by Morgana Best
All three aunts nodded. “We were trying to figure that out too,” Aunt Agnes said. “Obviously, the perpetrator saw you heading for the cottage.”
“But I did so at vampire speed,” I pointed out.
“How far out of your cottage were you when you took off at vampire speed?” Aunt Agnes asked me.
I thought back. “I snuck out the front door and out the front gate. Yes, it was only when I was out the front gate that I took off at vampire speed.”
“Then that’s no help at all,” Agnes said.
Aunt Maude looked up in surprise. “How so, Agnes?”
“I was thinking that if Valkyrie had come out of her cottage at vampire speed and continued that way until she got to the Game of Thrones cottage, then whoever was in Euphemia’s cottage must have been a vampire, because a normal person would have been unable to see her.”
Dorothy nodded slowly. “Yes, that occurred to me too.”
“So we’re none the wiser,” I lamented, reaching over to pat Cary.
The aunts nodded. “After breakfast, we will go over and have a look around,” Agnes said. “We can’t look as though we’ve been there, though, or the insurance investigator won’t like it.”
I agreed. “With any luck, whoever it was didn’t make off with all the evidence. Like I said last night, they couldn’t have been there long.”
Aunt Agnes nodded slowly. “You know, the more I think about it, the more I think it was a vampire,” she said. “You said there wasn’t much time between the time you saw the intruder outside the cottage, and the time you actually went to the cottage. Still, the intruder had time to see you, plan their attack, and light a candle. I’m thinking someone probably had to have vampire speed to do that.”
Aunt Dorothy waved one hand in the air for silence, dropping her piece of toast on the table as she did so. She grunted in disgust and put it back on her plate.
Aunt Maude turned to her. “Oh, there’s peanut butter and Vegemite on the table.”
“Calm your farm, Maude,” Dorothy said. “I’ll clean it up.”
Maude rolled her eyes. “How anyone can put peanut butter and Vegemite on the same piece of toast is beyond me.”
“Now I forgot what I was going to say, and it was important,” Dorothy said.
“It couldn’t have been too important if you forgot it,” Maude countered.
Aunt Dorothy folded her arms over her chest. “It really annoys me when people say things like that. People can forget important things just as easily as they can forget non-important things.”
“Did you remember what you were going to say?” I asked Dorothy to stop the bickering.
Dorothy looked up at the ceiling for a moment before answering. “Yes, thank goodness, I do, as a matter of fact. All our assumptions about timing are based on the fact that you saw the shadowy figure outside the cottage. But what if the intruder had already spent some time at the cottage and you saw them leaving rather than going to the cottage?”
“I don’t understand,” I said, thoroughly confused.
“I mean, what if the intruder had been there for some time and then you saw them leaving. They saw you watching them and then decided to set a trap for you.”
“I doubt they would have seen me,” I said. “It was dark.”
“But you saw them, didn’t you!” Dorothy said.
I nodded slowly. “Yes, you do have a point.”
I noticed Aunt Agnes and Aunt Maude exchanging glances and I could see they didn’t agree with Dorothy.
“We might know more when we have a look around,” I said in the hope of pre-empting a fresh round of bickering.
We all finished our breakfast hurriedly and walked over to the cottage. “Don’t ruin any evidence,” Aunt Agnes cautioned. “Valkyrie, show us the very point you emerged from the bushes.”
I led them over to the spot. “It was dark, but I was pretty sure it was here.”
“Make doubly sure,” Aunt Agnes said. “If we know where you were, then we will have a better idea where the intruder could have been, and maybe they left some evidence around. Otherwise, it’s too wide an area to pinpoint anything.”
I pointed to some wattle bushes. “I’m pretty sure I came out there, and I walked over to the cottage directly ahead. I had bare feet. I remember something stuck into the ball of my foot hard and hurt my foot.”
“There are no stones around here,” Maude said.
Aunt Agnes agreed. “Find out what you stepped on, because it might have been something the intruder dropped.”
