Addressed to my great-grandmother. The greatest witch of her generation.
And the briefcase belonged to one of our kind.
That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“There’s no note.” I’d known there wouldn’t be.
“What’s inside?” Charity asked. “Anything?
“Open it,” I said without taking my eyes from Gwyn.
Charity did as I asked. She flicked the catches and then eased the lid up. To all intents and purposes the briefcase was empty. I reached into my robes and took out my wand.
“No.” Gwyn said, so softly I doubt Charity heard her, but the word floated across the room, a feather on the gentlest of breezes. I hesitated, my hand in mid-air.
“The property of W Wylie?” Charity had found the little address tag attached to the handle. “That name rings a bell…”
“Does it?” I asked, frowning at Gwyn, willing her to come clean.
“Not with me,” Gwyn lifted her chin and glared at me.
“I think you’ll find he stayed here at the inn when I was down at the Psychic Fayre being fabulous if you recall.” I reminded Charity.
She nodded. “Oh, that’s right. A quiet man. Didn’t really mix with the other guests. He stayed a few nights.” She turned back to the keyboard. “Well I’ll be able to pull his records up from here, and we can reunite him with his briefcase.”
I shook my head and lifted my wand. “You won’t find any details because for some reason they’ve been wiped off the record.”
“He was a businessman, wasn’t he?” Charity tapped away. “That’s right. He said he’d tried to get a room at The Hay Loft, but they were full,” she chirruped on, unaware of the tension building between Gwyn and myself. “I don’t think he liked being at the inn with all of our super-natural guests. It must have been a bit strange for him.”
Gwyn moved towards me like lightning. “Just leave it, Alfhild.”
I ignored her. “Revelare!” I tapped my wand against the briefcase and once more it filled up with all the paraphernalia our mysterious Mr Wylie had mislaid.
Charity gawped at the contents of the case. “Where did they come from? What is all this stuff?” She poked around among the small glittery jars, the charts and notebooks, the telescope, the watch and so on. “Who carries this kind of stuff?”
“A wizard,” I said. “And one whom—for some reason—wants us to hold on to his briefcase.”
“But why?” Charity asked, confused. “Is he coming to stay again. Will he want to claim it back? What are we supposed to do with it?”
All good questions. I looked at Gwyn to see whether she could shed some light with a few answers, but she was already apparating away.
And where she goes, nobody knows.
I accomplished something incredibly brave.
Yes, I managed to drink a small glass of Millicent’s blackberry potion before I went to bed, and lo and behold, it actually worked. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but at that stage of my cold I would have expected a runny nose and sneezes for another few days followed by a week of blocked sinuses.
The following morning, I woke up and felt almost normal. Or what passes for normal in my life.
I repeated the process the next night and woke with more zing in my step than I’d had since arriving back into the UK. With all that extra energy I tackled some jobs that needed sorting around the inn with gusto.
I arranged a breakfast meeting with everyone concerned—Charity, Zephaniah, Ned, Monsieur Emietter who wouldn’t understand a word I would say, Florence (torn away from her beloved baking shows once more) and Gwyn. Gwyn had been keeping her distance from me, but seeing as I hadn’t mentioned the briefcase again, perhaps she was softening a little. She turned up to listen to what I had to say at least.
“I’ve inspected the cellar,” I said to my gathering of oddities, “and I’m really pleased with the work that’s taken place down there to cover the well and fix the floor. We obviously found a diamond of a building contractor, so I think I’d like to keep them on.” I smiled around at everyone. “We’ve done such a great job of building up a clientele for the inn, and everything looks wonderful, so I’d like to move on to the next phase.”
I shuffled the papers I’d brought down from the office. “These are a few plans that I’ve had drawn up. I think it’s time we dragged this wonky inn into the twenty-first century—”
There were some collective murmurings, and I held up my hands. “Don’t fret. Nothing major. We’re not going to paint everything beige or put in glass partition walls or anything. I just want to remodel some bedrooms so they have their own en-suite.”
We had several dozen bedrooms and some of them had to either share a bathroom or they had a bathroom that wasn’t connected. All the bathrooms in the inn were original, with large claw foot baths and institutional cracked wall tiles. I figured all that old décor could stay. They added to the character of the place.
“It’s a fairly simple undertaking,” I continued. “It will just involve putting new doors in where previously there haven’t been any and bricking up the old doors and redecorating. Nothing too major.”
Charity nodded enthusiastically. “That sounds like a good idea to me. The separate bathrooms don’t bother most of our guests the way they might at The Hay Loft, but en-suites are definitely something that the younger generation prefer. I say go for it.”
“Excellent.” I looked around at everyone else. Monsieur Emietter was studying a carrot with malevolent intent, everyone else seemed to be on board.
Apart from Gwyn.
Her eyes studied me with a sharp intensity. “Which rooms are you talking about?”
I cocked my head in puzzlement, taken aback by her vitriolic tone. “The Throne Room and Neverwhere to begin with.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “It won’t hurt the fabric or feel of the inn.”
