by Sam Short
Lady Green prepared the drinks with the practised skill of somebody who was no stranger to alcohol, adding a single ice-cube to her whisky, and tucking the bottle under her arm. She handed Gladys her sherry, and sat down opposite the three witches in a large armchair, looking at them in turn. She placed the bottle on a small table next to the chair. “I recognise you three,” she said. “I keep a low profile in town, but I’ve seen you around over the years.” She concentrated on Penny. “You own a boat don’t you? And you run that little magic shop with your sister.”
Gladys sipped her sherry, being sure to extend her little finger, but bringing it quickly back into line. Was that delicate social manoeuvre reserved only for the taking of tea? Or was it apt for alcohol too? She’d have to find out before she hosted another party in Huang Towers. She didn’t want to look silly. Lady Green hadn’t extended her finger, in fact, she was throwing whisky down her neck with the enthusiasm of a sailor on shore-leave.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Penny. “We run the shop.”
“There’s no time for small talk, Lady Green,” said Gladys. “Let’s get straight to the nitty-gritty. What happened all those years ago?”
“I think you should go first,” said Lady Green. “How do you know anything about what happened, and how did you get that letter? Did Ethel give it to you? That woman should know better. She’s under an oath.”
Gladys chose her words carefully. Ethel was dead, but Lady Green didn’t know that. “We think Ethel may be in danger,” she said. “We know your son was recently released from prison — and we know he was imprisoned on a fake charge implemented by your husband and the police. We’re worried he may want to cause trouble for Ethel.”
Lady Green poured herself more whisky. “Does Inspector Jameson know you’re here? He’s always looked out for Ethel. If he had any concerns, he’d have come and seen me himself. When I gave him that letter for Ethel, he told me nobody knew where my son had gone when he was released from prison. I don’t understand why you three are here and not the inspector.”
“Lady Green,” said Willow, leaning forward and brushing the hair from her eyes. “What happened to Ethel Boyd in the chapel? Tell us.”
Lady Green took a long swallow of whisky and gave a drawn out sigh. “I suppose it’s time to get it off my chest,” she said. “It’s been burning a hole in my heart for all these years — what happened to Ethel, and what we did to my son. What my husband did to my son. I didn’t want any part in a cover-up. I wanted it all out in the open, but back then, reputations were everything.”
Gladys wondered if Willow had cast a truth spell, but as Lady Green drank more whisky, Gladys realised she was under the spell of the oldest truth potion known to mankind. Alcohol. “Tell us everything,” said Gladys. “From the beginning. You’ll feel better afterwards.”
Lady Green held her glass up, allowing the light streaming from the window to illuminate the amber liquid. “It began with this,” she said, swirling the whisky in her glass.
“Whisky?” said Penny.
“Alcohol,” said Lady Green. “I was always partial to a drop, and it seems like I passed my genes on to my son. Not my youngest son, he doesn’t touch it, but my eldest son — the one you’re talking about. Rupert. He liked it a little too much.”
Gladys sipped her sherry. “Where are your other children?” she said. “It says in your letter to Ethel that you’re surrounded by them.”
“A lie,” said Lady Green, the words flowing freer with each sip of whisky she took. “I don’t want her to know how alone I am. My children stopped visiting us years ago. When they found out what we’d done to Rupert.”
“What did you do?” said Willow.
Lady Green gazed at her glass, her eyes glazed. “Rupert was such a good boy until he discovered alcohol, then he went off the rails. Him and a group of boys in town, always drunk and always getting into trouble. My husband and I put it down to teenagers being teenagers, but when the other boys went off to university and began building their lives, it became apparent that Rupert was more dependant on alcohol than we’d ever imagined. A little like me.”
“How sad,” said Penny.
“It was sad,” said Lady Green. “It was heartbreaking. But when he was caught drink driving, it became too much. My husband was an important man, not only was he a Lord, but he was a judge too. He had a reputation to protect. Benjamin spoke to the police superintendent and the charges were dropped. That was the first time he used his privileged position to influence the law.”
