He jerked a thumb at a spot over his shoulder.
The other woman lifted her head. Her voice carried like ice.
‘Cats are aloof from humankind. They act on their instincts but communicate on a different spectral plain.’
He sniggered. ‘I don’t have a bloody clue what you’re talking about. Now out of my way. I’ve got a plane to catch.’
The woman leaned on her cane as though it were a third leg, her head jutting forward.
‘You’re not going anywhere, Maurice Hoffman. We know what you’ve done. And we are going to detain you until the police arrive.’
He burst out laughing. ‘You and Grandma Fluff here? I don’t think so. You’ll need an army of grannies to stop me, lady. Now out of my way.’ He paused for effect, his voice flooded with menace. ‘Before I get nasty.’
‘What have you done with my daughter?’
Gloria was quivering from her beautifully styled hair to neatly varnished toes, but she was on the attack.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh yes you do. And you’re not going anywhere. The police will be here shortly. They know about the diamonds. They know about the money you got paid for smuggling them and the money that was stolen from your business partners. We know everything.’
Maurice stiffened.
‘You’re shivering, Granny. Why don’t you get out of my way and go home and warm your toes in front of the fire? Before I do something I might regret.’
‘I’m not shivering. I’m quivering. With anger. If you’ve harmed my daughter …’
‘Let me pass.’
Gloria swung her handbag around her head like an old time knight with a spiked ball on a chain. She’d read her fill of medieval romance so figured she knew what to do.
‘No.’ Her shout echoed in the thickening fog. Her body swung on her slender legs as she twirled the bag. Her legs weren’t quite what they used to be, they wouldn’t stand the stress of running a marathon.
‘You shall not pass,’ proclaimed Mrs Hicks who was standing right behind her, walking stick raised.
Muttering an expletive that ended in ‘off’, Maurice Hoffman swivelled round and marched down the path that led to the small car park at the end of the building. He’d chosen this route on arrival, only too aware of the squeaky gate.
The sound of police sirens sounded in the distance but getting closer.
A younger figure stepped into the car park entrance, a far wider entrance than the one Gloria and Olivia were guarding.
‘You’re not coming through here either until you tell me where my mother is.’
Lindsey was holding a garden spade above her head.
‘I could kill you all,’ Maurice growled, turning to face them, though not yet cornered.
He began backing up the way he’d come. The only hope of escape he had was to get through the hedge at the back of the property and take off over the fields.
With this in mind, he walked backwards into the darkness, his eyes still on them just in case one of the women was fit enough to follow.
‘I’ll kill all of you,’ he shouted. Then he was gone, enveloped in darkness.
Suddenly there was a thud. Then there was a groan.
Heart beating with excitement, Lindsey got out her phone. Her fingers felt like thumbs, but eventually she found the button that switched on the LED torch.
Maurice Hoffman was flat out, unconscious on the ground. A tall figure brandishing a tyre iron stood over him.
‘Have I killed him?’ Mary Jane sounded a little surprised, though not at all regretful.
Lindsey looked down at him. Her grandmother and Mrs Hicks came to take a look too.
‘He deserves to be dead,’ said Mrs Hicks.
‘I don’t think he is,’ said Gloria, looking disappointed.
Mrs Hicks turned her head slowly then peered along the dark gap between the two buildings. ‘Your granddaughter’s vanished.’
Honey’s mother shook her head. ‘Shame I didn’t get to hit him with my handbag. Mrs Thatcher used to do that you know; hit the members of her cabinet with her handbag if she thought they weren’t paying attention. I should think it felt most rewarding. Shame I couldn’t try it.’
The sound of police sirens preceded the flashing of blue lights.
A breathless and worried-looking Doherty came racing through into the car park and up the steps.
He eyed the flat-out figure of Maurice Hoffman then each of the three women.
‘I take it Honey is involved in this somewhere. Where is she?’
‘In there. Lindsey’s gone in to find her.’
He nodded in the sage, serious way he had when he was having trouble digesting a given situation.
