by Kim M Watt
Just as she was wondering if she’d forgotten the way after all, the village unfolded itself under the fells. Some trick of the winter light made it luminous, more in focus than the fields that surrounded it, the grey stone of the houses less dreary and more plucky, bearing up brightly under the winter chill. There had been no snow yet, and the lawns were stubbornly green among the leafless trees and the empty flowerbeds. Lights were on in houses, Christmas trees visible through windows, and the roads were strung with both standard decorations and wreaths that looked like the work of the Women’s Institute. Streams clattered everywhere, catching the doubtful sun and splintering it into glittering shards. Little waterways circled the village and ran through it, burrowing under roads and popping up in gardens, turning it into a place built on water and magic. DI Adams scowled at it all suspiciously and headed for Miriam’s house. If there was trouble, that was where she’d find it.
DI Adams parked outside Miriam’s little cottage and examined it. There were no lights on in the living room except for those of a Christmas tree, but there was smoke coming from the chimney. She’d probably be in the kitchen. She rubbed her face with both hands, a small anxiety uncurling in her stomach. In the summer, Toot Hansell had proved some things to her, such as the fact that what she’d seen in London had been real, not some stress-related glitch in her perception. Also that women of a certain age were horrifyingly determined, and very disinclined to act sensibly. But it was hard, when she was back in Leeds, to reconcile these things with what she saw to be true all around her. It wasn’t like there were gnomes marching through the city streets or unicorns prancing across the midtown rooftops. She knew what had happened had happened, but it was harder to believe the longer she was away.
She thought of DI Collins looking for firebombing postmen, and grimaced. The last thing the dragons needed were more police poking around the place. And anyway, it might have nothing to do with them.
She checked for dead rabbits (it had become somewhat of a habit after her first encounter with Toot Hansell), got out of the car and marched up the path before she could change her mind. Eliminating suspects. That’s all she was doing. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.
Miriam answered the door with a smile on her face, gasped, and slammed it shut. DI Adams blinked at the door. That she hadn’t expected. She should really learn not to expect anything around here. She raised her hand to knock again, and the door opened.
“Detective Inspector,” Miriam said, her cheeks pink and her smile on crooked. “Sorry. You surprised me.”
“Evidently,” DI Adams said, and found herself peering past Miriam, looking for signs of a looted postal van. She dragged her attention back to the woman in front of her. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”
“Oh! Oh, no. Come in, please.” Miriam pulled the door wide, and the inspector wiped her boots carefully as she came in, smelling candles and wood smoke and baking. “We’re just in the kitchen.”
We. DI Adams braced herself, and followed the older woman down the short, dim hall and into an oasis of golden light and warmth. Alice was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and looked entirely unsurprised by the unexpected visitor.
“Good afternoon,” the inspector said, her vision swirling with migraine-like dots and the room feeling far too hot. “Lovely to see you all again.” She looked hard at the spot on the floor that made her eyes water, and a headache-y, vertigo-ish feeling washed over her. It lingered for a moment, then retreated as the corner resolved itself into the large rug in front of the AGA, and the two dragons sitting on it. Beaufort was grinning enormously, an oversized mug of tea in his paws, and Mortimer had a mince pie halfway to his mouth. He looked less than enthralled. The room settled around her, the migraine spots retreating, and DI Adams’ shoulders sagged in relief. She realised that she had almost thought she’d imagined the dragons, that there was something Not Right with her. They also looked friendlier than how she’d started to remember them. They didn’t look like they’d go around attacking postmen, but she had to admit that she was somewhat of a novice when it came to dragons.
“Good afternoon, Detective Inspector,” Alice said. “Can we offer you a mince pie?” She was watching DI Adams curiously, and the inspector was suddenly certain that the older woman could tell she was wearing her most ancient bra, the one that had gone a funny grey in the wash and which didn’t match her knickers at all.
She smoothed her hair and pulled a chair out, reminding herself that she was the officer of the law here. “That’d be lovely.”
“And tea!” Miriam had been standing awkwardly by the door, and now she lunged toward the counter, suddenly animated. “Tea, yes?”
“Ah, yes, please.” DI Adams watched, bemused, as Miriam dropped the tea pot in the sink, squeaking at a small tidal wave of sudsy water, and searched for a reasonably intact mug. Alice got up to find a plate, and served up a mince pie next to a neatly folded paper napkin, with a tarnished fork on the side.
“Cream?” Alice offered, as Miriam over-filled the kettle and almost dropped it on her own foot.
“No thanks – is she okay?”
“Figures of authority make her nervous. You must remember from last time.”
“Well, yes, but last time she was a suspect. She’s not a suspect now.”
Miriam managed to get the kettle on top of the AGA, but not before she trod on Mortimer’s tail, eliciting an outraged yelp.
“I don’t think it matters. Even I make her nervous. Can you imagine?”
DI Adams met Alice’s amused gaze, and thought, yes, actually. And also thought that Alice knew it perfectly well. Aloud, she said, “So, Beaufort, Mortimer. How are things?”
