by Sam Short
The fox had never returned to scatter the contents of any more rubbish bins across the street, and the concealment spell had managed to wipe the memories of the twenty or so people who had witnessed the werewolf stampede, some of them passing out from the effects of fear and requiring medical attention before the spell had finally calmed their minds.
With a concealment spell that powerful shielding the paranormal community from discovery, it had been easy to convince the town that she and Judith were legitimate police officers.
She nodded at Sergeant Spencer. “Okay,” she said, beginning to realise that the policeman was serious about being treated as a suspect, but also aware that his years of experience would prove invaluable in finding out what had really happened to Trevor. “You say Trevor was poisoned. Will you come and look at the body? You might notice something that Judith and I might miss.”
“I shouldn’t go near the body,” said the sergeant, with an adamant shake of his head. “I can’t risk contaminating the evidence any further — I checked Trevor’s throat for obstructions and tried to revive him when he died, so traces of me are already all over him and the food and drink I gave him. You and Judith will have to work without me until you’ve done your due diligence and cleared my name.”
“But we know you wouldn’t do anything to harm him,” said Millie. “And you certainly know you didn’t kill Trevor. Why are you so insistent on being a suspect?”
“You saw what happened back at the school fete,” said the sergeant. “I wasn’t exactly pleasant to Trevor when I arrested him, was I? I said some quite nasty things to him, and I specifically remember telling him that if I had my way, he’d never leave that cell. That could be classed as a threat, and there were plenty of witnesses present who heard me.”
“Everybody knows you wouldn’t do something like that!” said Millie. “Everybody in this town respects you!”
“You’re not that naïve, Millie,” said Sergeant Spencer. “You know that’s not the case. Plenty of people dislike me, especially from the paranormal community. I’ve arrested a lot of them during my time in the town, and a lot of them don’t like the fact that a non-paranormal such as me has so much influence over their community. Add to that the fact that Trevor was a werewolf, and I think you’ll find that a lot of the paranormal community will begin showing a loyalty to Trevor that they never showed him while he was alive. They’ll want to find the culprit quickly, and they won’t like the fact that the man who gave Trevor the meal which killed him is investigating his murder. They’ll consider it to be some sort of cover-up.” He looked at the desk again. “I can’t be part of the investigation until my innocence has been proved.”
“Okay,” said Millie, relenting. Although painfully aware that Sergeant Spencer was more emotionally vulnerable than she’d ever seen him, she was equally aware that Judith was still alone in a police cell with a dead body. She probably required Millie’s support more than the policeman did. “What do you advise we do first?” she asked.
“I think you’d better start by examining the body and trying to work out exactly what happened to him,” replied Sergeant Spencer.
“Me and Judith examine the body? Surely a pathologist should do that?” said Millie, unable to hide the concern in her voice.
Sergeant Spencer sighed. “There’ll be no pathologist,” he said. “A member of the paranormal community has been killed. Trevor’s murder is not a matter for the police or the non-paranormal community in general. That’s just how things work in Spellbinder Bay. I’m sure you and Judith will be able to find answers, and I’m sure you’ll be able to ask for help from people you trust. Paranormal people you trust, you mustn’t involve anybody outside the paranormal community.”
Millie shook her head, still trying to understand what she was being told. “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense, but what doesn’t make sense is the fact that you’re so adamant that people will think you had something to do with Trevor’s death. Why do you want to be a suspect so badly?”
“I don’t want to be,” answered Sergeant Spencer. “I have to be.” He frowned, the furrows around his eyes deepening. “It was probably me who gave Trevor the poison, Millie. That’s all we know at this stage. Trevor asked for a drink and something to eat, and I gave him something. Of course I did. He may be —” He hesitated, his eyelids drooping. “He may have been one of the most unsavoury people in town, but he still deserved to be treated with respect. So, I took him some food and a cup of tea, and by the time I’d locked the cell door behind myself and got a few steps down the corridor, Trevor was coughing and shouting for help. By the time I got the key back in the keyhole, he was making loud choking sounds, and by the time I opened the door, he was dead on the floor with his hands clasped around his throat.”
