Amanda Cadabra and The Hidden Depths

by Holly Bell

  ‘Child. Wake up.’ Now she was opening her eyes. She was lying down, on a settee, in what Amanda recognised was the drawing-room. The old woman was speaking again.

  ‘You’ve had a nice little nap, and now your grandmother is here. That’s right, get up. Come along.’

  Walking blearily into the hall ... and here is Granny, Granny picking her up. Relief … safety.

  ‘You can take her,’ said the old woman. The usual icy contempt was back. ‘No further use for that one.’

  ‘I can take her for good?’ asked Granny levelly.

  ‘Certainly … And Senara.’

  ‘Well?’

  The old woman’s voice was as cold as the crypt.

  ‘Don’t come back.’

  Amanda, in her grandmother’s arms, saw the air crackle between the two women. She felt words bubbling within Granny, a quiet seething. But Senara turned and walking to the front doors that opened before her. Without looking back, she said with passionless finality,

  ‘Goodbye, Mother.’

  They were in the car, Amanda seeing the retreating shape of Cardiubarn Hall, the snake of the drive, the gates, hearing Granny’s tones, warm, reassuring, practical:

  ‘Back to Grandpa, and then … home.’

  The clean smell of the sea … Grandpa’s arms taking her out of the car. Granny’s low spoken:

  ‘She’s ours. Yes, for good. She promised.’

  Held close, cuddled. Grandpa’s words: ‘Pack up. We’re leaving now …’

  Now … now …

  Amanda came back to the present, sitting on the rim of the cauldron.

  ‘I remember … I remember it all, Tempest … And within weeks … days? … I had the first asthma attack … the ambulance siren … Grandpa saying … “Hear that? It means you’re important, bian.” Yes, I see … it was all quite logical … yes. The book! That sign on the right-hand page … I know what it means!’

  Amanda hurried carefully down the steps from the cauldron’s edge to the floor and went to the lectern ... Empty. She looked around desperately and became aware of a movement in the shadow thrown by the deep frame of the door. A glimmer of long rippling pale hair. A child’s quiet voice, both warm and matter-of-fact:

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Maybe it’s in great-grandmother’s library?’ Amanda asked urgently, disregarding, for the moment, the intruder status of the hidden figure.

  ‘Not there. I checked.’

  ‘You know …?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But … it has the antidote!’ protested Amanda.

  ‘Yes. You must find it.’

  ‘Where? Where do I look? … Who are you?’

  ‘I have a message. For Michael Hogarth.’

  ‘You’re a friend?’ Amanda enquired cautiously.

  ‘It’s time for him to tell you my story.’

  ‘Who …?’

  ‘Lucy. Tell him to tell you Lucy’s story.’ Then, before Amanda had a chance to question her further, she added helpfully: ‘Remember to blow out the candles.’

  Amanda went around the room until just the one by the door remained aflame. She turned and asked,

  ‘What do …?’

  But the girl was gone.

  Chapter 54

  Amanda and Kyt

  ‘Come on, Tempest, let’s get out of here.’ Amanda blew out the last candle and stepped over the threshold. At once, her phone came back on. Granny was returning to the hall too, as Amanda turned her shoulder on the now re-locked, under-the-stairs door.

  ‘As I suspected,’ stated Senara. ‘The grounds are a mess. Ah … I can see from your face you’ve had some revelations.’

  ‘When did you work it out, Granny?’

  ‘That? Not for a long time. I wondered. Suspected. But actually not until the healer at the Centre said there was nothing any treatment or therapy could do for you. I knew then that it was deep Darkside magic. And it was unforgivable of them. I am sorry, Ammee. Sorry I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Granny, there was nothing you could have done to have stopped it. I was not under your roof or protection, and Great-grandmother always made you leave me here. But indeed, I do think I had a lucky escape. I could talk at that age, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, my clever dear, but you were wise enough to know to appear mute whenever you visited. It is my belief that, at times, young children, faced with dire threat, develop their intelligence with great rapidity in order to deal with the situation. Even at that age, you were wise enough and witch enough to know in what danger you were, each time you were left here. A very, very bright little girl. The payoff, of course, was that in other ways you did not develop,’ Senara observed dispassionately. ‘In short, we knew that in some ways, you would never grow up.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ replied Amanda sympathetically.