“Okay, well, I came out here as far as I can tell, and I headed straight for the gate which was open,” I said, motioning with my arm. It was hen I noticed the little stones. “That’s when I stepped on those pebbles.” I pointed.
Aunt Agnes walked past me and picked one up. “This is not a pebble.”
“What is it?” I asked.
The aunts all looked at each other and shrugged.
“Look, there are a few more,” I said, pointing to several of the pretty pebbles or whatever they were.
Aunt Agnes bent down and picked them up. “This might be nothing, but it could be important,” she said, pocketing them all. “Let’s look through the cottage.”
“Hang on a moment. I’ll take a photo of one,” I said.
Aunt Agnes held out her hand, palm upwards, with the pebbles in it. “Why do you want to take a photo, Valkyrie? We have several pebbles. It’s not as if we’ll lose them.”
“I’m going to do a reverse image search on the Internet,” I told her. “Just hold one in your palm so I can get a decent photo of it.”
She did as I asked, and I took a close-up photo on my phone. The others went into the cottage. Aunt Agnes looked over her shoulder at me. “Valkyrie, go back to the manor now and rest.”
I held up my hand. “Just give me a moment. I’ve gotta find out what these things are.”
She disappeared into the cottage. I thought I would have trouble with the reverse image search, but I got an instant hit.
A castor bean.
I shrugged and walked back to the manor.
“Did you find out what it was?” Aunt Agnes asked me when she arrived back from the cottage.
“Yes, it’s just a castor bean,” I told her.
Maude and Agnes gasped, while Dorothy said, “Maybe, Gorgona had constipation. That’s why she was always so cranky.”
“No!” Aunt Agnes exclaimed. “The most deadly poison in the world is ricin. It’s made from castor beans.”
“But we found actual whole castor beans, not ricin,” I said. “Wouldn’t ricin have to be made in a lab or something?”
When the aunts shot me blank looks, I said, “Don’t worry, I’ll google it.”
Once more, it didn’t take me long to find the information. “You’ll never believe this!” I said. “Like Aunt Agnes said, ricin is a deadly poison, and there are instructions for making it online.”
“So, someone simply had to find and copy the instructions online?” Agnes asked me.
I shook my head. “No, there’s also an article by an academic that says the online instructions are inaccurate.”
Aunt Agnes opened her mouth, but I pushed on. “But he says that the beans themselves are deadly if someone chews them and eats them.”
Aunt Agnes held out the beans in her hand and poked them with one finger. “But why would anyone chew one up and eat it?” she asked. “Are you sure they have to be chewed, Valkyrie? Maybe we should go back and search the cottage more thoroughly.”
I shook my head. “No, the beans have to be split open, and that’s what I’m trying to say.”
We all traipsed back to the cottage at Aunt Agnes’s urging. “What are we looking for exactly?” Maude asked.
I looked past her at the coffee machine. “There! Her drip filter coffee!” I said, and then I pointed to the coffee grinder next to it. “Gorgona loved her coffee!”
We all hurried over to the grinder. Aunt Agnes took a
piece of baking paper and spread it over the kitchen table. “Is everyone still wearing their gloves?”
We all nodded. “Is it safe to breathe it in?” Aunt Maude asked. “Maybe I should take Cary outside.” Without waiting for a response, she opened the front door and stood just outside, clutching Cary to her.
“There are castor beans in her coffee grinder!” I exclaimed. “Look at them! But wouldn’t it make her coffee taste weird? Surely, she would have noticed something amiss with her coffee.”
Aunt Agnes pushed some of the beans around with a gloved finger. “It looks as though there are more castor beans than coffee beans in here.”
Aunt Dorothy picked up a large bottle of syrup. “Remember, Gorgona had a sweet tooth? She must have put a lot of this caramel syrup into her coffee. This would have disguised the flavour of anything, even the coffee.”
“Then do we tell the police?” I asked Aunt Agnes.
She tapped her head. “I’m wondering how we can tell them that we discovered this without admitting we were snooping.”
