by Holly Bell
‘Just one of your turns, I expect, Mother,’ he replied calmly. ‘Now let’s all settle down and have our tea. Perhaps you’re hungry, Mother. Did you skip breakfast, again?’ asked her attentive son.
‘I did only have a slice of toast and that nice cup of coffee you made me earlier. We’ve been so busy,’ Gillian explained. ‘Yes, that’s probably all it is. He’s so good to his mother,’ she told Amanda. ‘Dear Dale.’
It clicked, the penny dropped, the plant shot forth through the sand into the light, and the flower opened.
Nans. Not valley; dale. Bre: hill. Ha: And.
Gillian Hilland reached for her pudding, spooned a dainty load and delivered it to her mouth.
***
‘Sorry, Inspector!’ exclaimed Pavel. He came running out of the Centre and jumped up into his van, as Trelawney, his call to Amanda unanswered, sent off an urgent text.
The inspector, in the driver’s seat of the Mondeo, ready to go, signalled his thanks to Pavel. With a trained eye out for pedestrians and other motorists, he drove from the carpark and floored the accelerator.
***
‘Do try it while it’s hot, Amanda. That’s when it’s best,’ Dale invited her cheerily. Concealing her growing unease, she picked up her spoon. Tempest sat up on her lap, raised a dainty paw and scooped off the top of the pudding.
‘Oh, naughty kitty!’ Amanda exclaimed, with every appearance of displeasure. ‘Dale, do you have something I can wipe his paw with? I’m afraid he is rather keen on cream, you see? Tempest and I are very close, but I really don’t think I can eat this now.’
But he made no move to fetch a cloth. Instead, he slowly and deliberately turned his chair towards her, leaned back, crossed his arms across his chest and smiled.
‘You know. Of course … you know. I heard Mother’s little slip over South America. But you’d already started to suspect, hadn’t you?’
Amanda’s phone rang in Dale’s pocket.
‘We don’t need that at the moment,’ he stated smoothly. ‘Do we now?’
Chapter 41
The Truth Will Out
Amanda’s phone buzzed the text alert. Dale took it out of his pocket and looked at the message.
‘From your inspector. It seems he knows too.’ He turned the screen so she could see, but kept the device out of her reach.
Don’t Alice
‘It’s code. I can guess. Yes, he knows too.’ He sighed. ‘Ah well. That means time is up, Amanda.’ He got to his feet. So did she, Tempest springing from her arms onto the table between them.
The inspector must be on his way, she thought. But this is not good.
Grandpa’s words sounded in her head.
‘Be Granny.’
But I’m not, thought Amanda. I’m me. I’m just me … but I’m going to have to be enough ... And maybe I am.
After all, she had a pocket full of wand and head full of a thousand spells. And even more rules. Unfortunately, principle among them was that spells against humans were anathema, and, admittedly, they had got her into serious trouble. Then again … what choice would she have?
Amanda faced it: I can’t defend myself with anything but magic.
She moved away from Hilland as Gillian spoke,
‘Dale … I’m not feeling …’
‘No, Mother … but it’ll pass.’ He smiled. A smile of teeth and ice. He finished, ‘Just. Like You.’
From her drowsiness, she fetched up anger.
‘You’ve been a bad boy, haven’t you, Daley! Mother always knows when you’ve been a bad boy. You said the special thing in the cake was just for her. For her!’
‘Plans change, Mother,’ he replied airily, edging towards Amanda, who now had a hand in her pocket, fingering out her mini-wand.
‘I wouldn’t have said a word, Daley!’ she wailed.
‘I couldn’t risk it, Mother. This is best for me. You always wanted the best for me.’
‘Not when you’re a bad boy.’ She looked up at Amanda. ‘I always knew. I knew the minute he came back from Ecuador that he’d been up to no good. He wouldn’t tell me, but I always find out. I know how to find things out. I got it out of him in the end.’
‘Hush, Mother. You mustn’t upset yourself. It’ll only work faster.’