Beaufort tucked his tail safely out of danger and gave that alarmingly toothy smile. “Marvellous, Detective Inspector. Yourself?”
“Not bad, not bad at all. Tell me, what’ve you been up to recently?”
The dragons stared at her, Mortimer’s eyebrow ridges pulled up in an anxious line. “Why?” Beaufort asked. “What’s happened?”
DI Adams sighed. She’d never been good at the whole casual, just-making-conversation thing. She’d never been good at conversation, full stop. It just seemed like an awful lot of wasted effort. “Any trouble? Any issues?”
“What sort of issues?”
Between Beaufort’s fierce golden gaze and Alice watching with her fingers steepled under her chin, DI Adams was starting to feel like she was the one under interrogation. Not that this was an interrogation. No. She wasn’t even on duty. Well, not in this jurisdiction, anyway.
She sighed. “Postmen. Well, postman. And missing post.”
“Our postman?” Alice demanded. “I waited in all morning for him! Our Christmas boxes should have been arriving today.”
“Christmas boxes?”
“Christmas boxes!” Miriam hefted the kettle off the AGA, aiming it vaguely in the direction of the teapot on the table. The DI regarded the wandering spout in alarm, then grabbed Miriam’s arm.
“Milk?”
“Milk!” Miriam dropped the kettle on the table and rushed to the fridge. Alice picked the milk jug up from next to the mince pies and added some to the DI’s mug.
“This nervous?”
“Even the meter reader makes her nervous. Misspent youth, I imagine,” Alice replied, and filled the teapot. “Miriam, come sit down, dear.”
“Should I make sandwiches?”
“It’s 3 p.m. We don’t need sandwiches.”
“Right.” Miriam sat down and examined her own mug with interest.
“The Christmas boxes are for our charity dinner,” Alice said. “The dinner is a fundraiser itself, but we also ask people to donate little items to the boxes, books and toys and so on. They can either bring them to the dinner, or we have some for sale. Then the boxes are collected and go out to children who might not get a Christmas otherwise.”
“Right,” the DI said. She remembered her mum doing something similar at one stage. Althoug
h they might have been being sent overseas. She just knew that she’d had to grudgingly give up her favourite book to someone less fortunate, and therefore hadn’t thought it was a great Christmas. “So there were presents in the post, too?”
“Only the boxes, as far as I know. I have some book and toy orders coming next week.”
“Anyone else know you had these orders in?”
“The W.I., yes. But these are children’s books and toys. Nothing expensive. Why would anyone steal them?”
“And why have you come to see us?” Beaufort asked quietly. “I rather feel that this isn’t entirely a social call, although we’re very happy to see you, of course.”
There was a silence in the kitchen, full of the soft purr of the fridge and the tickings of the AGA, and the DI reached for the teapot to give herself a moment to think. What on earth was she doing? She was away from work without any sort of authorisation, treading on another department’s toes for the sake of something that might not even be a case. And she was talking to dragons about it. Not only that, she was kinda-sorta suggesting to said dragons that they’d been kidnapping postmen and stealing the Christmas mail. Assuming she really wasn’t imagining dragons, which she didn’t seem to be, this was possibly a little silly. She could get herself singed for her troubles. Or eaten. They weren’t big dragons, but they did have plenty of teeth. And she couldn’t quite forget how terrified the cupcake murderer had been when he’d turned himself in. Well, been convinced by certain meddlesome members of the W.I. to turn himself in. His only concern had been that the cells were dragon-proof, which had the whole station laughing at him. Except the DI, of course. She poured tea into her mug and picked it up, wrapping both hands around it despite the heat. It had a worn Peter Rabbit design on it.
“Whoever took the postman,” she said, looking straight at Beaufort, “left some rather dragon-y traces behind. Which isn’t to say it was dragons, but, well.”
The silence came back, heavier and louder.
Beaufort nodded thoughtfully, then said, “Well. We can’t be having that.”
“No, no, no,” DI Adams said. “This was not a suggestion that you should go off investigating. I’m the detective here.” How did she even need to point that out? Again?
“Well, if it’s dragons,” Beaufort said, “I rather think that this is our territory.”
“I’m not saying it was dragons. It was probably just someone doing a terrible job at burning the evidence.” She paused, then added curiously, “Do you actually breathe fire?”
Beaufort puffed his cheeks out and spat a little fireball into the centre of the kitchen. It floated for a moment, then drifted to the floor, where Mortimer swiped it hastily off the rug and patted it out on the stone flags.
“Okay. So, yes, it could have been a dragon. But I’m not saying it was.”
“Well, it wasn’t a Cloverly dragon,” Beaufort said. “No one would do that.”
“I just wanted to make sure you didn’t know anything about it,” the DI said. “I’m sure it’s going to turn out to be kids or something.”
“They tried to burn the van?” Alice asked.
“Yes. It didn’t take, but it was pretty scorched, apparently.”
“And straight away you thought of us?” Beaufort asked, looking offended.
“Well, no, not exactly. But it was a factor.”
“And the other factors?” Alice was sitting very straight, and looked alarmingly disapproving.