“The guests are happy enough. We have so many who come back time and time again.” She had a point, but I didn’t think the changes I’d proposed would make the inn any worse or change the experience in any tangible way.
Gwyn’s recalcitrance didn’t worry me overly much. She was from a much older generation who weren’t accustomed to new-fangled ideas like en-suite bathrooms and central heating and the like.
“Grandmama,” I said gently. “You worry too much.”
“You shouldn’t mess with what doesn’t concern you, Alfhild,” my great-grandmother told me, somewhat cryptically.
“It concerns us all.” I indicated everyone around us. “That’s why I wanted to let you know what the plans were. The builders will start first thing on Monday, and they’ll keep disruption to a minimum.” I stood up. As far as I was concerned the subject was closed. I waved my papers around with a flourish. “I have the plans here if anyone wishes to cast an eye over them.”
Gwyn fixed me with a hostile glare, but I waved her concerns away. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about,” I trilled.
Famous last words.
The builders began work in The Throne Room at 8.30 a.m. Right from the off I knew something wasn’t right.
It was nothing concrete. I couldn’t put my finger on why I felt uneasy. The builders came in and measured and re-measured the walls, consulted plans, tutted, shook their heads, sucked their teeth and measured some more. There were only two of them, a bobble-hat-wearing older chap by the name of Neil, and a younger lad named Joe, his apprentice, who sported a full on-beard. Finally, after a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing and numerous cups of tea, they got down to business. Neil, as head honcho, chalked an outline on the wall, a ghostly sketch of where the door would be.
And it was at that stage that I felt a little unnerved. Until that moment, I had never experienced anything untoward in that particular bedroom. The inn was absolutely riddled with ghosts, and for the most part there had never been any issues. Yet, as the time cam
e for the builders to cut through the wall, I experienced a pang of anxiety.
“This is well-weird,” Joe was saying.
“Why?” I asked. He brandished the plans at me, and Neil snatched them out of his hands.
“I think what he’s trying to say, Miss Demon, is that the measurements don’t quite match up.” He lay the plans on the wide window ledge and I went over to take a look. “See here.” The older builder ran a stubby finger with a badly broken nail over the paper. “You’ve got your bathroom there, next door like, and the bedroom here. Notice anything?”
I scanned the plans but couldn’t see anything odd.
“This is the outer wall.” The hairy-knuckled, fat finger, floated along the corridor wall. I could see where the doors to the various rooms had been inked in. “Well, it stands to reason that the width of the two rooms, plus the partition wall equals that measurement there. Do you see?”
Yes, now I thought I knew what he was getting at. The area on either side of the wall would stay constant, only the length of the rooms would change. “But they don’t?”
“Not even close, love. We’ve got that room there, that measures three-point-two metres across, and this room that measures four-point-four metres and the wall along the corridor that measures nine-point-two-metres.”
“But there’s the actual wall measurement to take into account, right?”
“For sure. But your intervening wall ain’t going to be over a metre thick, is it?”
I looked at the wall thoughtfully. “Bricked up fireplace?” I was thinking aloud. It was a rational idea but flawed given there was already an open fireplace in this bedroom on the opposite wall. Adjacent rooms shared fireplace space, and both fed up to one chimney.
“Nah,” the builder said. I sensed he was rather enjoying himself.
“Cupboard then?” Now I was being hopeful.
“Could be. Although I think that would be unusual in a building of this age.”
“What then? Secret room?”
The builder smirked. “I think it’s a little too small to be a secret room, but we’ll know when we open it up. Won’t we?”
I ran my hand over the wall. Silvan would have known how to reveal what lay behind this space, but I didn’t understand enough specific magick to do that. I looked around for Gwyn, but she was nowhere in sight.
“I guess so,” I replied and reluctantly stepped away from the wall.
“We’ll let you know what we find.” The young builder smiled cheerily, and I understood he had dismissed me. I had to let them get on with it.
“Smashing.” I took the hint and headed for my office.
I perched on the chair in front of my desk wondering what to start with first, knowing that within minutes the inn would reverberate to the sound of sledgehammers and drills. It would probably be loud, and it would certainly be disruptive. Perhaps I’d go in search of Finbarr and we could walk the perimeter fence together. Given that my cold seemed to have disappeared, I quite fancied a walk out in Speckled Wood.
I’d half made up my mind to do just that when the banging started. They were knocking through from the bedroom. I wondered what they would find? A long-neglected fireplace or a cavity in the wall?
But then the thumping stopped and even from my distance down the hall I distinctly heard the young builder say, “Maaaaaaaaaaaaate,” in a disbelieving tone.
This was followed by a muffled consultation. I put my head in my hands and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long. The sound of heavy boots clumping along the corridor were followed by a hasty tapping on the door. The young builder, ashen-faced, popped his head through the gap before I could invite him to come in. I looked up at him through splayed fingers.
“Erm, we think you should take a look at this?”
“What is it?” I asked but he’d already turned tail. I took a deep breath and followed him, hopeful that whatever they had found was some kind of Whittle Inn treasure, but knowing in my heart it probably wasn’t.