“Maybe I should call the police and say I stepped on something and put it in my pocket in case it was important. I could say I forgot about it until this morning when I pulled it out of my pocket and then did a reverse Google search and found it was a castor bean.” I said that all in one breath.
Aunt Agnes shrugged. “Why not! The detectives can take it or leave it. If they do, they will realise Gorgona’s death was not an accident. Let’s give it a great deal of thought first, though. We had better be certain we’ve covered our tracks. And now we have to get ready for the funeral.”
I tapped myself on the side of the head. “The funeral! I’d forgotten all about it.”
Chapter 15
We arrived at the cemetery for the funeral. The place seemed deserted. “I wonder where the graveside is?” Aunt Maude said.
“I’ll pop into the office and ask,” Aunt Agnes said. Thankfully, she had parked directly outside the office.
“Follow me,” she said when she came out moments later.
We walked up a rise, and at the top, I could see the funeral director consultant, who at once hurried up the short hill to greet us. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, tottering on her heels. “I’ll keep out of your way, but should you need anything, just wave to me. I’m here to help, but I won’t get in your way. This is your funeral.”
“To the contrary, it’s Euphemia Jones’s funeral,” Dorothy said in an angry tone.
Agnes took her by the arm and guided her down the hill to the gravesite. Jezabeth and Hemlock were already there, standing beside a coffin raised on a mechanical structure quite high off the ground. We walked up to them. Jezabeth didn’t acknowledge us, but Hemlock walked over and thrust a piece of paper into Aunt Agnes’s hands.
“What’s this?” Aunt Agnes said.
“It’s an invoice for the flowers and the fireworks,” Hemlock said. “You need to reimburse me, Agnes.”
Aunt Agnes arched one eyebrow. “You expect me to pay for this?”
“Of course not!” Hemlock snapped. “Grannie can pay for it. Didn’t you get money out of her account to pay for the funeral?”
Aunt Agnes crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t pay for this, Hemlock. Legally, I can only pay the funeral directors’ bill and the cemetery bill.”
Hemlock narrowed her eyes. “Well, someone’s gotta pay for it!”
“It seems you already have,” Aunt Maude said.
Hemlock pouted. “You don’t need to make a big deal out of this and cause all this trouble at Grannie’s funeral. We need to give Grannie a good send-off. She was a vampire, after all.” She said the latter in hushed tones and looked around herself as she spoke.
“Well then, it was you and your mother who decided what to have for the service, or lack thereof,” Aunt Agnes said.
Hemlock stormed off. She ran over and clutched her mother’s arm. Jezabeth spoke with Hemlock and then walked over to us.
“Why aren’t you paying for the flowers and the fireworks?” she asked through tight lips.
Aunt Agnes sighed. “Jezabeth, I’ve already explained to your daughter that the estate can only pay for the funeral director’s costs and the cemetery costs. You have to pay for anything else. You know, you could have arranged for the funeral director to bill you for some flowers, and then the estate could have paid for them.”
I stared at the flowers. They seemed familiar. I wondered if they had been picked from the gardens at Mugwort Manor. “Can I see that invoice?” I asked Aunt Agnes.
I had suspected something was amiss, and I was right. The receipt was from a florist, all right, but it appeared to have been for fifteen dollars, and a zero had been added in a different coloured pen. Also, the word ‘fireworks’ was written underneath in different handwriting. I looked up at Hemlock. “I didn’t know florists sold fireworks.”
“You’re a troublemaker!” she yelled at me. She said some more words which I could not repeat.
“Hush, Hemlock,” her mother said. “Behave yourself for once.”
Hemlock narrowed her eyes and for a minute I thought there would be a terrible scene, but Jezabeth walked back towards the coffin.
“I’m going to say a few words,”Jezabeth said, “and then anyone else can feel free to speak after I do. My mother was an unpleasant woman. Still, she had her good points. I hadn’t seen her in decades, but I’m sorry she’s gone. If there hadn’t been all these false accusations that she was murdered, then I would have been able to grieve her properly. Unfortunately, all these allegations about murder have stopped me from being able to grieve my own mother.” After she finished speaking, she shot Agnes a vicious look.
