“Alf! You’re home! So lovely to see you!”
What a welcome. Jasper, Millicent’s scruffy lurcher, and Sunny, her adopted Yorkshire Terrier, danced around my legs excitedly. Jasper burrowed his nose between my knees while Sunny jumped up to lick my hands—or bite my fingers depending on your perspective.
“Don’t hug me,” I said quickly. “I’ve come home with a lurgy.”
“Oh, poor you,” Millicent sympathised with me quite rightly, and with what I considered to be the proper degree of care and concern. “Well come in anyway and let me see what I can fix you.”
I hoped there would be cake or at least biscuits. Florence’s continuing and perplexing absence might do wonders for my waistline, but I was suffering from a serious sugar withdrawal.
I followed Millicent into the tiny kitchen and watched as she filled her kettle. “Thanks for the postcards,” she said, indicating the fridge where she’d stuck all three. “It looks like you had a fantastic time.”
“I had some very interesting adventures,” I agreed. “I really must travel more. The people you meet can be extraordinary.”
Millicent smiled. “More interesting that the ones you come across in Whittlecombe you mean?”
I pulled a face in response. “Nowhere is more interesting than Whittlecombe.”
“Not after the year you’ve had anyway. It must have been good to get away.”
“It was the right thing to do.” Whenever I thought of George, my heart hurt a little bit. I would have to get in touch with him and see how the land was lying. I watched as Millicent rummaged in one of her lower cupboards, listening to the chink of glass as she moved jars around.
“Where is it?” she was saying, bending down, her head buried.
“What are you looking for?” It wouldn’t be cake. Not in that cupboard.
Millicent’s voice travelled to me as if from a deep cave. “Hang on a sec.” She drew back. “Ooh. It’s been a while since I sorted this lot out, but here we are.” She sat back on her haunches and twisted at the waist to face me, brandishing a half pint bottle of vibrant purple liquid. A pretty dried flower decoration had been tied around the neck with a faded lilac ribbon.
“What’s that?” I asked, trying not to sound too dubious as I reached for it.
Millicent stood and brushed herself down. “It’s my blackberry cordial. It’s from a very old recipe that my grandmother taught me.”
I studied the bottle. As clear as glass, there was no sediment in the purple liquid. It sparkled in the light. The decoration was lavender. It gave off a faint fragrance. “Blackberry doesn’t sound too bad. It’s good for colds, is it?”
“This potion is the best cure for colds there is. Trust me.”
“Great. Thanks.”
Millicent ran the water in the sink so she could wash her hands. “Of course, it’s not just blackberry. There’s a little lavender in there. A little damson wine.”
That still sounded fairly innocuous. Pleasant even.
“A smidge of deadly nightshade and the filings of a black rat’s claw,” Millicent continued.
Oh.
“And skin shavings from a plague victim’s cadaver.”
I placed the jar down on Millicent’s countertop and backed away. “Seriously?”
Millicent cackled with evil glee and wiped her hands dry. “Not the latter, silly. But yes to the deadly nightshade and the rat’s claw. Our ancestors used to believe that all coughs and colds were related to the plague. So, they practised an early form of inoculation by incorporating symbolic elements within their potions. What doesn’t kill you…”
“Makes you better.” I sniffed. “Hmmm.”
“I promise that this will make you feel well in no time.”
“Alright.” I could trust her, she was my friend after all.
“Go through to the lounge. I’ll bring through the tea.”
“Will there be biscuits?” I asked, ever hopeful.
Millicent shooed me away. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I had to borrow a carrier bag from Millicent as I hadn’t thought to bring one, and she had loaded me up with some jam and chutney to take back to the inn in addition to her interesting cold remedy. I clinked as I walked through the door of the musty smelling post office. We had a very small post office in the village next to Whittlecombe’s General Stores. They sold stationery and cards and other bits and bobs that helped to supplement their income, but I had no idea how they carried on making a living. So many small village post offices had been closed over the years, we were lucky to still have ours. I guess it helped that Whittle Estate—otherwise known as me—only charged them a peppercorn rent.
I’d wager this place hadn’t changed much in nearly one hundred and fifty years. All of the wood was original, the shelving and the counter. The only new item appeared to be the glass that had been added to the counter as a security precaution.
“Good afternoon.” Beatrice Grey, the small owl-faced woman behind the counter looked up from what she was doing and nodded at me. She ran the post office with her husband Gordon, a man as tall and broad as she was short and thin. He was nowhere in sight today though.
“Afternoon,” I replied with a smile. “I believe you have a parcel for me?”
Beatrice placed her pen carefully down on a ledger in front of her and regarded me with a great deal of solemnity. “Well… that’s not strictly true.”
Was I here on false pretences? “Oh?”
“It’s all very irregular, Ms Daemonne. Let me show you.” She bent to take a look under her counter and then drew out a fair-sized parcel. Obviously a box, it had been wrapped in brown paper and measured perhaps, 60 centimetres by 40 centimetres with a depth of 25 centimetres or so. The name and delivery address had been written with artistic flair in bright green ink.
Mrs Alfhild Gwynfyre Daemonne
c/o The Post Office
Whittlecombe
Devon
UK
Earth
Earth?
