Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  “And us,” said Michael, “cursed with a sixth sense. So the bogles are moving things about your wee house, are they? We’ve seen that one before.” He shared a glance with Rebecca redolent of old misunderstandings and threadbare fears. How easily the Campbell-Reids interacted after several years of marriage, Jean thought. Not like two carriage horses yoked together but like a dance team, sometimes moving as one, sometimes proceeding separately.

  “I’ve not seen anything moving myself,” said Alasdair. “When we ran into the house late this afternoon, the bottle was sitting in its place, never mind it might well have been dancing a Highland fling two minutes earlier. But moving objects is the sort of tale I’m hearing from P and S properties, though like as not most are covering up folk losing objects or even nicking them.”

  “Speaking of crimes,” Rebecca said, “how did Samuel Gould hold up under questioning?”

  “Same as when I was talking to him at the cabinetmaker’s shop. Resentful and uncomfortable, aye, but no sweating, no squirming, and no contradicting himself. He went looking for Hagedorn at the pond because he and his mates knew Hagedorn liked mooching about the old farmyard, watching the birds and working on small objects. He’s agreeing that Hagedorn was worried and nervous, but no one’s knowing why.”

  “He could be saying that to divert suspicion,” said Jean.

  “Aye, but assuming Hagedorn died at four p.m., as the medical examiner is reckoning, Gould’s by way of having an alibi. Mind you, I was hardly in charge of the interview. Detective Venegas, she offered me a seat on the bus, but I was obliged to take one in the back.”

  “You were expecting anything else?” asked Michael.

  “Not a bit of it,” Alasdair said, showing little discomfort and less resentment. “A detective’s obliged to do what a detective’s obliged to do.”

  Just as Jean was wondering whether he was referring to himself or Venegas, a flash of light caught her in the corner of the eye. She turned toward the window at her side, but saw only her own face reflected dimly between the broad wooden slats of the blind, as though she was in jail.

  It was Sam Gould who was in jail, if only overnight, while Venegas and her minions checked out his story. His alibi. By tomorrow morning she’d be agreeing with Alasdair that the case was more complicated than it first appeared, that the issues were greater than a missing chisel. Or even a missing replica. Although Jean was pretty sure Hagedorn hadn’t been cursed, at least, not more than metaphorically. But something had happened to threaten him. Surely the break-up with Jessica wasn’t it, despite Alasdair’s rather smug, Look for the woman.

  Blinking, her eyes resolved the scene outside the window. Leaves and even tree-lamps thrashed in a cold wind, making the shadows gutter as fiercely as the flames in a couple of fire-baskets in front of the Magazine. Even the candlelight in the windows of the Courthouse wavered gently, as though to a slow heartbeat.

  A tour group walking through Market Square had apparently collided with a tour group walking up Duke of Gloucester Street and were now sorting themselves out. The wind whirled away their shouts and laughs. The lanterns and flashlights wielded by the guides shot beams of light in all directions but failed to illuminate the dark night beneath a sky lidded with cloud.

  Jean turned away from the window and its chill aura, back into the room that was cheerful despite its dimness. With her tongue she dug a shred of chicken from between two molars, then, realizing her grimace could be construed as editorial comment on detectives and detection, smoothed her features and changed the subject.

  “I was going to ask Jessica about witch bottles tonight. A shame the lecture was cancelled. Thanks for calling to tell me, Rebecca. We would have broken our necks getting to the Museum auditorium by five. And I’m not sure we could have waited until after the concert for dinner. We’d have been eating our programs.”

  “No problem,” said Rebecca. “I’m just glad I called to check on the time. They didn’t say whether she’d been nicked by the police, just that someone performing in the witch trial tonight had fallen ill, and since Jessica wrote the script she was conscripted . . .”

  Michael snorted. Alasdair grinned.

  “. . . to play a part.”

  “Which part?” asked Jean. “Not Mary Napier herself?”

  “No, one of the people she supposedly cursed.”

  “Witchcraft is like conspiracy theory,” said Jean. “It’s a way of explaining why things happen. Of finding a scapegoat. It’s not chance, it’s not coincidence, it’s not even synchrony. It’s enemy action.”