‘And then, when he came back that afternoon, I knew he’d been bad again. Then I heard about that girl. She knew too somehow. She had it, had the book.’ She reached out a weak arm to him, barring his path to Amanda, who edged further away. He put his mother aside, as she whined. ‘I would have paid, Daley, anything she wanted.’
But her son was ignoring her.
‘Come on, Amanda. Time for cake …’
She knew Hilland was bigger, stronger and faster. He made a grab for her, as she dodged back, whipping forth her wand with the word:
‘Cusslaepeth!’
At once Dale’s eyes closed and he crumpled onto the fashionably black tiles of the florist’s shop floor. Amanda quickly moved to Gillian Hilland’s now sleeping form. She managed to stop her head from thudding into the metal table. Even as she tended to the visible fallout, Amanda felt it. The mystical mushroom cloud erupted into the ether, bearing the fatal message to any Cardiubarn or Flamgoyne still alive: the witch lives.
She stood back and surveyed the visible disaster. Her familiar padded across to Dale and regarded him with satisfaction.
‘Oh dear, Tempest,’ said Amanda, looking from one somnolent body to the other, and putting away her wand. ‘I didn’t have a plan for this. What am I going to do with them? What I need is …’
A faint metallic scraping and clicking sound was coming from the back door. Suddenly there was a click and draft from the kitchen, heralding the welcome entrance of Detective Inspector Trelawney. Amanda greeted him with palpable relief.
‘Perfect timing!’
‘Miss Cadabra, are you all right?’ he asked, instantly deducing what had had just transpired.
‘Yes, thank you, Inspector, but I think Mrs Hilland may need an ambulance. I think Dale has —’
‘Poisoned her. The cake,’ he added. Amanda stared at him in amazement.
‘How did you ...?’ But that was a question for another time. More pressing was the present predicament. ‘Well, never mind. Look, I’m afraid I had to use … magic,’ she explained regretfully.
‘Yes, so I gathered. Well, you can, er, bring them round by the same means?’
‘Yes, but we’d better arrange the scene, perhaps?’
‘Unquestionably,’ agreed Trelawney, crossing to Dale and heaving him up and into a chair. Amanda supported the sleeping murderer upright while Trelawney went to the back door then returned with handcuffs.
‘Baker is calling for the medics now.’ He told her as he applied the restraints to Dale’s wrists.
Amanda arranged Gillian with her head on her arms, saying,
‘He was definitely the guide. The journal gave his name. I just didn’t see it: Nans Breha: Dale Hilland.’
‘Aha. Excellent. Ready?’
‘Now?’ she asked Trelawney.
‘If you will, Miss Cadabra.’
She took out her wand.
‘Awaekdenath.’
Trelawney, using the brief hiatus of the Hillands emerging from Amanda’s sleep spell, moved to the front door, let Baker in and asked him to do his bit.
Dale went to rub his eyes and discovered that his hands were cuffed. He was about to stand up, when Baker approached him.
‘Dale Hilland, I am arresting you for the murder of Ainsley Storridge and the attempted murders of Amanda Cadabra and Gillian Hilland. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
‘Inspector,’ Amanda said quietly, seeing Gillian fall back into slumber, ‘I think we have to get Mrs Hilland to wake up and try to keep her awake until the
ambulance arrives’
‘Indeed. Nikolaides!’ The constable had entered through the back door at the inspector’s word. ‘Wake Mrs Hilland up and keep her awake. How long until the medics get here?’
‘Five minutes, sir.’
With some cheek-patting, hand-slapping and calling of her name, Mrs Hilland was brought back to consciousness. It was sufficient, at least, for her to hear Nikolaides following words:
‘Gillian Hilland, I am arresting you on suspicion of being an accessory to the attempted murder of Amanda Cadabra. You do —’
‘You can add blackmail to that!’ shouted Dale. ‘She drove me to it! The witch!’
A shot of ire-fuelled adrenaline brought his mother back to life to retort, ‘Two years, that’s all I asked, just two years to help me set up the shop. I wouldn’t have told. You could have gone back to your life. I wouldn’t have told.’
‘Two years was a life sentence too long, Mother!’