  ‘But then one day your grandfather said he didn’t think you needed to and would do extremely well with some of the adult odds and ends missing.’

  Amanda laughed. ‘Yes, that does sound just like Grandpa.’

  ‘And he’s at the gate. Come on, let us leave this place. Done your job?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think I’ll mention the area beneath us, when I give these plans back to Mr Keast.’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Granny, as her granddaughter locked the front doors behind them.

  Beyond the gates, they found the men leaning on their cars and chatting. Trelawney had returned after an hour and a half, just in case. He was finding it much easier to engage with the transitioned Perran without the intimidating presence of Senara.

  ‘Grandpa! Is that a Rolls Royce? Very fine.’

  ‘Come to get your Granny in style. Must be off, bian. We’ve got a daffodil show to go to.’

  ‘See you both in due course,’ Senara added with a wave, as they disappeared, in more than one way, down the road.

  Trelawney and Amanda got into the Mondeo.

  ‘Before I ask you how you got on,’ said the inspector, ‘my father has invited us for dinner, and your Uncle Mike too. If that’s too much for you …’

  ‘Well …’ She felt at first overwhelmed by the idea of meeting Mr Trelawney but then … ‘Of course. It’s most kind and will give me a chance to thank your father for his kindness and hospitality. And I want to tell Uncle Mike what’s happened.’ Amanda suddenly got out of the car.

  ‘What’s wrong, Miss Cadabra?’ called the inspector ‘Have I said ...?’

  But she was pointing to the grey feline slinking through the Cardiubarn Hall gates as though he owned the place. Amanda opened the back door and Tempest settled himself on the seat.

  ‘Sorry, Inspector. Yes, let’s go to Trelawney House, shall we?’

  ‘“Trelawney House”? How grand-sounding. My father’ll like that!’

  Kytto received a polite handshake and heartfelt thanks from Amanda. Mike got a hug, and everyone acquired a glass of sherry handed out by Thomas.

  Amanda accepted hers appreciatively. ‘Thank you. I rather think I need this!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Thomas. On the way, she had furnished him with a short version of the revelations she had received, in the depths of Cardiubarn Hall.

  ‘Dinner’s not quite ready, but shall we sit down?’ suggested Kyt. ‘Miss Cadabra, do you have news? Are you comfortable with telling us?’

  ‘Er yes … You see … I was really, very lucky.’

  ‘Yes, I feel that way whenever my father tries to poison me,’ Trelawney chipped in.

  ‘Hush, Thomas,’ replied Kyt, suppressing a smile.

  ‘Go on, Amanda,’ encouraged Hogarth.

  ‘But I was. You see, normally, according to the Cardiubarn custom of disposing of anyone undesirable, they would have simply bumped me off. However, thanks to Granny and Grandpa’s involvement and my allowing them to think I was mute and ninepence to the shilling into the bargain, they didn’t have to do that. I remember someone saying, down in that crypt place, it would
have been an unnecessary complication.’

  Amanda was gathering confidence in addressing her audience. She was now speaking with a brightness that Trelawney senior was finding fascinatingly incongruous, if a little disorientating.

  ‘So instead,’ she continued animatedly, ‘they did something really quite ingenious. They cast an asthma spell on me that would not take immediate effect. Instead, it struck some time later. The idea was that I would pop my clogs in hospital and it would, of course, be recorded that I’d done so of natural causes. Job done, all right and tight, as Humpy would say,’ she added as an aside to Trelawney.

  ‘But my dear,’ interjected Kyt, greatly moved. ‘This is appalling. You must have been deeply distressed by the revelation that … that your own parents were involved in an attempt to … to murder you!’

  Amanda considered this for a moment with her head titled to one side.