“But not the last,” said Gladys.
Lady Green shook her head. “No. When the charges of drink driving were dropped, my husband pulled some more strings. Rupert had no university degree, but Benjamin knew a lot of people who were high up in the church. We arranged to send him off to train as a vicar.
“ It worked, and Rupert stopped drinking for years. Although his position as a vicar had been manipulated by my husband, Rupert began to enjoy it, and my husband and I were overjoyed. We were both very religious people deep down, and the little chapel near the canal was on our land.
“Rupert took it over and built up quite a congregation. He began to see the chapel as his rock— a place to find comfort in. He became very highly respected, and nobody was any wiser about his previous problems with alcohol. We were proud of him.”
“Proud…” said Gladys. She’d seen enough detective shows on TV to know that you didn’t let somebody stop talking when they’d started. You needed to keep grinding their gears. “…until nineteen-eighty-seven.”
“Yes,” said Lady Green, fiddling with her necklace. “That was an awful year. Rupert began drinking again, you see. He had a terrible problem, and his father and I decided to cut him off from money. He wasn’t getting paid to be a vicar. Like I said, his position was manipulated by my husband and some people in the church. The only money Rupert was getting was from me and his father, and when he started drinking it away, we cut him off completely. We fed and clothed him, of course, but we wouldn’t pay to feed his habit. It was hypocritical of me, as a drinker myself, but I was nothing like Rupert. He didn’t know when to stop.”
“Go on,” said Gladys.
“Well, he found a creative way of obtaining money. He began a collection every Sunday. Him and Ethel Boyd would hand a plate around, and the good people of the congregation would fill it with money.”
“Which went on booze,” said Penny.
Lady Green sighed. “Yes. He stole the money and spent it on alcohol. Drugs too. He was a mess. He’d hide in his little cave, drinking, taking drugs, and wasting his life.”
“Cave?” said Gladys.
“Underneath the chapel,” said Lady Green. “That’s why it was called cave chapel. There are caves everywhere in the hills around Wickford, and the man who first built the chapel was as dishonest a vicar as my son was. He built it over the cave, and so close to the canal, to advance his business in stealing from haulage boats.
“He had arrangements with a lot of the narrowboat crews. They’d sell him a portion of the coal, or whatever load they were carrying, and the vicar would hide it beneath the chapel. Nobody would have thought a little chapel was built above a storage facility for stolen goods, so he got away with it — selling it on, and lining his pockets. The entrance is hidden behind the chapel, so not even his congregation knew it was there.”
“You’re getting off track,” said Willow. “What happened between your son and Ethel?”
Lady Green may have gone off on a tangent, but something she had said was worming its way through Gladys’s mind. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, or why it may have been important, but it was there — like a distant voice on the wind.
“As I said,” continued Lady Green. “He sat in that little cave, drinking and taking drugs — all from the proceeds of dishonesty. We didn’t know of course, or we’d have put a stop to it. We only found out afterwards, when Ethel told us. When she could speak again.”
“Speak again?” said Gladys. “What do you mean?”
“It was awful,” said Lady Green with a shudder. “Rupert took a liking to Ethel… in that way. She wasn’t like the other people in the congregation. They’d all come to church in their Sunday best, but Ethel would come in a snazzy shell-suit. She said it was more comfortable to play the organ in, but I know she was wearing it to turn Rupert’s head.”
“They were in love?” said Willow.
“Oh gosh, no,” said Lady Green. “It didn’t get that far. At least from Ethel’s perspective. Rupert made the mistake of thinking he could trust Ethel. Ethel may have had her eye on being a vicar’s wife but, she wasn’t dishonest. One morning, on a Wednesday, Ethel went to the chapel to practice on the organ. Rupert was drinking in his cave of delinquency, and when he heard Ethel playing he came up to see her.