  “And the best defense is offense,” Rebecca concluded.

  Alasdair provided a coda. “Or making the assumption we’ve got free will.”

  “Amen to that,” said Michael.

  The waiter arrived to clear away their dishes. “Dessert? Another drink?”

  Jean had already rejected such exotic concoctions as the Witches’ Revenge, a blend of light and dark rums, apricot brandy, and pineapple juice, figuring she’d need a dose of insulin as a chaser. And one lager was enough. If wine went to her knees, then beer went to her cheeks, and right now her face was so hot she was sure she looked like Rudolph’s nose—you could even say it glowed.

  It didn’t seem appropriate to turn up for a concert in the church, let alone meet Miranda there, so obviously under the influence. Miranda was no teetotaler, but she’d never exhibit poor enough taste to get tipsy.

  They were refusing further food and drink and requesting their bills when the sound of a guitar came from the front hall of the tavern. “Ah,” said Alasdair. “Hugh’s arrived.”

  Sure enough, Hugh made his entrance, dressed in knee breeches and a shirt not just cut voluminously, but voluming out over his Santa-Claus belly. Hoisting his guitar, he began to play and sing a contemporary version of “Allison Gross, the Ugliest Witch in the North Country.”

  “I’ve always felt sorry for Allison Gross,” said Rebecca. “There she is, trying to seduce a handsome young guy, but he acts like she’s a slime slug.”

  “No surprise it ends badly,” Jean added, “when she exercises her prerogative as a woman scorned and turns him into a worm.”

  “Not a newt?” asked Michael with a grin.

  “Newts have feet. She was wanting a creature that could not escape her clutches.” Alasdair’s wink at Jean conveyed the message just kidding.

  A shame, Jean thought, he felt he needed to annotate his joke. She didn’t weigh in with the difference between “worm” and “wyrm”, or fire-breathing, maiden-devouring dragon.

  By the end of the song Hugh had reached the far side of the room. He bowed to Jean and her cohorts’ enthusiastic applause.

  Alasdair asked him, “This is you taking things easy, is it?”

  “That it is.” Hugh’s cheeks were polished by the brewmaster’s skills as well, and behind his glasses, his eyes radiated good cheer and keen intelligence. “Who were your friends outside the theater this afternoon, Jean? Like Jack Sprat and his wife, though the other way round.”

  “Tim and Sharon Dingwall, conspiracy theorists. They’re after the charm stone that was on the Witch Box, which will, through a presumably non-magical process, prove that some great conspiracy is the driving force of history. I’m doing an article on them.”

  “Have a care, then. Tim’s spit in the form of a woman was infesting my flight from Edinburgh. Aiming for the Dunmore exhibit as well, like as not.”

  “That was Tim’s sister, Kelly,” Jean stated, as beside her Alasdair sat to attention. “No wonder he and Sharon asked me who you were and why you were in Edinburgh. You must have gotten an earlier flight from Newark to Richmond than she did.”

  “Oh aye, I barely caught the plane and worried all the while that my instruments had not.”

  “You spoke with Kelly?” asked Alasdair.

  “No, thanks to all that’s merciful. When she was not harassing the air hostess, she was poncing to and fro handing about brochures promoting a film, so far as
I could tell with a pillow over my head. Voice like a foghorn, that woman, and not lacking opinions.”

  “Thanks, Hugh. Funny, Tim and Sharon said the film wasn’t finished yet.”

  “Not according to Kelly. My ears are still ringing. And after playing for some years next a set of bagpipes in full throat, that’s saying something.” Hugh turned to the next table, beamed at the children, and started a bouncy ditty about a red yo-yo with a wee yellow string. Which had political implications over and beyond a missing yo-yo, but the children and their parents, blissfully uninformed, simply clapped along.

  “Well then,” said Alasdair. “Here’s hoping Kelly dropped a hint or three as to the whereabouts of the replica. Or why she and Quentin nicked it to begin with.”

  “Maybe Tim and Sharon wanted to do a compare and contrast,” Rebecca offered. “The question is, why?”

