by Sam Short
“Deep breaths, Barney,” shouted Gladys, hearing the panic in his voice. “He’s walking towards the door. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”
Gladys dragged Penny behind the bedroom door, and the two of them stood quietly, hardly breathing. Gladys felt a tingle in her fingertips and accepted the fact that she’d cast a spell if she was forced to, although casting a spell on the same person twice in two days could have an adverse effect. It might even bring back Inspector Jameson’s memories of seeing Ethel dead in the chapel, but she’d cross that bridge when, or if, she came to it.
A loud banging echoed through the house as the inspector knocked on the door.
Gladys took a deep breath, and felt Penny move next to her.
Barney cleared his throat, and the sound of his footsteps echoed in the hallway as he made his way to the door. “Hello, Sir,” he said, as the door creaked open. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” said the inspector, his footsteps joining Barney’s in the hallway. “Where’s Ethel?”
“Erm… she’s not here, Sir.”
“Where is she, Sergeant Dobkins?”
“I’m not sure, Sir,” said Barney.
“Then why are you in a woman’s house when she’s not here?”
“Erm… I, I’m —” stammered Barney.
The inspector’s voice rose in volume. “Has the cat got your tongue, Dobkins? Then maybe I can assist you. You’re here because you’ve been meddling in things that you shouldn’t be meddling in.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Sir?”
“You know damn well what I mean, Dobkins. I wasn’t born yesterday. I had an alert come through to my computer — an alert that told me somebody had been searching for information about something that doesn’t concern them… or at least, shouldn’t concern them…” The inspector’s voice took on a menacing tone, “… unless they know something they shouldn’t know.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Sir,” said Barney.
Penny moved, and a floorboard squeaked. Gladys put a hand on her granddaughter’s arm, urging her to be as still as possible.
“You know fine well what I mean, Dobkins. I set up an alert on the police search system — years ago — for certain terms and names, and it just so happens that you triggered all of them with your frantic searches yesterday. And imagine my surprise when I used the tracking system to trace your car, and found it at the property of the very woman you’ve been searching the system for,” said the inspector. “What are you up to, Sergeant Dobkins? What do you know about Ethel Boyd?”
“Nothing, Sir. I don’t know anything about her.”
That wasn’t a lie, Gladys conceded. Barney knew Ethel was dead, but that was about as far as his knowledge of the woman went.
“Don’t mess me around,” hissed the inspector. “Why were you searching for crimes committed in nineteen-eighty-seven, and adding Ethel’s name to the search criteria? But most fascinating of all, is why you were searching for information about that run down little chapel down by the canal. Why would that building, Ethel Boyd, and the year nineteen-eighty-seven, hold any interest for you, Sergeant Dobkins? Answer me!”
“I was… I was…”
“I’ll ask again, Dobkins,” said the inspector. “Why were you looking for information about Cave Chapel?”
That was a name Gladys hadn’t heard for years. In fact, she’d completely forgotten that the building was once known as Cave Chapel.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Sir,” said Barney.
Barney was faltering. He was no match for the inspector, and what could he say? He had no valid reason for being in Ethel Boyd’s house. He was going to spill the beans if Gladys didn’t do something.
Gladys whispered in Penny’s ear as the men continued talking downstairs. “Open a portal in the doorway,” she said. “Go to The Haven, and then go back to your boat. I’ll meet you there.”
“But the inspector will hear,” whispered Penny. “Portals make a buzzing sound.”
“Just do it,” said Granny.
Penny frowned. “What will you do? You shouldn’t cast another spell on the inspector, he’s still under the influence of the one you put him under yesterday. You could damage him.”
Gladys glanced at the photo on the chest of drawers. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”
Penny nodded. She must have known when to trust a wiser witch. “Okay,’ she said. “But be careful, Granny.”
Penny tip-toed from behind the door, gave Gladys a smile, and cast her spell. The doorway filled with a golden light, and a loud buzzing sound throbbed in the air. She stepped through the portal quickly, the tablet tucked under her arm and an anxious look on her face.
The moment Penny had been completely enveloped in light, the portal closed behind her with a loud popping sound. Penny would be in The Haven, and could simply open another portal which would take her back to Wickford. Gladys could have done the same, but she wasn’t going to leave Barney to fend for himself.
“What was that noise?” said the inspector. “Ethel! Are you upstairs?”
Gladys crossed the room quickly, took a quick look at the photograph of Ethel on a beach, and lay down on the bed. Footsteps thudded up the stairs as she muttered a few words and forced the ball of magic which had formed in her chest through every tendon and vein in her body.
A shadow fell across the doorway, and Gladys closed her eyes, hoping the spell would hold.
The inspector’s heavy footsteps approached the bed. “You’re here?” he said.
Chapter Ten
Gladys opened her eyes and yawned. “Oh, hello,” she said. “Of course I’m here. I must have nodded off. Is Sergeant Dobkins here? I asked him to come. I didn’t think he’d bring you along too.”
“You asked him to come?” said the inspector.
“Yes,” said Gladys. “He said he’d come alone. I left the front door open incase I was asleep. I do like a snooze after my third cup of tea, you see?”