“He was drunk — he wasn’t thinking straight, and he boasted to Ethel about how he was stealing the money and spending it on drink and drugs. He showed Ethel the cave, and Ethel did the right thing by God, but not by Rupert.”
“What did she do?” said Willow.
“She told him she was going to report him to the police,” said Lady Green, a tear swelling in her eye. “She should have come to us, but no, she threatened him with the law, and it scared him. He was so drunk and high on drugs that he wasn’t thinking straight.”
“What did he do?” said Gladys.
Lady Green let out a sob. “Ethel went back into the chapel to collect her sheet music, and as she was sitting at the organ, Rupert came up behind her and hit her over the head with a full bottle of vodka.”
“Oh, my,” said Gladys. “What an awful man.”
“Yes,” said Lady Green, “but something, or someone, spoke to him, and guided him back onto the correct path. The honest path. He came straight here, to this house, and told me what he’d done. I phoned the police of course, and Rupert ran off, back to the chapel. When Benjamin heard what had happened, he was furious with me for phoning the police, and by the time the police got to the chapel, the cover-up had begun.
“Benjamin knew a lot of powerful people — people in government, people he’d known since his Oxford days. The phone calls were made quickly, people’s jobs were threatened, and the incident was never reported. If Ethel had died, I think it would have been different, but the hospital said she’d come out of the coma within a few days. Which she did.”
“Wow,” said Willow. “The poor woman.”
“Yes,” said Lady Green. “The poor woman. Benjamin and I didn’t know what to do with Rupert. He was a drug addicted alcoholic man who’d nearly killed a woman. We were ashamed, and Benjamin had his reputation to think of. Rupert had to be taught a lesson, although I think we went too far.”
“You had him locked away for murder,” said Gladys. “Which he was innocent of.”
“By sheer luck,” said Lady Green. “Ethel was close to death, so we told Rupert she’d died, and Benjamin set up a mock trial using every favour he was owed by some of the most important people in the land. The jury was real, and the judge was real — a friend of Benjamin’s, but everything else was manufactured. The evidence, the pathologists report, everything. When the the jury found him guilty, the judge sentenced him to thirty years, and he was never told that Ethel didn’t die. He still thinks he’s a murderer.”
“And you bribed Ethel and Inspector Jameson?” said Penny.
“We offered Ethel money, yes, and she accepted it, but Inspector Jameson didn’t. He only did what Ethel asked him to do. He’s a good man,” said Lady Green. “My husband was a hard man. I had no control over his decisions, and things were different all those years ago. There was more corruption, and when a reporter began poking his nose where Benjamin didn’t want it, he was sent to prison too, on a fake drugs charge.”
The reporter who Susie had spoken to, realised Gladys. She closed her eyes for a moment, the flavour of sherry still warming her throat, and her mind working towards something — slowly, but surely.
Gladys knew she wasn’t a clever woman, not in the academic sense, but she did know that her mind was keen. Not quite as keen as mustard, but keen enough.
She liked to think of her mind as a kitchen cutlery draw, with the utensils she used regularly near the front — easily accessible and ready for use. At the back of the drawer, in a messy pile, were the things that she collected, but used infrequently — like the hard boiled egg slicer, and the little melon baller that Eva had bought her for Christmas.
It was there — at the back of the drawer, tucked away in the darkest recesses of her mind, that she found them — the little jumble of thoughts which had turned into an idea. No — it was more than an idea — it was an answer. The answer. The answer to the question of who had killed Ethel Boyd.
She stood up. “Penny, Willow,” she said. “We need to leave.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gladys’s knee creaked as she lowered herself behind the bush, and she snapped her head to the right as Barney’s radio crackled into life. “Turn that off!” she hissed. “We have to be quiet. This is a stake-out!”
Barney twisted the knob on his radio and it fell silent. “Are you sure about this, Gladys?” he said. “You haven’t told us how you’ve come to this conclusion.”
Gladys tapped the side of her head with a finger. “It’s all up here, sunshine,” she said. “I’ll explain how I worked it out in due course.”