“Maybe he choked?” asked Millie. She shook her head. “No, you already said you’d checked his airway. But why are you assuming he was poisoned? Maybe something else killed him? Something less… murderous.”
“You’ll understand when you see his body,” said Sergeant Spencer. He ran his eyes over Millie’s face, suddenly appearing concerned. “If you want to see it of course. Nobody is forcing you to help. It’s just that you’ve been such a great aid in the past; I think Judith assumed that you were the person she had to call, and I agreed. She trusts you. I trust you, and you have to remember that I’m Judith’s father. It’s probably not easy for a young woman to hear her father telling her that he’s to be treated as a murder suspect. She’ll need your support.”
“No,” said Millie, wondering, with a lump in her throat, who would support her. Wishing she could trust herself to hug him without blurting out the truth about their relationship, she gave Sergeant Spencer a thin smile, painfully aware of the similarities between the shape of her mouth and that of his. “I’m sure it’s not easy for her. I’m sure any daughter would find that difficult. I’ll be there for her, though.”
Sergeant Spencer gave a slow nod. “You’re a special young lady, Millie. Judith couldn’t have asked for a better friend, and I couldn’t have wished for a better person to be her friend. You two are so close. You’re almost like sisters.”
“Yes,” said Millie, turning her back on the desk and facing the entrance to the cells, not sure whether the tear which tracked down her cheek was as a result of Sergeant Spencer’s words, or the fact that she was about to view a dead body. “Yes,” she repeated, rubber squeaking on tiles as she walked slowly across the room. “We’re just like sisters.”
Millie heard Judith before she saw her. The sound of heavy breathing interspersed with frightened mutterings came from the cell’s open doorway, and as Millie peered around the door frame, it was hard to decide which of the two people on the cell floor appeared to be the deadest.
Both of their faces were as pale as the handkerchief which Judith clasped in her hand, and both of them were still, but that was where the similarity between life and death ended. The fact that Trevor’s eyes had glazed over and were staring aimlessly at the dull white ceiling, and the fact that a shimmering river of sparkling blue foam trickled from between his grey lips, placed him firmly as the winner of the deadest person on the cell floor contest.
Hunched over Trevor’s body, Judith took a deep sobbing breath and looked up as Millie entered the cell. “Millie! Thank goodness you’re here! I really need you right now.”
Staring in morbid astonishment at the glowing foam which continued to trickle from Trevor’s mouth, realising now why Sergeant Spencer had told her that she’d understand why poisoning was the probable cause of Trevor’s death when she saw his body, Millie knelt on the floor next to Judith, placing a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder. “What is it?” she said quietly, watching the bubbling river of bright foam forming a small pool on the floor next to the dead man’s cheek, before evaporating in tiny multi-coloured sparks, which flickered, flashed, and vanished after rising a few feet in the air. “Is that the poison?”
“It must be,” sai
d Judith. “It hasn’t stopped coming out of his mouth since I got here. It all just turns into sparks and evaporates, though.”
“Is it magic?” asked Millie. “Was Trevor killed by a magical potion?”
“I don’t know,” said Judith. “But I do know what Dad gave him to eat and drink just before he dropped dead.” She pointed at the floor beneath the small window, its brick-thick frosted glass blocks backlit by the moon.
Millie gasped. “Cakes!” she said, staring at the spot where a plastic tray had spilt its contents. “The cakes the children and I made!”
Judith nodded. “Dad didn’t know that Trevor didn’t like cream, and call me cruel if you like, but I didn’t tell him when I saw him selecting the cakes for Trevor. That’s why the French horn and the eclair are on the floor, but the mini-muffin has been eaten.”
“The poison was in the muffin?” asked Millie, her mouth dry. “The muffin the children and I made?”