  ‘Well, if I’d known they were my parents or had been in the least bit attached to them, I dare say I should have been most put out.’

  ‘Put out?’ Kyt looked at her in bemusement.

  ‘Yes. If,’ she continued, feeling further explanation was called for, ‘my grandparents had made a sorcerous attempt to put me out of existence, then it would have quite traumatising.’

  Although, Amanda reflected, if it had been Granny, I’m sure she would have succeeded first go, to give credit where credit’s due. She went on aloud,

  ‘However, thanks to some vestige of physical resilience or the love and efforts of Granny and Grandpa, I failed to realise the family’s expectations and breathe my last. So … what were the Cardiubarns to do? There was only one thing that could be done: recall me to Cornwall and the Hall and finish the job, maybe by topping up the spell. So, then Granny got the letter telling her to take me back to them. Consequently, she had to act. And the rest is history. But I haven’t come to the most startling thing.’

  Ding!

  ‘Ah, that’s the timer for the first course,’ explained Kyt. ‘Please don’t let me miss anything’ He looked at his son in a marked manner, ‘Thomas, give me a hand?’

  Chapter 55

  Popping The Question

  With the kitchen door closed and the first-course soup on the hob switched off, Trelawney senior turned to his son.

  ‘Is she always like that?’

  ‘Sorry, Dad?’

  ‘So ... so sanguine!’

  ‘About her family trying to dispatch her? Frankly, yes. It’s one of the most remarkable and refreshing things about her.’

  ‘Offer her the job. You really should,’ urged Kyt, with absolute conviction.

  ‘The job?’

  ‘The one Hogarth and Maxwell and Whitehall want you to take, with Miss Cadabra as your partner in magical crime-solving. That one.’

  ‘How do you know about that?’ demanded Thomas.

  ‘Mike popped round and asked me what I thought.’

  ‘Asked my father?’ He laughed in disbelief. ‘What am I? Twelve?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure how you’d feel about any of that. And it would be depriving me of my only son and heir if you said yes,’ Kyt explained.

  ‘I was away at police college and I haven’t lived at home for years. Besides, I’d be moving to Sunken Madley, not sacrificing myself to the sacred volcano. Plus I’d still have responsibility for Parhayle.’

  ‘Good. Well anyway, I encouraged him to ask you and I encourage you to say yes and get Miss Cadabra to run the show with you.’

  ‘Yes … well, I shall. But when the moment’s right. Not in open forum.’

  ‘Thomas, trust your old man —’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me you know all about women, are you?’ he asked, with a shade of teenage weariness.

  ‘No, I’m going to tell you that I have had more experience of people than you have, thanks to avoiding an early grave at the hands of the Flamgoynes.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ conceded Thomas fairly.

  ‘And I’m telling you: ask Miss Cadabra. Over pudding.’

  ‘Surrounded by my father and my best friend?’

  ‘With her Uncle Mike and her kindly host on hand,’ Kyt corrected.

  ‘So when she’s merry with sherry and that nice bottle of wine I brought over the time before last?’

  Kyt leaned against the sink, folded his arms and looked his son in the eye.

  ‘What makes you assume she’ll want to give you an answer straight away?’

  ‘Hm. Well, I’ll consider it. Soup ready?’

  ***

  ‘Wonderful shepherd’s pie, Mr Trelawney,’

  ‘Kyt, call me Kyt.’

  Amanda looked at the inspector. It seemed disrespectful to first-name his father, but Thomas nodded and smiled. She turned back and replied,

  ‘Kyt it is. Please call me Amanda.’

  ‘Amanda. Thank you for the culinary compliment. It’s Thomas’s favourite.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘But you were about to relate the most startling thing you learned on your two-shilling tour of Cardiubarn Hall.’

  ‘It would have been easily worth a pound or even a guinea! At the very end, down in that crypt-cellar-dungeon place, just as I was looking for the grimoire my great-grandmother had been reading the asthma spell from, I heard a voice, child-like. I say child-like because I could just make out a figure about my height, not little. And long, pale, sort of wavy-curly hair. She said the book was gone and I must find it and then,’ Amanda added portentously and turned to Hogarth, ‘she said she had a message for you, Uncle Mike.’