‘Yes, well that’s what he’ll be facing,’ Trelawney murmured to Amanda.
When the ambulance sirened up minutes later, the pair were still exchanging dagger looks and expressively worded recriminations. It seemed to Amanda that these were every bit as good as a signed confession.
Nikolaides departed with Mrs Hilland, and Baker delivered her son into the hands of uniformed backup to carry him to detention.
‘Flash and dabs’ll be here in a minute, sir.’
‘Thank you, Baker.’
The sergeant turned to Amanda,
‘That’s —’
She grinned. ‘I know, the photographer and forensics.’
‘Very good, miss. We’ll have you on the job, yet,’ Baker commended her.
‘Hm. In the meantime,’ said the inspector, ‘let’s have a look around, shall we?’ Baker handed him a pair of latex gloves, which he snapped on.
Amanda followed Trelawney into the kitchen, careful not to touch anything. She watched him go through the drawers and cupboards, then squat down by the unit under the sink. Only a few moments later, he drew out a plastic bag from the shadowy depths. He stood up.
‘Hm. Looks like dried flowers or …’
Amanda leaned forward.
‘May I?’
‘Look but don’t touch, please, Miss Cadabra,’ Trelawney, responded, holding the bag closer to her. After a few seconds, she frowned.
‘I don’t need to handle it, Inspector. In fact, I’d rather not.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s hemlock. He must have been feeling the strain of life with Mother for a while.’
‘That went into the cake then.’
‘I wouldn’t trust the tea either. Although I think Dale put either a sedative or poison into his mother’s coffee earlier.’
‘Well, it’ll all go to the lab for testing.’
The rest of the team arrived at that moment, and Amanda left them to do their job. Her priority was to call Mrs Pagely and let her know that all possibility of arrest was now removed. Finally, Amanda returned with relief to the cottage to recover with Tempest, on the sofa.
Once ensconced, tea and gingernuts before her and her lap heavy with cat, she called out,
‘Grandpa!’
Perran obligingly appeared on the sofa beside her.
‘Well done, bian!’
‘Thank you, Grandpa. But you could have told me what that phrase meant: Nans Breha.’
‘I knew you’d get there in the end, Ammee love. Besides if I just gave you the answer, where would the fun in that be?’
His appalled granddaughter fairly spluttered out an indignant reply:
‘Fun?’
Chapter 42
Debrief
‘It’s just a pasty, and cup of tea,’ Amanda reassured Trelawney, setting the tray down on his lap. ‘I was sure when you called that you wouldn’t have eaten by the time you got here. And it doesn’t count as socialising with a witness, if we talk about the matter in hand while you eat.’
He grinned up at her.
‘Well, it’s very kind of you.’
‘My pleasure. The least I can do since you brought my phone back,’ she responded cheerfully, going to the kitchen to fetch her own matching supper.
Once Amanda was back on the sofa beside the well-fed familiar now sleeping off a three-helping dinner, Trelawney asked her,
‘When did you realise? That it was Hilland.’
‘That name kept bothering me: Nans Breha.’
‘Nans meaning valley, you said.’ Trelawney took a bite of his pasty.
‘Yes,’ replied Amanda, ‘but I kept feeling that, in this case, that translation was wrong. And then when he sort of took my …. Well, I let him have my phone to show him the piano pics … He’d asked to see the progress I was making, and he walked to the door with it, and I felt … I suddenly wanted my phone back … And then he locked the door, but in the most innocent-seeming way. Like Mrs Sharma turns the sign around when she needs to go upstairs or something. Only it didn’t feel like that at all.’
‘It must have been unnerving.’ Trelawney leaned down to give the fire a prod with the poker, and it flamed into renewed effort.
‘Yes, alarm bells were starting to sound in my head. Oh, and then his mother said she didn’t feel well. It was the tea, at first, that I suspected, and fortunately Tempest jumped onto my lap just as I felt I was expected to drink some.’
‘Fortunate indeed,’ agreed Trelawney.