“I don’t know,” said Judith. She nodded towards the brown puddle, pooled next to a steel mug. “Maybe it was in the tea. We won’t know if he drank any without finding out what’s inside his stomach.”
Suddenly feeling faint, Millie choked on the acrid bile which burned her throat. “Oh no!” she said. “If the poison was in one of the cakes I made, what about all the other people who ate one?” Her eyes widened. “Has somebody poisoned the cakes the children and I made? Will other people die?”
Judith shook her head vigorously. “No!” she said. “Those cakes on the floor are the ones that I brought from the fete for Dad. I ate one on the way over here, and Dad ate two when I got here, and we’re both fine. If the cake was poisoned, I find it highly unlikely that it was poisoned before I brought the cakes to the police station.”
“So, what happened?” said Millie, staring into Trevor’s glassy eyes. “Did somebody sneak into the police station and poison Trevor’s meal?”
“No,” said Judith, getting to her feet. “That would have been impossible. When I got here with the cakes, Dad made a pot of tea… I helped him. He’s a traditionalist like that, he always makes a pot when he can. We both sat at the front desk and had a cup each, and Dad ate two cakes. I was still here when Trevor started shouting that he was hungry, and I watched Dad pour a cup of tea for him from the same pot we’d drank from, and put some cakes on a tray.
“I said goodbye to Dad at about nine o’clock, and left the station as he was taking the tray to Trevor. I’d only driven as far as the end of the street when my phone rang. It couldn’t have been more than three minutes since I’d left the station. It was Dad telling me that Trevor had died.” She stared at Millie, her face white. “Nobody could have sneaked into the police station, and that tea and those cakes weren’t poisoned before I left.”
“The poison was added to his meal in the three minutes after you left?” asked Millie, understanding what that meant and beginning to fear that Sergeant Spencer would be treated as a suspect by other people in the town.
Judith gave a sombre nod. “It must have been. Dad said Trevor started shouting for help almost as soon as he’d closed the cell door behind himself after he’d given him the tray. He obviously went straight for the mini-muffin and not the cream cakes, and maybe he took a sip of tea before he died.” She took a long breath as she gazed at the body at her feet. “So, unless Trevor poisoned himself, or Mister Invisible was in the cell with him, then the cake or the tea was poisoned after I’d left, and during the time it took Dad to walk the few steps from the reception desk to the cell.”
“Maybe the poison was in the cake when you brought it here,” suggested Millie. “How can you be so sure it wasn’t?”
“Because I’m still alive,” said Judith.
“What does that mean?” asked Millie, puzzled.
“I feel so childish telling you,” confessed Judith. “And I know it’s stupid, but I really don’t like Trevor Giles. When Dad locked him up last weekend for fighting in a pub, he was very nasty to me, and to Dad. And after seeing him being so nasty to that poor old man in the refreshment tent today, I really didn’t think he deserved nice fresh cakes to eat. I told Dad to give Trevor a limp ham sandwich when he started shouting for food, but you know Dad.”
“He’s too kind,” said Millie.
“Yes,” agreed Judith. “So that’s why I didn’t tell Dad that Trevor didn’t like cream when he put two cream cakes on the plate.” She looked down. “And why I snapped half of his mini-muffin off while Dad was looking the other way, and pushed the rest of it against the French horn to make it look whole again.”
“Really?” said Millie. “You did something that a six year old would do to their brother or sister’s cake when they were looking the other way?”
“Yes, really,” said Judith. “I did that. I knew he wouldn’t eat the cream cakes, and I didn’t want him to have a whole chocolate muffin. I wanted him to suffer.”
Millie raised an eyebrow. “It was a bite-sized muffin,” she said. “It’s not like it was very large in the first place.”
“I know,” said Judith. “And I know it was immature of me, but it proves that the poison wasn’t in the muffin when I snapped a piece off, because I ate it, and I feel fine.”