  He was looking at her attentively.

  ‘Do go on, Amanda. You interest me strangely.’

  ‘The message was: it’s time for you to tell me her story.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  Hogarth gave a twitch of the eyebrows and casually picked up his cake fork.

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘So? What is her story, Uncle Mike?’

  After a brief pause, he replied casually, ‘I tell you what, Amanda. It’s rather a long tale, and, er, it’s getting late. By the way, I have to be out of the country for a while. A visit to my sister is rather overdue. But when I come back, if our good friend Kyt here …’

  ‘Happy to put you up, my dear.’

  ‘... for a few days, then I shall share with you the strange case of Lucy Penlowr. How would that be? Thomas could bring you down. It might be helpful if he sat in. What do you say?’

  Amanda nodded, ‘Yes, of course. Erm ... Inspector?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Thomas replied readily. ‘It would be my pleasure. Also, I must admit I am curious to know of this lady and her past, which seems to have some bearing on Miss Cadabra’s history.’

  ‘And is something of the present moment, I’d say, given that she said it was time to tell it,’ commented Kyt.

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Amanda, still somewhat taken aback by her Uncle Mike’s evasive response.

  Hogarth smiled.

  ‘That’s settled then.’

  Some half an hour later, plates on the arms of comfortable chairs and glasses of dry Sauternes on coffee tables, the four sampled jam roly-poly and custard.

  ‘Thomas’s favourite,’ commented Hogarth.

  ‘Don’t I know it,’ added Kyt.

  His son grinned, and Amanda remarked,

  ‘And very fortunate too, because it’s one of mine.’

  ‘What do you think of the pudding wine?’ asked Kyt.

  ‘Just right. My word, I shall sleep well tonight.’

  ‘Miss Cadabra,’ began Trelawney.

  ‘Inspector?’

  ‘There is something to which I would like to invite you.’

  ‘Another ball?’

  ‘Some might call it that,’ he agreed.

  ‘What fun,’ Amanda remarked, leaning forward a little with anticipation.

  ‘As to that …’ He explained about the
proposed new post in Sunken Madley. ‘Of course, I shall be reliant on the guidance of a specialist civilian consultant with experience in matters ontological.’

  ‘You mean a witch?’ asked Amanda frankly.

  ‘Yes … the ideal and indeed the only candidate would be …’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You would be paid, naturally,’ Trelawney hurriedly added, hoping this was important.

  ‘Well … er … that’s always nice, of course, but … I must say, this is rather a …’ But then Amanda curiosity overcame her bemusement. ‘Would I be like Baker and Nikolaides?’

  ‘You would be working with me, not under my supervision. I would defer to you where magic was concerned, and you would …’

  She could easily guess the rest. ‘Defer to you regarding police protocol?’

  ‘Just so.’

  Amanda put down her fork and leaned her head back. It was spinning, but not from the wine. Excitement, anticipation, butterflies, relief, ramifications, complications, joy, whirled around in her brain like materials in a centrifuge.

  ‘Miss Cadabra — Amanda,’ put in Kyt. ‘I don’t know all of the ins and outs of your village, but I do think, from what little I know of you and the great deal I know of my son, that you’d enjoy yourself. I think you could do a great deal of good, the pair of you. A very great deal. And if he gives you any trouble, just come to me!’ he added with a grin.

  ‘Or me,’ piped up Hogarth, with a cheerful wave of his glass.

  Amanda looked across at Thomas. He felt precipitated into speech.

  ‘Of course, you’ll have lots of questions. Please ask anything you want. There’ll be a proper contract, all drawn up and agreed. Two versions: one of which makes no mention of magic, naturally. You could ask Mike here to go over them with you before you signed.’

  There was a pause in which Amanda counselled herself to allow time for consideration and to talk to Grandpa, in particular. Finally, with the three men looking at her expectantly, she spoke calmly.