Strange Sight

by Syd Moore

  ‘It’s a cocktail,’ I told him, unable to stop myself grinning at his expression. It lightened the atmosphere a bit, which was good. Buttery Nipples had a tendency to do that.

  ‘I’m not asking for a Buttery Nipple,’ Sam returned with priggish dismay.

  I tutted and went off to get a window table, ‘Just ask Jamaal for Rosie’s favourite. He’ll do the rest.’

  ‘Thought you didn’t come here often?’ Sam called after me.

  ‘Oh, you know – birthdays, bar mitzvahs, divorces …’

  There were some free stools at a tall table by the exit that looked out on the flats. It wasn’t inspiring but if you leant forwards and craned your neck, you could just about see the green foliage peeking off my balcony. Felt comforting to know my plants were there. I checked my phone. One message from Mum saying Dad seemed fine and that they were going to have halibut and an early night. I put the mobile on the table and stared at it. Was I partly responsible for Dad’s attack? Had I unwittingly brought it on? Was my lingering at the museum, my dwindling resolve to sell it straight away, was that making my poor father ill?

  The thought troubled me more than I expected. Of course my first impulse was then to stop mucking around and go back and put it on the market. But my second reaction, which was rooted in a tumult of emotion, was to be sad. And somewhere else, in a place without thought or emotion, I experienced another feeling or notion or, I don’t know what you’d call it – a conviction that stopping this, severing these new-found connections with the past, that all of that would be wrong.

  But if Dad’s health was at stake …

  I took a deep breath in and smelt the stale stench of week-old Sauvignon Blanc, rancid orange juice and beer. If it had to be done, then it had to be done. If we could find some time after we’d sorted out this business at La Fleur, then we should go back and start an inventory. I’d tell Sam that was his new priority and to forget about fixing the place. If I had to get rid of it, then at least an inventory might bring to light some valuables and maybe there would be some items I could salvage for myself as a memento of sorts. There was such a lot there.

  Sam set our drinks on the table. ‘Nice chap, that Jamaal,’ he said. ‘Knows all about your nipples.’

  I was going to make a joke about him and half the neighbourhood but I thought it might give the wrong impression, so instead asked, ‘What killed Septimus?’

  The question had been at the back of my mind since I saw Dad pitch forwards and clutch his chest. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t think of a way of introducing the subject in a more subtle manner so there was nothing for it but to come straight out and call it.

  I don’t think Sam minded. He kind of squinted at me, and said, ‘Heart.’ Then he took a long swig of his Coke.

  ‘He was fit up until the day he died, though,’ Sam added, suddenly and quickly. ‘Your dad has got good genes. Try not to worry too much.’

  ‘Difficult,’ I began, but my phone which was on the table between us, beeped very loudly and insistently. Two messages arrived, one after another.

  ‘Who is that?’ Sam turned the phone round towards him and read the sender’s ID on the screen. ‘Ray.’

  ‘Let me see,’ I said, and grabbed it back. I didn’t like other people reading my stuff. The messages were both the same. Mr Boundersby had either accidentally pressed send twice or he wasn’t taking any prisoners and wanted to get his message across. ‘He says the crime scene’s going to be released soon.’ I told Sam. ‘He wants us at La Fleur at 10 a.m. prompt.’

  ‘Does he say prompt?’ Sam asked.

  ‘No. He says,’ I pretended to read off my phone, ‘or else I’ll shoot you.’

  Sam jumped to his feet wobbling the table in his haste. ‘Good god.’

  ‘Just joshing,’ I told him and nudged a beer mat into the spilt Coke. ‘The words he’s used are on the dot.’

  Sam sat back on top of the high stool. ‘And what Ray Boundersby wants, Ray Boundersby gets.’ Then he took down a very long slug of his drink. ‘I’ll phone the museum and let Bronson know we’ll be up here for a bit.’

  He pulled his bag on to his lap and began fumbling for his mobile. There wasn’t a problem with him staying over at my place, though I did have an issue with him wearing the same pants for the foreseeable. We definitely weren’t yet at the stage where we’d be comfortable washing each other’s smalls. Thank god.