“You see the problem?” Beatrice’s quiet voice broke into my thoughts.
“It’s addressed to my great-grandmother,” I said, taken aback by the sudden realisation.
“Exactly.” Beatrice sounded triumphant. “You see why we couldn’t simply deliver it to you at the inn? We needed to know you would accept delivery.”
“Yes, of course I will.” I nodded, flipping the parcel over to examine the reverse. As Charity had said there was no return address and no indication where the parcel had come from. “Why would someone send anything to my great-grandmother?” I wondered aloud.
Beatrice nodded, her face shining at the mystery of it all. “Especially when she’s been dead… what? Fifty years?”
“Oh… and the rest... More like seventy I think.” I took the box from Beatrice. Finding it wasn’t so heavy that I couldn’t carry it home, I gave it a gentle shake. There was something sizeable inside.
“Well I suppose given that you are her heir, you are entitled to take her mail. Regardless of what it is and however long it has been held up in the system…”
I examined the stamps. There were a number of them. Some of them appeared positively vintage. I didn’t recognise any of them as current. “Are these stamps all British?” I asked Beatrice.
She slipped a pair of spectacles onto the bridge of her nose and took a closer look. “Hmm. Yes. Yes, they are. How interesting, Ms Daemonne. There are some real classics here.” She ran her finger over one of them. “There’s one here from The Festival of Britain. 1951. Very nice. Oh, and look.” She pointed out another one. “British trees. I remember these. There were several editions over a couple of years. Early to mid-seventies. And here… this British Army one? That’s The Royal Welch Fusiliers from 1983, I believe. I could look them up if you’re interested.”
“Has this parcel been lost somewhere?” I was confused as to the date it had been sent. Gwyn had already been dead twenty years by the time the tree stamps had been iss
ued.
Beatrice shrugged. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. I found it on the step when I opened. It didn’t come with the regular delivery.”
“And it’s legal to send a parcel with old stamps on it?”
“Yes. They can be used regardless of how long you've had them. They just need to be combined to make up the value of postage required.”
“So, this has the correct postage for today?”
“Yes.”
Curiouser and curiouser.
“Will you sign for it, Ms Daemonne?” Beatrice reached behind the counter for a little handheld device and I made a wiggly signature using my finger on the screen. Everything is digitalised these days, I mused, reminded of the worker at the airport who had scanned the baggage on the carousel. “All done!” Beatrice returned the device to its place. “Let me know if you want us to look at the stamps for you. Gordon is a keen philatelist.”
“I will do,” I promised and bid her a good afternoon.
There was a sleepy air over the inn when I returned. The heavy sky, promising rain imminently, had put a downer on some of my guests’ activities. My father had started a craze for games on the lawn—croquet and tennis, giant chess and cricket chief among those—and my guests had always gone wild for them. Witches, wizards, sages, mages, ghosts, goblins and the occasional Fae (but never vampires) had proved time and time again to be the biggest children at heart.
But of course, these could only be played when the weather was fine. I’d invested in a cupboard full of board games for wet weather but on dreary afternoons like today, when ostensibly the weather should still have been warm enough to enjoy the outdoors, people couldn’t help but feel cheated.
I noticed the bar lacked a little atmosphere this afternoon and it occurred to me this was because the fire had not been lit. The fires were Florence’s main job.
I dumped the parcel on the counter in the kitchen, along with Millicent’s jars of preserves and the blackberry potion and went in search of my missing housekeeper. I searched all her known ‘haunts’, primarily the attic rooms, and eventually located her in one of the small back guest bedrooms. She was splayed out on an unmade bed, staring at the wall.
Well, not really the wall. The guest who had last inhabited this room had obviously requested the use of a television. As a general rule Whittle Inn did not provide televisions or other electronic equipment in guest bedrooms unless it had been specifically requested.
“Florence?” I poked my head around the bedroom door. The room smelt quite strongly of smoke. Poor Florence had lost her life while laying a fire in the bar during the 1880s and her smouldering ghost had haunted the inn ever since. Fortunately for the guests, her face, while permanently covered in soot, had been spared any serious burns.
I waved the stench away and strode across the room to fling the curtains wide and open the window. “Florence!”
My housekeeper looked up at me from where she lay, blinking in bemusement. “Miss Alf? I didn’t know you were home.”
“Evidently.” I regarded her astutely. “I’ve been back a few days now.”
Florence jumped up. “I’m so sorry, Miss Alf. The time just runs away with me.” Her eyes darted back to the television set.
I followed her gaze. What on earth was she watching? On the screen, a woman with pink hair was cutting out tiny tubes of what looked like banana-coloured plasticine. As the camera panned out, I realised that the plasticine was actually marzipan or some sort of edible icing. The woman was a baker creating a cake decorated with approximately one zillion teeny-weeny hedgehogs. The tubes would form the face and underbody of the hedgehog, and tiny chocolate shards would become the prickles.
The detail was intricate, and I watched entranced as the baker lady worked quickly and efficiently to insert the spikes into the body.
