol admonished. “I need to rule out all possibilities. Why do you suppose someone broke into the house, just to leave a fire poker for you? Do you think it was some kind of threat?”

  She remembered Willie’s malignant little eyes. “Possibly. There are some people in Culcraig who would rather I didn’t write about Anne Black. If they’d heard Caid had agreed to let me see the journals…” She shrugged.

  “I still dinnae understand the significance of the poker.”

  Neither did she, really. She lifted her gaze and met Caid’s eyes. He shrugged.

  “I think there was blood on it,” she blurted out.

  Bristol looked to Caid for confirmation.

  Caid sighed. “It might have been blood.”

  “Where’s this poker now?”

  “Right here.” Caid knelt next to the credenza and slid the door open. After a moment, he turned around, frowning. “Did you move it, Hillary?”

  “No. I haven’t seen it since last night.”

  “It’s no’ here.”

  “How can that be?” She crossed the room and bent to peer into the dark cabinet.

  Her eyes met Caid’s. He shrugged and shook his head.

  “You put the poker there last night and now it’s gone?” Bristol asked.

  She nodded. Someone had been in the house again, but when? Last night, while they slept? This morning, after Caid left? A shiver tickled her spine.

  “I must be honest,” Bristol said, hauling his hugeness off the settee. “I think ye’re probably correct, Hillary. Someone who’s taken an exception to yer book is playing a nasty prank on the both of you. I doubt there’s any real danger. Check yer windows and doors, and make sure you’ve locked up tight before going to bed. You might want to consider an alarm.”

  “What about the blood?” she asked, even though she was fairly certain what his answer would be.

  “Surely, it wasnae really blood. I think someone’s having you on.”

  “Well, thank you anyway, Inspector,” Caid said, his expression inscrutable. “Sorry to have dragged you out here for nothing.”

  Hillary ground her teeth together. Nothing? She knew what she’d seen. If that poker was some kind of sick joke, there was nothing harmless about it. Not to mention someone coming and going from this house whenever they chose.

  “No’ for nothing. And if this poker turns up, I’ll wantae have a look at it,” Bristol said.

  Caid nodded and walked him out while Hillary stayed where she was and fumed. When Caid returned, she was on the verge of exploding.

  “He seems like a nice enough man, but as a cop he’s bloody shite,” he said, flopping onto the settee and stretching out.

  Her anger evaporated at his blunt words. “I’m starting to think Agnes may have been right about him.”

  “Aye, maybe we should have our own book of accounts. Dinnae let someone breaking into my house keep you from yer tea.”

  “Oh, yeah. My lunch is still sitting on the counter.”

  “Provided our invisible intruder hasnae disappeared with that too,” he said, hauling himself up and following her down the hall.

  In the kitchen, she poured herself a glass of milk and took it and her plate to the table, while Caid started preparing something for himself.

  “The study looks good,” she said. “You got a lot done today.”

  He shrugged. “Aye, I suppose. Any luck with the journals?”

  “No. And if they’re not in her room, I have no idea where to look, next. I’m afraid I might be here for the rest of my life, looking for them.”

  “I know how you feel.”

  He sat across from her with a sandwich of his own and they ate together in silence for a few moments.

  “About last night,” she said finally.

  His eyes, dark and fathomless, met hers. “Everyone has nightmares, Hillary. You shouldnae be embarrassed.”

  “I wanted to thank you for being so decent, and to apologize for waking you.”

  “I told you, I was already up.”

  “Couldn’t you sleep?” she asked, eager to shift the conversation away from her.

  He jerked a shoulder and took a bite of the sandwich.

  “Is it the house? Are you a little overwhelmed?”

  He glared at her. “Tell me about yer dream. You sounded terrified last night.”

  “Fine, I won’t ask about your sleepless nights and you won’t ask about mine. Point taken.”

  With a grunt, he bit into his sandwich and looked away. She followed his gaze around the huge kitchen and could almost hear his heart rate pick up as the enormity of the work needing to be done settled in.

  But, wisely, she didn’t comment.

  Hillary stayed in Agnes’s room for the rest of the afternoon and, as the sky outside slid into twilight, she flopped down on the bare mattress and faced the inevitable. The journals were nowhere in this room. She’d been through every box. Cleaned the room of clutter, as she had with the study, and still nothing.

  Exhausted, she rubbed her eyes and did her best to ignore the aching in her shoulders and back. She wanted nothing more than to stand in the shower under the steaming spray, wash off the decades worth of dust and grime caked on her skin, then crawl into bed. On the upside, she was so damn tired the chances of her waking up, or waking anyone else, from a nightmare, were slim.

  As she glanced about the room, admiring her handiwork, her gaze fell on the photos and ugly ornaments on the mantel. She should put them in the boxes she’d set aside for Caid to look through. Though why she should do anything nice for him when he’d been such a miserable jerk all day was beyond her.

  Since lunch, he’d been sullen and quiet. When she’d spoken to him, his replies had rarely consisted of more than one word or a grunt.

  With a sigh, Hillary forced herself to stand, her muscles aching and stiff. She crossed the room and gathered the frames from the ledge, stacking them one on top of the other.