  ‘Sam,’ I said. ‘You’ll need to pop over to Matalan and buy some clothes, won’t you?’

  He brightened visibly. ‘You don’t mind me staying?’

  ‘No? Do you?’

  ‘Cards on the table,’ he said. ‘I’d love to.’ He found his phone, which immediately began ringing. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Talk of the devil … it’s Bronson!’

  I could tell from the fall of Sam’s face as Bronson spoke that it was serious.

  He punched the speaker button and said, ‘Rosie’s here too. I’m putting you on speaker.’ Then he looked up. ‘Someone’s broken into the museum.’

  ‘No!’ I said, then shouted at the phone, ‘Bronson, you okay? Are you hurt? What happened?’

  The caretaker’s voice crackled over the line. ‘I’m fine thank you, Rosie dear. I wasn’t there. One of the neighbours called in to say they saw a suspicious light in the front yard so I’ve dropped by to check. Window’s smashed at the side.’

  I thought of the beautiful circular stained glass in the office and asked if it was that one.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank goodness. Not the rose window. Further back, in the kitchen.’

  Ah, that wasn’t too bad then. That was an ordinary PVC job that looked to the side and rear of the museum.

  Sam’s face was all pinched. ‘So what have they taken, Bronson?’

  There was a pause on the line, then the caretaker said very slowly, ‘Well, that’s the thing, Sam lad. They’ve not taken anything.’

  I frowned at Sam who responded similarly.

  ‘No,’ Bronson went on. ‘Whoever has broke in has, er, left a few things in here.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  There was another lengthy pause then he said, ‘I think you’d better see for yourselves.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bronson was waiting for us outside the Essex Witch Museum. In the pale moonlight, it looked more like a skull than ever. The whitewashed walls gleamed like bare bone. The glass of the ‘eye windows’, though dark and hollow empty sockets, caught the light and glinted with animation. The museum was disturbed. Someone had violated it.

  As we crunched over the gravel of the drive to the caretaker the breeze stirred the line of pine trees that formed the property’s border. ‘Shhhh,’ they whispered, urging us to caution.

  Except of course they weren’t, because trees can’t talk.

  ‘Thank you for coming down so quickly,’ Bronson said when we reached him. He had on his usual garb, a yellow sou’wester and matching jacket that gave him the look of a fisherman in search of his boat.

  I popped a kiss on his cheek, brushing the thick grey moustache, and thanked him for waiting. We’d left as soon as we got the news but because of my Nipple (buttery variety) I was over the limit so Sam had to drive and kept very firmly to the speed recommendations, doubling the normal length of my journey to Adder’s Fork.

  Sam shook his hand, then wiped it on his jeans. The caretaker’s hands were perpetually damp.

  ‘Come on then,’ said Bronson and picked up a bucket.

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Show us the damage.’

  ‘Oh.’ He slowed as we crossed the lobby to the ‘Abandon Hope’ door. ‘There ain’t no damage. Quite the opposite.’ He beckoned us in. ‘Apart from kitchen window, that’s all.’

  ‘See,’ he pointed to the floor of the corridor that led into the main body of the museum. ‘It starts there.’

  Sam and I followed his finger to a series of tiny round objects scattered across the lino.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked and went and squ
atted over them.

  ‘Rose petals,’ Bronson said quietly. ‘There’s a whole trail of the buggers. Will take me a good hour at least to clear up.’

  They were mostly yellow in colour but had fine tips tinged with both a reddy-pink and lavender. And they were fresh too. ‘A trail?’

  ‘Yes, come see.’ He disappeared round the corner into the artefacts display area, the one that Sam had worked on with Septimus. It was the lightest, airiest space in the museum because of its high ceilings and skylights. The spotlights fixed to the old wooden beams illuminated elegant cabinets full of neatly labelled historical artefacts and folklore paraphernalia.

  Bronson was right – a narrow path of petals led us past the cases and several witchcraft exhibits, tableaus which I called ‘witch scenes’, and through to a space referred to as the ‘Talks Area’. It was usually set out with benches that faced a small platform from which Sam did his lectures and ‘community-facing engagement’, whatever that was. But tonight these had been pushed aside. In the centre of the clearing was the strangest of sights.