‘That’s OK. But this isn’t.’ He nodded down at the unconscious Maurice. ‘What happened to him and who did it?’
‘Granny power,’ said Mrs Hicks. ‘He told us to go warm our tootsies in front of the fire and to mind our own business. That’s the trouble with the young nowadays; no respect. We took umbrage.’
Doherty looked stunned. He shook his head in despair. ‘Umbrage is understandable. Unconscious takes more explaining. How did he get to be unconscious?’
Mary Jane raised her arm to reveal her weapon of choice.
‘It was dark. He ran into my tyre iron.’
Doherty opened his mouth to say something, but Mrs Hicks had a knack for picking up angry vibes. She could also lay on the defenceless little old lady bit when she needed to.
‘Can somebody help me look for my cat? Peregrine doesn’t stray from my side. I fear the worst. Oh dear. Oh dear, what shall I do.’
Lindsey had never been inside Moss End Guest House. It smelled musty and damp. Coming in the back way, first stop had been the utility room. The bedding was piled high, but there was no lingering smell of soap suds that a busy hotel usually had.
She considered turning on the lights just in case Maurice Hoffman hadn’t been working alone. Heart beating nineteen to the dozen, she decided to chance it.
Click! On came the lights. Her surroundings were gloomy. The kitchen was brighter, but no sign of anyone else.
Upstairs!
The word had popped into her head. This place was cold and creepy but it didn’t explain how come she was hearing things – or not hearing things. It wasn’t really a sound more a sudden inclination. She jerked round. Did that hand land on her shoulder again?
Nobody there.
‘Gird up your loins,’ she said to herself. ‘You’re made of strong stuff, Lindsey Driver!’
Talking to herself seemed to work. She soldiered on into the hallway which served as a reception area.
Nobody leapt out from beneath the Victorian desk, a thing of dark wood with small spindles running around its edge surrounding a green leather surface. It was set in front of the window. The room wasn’t big enough to hold much else and there were no creepy corners. There were three doors opening off the hallway. The one to her right seemed the most convenient so she opened it and pressed the light switch. It didn’t come on and the room was big with a high ceiling.
‘Mother? Honey Driver, are you there? One tap for yes, two for no.’ Her humour was short lived. She sounded nervous even to herself.
Upstairs.
That voice again. Where had it come from? She looked all around her. Nobody. She was all alone.
The stairs were steep and enclosed between wood panelled walls. A brass handrail ran up one side. The landing at the top of the stairs was like the inside of a cave. Not a vestige of detail showed. Total darkness.
‘Right,’ she said out loud. ‘I’m only going up these stairs if the light works.’
The light worked. Whoever was urging her on – whether it was in her own head or an outside influence – they seemed to be on her side.
At the top of the stairs a narrow corridor went off to her right. To her left was a quarter landing and a bathroom and nothing much else. She worked out she was at the ver
y end of the house. The higgledy-piggledy corridor to her right was the way to go.
Halfway along the corridor a set of stairs went up to the attic bedroom.
‘I know this,’ she said to herself, almost in wonder only this time it was nothing to do with an unseen presence whispering in her ear. Her mother had told her that the bodies of the victims were thrown out of the attic bedrooms at the top of the stairs. The only way was up.
‘But I’ll only go up if the light works. Light switch,’ she muttered, found it and switched it on. ‘Thanks – whoever you are.’ She went up the stairs.
Wet and cold, Honey was slowly slipping into unconsciousness. It was as though she no longer had a body, just a brain that felt as though it were surviving all by itself. Bits of her were closing down. Her toes went first. Then her fingers.
‘Isn’t it wonderful that I’ve got an ample bosom,’ she murmured.
Peregrine purred in response. OK, he was only a cat, but even he must have appreciated the fact that her bosoms were the only part of her beside her head that was above the waterline. Which meant he was above the waterline too, and as a cat, he preferred things to be that way.
Still, a body couldn’t survive as head and bosoms alone, and she couldn’t keep her back arched indefinitely.