As I entered The Throne Room, I could see that the builders had made quite a sizeable hole very quickly, like a large window. The elder builder was carefully removing wattle and daub from around the outside of the hole to make it bigger.
“What have you found?” I asked and he beckoned me over.
I carefully picked my way through the debris on the floor and placed my hand against the wall for support so that I could lean forward. As I peered into the gap, looking down into the gloomy shadows, I noted the faint traces of some kind of magickal pulse. At some stage an enchantment had bound this space to secrecy. My elbow connected with the edge of the hole, sending plaster dust and old straw scattering into the dark vacuum below. The wall did not have any sort of thickness, it was little more than wood and straw and plaster.
The elder builder handed me a torch and I flicked it on…
… and gasped.
A corpse.
My brain reeled at what it thought it was seeing. Not a body as such but a skeleton. All the flesh had fortunately wasted away, leaving behind dry white bones. It had obviously been in situ for a long time. There were a number of items scattered around it.
Whomever it had been, male or female, had been wearing robes of a saffron orange colour, with a pointed hat in matching material. These marked it out as a witch or a wizard.
I strangled a moan in my throat and reared back in shock. Who the devil had boarded up a witch in these walls? And why?
Such an horrific end. What kind of a witch would sanction that ending for another?
What kind of a Daemonne? Because surely my ancestors must have authorised this. It couldn’t have happened without their knowledge.
“We need to call the police.” The builder’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I had to agree. I turned to tell him I’d do that and noted Gwyn behind him. She looked in horror at the hole in the wall, and as I moved away she floated into my place. The builders couldn’t see her. They didn’t know she was there. I watched Gwyn put her hands to her throat and utter a blessing. Tears formed in her eyes.
“The police?” Joe asked again.
There was no covering this up. No tidying it away with magick. Nothing Wizard Shadowmender could do to help me here.
“I have one on speed dial,” I said and reached for my mobile.
It seemed strange having George back at the inn. He proceeded to take charge of the police operation with quiet and studious professionalism. I expected nothing less of him, but once or twice he caught my eye and something complicated and unresolved passed between us.
He had arrived fairly quickly, along with his young sidekick Danny, whom I vaguely recognised. Once he’d ascertained that I hadn’t gone crazy, and there really was a skeleton in my walls, he had gotten straight onto the phone and requested the attendance of a forensic team. Before I knew what was happening, I had people clad in white plastic suits and slippers cordoning off the corridor and The Throne Room. Cameras flashed constantly for some time, and then several people began sweeping the bare wood floor and the walls with what looked like a giant laser wand.
I had positioned myself in the corridor where I could see what was going on. George stepped back to have a word, with his pen and notebook at the ready.
“When did you get back?” he asked, and I wondered whether it was for his records or because he was hurt that I hadn’t been in touch.
I licked my lips, my mouth dry. I couldn’t tell whether this was as a result of the shock of finding the skeleton, or from seeing George up close in this way. It had been a while. “Last weekend.” It sounded deliberately vague. I didn’t want to hurt him.
“Oh.” He still managed to sound disappointed. “I haven’t heard from you.”
“I’ve had quite a bit going on and I haven’t been well.”
“Witch flu, I heard?” I saw a smile play out at the edge of his lips. He’d been talking to Charity. Were those two in cahoots?
I decided to change the subje
ct, indicating the activity in the bedroom in front of us. “Now this.”
George nodded and quickly scanned what he had written down. “You had no idea there was anything behind this wall?”
Was he crazy? “Certainly not. I’d hardly have called the builders in to knock it through if I’d…”
George held his hand up in a peace gesture. “I’m not suggesting you had anything to do with putting the body there. Quite clearly it’s been there a very long time. I’m just asking whether you knew it was there.”
I folded my arms in defiance. “Well no then. I didn’t.”
“Okay.” George wrote that down. “And for my records, Whittle Inn has been in your family for how long?”
“Since forever.” He knew that, but he gave me a look nonetheless. “Erm … the written records date back to the 1400s,” I expanded.
George nodded, and regarded me quizzically. “And…” he nodded at Gwyn, pacing among the forensic team as they carried out their investigation. George could see the ghosts, of course. I’d helped him to do that when we’d first started seeing each other, but the rest of his team could not. “Have there been any rumours… in the family… handed down, say… of anything untoward that happened in the past? Anything that needed covering up?”
The truth was of course that Whittle Inn and the Daemonne family were inextricably and eternally linked. We seemed to thrive on secrets and hidden truths. It sometimes appeared as though I learned something new about my family history every day.
I watched Gwyn darting about in agitation and I instinctively understood that she knew what had happened here. Or knew something about it at least. Perhaps she wasn’t to blame, but she did hold the key.
“No,” I replied honestly. “I’ve never heard anything regarding a corpse in the walls of the inn, or even of an unexplained death or a missing person.”
I shook my head, tears not far away. A wave of sadness began to overwhelm me.
“It’s okay, Alf,” George said gently. “You understand I have to ask these questions.”
The Mysterious Mr Wylie: Wonky Inn Book 6 Page 4