  ‘Wow,’ said Sam and put his hands on his hips.

  ‘Indeed,’ Bronson nodded.

  ‘It’s kind of beautiful,’ I said. ‘Flowers.’ For there were hundreds of them, in vases, sprouting from buckets, bunched into plastic plant pots, dotted all over the space. In the centre of them all, on a podium, was a huge stunning bouquet like an exploding firework of colour – yellows, purples, whites, blues. It looked gorgeous.

  ‘Bronson,’ I laughed. ‘It looks like you’ve got an admirer.’

  But he didn’t laugh back. ‘This one here,’ he made his way towards the central bouquet and pointed at a cluster of beautiful roses. ‘Do you know what it is, Rosie?’

  Sam had sidled up behind us. ‘Bronson,’ he said. His voice sounded strained again. ‘Do you think you should …?’

  But the caretaker sent a gesture back with the minutest shake of his head. ‘Look around you, lad.’ Then his twinkly blue eyes fixed on me. ‘This,’ he gestured again to the roses. ‘It’s the Ethel-Rose rose.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The same name as my grandmother.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he nodded. ‘It was created and named for her. By your great-grandfather on the occasion of her first birthday. Lovely isn’t it. Your great-grandfather chose the colours himself – yellow for joy, pinky tips for love and gentleness, and mauve for splendour.’

  I was frowning, trying to work out what he was going on about and reached out to pluck the rose from the bouquet. In the quickest movement I’d ever seen, Bronson knocked my arm back and caught my hand in his. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it, Rosie love. There’s belladonna in among the stems.’

  ‘Bella Who?’

  It was Sam who answered. ‘Deadly nightshade. The queen of poison plants. Now you mention it I can see it too. There’s quite a lot.’

  ‘Why is it there?’ I bleated. Surprisingly it was pretty with a purple hooded flower, yellow stamens and blue cherry-like berries. ‘That’s not very nice.’

  Bronson released my hand and pointed in among the stems. ‘There’s nettles in among them too. See.’

  I looked past the deadly nightshade to a straggled hairy stem which I recognised, from lots of experience on my dad’s allotment as a stinging nettle. ‘Strange for a bouquet.’

  ‘There’s wolfsbane there,’ said Sam, edging towards the bouquet. ‘Also known as devil’s helmet. You know, in mythology, the goddess Hecate was meant to have invented it. Talking of which, she’s not around, is she?’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘That cat’s got a six or seven senses, for sure. Not seen her tonight. Reckon she scarpered when it happened.’

  ‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘The wolfsbane is almost hidden behind those orange lilies but you can see white flowers there. They look a little like snowdrops. Just a sniff of them can make you feel unwell.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Do you think that’s what they wanted? To make us sick? Maybe it was someone from La Fleur?’ I thought about the restaurant’s name. ‘Perhaps we’re getting closer than someone likes?’

  ‘But who would put them here? Like this?’ Sam bit his lip in thought. ‘It would be more effective to send a bouquet to your flat, wouldn’t it? Then you would physically have to handle the blooms and stems – unwrap them, put them into a vase, arrange them etc. But these, they’re set up already. Arranged. Almost as if whoever did this didn’t want you to touch them. Just to look.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I conceded and stood back to take in the huge display. ‘But who would go to such effort?’

  ‘Who, yes. Well, that I don’t rightly know,’ said Bronson and carefully flattened his moustache.

  ‘And why?’ Sam wondered out loud. ‘That’s the more troubling question.’

  ‘Oh, I reckons I know why,’ ventured Bronson.

  Sam and I both turned towards him.

  ‘It’s a message,’ he said. ‘I been here since half seven and not doing much but looking at it. It’s a message.’

  ‘How d’you work that one out?’ I said.

  There was a chair at the back of the area, which Bronson went and got. He offered it to me, then when I declined, sat in it and leant forwards, hands on knees. Sam sat down on the floor next to him.