  “Venegas looked them out at the Woodlands, behind the Visitor Center, but they’d not answered the phone by the time we came away from the police station. Nor had Dylan, come to that. I reckon they all went away to Richmond to collect Kelly. I’ll be having a word or two with her.” Alasdair’s humorless smile gave warning—anyone who lied to the constabulary, any constabulary, was on his hit list.

  This time Jean’s grimace really was a comment. “Interviewing the Dingwalls was like watching a kaleidoscope, except their perfectly genuine little pieces don’t actually make a pattern. They conflate, pick, choose, they don’t distinguish between fact and what Alasdair would call opinion and what I would call interpretation flavored with one’s own biases.”

  “Yet they’ve got real evidence about the charm stone?” Michael asked.

  “It’s mostly smoke and mirrors, but not all. Once you get past the Bacon bits—” She only realized what she’d said when everyone groaned. “—there’s provenance for the Witch Box, and some charm stones are still extant, and I assume Robert Mason actually existed, as Francis Stewart and Charlotte Murray certainly did. And, well, speaking of conflating, if Tim and Sharon have an actual source for the story about the servant stealing the charm stone, and Sharon was working with Jessica, and Jessica’s claiming to have a new source, what if they’re quarreling over the same one? A letter, another inventory, something?”

  “Why did they fall out? Over who gets to do the dog and pony show with it?” Rebecca was an old hand at academic infighting.

  So was Michael. “There’s likely more to it than that, with the lawsuit and all.”

  “Sure there is. I was talking to Matt—he happened to be at the Cheese Shop, too—but didn’t know enough then to ask him about it. I will tomorrow. Plus I want to find out the name of that servant, already.” Jean shook her head. The dang handbell choir was still dinging away in her mental back room. Fine. She liked to do research. “I hate to say this, but it looks like Tim, Sharon, and Kelly—and maybe the sons, too—are up to some sort of, well, not cover-up per se. A secret plot or plan.”

  “A plan to make money,” said Alasdair, “never mind the bit about working pro bono.”

  “Well yes, considering how much time, energy, and money they’ve invested in their work. But I still think they’re basically crusaders. Reformers. Rebels without a clue.”

  Alasdair, Michael, and Rebecca laughed in agreement just as the waiter appeared at the end of the table with the bills.

  A sudden chill breath from the window drew gooseflesh from Jean’s arm and shoulder and felt icy against her face. Again she looked out through the bars. Venegas’s jail was much nicer than the one where Mary Napier had languished in 1685. That one wasn’t even here, it was at Jamestown—the farming settlement called Middle Plantation wasn’t formally transformed into Williamsburg, the capital of the colony, until 1699.

  Hagedorn’s Dunwich Pond had been a seventeenth-century farmyard, Venegas had said. Something about the name, Dunwich—what had Jessica said, way back when, in her lecture about the artifacts of witchcraft. Sociological artifacts. Witch boxes and charm stones. Plays about Mary Napier.

  Hugh was joking with a table of young men about the title of the folk song “When She Came Ben She Bobbit,” about a maidservant coming into the room and bobbing a curtsey. A servant from eastern Scotland. Francis Stewart’s coven in Berwick, in eastern Scotland. A woman named Napier accused of witchcraft . . .

  “Earth to Jean,” said Rebecca’s voice.

  Jean collected her thoughts, pinned them firmly to a backing, labeled them, and closed a glass lid on them. They’d keep. “Coming.” She accepted Alasdair’s hand to slide off the bench and put on her coat, replying to the quizzical tilt of his head with a shrug.

  The shadows were hardly thicker outside the tavern than within, but they were a lot colder. People dressed in the clothing of two different eras huddled around a fire built on the shoulder of the street. The wind whined past the corner of the tavern, adding an eerie undertone to the voices of the people spilling down the steps of the Courthouse toward the post and the pillory.

  “They’re having the last act of ‘A Matter of Witchcraft’ out here,” Rebecca said. “I read up on it while Linda was napping this morning.”

  “We’ve had good timing, then,” said Alasdair.