A branch snapped as Willow adjusted her position, and Gladys scowled at her. “Would you keep silent, please?”
“Are you sure he’ll come?” said Penny.
Gladys peeped through the bush. The rear of the chapel was twenty metres to their front, and a pathway led off into the woods to the right. “If Barney did his job properly he should be here shortly.”
“Of course I did,” said Barney. “I found him near the butcher’s shop, and told him he had to move on. He headed out of town, I watched him and then came straight here.”
Gladys nodded. “Just you wait,” she said. “With no more spells preventing people approaching the chapel, we should have a visitor in the very near future.”
Gladys steadied her breathing. She was about to confront Ethel’s murderer, and she wanted to be calm when she did so. There could be no room for emotion in a highly charged situation such as the one she was in.
She allowed her knees to sink further into the pine needles, and kept her eyes on the pathway. She revelled in the excitement, her heart thudding on her chest wall, and her stomach in anxious knots.
Time ticked by, and after thirty minutes of waiting, even Gladys had become restless. She stood up slowly, allowing her knees time to recover, and joined the other three as they plucked blackberries from a nearby bush. They tasted good, and Gladys stuffed her mouth with the sweet fruit, wiping the juice from her chin with the back of her hand. As she chewed, she realised she had a new found respect for the police. She didn’t know how they managed to stay so still on stake-outs, for hours on end. She span on the spot. “Did you hear that?” she said.
“What? Said Penny.
“A man shouting,” said Gladys, cupping a hand behind her ear.
They stood still, listening, and just as Gladys was about to get back to fruit picking, she heard it again, this time closer, and clearer. “Bonnie!” came the man’s voice. “Bonnie! Where are you?”
Gladys sank to her knees and urged the others to join her.
“Who’s Bonnie?” whispered Willow.
“Not who,” said Gladys. “What.”
A blur of white streaked through the clearing to their front, followed by the sound of exciting barking.
“That’s Bonnie,” said Gladys. “The little terrier that Mavis saw.”
“How did you know its name?” said Penny.
“I didn’t,” said Gladys, “but I guessed it belonged to the murderer.”
The man shouted again, now much closer, and with excitement in his voice. “Bonnie! There you
are! I’m so sorry, girl! I couldn’t find my way back to you. I kept getting lost! But I’m here now, and I’ve got something special for you.”
He hadn’t been lost, just confused by a spell, but Gladys could never tell him that. She could show off and tell the other three what the man had brought for his dog, though. “Scraps of kidney and liver,” she whispered. “Just you watch.”
A branch snapped to their front, and Gladys lowered herself even closer to the ground. “Quiet,” she hissed. “He’s here.”
Branches parted, and the little dog scampered into the clearing followed by its owner, who staggered behind it, clutching a paper bag in one hand, and a bottle of vodka in the other.
“The homeless man you told us about,” whispered Penny.
Gladys smiled. “Let me introduce you to Rupert Green, shamed vicar of Cave Chapel, and Ethel Boyd’s murderer.”
Barney reached for his night-stick, and Gladys put a hand on his arm. “No, Barney,” she said. “I worked it out, I want to confront him. I’ve got a little speech planned and everything!”
Barney nodded. “We’ll all go together, but you can speak to him. If he tries anything funny, I’m right here.”
“So are we,” said Willow. “There are three witches here, Barney. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
Barney took his hand off his night-stick. “Watch out for the dog, those terriers are snappy little things.”
“Just wait,” said Gladys. “He’s going to show us where the entrance to the cave beneath the chapel is, and when he goes inside, we’ll follow him. He’ll be trapped.”
The little dog jumped up at its owner as the two of them headed for the chapel. The man who Gladys assumed was Rupert Green, squeezed through a gap in the fence railings and made the sign of the cross on his chest.
He pushed through the long grass and made his way to the rear of the chapel, where he bent over and parted the large bushes which grew against the wall.