  “You don’t look half as moody as he is,” she muttered to the photo of Caid’s grandfather on the top. She tucked the pile under her left arm then lifted an ugly, porcelain urn with a huge pink rose painted on it.

  “As moody as who?”

  Caid’s voice made her jump and one of the photos started to slip out from under her arm. She shifted quickly and managed to grip all the frames to her chest, but lost her hold on the urn. The smooth porcelain slid from her fingers and crashed to the floor, shattering at her feet.

  “That was your fault,” she snapped and knelt down, setting the pictures next to her.

  “My fault? How’s that?”

  “Sneaking up on me when my hands were full.”

  He squatted next to her and helped gather the broken shards. “No doubt a priceless family heirloom. What’s this?” He pulled a big iron key from the wreckage.

  “It must have been inside,” she said, taking it from him.

  He caught her wrist and turned her hand in his, his gaze narrowing at the scar running diagonally from the base of her index finger to just above the wrist. She nipped at her lip, heat creeping into her face as his thumb slid between the key and her palm, and he traced the thin hard line. The contrast between the cold metal and his warm grip sent a shiver tingling over her skin.

  Please don’t ask about it. She pulled away from his grasp and squeezed her hand into a fist, her cheeks still stinging.

  “What do you think the key’s for?” she asked, trying to distract him and wishing her voice hadn’t trembled when she spoke.

  To her relief, he shrugged. “I havenae a clue. It’s is too big for any of the doors in the house.”

  “Maybe there
’s a huge family treasure,” she teased, her anxiety easing a little.

  He actually smiled. “Wouldnae that be nice?”

  Chapter Ten

  They shared a meager supper of canned soup and sandwiches. Already, Hillary missed Joan’s cooking. She tried not to think about the weeks of sandwiches and soup that lay ahead. She wasn’t much of a cook and Caid didn’t appear to be, either. At least he was better company now.

  “No luck finding the journals?” he asked, as he cleared the dishes from the table.

  She shook her head and filled the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’ll try another room tomorrow.”

  “That’s good news for me, then. You do a fine job of organizing a room before I get to it.”

  “I aim to please,” she said, setting the dishes into the suds.

  “What do you hope to find in those journals?”

  “The circumstances that motivated Anne Black’s lynching.”

  “And you think that old Roddy has the answers?”

  She handed him a rinsed bowl to dry. “According to Agnes, he did.”

  “I thought yer specialty was the witch hunts?” He set the bowl in the cupboard and took a plate from her. “I dinnae understand how Anne fits in.”

  “At the time Anne stood trial, there were a number of newspaper articles with quotes from her neighbors claiming she was a witch, that she’d cursed the villagers and they had subsequently suffered various misfortunes. Sick farm animals, fires, property damages and illness. Accusations not at all dissimilar to those made during a witch craze in the Middle Ages.”

  “But Anne wasnae accused in the Middle Ages. All this happened at the beginning of the twentieth century.”

  “I know.” She held out a handful of silverware. “Makes the case even more interesting. I would love to see what factors came together so that a community not only believed she was a witch, but felt so threatened that they were compelled to kill when the courts acquitted her.”

  He took the silver awkwardly in the dishtowel. “But wasnae it unusual for a village to accuse a woman of witchcraft in 1915?”

  She shrugged. “Unusual, but not unheard of. While it was decided that witchcraft was no longer a criminal offense in 1736, that didn’t mean everyone agreed. Many educated people still believed witchcraft existed.”

  “But in 1915?”

  “Granted, most of this sort of conflict in Britain peaked between 1850 and 1870, fizzling out by the late 1890s, but it wasn’t unusual for there to be accusations made in rural areas into the 1930s. I suspect Anne was a begging witch, not at all uncommon in the late nineteenth century.”

  “That’s guess work, though, without the journals.”

  “Educated guess work. I do have some experience with the subject matter.” She shoved a pot at him. “Dry faster, you’re slowing me down.”

  “Oops. Did I offend yer professional sensibilities? What makes you think Anne was a begging witch?"

  Hillary grinned and drained the sink. “Do you really want to hear this?”

  “I’m too tired to write anymore tonight.” He shrugged as he filled the kettle. “And there’s no telly.”

  “How could I refuse such a flattering request?”

  “Ye’re too bloody sensitive.”

  “No doubt.” But she liked the easy banter, the quiet after dinner conversation. They sat at the table and waited for the water to boil.

  “So, what’s a begging witch?”

  “A begging witch uses the threat of bewitchment as a means of survival. The villagers would have given Anne food and lodging to keep her from cursing them.”

  “Nice work if you can get it.”

  “It was a fine line, though. She had to convince people of her powers without actually admitting to being a witch.”

  The shrill whistle from the kettle pierced the quiet. Caid stood and went to the counter.

  “So a begging witch had to watch her step or wind up like Anne?”

  His back was to her as he took down two cups from the cupboard. He had a well-formed body, visible despite the loose sweater and jeans. Wide shoulders above narrow hips and a great butt.

  “Well?”