The cold was taking over. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t prevent her eyes from closing.
‘You mustn’t,’ she muttered to herself though her voice wasn’t even a whisper. The words had only surfaced in her mind and never got to her lips. She reasoned that other people had survived similar situations.
‘Hold on. Like the people on the Titanic.’
She knew most of them who’d gone into the water had been dead in minutes. Cold was a swift killer. The body just shut down. Fast.
Lindsey looked to either side of her. The attic rooms were unlit and gloomy. The wallpaper hadn’t been changed in years; gold stars on dark blue.
The smaller of the two rooms held only a narrow bed and a bedside table. Closets were set into the only wall not curbed by the slope of the ceiling.
The larger of the rooms contained much the same furnishings, but also two large boxy affairs painted a hideous green.
For some reason her eyes kept going back to those boxes. They were the size of a decent coffer, the sort of thing a housekeeper would keep her linens in. Yet they couldn’t be that, she thought. Not up here.
She attempted to open the smaller of the boxes. The moment she saw the water she knew that this was an old-style water tank, probably Victorian and no longer used to supply the house with water.
There seemed little point in opening the lid of the other one, except …
Try it!
The larger box had a wide lip running all the way round – easy to grip. It should have opened as easily – more easily – than the smaller of the water tanks, but it didn’t.
‘Some plonker’s nailed it down,’ she grunted as she tried to heave it open. A sudden sound caused her to pause. It was faint. She stayed perfectly still, her ear against the wooden lid. That sound again. A faint meow.
A cat had fallen into the water tank!
Her thinking progressed on a more logical train. No. Not fallen in. The lid was nailed shut.
She began hammering on it.
‘Mum! Are you in there?’
There was a faint sloshing of water. A small voice calling for help. And more meows.
Hammering on the lid and screaming for her mother to hold on, Lindsey was oblivious to the quick rat-a-tat of masculine feet racing up the stairs.
‘She’s in here! She’s in here! But I can’t open it. It’s nailed shut.’
Doherty didn’t hesitate. Using the tyre iron he’d confiscated from Mary Jane, he prised open the lid.
A pair of orange eyes looked up at them. The cat meowed, purred, then jumped off Honey’s chest, onto the floor, and off down the stairs.
Honey opened her eyes.
‘I feel so tired. Take me to bed please.’
Doherty caught hold of her shoulders, raised her up, and held her tight.
‘You bet.’
Chapter Twenty-five
It wasn’t often Honey held a dinner party for family and friends, but she figured on this occasion that they all needed it.
Just for once her mother was all for the idea of dining with Doherty.
‘I’ve been a widow a few times, but losing husbands is one thing; losing a child – even a middle-aged child – is far more devastating.
‘I’m so glad you’re accepting Doherty – Steve,’ Honey said to her.
‘The man saved you,’ said Gloria, her diamond earrings rattling as though in applause.
The man. It was noticeable that she didn’t call him by name, but there, her mother didn’t surrender anything that easily.
She did add that she couldn’t stop long because Antonio had invited her to his place.
‘For an authentic Italian dish?’ Honey asked.
Her mother’s eyes sparkled. ‘He is an authentic Italian dish.’
By ten o’clock Lindsey had left the table to go clubbing with friends.
‘I need to party. Finding my mother half-frozen wearing one of her old bras and a pair of outsize knickers was a fact-finding tour I haven’t quite got over yet. I need to chill out – though not in cold water.’
Honey thought how lucky she was and said so.
‘If you hadn’t persisted in searching that gloomy old house …’
‘And if Mary Jane hadn’t come armed with a tyre iron …’ Lindsey caught the look on Doherty’s face. ‘Sorry. I hear you turned in a statement saying it was black as night round there and he must have fallen and hit his head.’
Mary Jane eyed Doherty blankly as though she hadn’t heard what either he or Lindsey had said.