  ‘Now, if you look at it from here, you can see that these red flowers in the buckets,’ he motioned to what, from this angle, now looked like an outer ring of flowers. ‘They’re all begonias. Old Mrs Bronson used to go in for flower arranging back in the day. She was very big on the meanings of flowers. Said it gave her arrangements an added layer of enigma. See, the Victorians went wild for that sort of thing. Had a whole language of flowers. Begonias, I remember Grace saying, were such bright and charming blossoms. Didn’t seem right that their meaning was so different. You see, the begonia is meant to stand for fear. If you give it to someone else, then it means “beware”.’

  I crossed my arms and squinted at the display. The vases and buckets and pots had been formed into several decreasing circles around the main bouquet. Bronson was right about the ruby red ones, the begonias, for they did form the outside perimeter of the piece or arrangement.

  I carefully picked my way through the scarlet flowers to the second ring.

  ‘I know what these are.’ I bent over a pot of bright yellow-and-orange blossoms. ‘Marigolds.’ I had grown them on my balcony last year and tried to use them in salads. ‘They’re not poisonous. They’re edible. What do they mean?’

  Bronson shrugged, trying to remember.

  But Sam was already jabbing at his phone. ‘Oh! Pain and grief!’

  I raised my eyebrows. Bronson nodded slowly. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Now you mention it.’

  ‘And these,’ I moved in towards the centre and hovered over a couple of jam jars that had been planted with sweet-smelling pink-and-blue flowering plants. I loved them. ‘These are hyacinths,’ I announced.

  Sam swiped his phone then looked up. ‘I am sorry. Please forgive me.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘That’s what they mean,’ he said, and frowned.

  ‘Told you,’ Bronson’s full baritone resonated across the space. ‘Mark my words – it’s a message.’

  On the interior ring there were three buckets and one watering can, each filled with a different plant. Little shoots of lobelia poked from the spout of the can. They looked exactly like they did on the packet that I had stuck in the soil of my hanging baskets. I fingered their delicate blue petals and named them. They were so pleasant-looking they had to have a positive meaning, I was sure.

  Sam shook his head. ‘Malevolence.’

  ‘Christ!’ I said, and stepped back, almost knocking over a bucket behind me. I righted it and looked in to find there was actually no water in there. There was a small branch poking out. ‘Chestnut,’ I declared.

  It took Sam a couple of seconds to find the meaning. ‘Do me justice,’ he said very slowly as if he were just as surprised by the me
aning as me.

  I was becoming more and more unsettled. It was beginning to look like Bronson was right.

  A small bunch of flowers inside the can were withered. ‘I don’t know what this one is.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’ Sam asked. His voice had got its edge back again.

  ‘Lots of foliage, dark green. The flowers look like daisies, but they’re large and yellowy-orange with brown centres.’

  Sam got up and came over and took a picture on his phone. After a few seconds he said, ‘Rudbeckia, or the coneflower, or goldsturm. Or black-eyed Susan.’

  ‘And?’ I said.

  He nodded at the caretaker. ‘Justice again.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and pointed to the final bucket. ‘Well, we all know what these are.’ I indicated the slender-stemmed flowers with their floppy red heads. ‘Poppies.’

  ‘The fallen,’ Bronson murmured.

  ‘So that means this central bouquet is full of orange lilies …’

  ‘Hatred, jealousy,’ said Sam.

  ‘That frothy foliage has come from asparagus. Dad’s got some on his allotment.’

  ‘Fascination?’ Sam added, as if it was the uncertain answer to a question he didn’t understand.

  ‘There’s a wreath of ivy wrapped around the base like a garland. Some small leaves turning into bigger ones. Quite fresh and shiny and full …’

  Sam shook his head and looked at his phone. ‘Marital fidelity.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. What did it all add up to? ‘Then there’s all these others, the bad ones, the poison brigade.’

  ‘Which are pretty evident in their meanings,’ Sam continued.

  ‘All clustered around the Ethel-Rose.’

  I folded my arms and stepped back to regard the display. ‘So – beware, pain, grief, malevolence, justice, the fallen, fascination, marital fidelity, poison and roses. What does it mean?’

  ‘I was wrong,’ Bronson said finally. ‘It’s not a message – it’s a warning.’

  I remained quiet for a moment then asked Sam and Bronson. ‘Do you know how Ethel-Rose died?’