  What had he asked? Hillary shook her head. “Usually, a suspected witch fell prey to various forms of harassment. Being dragged from her home by a mob of angry men and murdered was a fairly extreme reaction. You know, Agnes would have been a strong contender for accusation. Back in the Middle Ages, she would have been a scold. An old woman, usually poor and reduced to begging, prone to cursing people who made her unhappy. Women like this were usually first to be accused in a witch-hunt. If a hunt hit the level of a craze, it became a free-for-all as far as accusations went. There were villages in Germany with only one woman left alive after a craze.”

  “Good God, no wonder you have nightmares,” he teased, those ocean blue eyes lit with warmth. “And while Agnes might have been known to give her neighbors a telling off, she wasnae quite reduced to begging.”

  “That’s true, but I think she was worse off than you realize. I mean aside from gouging me to see the journals and--I’m guessing here--not leaving you a penny besides the house, I think she was selling off her furnishings. The rug in her bedroom is missing.”

  He sat up straight, his expression turned serious. “I thought you didnae get past the front door the first time you were here.”

  “I didn’t.” The image of Agnes in a heap on the stairs flashed through Hillary’s brain before she could stop it and she suppressed a shiver. “But while I was in her room today, I noticed the discoloration of the wood on the floor. For about two feet from the wall, all the way around the room, the floor is faded and filthy. Past a clearly visible line, the floor is still dirty, but not nearly as bad.”

  “You may be right,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “I wonder what else she sold. Maybe yer journals.”

  “Not funny. Besides, I’d like to think she’d have let me make an offer.”

  “Unless she did it long before she spoke to you. When you contacted her, maybe she let you believe she had them, when her plan all along was to have you come here and search for something that she no longer owned--paying her for the privilege, no less.”

  “She contacted me,” Hillary said, doing her best to ignore the sick feeling his suggestion caused. “She read one of my books and thought I might like to read her journals.”

  “Well, then I suppose it’s a good thing for Agnes that they dinnae have witch-hunts anymore.”

  “But she was the victim of a witch-hunt.” Hillary drained her cup. “When your father tried to have her proven incompetent.”

  “No’ quite the same.”

  “Actually, the situations are quite similar. A strange woman with few friends to defend her, your father was in a position of power and authority in comparison. He used her reputation as eccentric and strange and mostly just old to take advantage of her few resources and have her removed from her home and community.”

  Pity welled in Hillary at the thought. After all, she knew first hand what it felt like to be the victim of a witch-hunt. No, she hadn’t been burned or hanged. She’d simply lost everything that mattered to her, leaving her standing alone in the smoldering ruin of her life.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re here aren’t you? Free?

  She’d only spent two days in a jail cell before her lawyer arranged her bail, but it was long enough. Long enough to bargain her life away in tearful prayers if she could just get out of that mess.

  “But he failed.” Caid’s voice brought her back to the present. “I wonder if my father knew she was selling things from the house. He would have been angry. As far as he’s concerned, this place is his.”

  “He had no idea you could inherit instead of him?”

  “Not until the solicitor insisted I be here when he read the will.” Caid’s straight brows drew together in a frown. “I hadnae seen her in more than twenty years. I doubt the possibility even entered his mind. She mu
st have hated him.”

  Hillary thought of what Joan had said about Agnes complaining of the way Caid’s parents treated him. Maybe Agnes had had a soft spot for him. “She read your books. Or at least she had copies of them.”

  A semi-smile touched his lips. “Did you finish reading my book?”

  “Almost. I hesitate to tell you this for fear of feeding what is clearly a monstrous ego, but I pocketed Agnes’s copy of your second book.”

  He leaned forward, grinning. “My number one fan.”

  “You forget I know you personally. I could never be your number one fan.”

  He laughed, unperturbed by the insult.

  “Besides,” she added, “I think that title goes to Joan.”

  “No’ since I kissed you. She was well pissed at me that night.”

  Hillary’s cheeks burned with the memory of his lips on hers, the heat that had surged through her body, and the way she had eagerly responded. She turned her attention to the stone floor. Caid cleared his throat and when she looked up again, he stared down at the table, tracing a thin crack in the wood with his fingertip.

  When he lifted his gaze to hers, all humor was gone. “When you found Agnes, did it look like an accident? Did it look like she’d fallen down the stairs?”

  “I…um…I,” she stuttered, trying to push back the picture of the bloated, twisted body in her head. And the smell. The rancid odor of rotting flesh that had stayed with her even days later. “I couldn’t tell. I’ve never seen someone dead from a fall down the stairs.”

  “But when you first saw her is that what you thought? That she must have fallen down the stairs?”

  She searched for the right words, trying to skip over her less-than-stalwart reaction. “I didn’t really look at her for long.” Ah, the hell with it. “The truth is I opened the door, saw her--smelled her--and then I went right back outside and threw up.”

  “Sorry, I didnae mean to push.”

  “It doesn’t matter, just not my finest hour. Why do you want to know?”

  “I started thinking about what you said about my father trying to have her put in a home and I wondered just how far he would have gone to get her out. Especially if he knew she was selling things from the house.”