Gladys pushed herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
“I heard a noise, are you okay?” said the inspector.
“I do snore quite badly,” said Gladys. “Sometimes I wake myself up.”
“Have you been walking in the hills?” said the inspector. “Your hair looks… windswept.”
Gladys attempted to smooth down her hair, but it refused to stay tight against her scalp. Using a photograph as reference for a shape-shifting spell had its problems. “It’s my new hair-lacquer,” she said. “It’s very strong. And expensive. I must have slept awkwardly before it had dried properly.”
Barney appeared in the doorway, and Gladys gave him a reassuring smile. He stood still, his face ashen and his eyes wide. Like he’d seen a ghost.
“Did you find any clues, Sergeant Dobkins?” asked Gladys.
“Clues?” said Inspector Jameson. “What’s going on here, Dobkins?”
“Erm…” said Barney.
Gladys remembered the pair of saucy knickers in Ethel’s drawer. “Don’t worry, Sergeant Dobkins,” she said. “I’ll tell him — as embarrassing as it is for me.”
“Tell me what?” said the inspector.
“This is why I asked Sergeant Dobkins to come alone,” said Gladys. “I trust him with personal things. He’s got a kind face.”
“You trust me too, don’t you, Ethel?” said the inspector.
The tone of voice the inspector had used put Gladys on alert. He’d known Ethel well. It was obvious.
“Of course I do,” said Gladys, giving the man a reassuring smile. “I didn’t want to bother you with silly things like thongs being stolen from my washing line. You’ve got more important things to be getting on with. I’m sure it’s just a local pervert trying to get his filthy kicks. Sergeant Dobkins will get to the bottom of it, I’m sure.”
The inspector turned to face Barney. “Go into the back garden and have a good look a
round, if you haven’t already. Check for footprints or signs of how somebody got in.”
Barney looked at Gladys. Realisation had dawned on his face. He knew he wasn’t in the presence of a ghost. “Okay, Sir,” he said, raising an eyebrow in Gladys’s direction.
When Barney’s footsteps had reached the hallway, the inspector looked at Gladys. “Are you sure it’s just some random pervert, Ethel? You can’t be too careful. He’s out of prison now, and I’m the only copper still working here who knows what happened to you.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Gladys, thinking carefully about what she said next. “I caught a glimpse of him climbing over the fence. He was a young man.”
“Not him then,” said the inspector. “From what I hear, prison hasn’t been kind to him. You have to be careful though, Ethel. I don’t know where he went when he was released. All my old contacts are either dead, or living it up in Spain on the money they got paid for the cover-up.”
Gladys considered throwing caution to the wind and casting a truth spell on the inspector, but his eyes had the faraway look of somebody already heavily under the influence of magic, and she sensed he was a kind man. She didn’t want him to come to any harm. “Do you think he’d come back here? To Wickford?” said Gladys, hoping she was using the right words.
“I doubt it,” said the inspector. “He thought he’d killed you. He probably wants to stay as far away from here as possible, and his family won’t have him back. Not after the shame he brought on them.”
“I suppose not,” said Gladys.
The inspector looked carefully at Gladys. Was the spell faltering? “Are you okay, Ethel? You look anxious.”
“I’m just tired,” said Gladys.
The inspector looked at his shoes. “Listen, Ethel. I came here to bring you something, and I was shocked to find Sergeant Dobkins’s car outside. I told him I’d traced him with the car tracking system. I think he knows something he shouldn’t. He’s been searching the police system for information about you, and about what happened in the chapel. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I do trust the man, he’s a good copper. Have you said anything to anyone, Ethel? About what happened to you? Anything that may have got back to the Sergeant?”
Gladys thought quickly. “I went to the chapel yesterday,” she said. “And he was there.”
“What?” said the inspector.
Gladys smiled. “I was asked to be an organist at a wedding. Gladys Weaver’s wedding — she’s bought the chapel and she’s making it look nice again. Well, when I got there to show them how I could play, Sergeant Dobkins was there too. He’s the boyfriend of one of her granddaughters. I was nervous about going in… after what happened, so I mentioned to the Sergeant that something had happened to me in there, in nineteen-eighty-seven. He must have wanted to find out what it was. That’s all.”
“And you asked him to come here to catch the underwear thief while you were at the chapel?”
“That’s right!” said Gladys, happy her story was holding water. “I did! I asked him!”
“You mustn’t tell anyone again, Ethel. His father may be dead, but his mother is still alive. She could still cause us a lot of problems. You know what you promised them. You promised you’d never breathe a word of it to anybody in return for thirty years of very generous monthly payments.”
“I know,” said Gladys. “I was very nervous, you know, stepping into the chapel after all this time, and Sergeant Dobkins was so nice, it just spilled out of me.”
“I really don’t know why you went in there, Ethel. Among all those bad memories,” said Inspector Jameson.
“Gladys is paying well for an organist, and I need the money.”
The inspector sighed. “I told you years ago that you should have used that money more wisely. Giving three quarters of your monthly payments to animal shelters was a kind thought, but you could have done so much more with it. You’ve left yourself financially vulnerable.”