  The two couples jockeyed for position behind the ticket-buying customers, ending up on the grassy area between the back of the Courthouse and Chowning’s darkened garden. Jean looked over her shoulder at the hulking shapes of the houses and trees along Nicholson Street. A solitary custodian trundled his or her cart past the Randolph House, any sound of footsteps or wheels muffled. The sky was a starless, charcoal gray.

  The light, Jean told herself, drove away the shadow. It wasn’t that the shadow threatened to engulf the light. Still, she stepped close to Alasdair’s side and he wrapped his arm around her. Her hair blew into her face and she scooped it back. The warmth drained from her cheeks.

  Several interpreters-cum-actors, wearing the broad collars of the 1680s, started down the steps of the Courthouse. Jean craned her neck but didn’t recognize Jessica among the women.

  A solidly built man wearing a long coat, a brimmed hat, and a scowl, grasped the arm of a young woman wearing a modest apron around her slender waist and a cap over draggling strands of blond hair. How old had Mary Napier been? Jean wondered. Quite young, if this portrayal was accurate. So much for the perception that only old hags were accused of witchcraft.

  From the top of the steps, an official in frock coat and wig began speaking, and the crowd fell silent. “Mary Napier is accused of enchantment, charm, witchcraft, or conjuration to tell where Treasure may be found and to prevent the rightful owners of said Treasure from reclaiming it to their own use by inflicting illness and dearth upon them.”

  “They’re hitting on all cylinders there,” whispered Jean to Alasdair—Michael and Rebecca had been absorbed into the crowd of spectators. “She’s not only making her victims sick, she’s also depriving them of Treasure, however that was defined. Cows? Corn? Coins?”

  “After all due testing, questioning, and testimony, it is the opinion of this court that the said Mary is guilty of what is laid to her charge, and it is therefore ordered that the Sheriff take her and carry her to the common pillory, there to reside until such time as she may repent of her misdeeds.”

  The “sheriff” hustled “Mary” toward the pillory, the crowd parting on either side. She walked with her head bowed, exhausted from her ordeal. Several voices called, “Burn the witch!” and “It’s a fair cop!” knowing their Monty Python better than their history—no witches were ever burned in the American colonies and only one was ever hanged in Virginia, and that was without benefit of trial. The colonies had always taken a more practical view of charges of witchcraft than the parent countries in Europe. Even the frenzy in Salem, Massachusetts, had been brief, although knowing that would have brought its victims little consolation.

  At the last moment, Mary shied away from the pillory, turned her pale face to the light, and began a quavering speech of repentance.
It hardly mattered whether she’d actually committed any crimes, if confessing to them would get her off the hook.

  Never mind the antique pronunciation of the words, Mary’s voice was a nasal sine wave. Rachel Finch. Jean hadn’t recognized her without the cosmetics.

  The chill of the grass oozed upwards through Jean’s shoes. And something else oozed down the back of her neck, just the briefest rill of psychic ice water. But that was enough to draw a shudder rippling through her body.

  “Cold?” asked Alasdair in her ear. “Or is it—wait, there’s something . . .”

  As one, they turned and took several steps toward Nicholson Street, along the broken-shell path that cut the expanse of grass like a pallid ribbon tying a dark package. Something glinted in an upstairs window of the Randolph House, a candle flame flaring and then dying, perhaps. Or perhaps the light of the fire-baskets had been caught by a pair of eyes, eyes that looked quickly out into Market Square and then vanished back into another dimension.

  “It’s gone,” Alasdair said, his words leaving his lips in a wraith of warm breath.

  “Yeah.” Jean rotated her shoulders, then, having inadvertently shrugged off his arm, crunched several more steps away from him, the crowd, and Mary/Rachel’s tearful testimony. Most people, she thought, would walk away from a haunted house, not toward it. But most people let fear—or common sense—conquer curiosity.

  The wind, scented with smoke, earth, animals, tossed the leaves of the enormous tree across from the Tucker House. In the darkness beneath its canopy, something glinted. Something quite corporeal, Jean told herself, testing her neck and shoulders for extrasensory data and finding none. As she stepped off the path and across the carpet of grass, a very different kind of unease pricked her shoulder blades.