“I think I’ve shared enough for now.”
“I think if you’re suspecting dragons you should tell us why,” Alice said sharply. “Six months ago you didn’t even know they existed.”
The DI pinched the bridge of her nose and swallowed a sigh.
“Are you alright?” Miriam asked. “Do you want a sandwich? I knew I should have made sandwiches.”
“No. No,” she managed more calmly. “I’m fine. I’m not hungry.”
“Are you sure?” Beaufort asked. “You seem quite small, even for a human. I can get you a rabbit.”
“I don’t want a rabbit.” She clutched the table with both hands and tried to remember what, exactly, she’d thought she was going to find here. It certainly hadn’t been straight answers. She should have remembered that there were never straight answers in Toot Hansell.
“What sort of person doesn’t want a rabbit?” Beaufort whispered to Mortimer, rather loudly.
Mortimer shushed him, and said, “How can we help, Inspector? Can we help?”
She stared at him and wondered why the only creature acting reasonably in here had scales and wings. “No. Well, yes, actually. You can stay out of the human side of things, and let me know about anything from your end. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you, but just … if you hear anything.” Let me know and I’ll go arrest some dragons? She took a hurried gulp of tea to smother a laugh that was trying to make its way out. This place was not good for her.
“It won’t be a Cloverly dragon,” Beaufort said again.
Mortimer looked doubtful, and said, “We’ll see what we can find out.”
“Thank you. That’d be great.” The inspector looked at her half-finished tea, and decided she’d had as much of the W.I. and dragons as she could manage in one sitting. “You still have my card?”
“We do,” Alice said. She sounded unimpressed. “Am I to take it our boxes are missing, then?”
“I’d say so, yes.”
“Most unfortunate. I’ll have to order more.” She stood and extended a hand across the table. “Are you sure we can’t do more, Detective Inspector? We can’t have the dragons being implicated.”
Beaufort gave a snort that threatened to scorch the tablecloth. “A dragon will not be responsible for this. What would we do with a postman?”
The DI looked at the few crumbs of mince pie left on her plate and said, “What do you eat, exactly?”
There was a sudden, shocked silence, broken by Miriam taking a nervous slurp of tea and promptly choking on it. Alice patted her on the back, and the dragons stared at the inspector in horror.
“You’re not suggesting—” Mortimer began, then was cut off by Beaufort.
“That is preposterous,” the High Lord spluttered. “Eating people? Even in my younger days we didn’t eat people. I know some clans carried on like that in the Middle Ages, but, honestly. What do you take us for? Savages?”
“Dragons,” the DI said. “Which is a little outside my area of expertise.”
Beaufort gave DI Adams a look that reminded her of her mother. “Inspector, I am disappointed in you.”
“That’s not fair! I’ve never met dragons before.”
“All the more reason to do your research.”
She rubbed her face. There was a headache cranking up behind one eye. “I watched Game of Thrones. Does that count?”
“Oh, no, no,” Alice said hurriedly. “No, that’s very fictional. Very.”
“Game of Thrones? Is that on the television?” Beaufort pronounced the last word with care, and possibly an extra syllable.
“You have TV?”
“We’ve been watching a few shows here,” Miriam said, her face red. “Midsomer Murders and Poirot, mostly.”
“Oh, fantastic,” the DI muttered.
“It’s very clever,” the old dragon said. “We’ve been learning a lot.”
The inspector wondered if she had any painkillers in the car. “Wonderful. That’s just wonderful.”
“We eat rabbits, mostly,” Mortimer said quietly, apparently the only one paying attention.
“We learnt a long time ago that livestock are missed,” Beaufort said. “And even if we actually liked the idea of eating something that talked to us, humans apparently don’t taste particularly nice. A bit stringy and dirty was what I was told, but that was a long time ago. Before running water and indoor plumbing, certainly.”
“Well,” DI Adams said. “That’s good to know.” She pushed her chair back and got up. “I’m going now. But yo
u’ll stay out of the human stuff, right?”
“It’s just dragons you’re interested in?”
“Just dragons, Beaufort.”
He sighed. “Fine.”
DI Adams turned to go, and paused at the kitchen door. “When you say just dragons – you mean just dragons and not humans, right?”
Beaufort exposed his teeth in that alarming grin. “Not humans. Or gnomes, or dwarfs, or gargoyles, among others.”
The DI stared at him for a long moment before she said, “Vampires?”
“Don’t be silly. Vampires don’t exist.”
“Oh.” She relaxed a little. “So, no werewolves, then, either.”
“Plenty of those. Some of them are quite good sorts.”
Her headache was actually quite bad now.
3
Miriam
It was a sombre little group that was left behind in the kitchen. Miriam clutched her tea, thinking about what the inspector hadn’t said. She wouldn’t have come here just because a van was set alight, surely? She wouldn’t jump to conclusions like that without evidence. So what was the evidence? Was it something to do with them, with the W.I.? Maybe even her? Oh, God, she wasn’t a suspect again, was she? She didn’t think she could take being a suspect all over again. Just the thought made her stomach roll over.