“I’ll survive,” said Gladys. “I always do.”
The inspector reached inside his suit pocket. “Here,” he said, handing Gladys an envelope. “This is from his mother. She says it’s the last you’ll hear from her.”
Gladys took the envelope and placed it on the bed next to her. “I’ll open it later,” she said. “Thank you.”
The inspector nodded. “Okay. Well, I’d better be going. The further I stay away from you, the better. I don’t want to give Sergeant Dobkins any reason to keep searching the computer system. There’s nothing there of course, and the file I made is in my safe, but I don’t like to think of him stumbling across something he shouldn’t. I’m sure he’ll find out who’s been at your underwear, though, he’s nothing if not thorough.”
“Do you mind seeing yourself out?” said Gladys. The spell was weakening and Gladys feared any unnecessary movement on her behalf would bring it to an abrupt end.
“Of course,” said the inspector. “Take care, Ethel, and take life easy — I’m going away for a few days. I’m flying to Scotland tonight. Three days of salmon fishing will clear the mind, and it seems I need the break. I’ve been having terrible headaches since yesterday.”
Headaches were a normal symptom after being blasted with a powerful witch’s spell. He’d be right as rain after a few deep sniffs of the Scottish mountain air. Not like… She stopped herself, pushing the intrusive thoughts from her mind. He’d be fine too.
“Enjoy yourself,” said Gladys. She remembered the phrase which Norman had always used around his fellow anglers — when he wanted to wish them good luck on their fishing trips. “Tight lines.”
The detective thanked her, and Gladys waited until the front door had closed and the inspector’s car had pulled out of the driveway, before allowing the spell to completely fade. She hurried down the stairs, with the envelope in her hand.
She peered into the back garden, where Barney was standing in a corner next to a tree, biting his nails. “Come on,” she said. “The plot has thickened.”
Penny was in The Spell Weavers with Willow. She’d phoned Barney the moment she’d arrived back in Wickford through a portal, and Barney drove Gladys straight to the magic shop, seemingly as impatient as she was to find out what was inside the simple white envelope with Ethel’s name on the front.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Barney, telling Penny and Willow about Gladys’s prowess with a shape-shifting spell. “I really thought it was Ethel for a moment. It was amazing.”
There it was. Finally. Admiration for her magic. Gladys smiled. “It was nothing, really. But it worked. The inspector fell for it.”
“Open it,” said Barney, leaning on the sales counter, a box of fake love potions next to his elbow. “Come on.”
Gladys had filled the three of them in with every detail of what had been said in the bedroom, and all that remained to be done was to open the envelope. She slid a nail along the gummed seal and lifted the flap, feeling a little guilty about reading another person’s private correspondence. Carefully, she withdrew the single sheet of expensive writing paper, pushed her glasses along her nose, and began to read the handwritten letter as everybody listened.
“Dear Ethel,
So. Thirty years have gone by. You kept your side of the arrangement and we kept ours. I trust the money served you well, and I trust that knowing my son has been locked away for all those years has gone some way towards healing both your physical and emotional pain.
What he did was unforgivable, and as you know, God will be the ultimate judge of his actions. Thinking he had killed you, was, I believe, punishment enough. I believe that the part my husband and I played in locking him away for so long under false pretences, will mean we’ll be judged harshly by God too.
Of course, my husband has already met his maker, and I can only pray that God saw the goodness in his heart. What he did in covering the terrible events up was an act of love. He was protecting his family. He was protecting me. In some small way he was protecting our so
n too — he was too fragile to make his way through life without a vice, and was easily led by people with few morals, leading to his downfall in the eyes of The Lord, and of course, his family. Prison may have been the best place for him.
Make no mistake. I blame you for your part in all of this, too. You should have come to us before threatening him with the law. He was a frightened man, and sometimes frightened men act in ways we’d never imagine they could — especially a man of his standing in the community.
I’m going to attempt to put all of this behind me. I’m no longer young, and will never see my son again. He was disowned by this family the day he let God, us, and himself down. Although he is no longer in prison, he knows he is not welcome in my family. I wish to spend the final years of my life with the children I still have around me, and this brief note will be the last you hear from me. I trust you will respect my privacy in return.
With regards and sorrow,
LHG”
“It sounds like something very bad happened in that chapel,” said Willow. “And I think it’s safe to say that Ethel’s murder is connected to what happened back then.”
Penny touched Barney’s hand. “You have to get that file from Inspector Jameson’s safe,” she said. “It will probably hold all the answers.”
“I can’t,” said Barney. “How could I? It’s in his office and I don’t know the code. There’s cameras everywhere, too. I’d be seen, and Inspector Jameson already knows I’m interested in Ethel. I’d be asking for trouble. This all feels very dangerous.”
“From what Inspector Jameson said to Granny, it sounds like he’s a crooked cop, in on a cover-up” said Willow. “We should just report the whole thing to somebody higher up and let them investigate. We should go back to the chapel, take Ethel’s body out of stasis, and reset the last two days.”