“Wow,” I said, perching on the edge of the bed. “If I tried that the chocolate would melt in my fingers before it got anywhere near the body. How is she going to get each of those little hedgehogs to stick to the side of the cake?”
“That’s the really clever bit, Miss Alf.” Florence sat back down next to me. “And you should see what she can do with flamingos.”
It was over two hours before I made it down to the kitchen again. It transpired that Florence, who had never previously had occasion to watch television, had become addicted to Witchflix. More specifically to the cooking and bakery shows. I’d sat with her and watched back-to-back episodes of The Great Witchy Cake-Off. Turned out these shows were as addictive as the sugary treats the contestants produced. If I hadn’t forced Florence to surrender control of the remote, I’d have ended up watching a whole season’s worth of Bake Wars, sitting alongside her and drooling with desire.
Enough was enough. It had to be.
“Everything in moderation,” I’d suggested to my now-slightly grumpy housekeeper. “The inn and our guests have to come first. There’s nothing wrong with you having a little down time when there’s nothing else to do.”
She’d acquiesced. Florence was generally good-natured, and I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. Ghosts don’t need sleep, but maybe I was working her too hard? An eternity of cleaning Whittle Inn wasn’t the most exciting afterlife, after all.
The parcel was exactly where I’d left it. Monsieur Emietter was working around it, chopping vegetables and simmering stock for this evening’s meals. I smiled at him in apology for getting in his way, but he simply glared at me as I removed the package. “It’s for Gwyn,” I explained, as though that would earn me his forgiveness. “Have you seen her?”
Monsieur Emietter gestured at me to leave his kitchen. Knives flew through the air to hack at herbs that hung above my head. My spirit chef didn’t speak a word of English, but he was by far the best chef in the business.
And his aim was deadly.
I took the hint and carried the parcel out of the busy kitchen and up the stairs to the office. “Gwyn?” I called as I entered, finding Charity already in situ, a pen between her teeth as she pored over the computer.
Gwyn apparated into the room. “You called me, my dear?”
“Why didn’t either of you tell me about Florence’s newfound obsession with the TV?” I asked.
Charity shrugged. “I didn’t want you to be cross with her.”
“I’m not cross,” I confirmed. “I just find it rather odd.” Did they think I was excessively bad-tempered? Surely not I?
Charity giggled. “It’s just the baking shows really.”
“And that one with the witches,” Gwyn chipped in. “The new drama series. All these teenage witches performing perfect magick. It’s absolute codswallop of course, but she seems to like it.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Have you been watching too?”
“When it’s on,” my great-grandmother replied airily. “It passes the time. I could give them some pointers about witchcraft though.”
I shook my head in disbelief. I could just imagine Gwyn turning up at the production office to put them right about their portrayal of witches in a fantasy television drama. “I’m sure the producers would appreciate it, Grandmama.”
“Perhaps I’ll write to them,” she replied. “And make some suggestions for future improvements.”
That reminded me. “Have you been ordering things, Grandmama? From a catalogue or… dare I say it… the Internet?”
Gwyn frowned at me. “Ordering things? Whatever do you mean?”
I picked up the parcel and showed her. “This came to the post office. But it’s addressed to you, not me.”
Gwyn floated over to stand next to me and peer down at the writing. “Who is it from?”
“Unknown. I’ll have to open it.”
Gwyn nodded. “Well go ahead, my dear.” Ghosts can interact with the physical world by using energy, almost by telekinesis. It’s the same energy that helps a poltergeist—or a bad-tempered shouty spirit—throw things around the room. My great-grandmother could have opened
the parcel if she wanted to, but it was easier for me to do so on her behalf.
Charity made a little more space at the desk. I placed the parcel back down, and then carefully slit the string that had been tied around it, followed by the Sellotape. The paper quickly fell away and revealed a plain brown cardboard box. Again, there was nothing written on it, nothing stuck to it, nothing that gave us a clue as to the contents of the box or who had sent it. The Sellotape used to secure the lid of the box was old. So old it had lost its stickiness. I reached to peel it back and it slipped away from my fingers.
“Wait,” Gwyn commanded, and I moved away.
She gestured, just a small movement, and the lid of the box lifted of its own accord to reveal an item covered with faded tissue paper. Another small movement of her fingers and the tissue paper had slipped sideways.
To reveal a briefcase.
But not a briefcase. The briefcase.
“What on this good green earth—” I began but Gwyn’s reaction was extraordinary. She retreated backwards, across the room to the window, quickly, as though she had been shot. Charity looked on; her eyes wide.
“What’s up?” she asked. “Who’s sending Gwyn a briefcase?”
“That’s what I want to know, too.” I turned to my great-grandmother. “Grandmama?”
Gwyn folded her arms across her not insubstantial bosom. “I have no idea. Is there a note with it?”
I knew there wouldn’t be, but I reached into the box and lifted the briefcase free of its wrappings. The familiar battered brown leather mocked me. I’d ignored it at the luggage carousel, but it had been persistent. It had followed me to the coach station. I’d handed it over to a passing member of staff and thought I’d seen the last of it.
But no. Like a bad penny it had turned up on my doorstep.
The Mysterious Mr Wylie: Wonky Inn Book 6 Page 3