‘Things could have turned out differently. All of you could be dead. Maurice Hoffman’s fingerprints were inside the small safe in that urn. They’d been made in South Africa and ordered by the Seraphina Club in London, purely to be used for smuggling. Rhino had an old placard from the club in his trolley. Boris saw it, saw the key, and called up the details on the internet. He’d been out in South Africa for a while and had seen the reported theft of diamonds. He’d also seen bits of paper connected to Maurice Hoffman and the club. Trading people’s details was his business. He put two and two together, found the money in one of the urns, but didn’t count on being found by Hoffman and his cronies. He had hoped to be able to retrieve the money from Rhino after the two thugs came calling. Unfortunately …’
There was silence as everyone digested the details.
Finally, Lindsey stood with both hands on the chair back. Her expression was thoughtful, one eyebrow raised higher than the other. She was biting her bottom lip, her eyes fixed on the fatty rind she’d left on the side of her plate.
‘It was an odd night,’ she said, her voice soft though her vowels were clipped. There was something she wanted to say but didn’t know how to say it.
Honey reached across and covered her daughter’s hand with her own.
‘Don’t look so worried, love. I know it must be a trial to have a nutcase of a mother like me. You go out and enjoy yourself.’
‘It isn’t that … I really don’t know how to say this, but something … someone …’
‘Moss End is haunted,’ Mary Jane piped up. ‘The presence isn’t exactly the same as Sir Cedric. I mean, he’s perfectly ordinary.’
All heads turned in her direction. Only Mary Jane could possibly talk about ghosts being ordinary.
‘I can explain,’ said Mary Jane. ‘Olivia and I had a little chat about it and we both agreed it was a special place. There’s a door there into the great beyond. It’s like an express elevator for spirits; they come and go through it like we do in a department store.’
‘Ghosts!’
‘Not ghosts,’ said Mary Jane, her face upturned, eyes fixed on the fancy plasterwork around the light rose.
&nbs
p; ‘What exactly do you mean?’ Lindsey asked, her face full of interest.
‘It means that it’s a kind of spiritual super-highway; a bit like the internet but without the microchips.’
‘You felt it too?’ Lindsey sounded awestruck.
Mary Jane blinked like an owl that just woke up.
Honey didn’t want Lindsey to feel odd about her feelings at Moss End Guest House. She exchanged a nervous look with Doherty. Doherty, sipping wine, looked totally unconcerned.
‘All right. I’ll admit it myself,’ said Honey. ‘I felt there was something going on there, but they weren’t interested in me. Spirits kind of like to help out now and again.’
Lindsey pulled her chair back out and sank back into it. ‘Like angels?’ she asked.
Mary Jane did a so-so toss of her head. ‘You could say that. Helpful beings that may or may not have ever lived; they exist. Sometimes they like to help out those who are living. Well,’ she said suddenly, knees making a cracking sound as she got to her feet. ‘I’m turning in. Thanks for the dinner. It’s good everything worked out and that I’m not being sued for bashing that guy over the head.’
Honey tuned herself out of the conversation. Her troubled expression was all for Lindsey. She truly felt for her. Despite the joking, she knew Lindsey had been as much affected by her ordeal as she was herself.
‘Lindsey?’
Her daughter shook her head. ‘I’m OK. Honestly I am.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Thank goodness for Mary Jane. Mary Jane, you are absolutely amazing.’
‘I am?’
Mary Jane, a bright delight in her favourite shocking pink and pistachio green velour lounging suit, looked surprised.
‘You knew there was something spiritual about that house.’
Mary Jane shrugged. ‘I picked up on the atmosphere, but Olivia filled me in on the detail. That’s why she’s there you know. She keeps an eye on the place. Her and that cat of hers. What a cat, huh? Did you see those orange eyes?’
It was good to finally be alone. Lindsey had opted to stay with friends overnight. They had the coach house to themselves. The sheets on the bed were freshly laundered, the room was warm. Only the fact that Doherty was lying in bed beside her with only his chest hair providing any modesty prevented her from falling asleep.
Blood and Broomsticks Page 24