Aunt Agnes stepped forward. She spoke eloquently about Gorgona, and while she didn’t exactly say anything nice about her, she didn’t say anything horrid, either. I was surprised she was able to speak for so long without saying anything at all, really.
“Would you like to say something now?” Jezabeth asked Hemlock.
“Yes, I’m going to do an interpretive dance,” she said, “and then I will let off the fireworks.”
“Fireworks are thoroughly illegal,” Aunt Maude told her. “You won’t be allowed to light any fireworks. You should know that.”
Hemlock merely shot her a nasty look. She had a little amplifier that she plugged into her iPhone. I hadn’t seen one like it before. She turned it on and turned up the volume. To me, the music sounded something like the Arabian nights with overtones of death metal music.
Hemlock at once went into what she had called an interpretive dance, but to me looked more like a drunken belly dance gone wrong. She swung this way and that way, moving her hands out to the sides like a venomous snake striking, and then swinging her hands back again. I hadn’t realised she had gymnastic abilities, and if she hadn’t been heavily under the influence of illegal substances, the dance might have looked quite good. It was only when she began to take off her clothes that I became alarmed.
“Is she taking off her clothes?” Aunt Dorothy asked, leaning forward to get a better look.
Aunt Agnes adjusted her glasses and then gave up and looked over the top of them. “I do believe she is. Oh my goodness, that tattoo must have been painful. I didn’t know you could get them there.”
I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I stood there, unable to look away from Hemlock doing an interpretive dance a.k.a. a strip.
I noticed the funeral consultant standing in the background, her mouth hanging open in shock. After a while, she hurried over to Jezabeth and whispered in her ear. Jezabeth must not have said anything to her liking, because she in turn hurried over to Agnes. “It’s illegal to take one’s clothes off in public,” she said, clearly horrified.
“I’m afraid I have no control over Hemlock,” Agnes said. “Perhaps you should speak to her mother again.”
The poor woman merely hurried away.
Hemlock stopped gyrating and said, “And now for the nex
t performance.”
Aunt Agnes said, “I think you had better put your clothes back on in a hurry, Hemlock. I think the funeral consultant lady might be calling the police.”
“Not the cops again!” Hemlock said, making me wonder what she meant. At any rate, she did put her clothes back on. We all breathed a sigh of relief.
“And now for the next part,” Hemlock proclaimed loudly. “We have to give Grannie a proper send off. I liked Grannie. It was a pity she had to die.” She pulled something out of her handbag. She lit it and threw it into the empty grave.
“Oh no,” said Aunt Agnes.
“Maybe we should leave now?” Aunt Dorothy said hopefully.
I stepped forward. “I vote with Aunt Dorothy!”
“Why didn’t it go off?” Hemlock yelled in a rage. She pulled more fireworks from her handbag. She lit them all and threw them into the grave.
All of a sudden, there was a mighty explosion. Pretty colours of green, red, and yellow burst forth from the grave. An explosion shook the ground and the coffin flew into the air.
It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The lid flew off when the coffin landed in a tree. Gorgona’s body toppled out and fell directly into the grave.
“Grannie!” Hemlock yelled and jumped in after her.
Jezabeth rounded on the aunts. “Do something!” she yelled. “This has turned into a disaster! It’s a farce!”
“She’s your daughter,” Aunt Agnes said. I could see she was doing her best not to laugh.
“This is all your fault!” Jezabeth screamed.
“How do you figure that?” Aunt Agnes asked her.
“You wouldn’t give Hemlock the money for the roses or the fireworks and you upset her.”
The logic of that escaped me, but the logic of just about everything Jezabeth and Hemlock did escaped me. Aunt Agnes walked over to the grave and reached in for Hemlock. As her face appeared over the top, I saw that her eyebrows were singed off and her face was bright red.
Just as Aunt Agnes was about to haul Hemlock over the edge, Hemlock said, “You’re such a troublemaker, Aunt Agnes.”