Digesting the information, Millie stared at the contents of the tray on the floor. If the poison had been in the meal, it had to have been in the tea or the muffin. The muffin that wasn’t poisoned when Judith had eaten a piece, and the same tea that both Judith and her father had drank, with no side effects obvious in either of them.
That meant only one thing. If the meal had been poisoned, it must have been poisoned after Judith had left the police station. Blowing out slowly, Millie pushed herself to her feet and stared at Judith. “That’s why your father wants to be considered a suspect,” she said.
Screwing her face into an expression of anguish, Judith massaged her temples with a finger and thumb. “Yes,” she said, “because at the moment he’s the only logical suspect, and unless we find out what really did happen to Trevor, then everybody is going to believe that he actually did it.”
Thoughts crowding her mind, Millie concentrated on what needed to be done next. Watching as another dribble of florescent foam bubbled from Trevor’s mouth, she slid her phone from her pocket. “We need help,” she said, tapping at her phone’s screen. “At this stage, we don’t even know with absolute certainty that he was poisoned.” Putting the phone to her ear, she looked around the cell.
Partially consumed meal on the floor? Check. Dead man on the aforementioned floor, his dead hands clutching his dead throat? Check. Mysterious glowing foam which turns into sparks and evaporates, spewing from aforementioned dead man’s mouth? Check.
She sighed. Of course he’d been poisoned, but they still needed to identify the poison used. They needed the help of somebody with a knowledge of chemistry, potions, and as a helpful bonus — werewolf physiology.
“Who are you ringing?” asked Judith, looking away from Trevor, the handkerchief held to her mouth.
“The only person I can think of right now,” replied Millie.
Chapter 10
Timothy Huggins answered his phone with a satisfied edge to his voice. “What a pleasure it was to see your name flash up on my screen,” he said. “Although it wasn’t completely unexpected.”
“Timothy!” said Millie. “Stop speaking! I need your —”
“I know exactly what you need,” said Timothy, speaking over Millie, hardly pausing to breathe as his voice rose in volume. “I knew you’d come to your senses when Judith wasn’t around to put a downer on things. She’s jealous of you, Millie... jealous that you were asked out by the biggest, strongest wolf in town, and not her.”
“Timothy! Please listen to me!” urged Millie, certain she’d heard the pop of a champagne bottle being opened on the other end of the phone. “I need you!”
“I know, Millie,” said Timothy. “And it just so happens that I’m available to supply whatever it is that you need. You know
where I live, Millie, get yourself over here, pronto. I’ve just opened some bubbly and I’m about to light the log fire. There’s a sheepskin rug in front of it large enough for two… if you know what I mean?”
Scrunching her eyes tightly closed, Millie took a deep breath. “I know exactly what you mean, Timothy,” she said. “But that’s never going to happen! I need your help! We need your help… Judith and me. We —”
“Woah!” said Timothy. “Stop right there! That’s an interesting proposition, and I’m very flattered, but I’m not sure that I have the stamina to entertain the two of you. It’s been a long day.”
“Trevor has been murdered!” Millie yelled, startling Judith, who took a step backwards, almost tripping over Trevor’s body. “We need your help as a chemistry teacher and a werewolf! We think he’s been poisoned!”
“Trevor Giles? Murdered?” said Timothy, the cockiness in his voice replaced with what sounded like genuine concern. “Where are you?”
“The police station,” said Millie. “And please hurry. I’d like to move Trevor’s body. He should be somewhere which offers more dignity than the floor of a police cell.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” promised Timothy, ending the call.
Timothy peered over the rims of his glasses, the point of his yellow tie scraping the floor as he kneeled over Trevor Giles, inspecting the foam which still trickled from the dead man’s mouth. Reduced from a river to a thin stream, the foam appeared to be drying up, the last of it dissipating in a shower of tiny bright lights which drifted upwards, vanishing into nothingness before they reached the ceiling.