‘Then I could see I was expected to show some interest in the pudding and I took up my spoon, trying to think what to do next when, bless him, Mr Fuffiness here put his paw right into the top of it! When I said I couldn’t eat it now, and your call and then text arrived, that brought things to a head. I tried to back away, but, in the end, I had to use magic. And then you came in the nick of time to help deal with the aftermath.’
Trelawney was picking up his pasty for a second bite when she said,
‘My hero!’
He blushed at such an unexpected accolade from Miss Cadabra. However, looking up at her in surprise, he found her fond gaze resting upon the heap of comatose fur beside her.
‘Hm,’ he commented vaguely.
In his sleep, Tempest registered his human’s naturally well-deserved tribute. Of course, he could have leaped at her assailant if she had not had the means to stop him at her disposal. It was good for her to employ her skills. It wouldn’t do for her to become lazy, he thought, before retiring into slumber.
‘Clever text message by the way,’ Amanda commended Trelawney. ‘“Don’t Alice”.’
‘You got it?’
‘Dale read it out. Yes, I thought of Alice in Wonderland and the cake: Eat Me. Unfortunately, he twigged, at least that it was some kind of warning code.’
‘I hope it bought you some time, though.’
‘A few seconds. So, did you get the final piece from Lord Vigo, as to the identity of the mysterious guide?’ Amanda asked, before enjoying her first mouthful of pasty.
‘I did, thanks to your Uncle Mike, his influence with Maxwell and Maxwell’s with some other big cheeses.’
‘Hm.’ Amanda dusted the flakes of pastry from her lips with her napkin. ‘May I know what he told you?’
‘It was all off the record.’
‘I gather it was enough for you to join the dots and end up with Dale Hilland.’
‘Yes.’ Trelawney relented. Mike would say there was no reason not to tell Miss Cadabra. ‘There was a photo on Vigo’s phone of the guide he himself had hired and recommended to Ainsley Storridge.
‘I expect Samantha had looked through his phone,’ Amanda commented prosaically.
‘You do?’
‘Yes, it would have appeared to have been quite innocent, just a typical teenage girlfriend thing,’ she explained.
‘You seem confident about that,’ Trelawney observed, thinking it wasn’t the sort of thing he could imagine Miss Cadabra would do.
&nb
sp; ‘Yes, thanks to Ruth and Kieran, my data banks for all things teenage. They gave me a list. Quite long, and including that item!’
‘Aha. I see. Inside information.’
‘Precisely. But why couldn’t Vigo just give you Hilland’s name?’ was Amanda’s next question.
‘He didn’t know it. Vigo had hired the man in a less than above-board manner.’
‘Oh, no wonder he wants it on the QT. But you recognised the photo as being that of Dale?’
‘Not at once,’ admitted Trelawney, reaching for his tea. ‘Is there sugar …?’
‘Already in. One teaspoon. Stirred not shaken,’ she added with a twinkle.
He chuckled. ‘Thank you. Hilland had disguised his appearance. But I can imagine that once Samantha Gibbs had seen him around Sunken Madley, given that she was on the trail of the guide, she would have recognised him.’
‘So, she found the guide in, and traced Ainsley’s journal to, Sunken Madley. She found the jackpot here, of all places.’
‘Yes, and on the afternoon of the party, got Hilland to meet her in the stacks where she’d hidden the journal in plain sight. She tried to bleed him for cash in exchange for telling him which book was the incriminating one. That’s when it all went awry. Mrs Hilland’s and her son’s streams of recrimination on the way to the ambulance and after were most informative.’
‘It looks like Dale found himself in one blackmail situation too many. What with his mother making him stay around here, and then Samantha demanding money, and it sent him over the edge … so to speak,’ remarked Amanda.
‘Just so. Yes, he’d already killed before. I wonder if the sight of all that treasure up in the Andean cave hadn’t affected his sanity long before the showdown in the stacks.’
‘In my opinion,’ Amanda stated, ‘he and his mother are a pair. Nutty as a fruitcake.’
‘I’ve no doubt their respective solicitors will make full use of just such a plea,’ Trelawney commented drily.
