A Vicky Hill Exclusive! (35 page)

I stole a sideways glance at my landlady who was carefully unwrapping a second sandwich. I could easily overpower her, throw her out of the car, grab the keys, and go for help. I’d never physically tackled a senior citizen before – the idea didn’t seem right somehow.

Perhaps I was overreacting? A lifetime of inherited suspicion made me mistrust everyone.
Don’t be silly, Vicky!
If she’d meant to do you harm, you’d be bound and gagged by now – even dead! This little jaunt was about the coven, I was sure of it. I decided to play along.

‘I must have nodded off,’ I said, luxuriating in a catlike stretch. I peered out the passenger window and could just make out the undulating shapes of moorland that stretched to the horizon.

‘Wow! Does Salome Steel live out here?’ When Mrs Poultry didn’t reply, I went on, ‘I’m really thirsty. Is that hot chocolate?’

‘This is tea.’ Mrs Poultry drained the last drop and replaced the plastic cup on top of the flask and put it on the floor behind her seat along with the carefully folded paper bag. In silence, she reached over to my side and tried to unlatch the glove compartment with her arthritic fingers.

‘Here, allow me,’ I said. The latch popped open to reveal a small object wrapped in a piece of cloth. I gave her the bundle. She put it on her lap.

‘I’m afraid I brought you here under false pretences.’ Mrs Poultry turned to face me, her expression deep in the shadows. ‘Tell me about your friendship with the gel from the cafe,’ she demanded.

‘
Topaz
?’ I was stunned. Why would she care about
Topaz
? I racked my sluggish brain but could not remember even mentioning Topaz to Mrs Poultry. I shrugged. ‘She’s a bit odd but I hardly know her. Why?’

‘Don’t lie,’ Mrs Poultry hissed. ‘When I telephoned the Gipping Constabulary on Monday night to report you missing, Detective Constable Probes suggested I call The Copper Kettle.’ Mrs Poultry paused, before adding nastily, ‘The police officer implied that you and she were . . .
intimate
.’

Blast Probes and his big mouth!
Mrs Poultry wanted to know if I was still a virgin. Everyone knows coven initiates must be virgins.

It certainly explained her horror when she spotted me canoodling with Dave on Sunday evening. Then there was that business of how angry she was when I spent the night with Annabel and ended up accepting a lift from Chester in my pyjamas. Hadn’t she demanded to know if he’d ‘compromised my purity’?

‘Don’t worry Mrs P. I swear I am still a virgin,’ I said brightly. ‘I know how important it is for the coven.’

‘Coven? What coven?’ Mrs Poultry snapped.

‘Aren’t you a witch?’ I stammered.

‘Certainly not! What an outrageous suggestion.’

A peculiar feeling began to settle in the pit of my stomach. If this fabricated trip to see Salome Steel was not about joining a coven, why had I been brought here and where, exactly, were we?

‘I was joking,’ I stammered. ‘Actually, Topaz thought you were a witch but I told her she was imagining it.’

‘Is that what she’s calling herself these days?’ Mrs Poultry snorted with disdain. ‘I recognized Ethel immediately in Tesco this morning. Ridiculous disguise.’

As the full import of Mrs Poultry’s words hit me, I realized Topaz had been right about her aunt being murdered, but wrong about the killer.

Not only did Cradle to Coffin Catering take advantage of the occasion for theft, it provided the perfect opportunity to poison the guests!

I was in deep trouble.

‘You think I don’t know what you two are up to?’ Mrs Poultry’s hands clutched the bundle on her lap tightly. ‘You left the coroner’s reports in a very obvious place, Victoria.’

‘Oh
those
!’ I said, flippantly, despite my stomach doing somersaults. ‘Old news now, of course. With the Lady Trewallyn scandal splashed all over the
Bugle
, there’s no story now. Who cares if she murdered her husband? She’s left the country and that’s that.’

Mrs Poultry began to unwrap the bundle.

‘Between you and me, it’s good riddance to bad rubbish,’ I gabbled on. ‘I’m told Sir Hugh was quite a womanizer. Used to have love trysts in that Folly in the woods and slept with half the women in Gipping – Barbara Meadows, Mary J. Larch—’

‘That’s not true,’ Mrs Poultry cried, whipping out a Beretta 92FS. She pointed it at me. ‘He only loved
me
!’

‘Don’t shoot!’ Even though it was hard to tell if this was a real Beretta or a BB gun, Dad always said to assume the worst. ‘I won’t say anything. I don’t like the cops.’

Mrs Poultry slipped her free hand inside her coat and pulled out my two precious postcards from Spain. ‘I believe these are of great importance to you, Victoria,’ she said as she released the Beretta’s safety catch. ‘I suggest you get out of the car.’

Oh God!
This was far worse than I expected. Miserably, I scrambled out.

The Morris spluttered into life. After an eleven-point turn, Mrs Poultry forced the car into first gear and kangarooed away over the uneven moors.

Numb with shock I watched the taillights vanish from sight just as a thick mist descended. I was utterly alone, but I was alive.

I
went after the Morris Traveller at a trot. The ground rose steadily towards one of the many massive granite outcrops that littered the moors. The full moon was bright enough to light my way, so I was pretty sure I’d get a good view and find my bearings from up there.

How could I have been so stupid? So naive! Mrs Poultry was simply a straightforward murderess and thief. There had never been a coven. All that devil chicken and poppet palaver was just a ruse exploited by my landlady who had sworn she’d never even read
Voodoo Vixens
. The Eco-Warriors had jumped on the same voodoo frenzy and must have thought sending Annabel a poppet a hilarious joke. And to think I’d fallen for it, too!

It was too late to get a front-page scoop now. Mrs Poultry – anonymously of course – was bound to tell the cops my parents lived in Spain. I was stranded on the moors and would probably die of hypothermia. A feeling of self-pity swept over me. Perhaps it was for the best. Without warning, a thick, impenetrable mist descended and completely enveloped me. I had to stop. I couldn’t even see my own feet.

Bloody hell!
It’s the killer fog! Like everyone, I’d heard of these dreaded mists that come out of nowhere. I’d also pooh-poohed ancient folklore that says it’s summoned by pixies in order to lead hapless travellers into bottomless mires. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I walked on very carefully. It was like playing a horror version of blind man’s buff. Hot tears stung my eyes. I started to whimper and began to pray to God. I hadn’t had a chat with Him since the break-in at the
Gazette
. I reminded Him that Mrs Poultry had broken at least five of the Ten Commandments and I hadn’t broken any. I even resurrected the virgin deal if it would get me back to Gipping safe, and protect Mum and Dad from the law.

As if by magic, the mist vanished. The sky was bright with stars once more. But the rocky outcrop I’d been heading for had vanished. I was hopelessly lost. I didn’t even know which of the three moors in southwest England I was actually lost on. How long had I been unconscious?

What if I were in Cornwall! Only last week the trashy
Bugle
had reported that the Beast of Bodmin Moor had savaged a hiker from the Ramblers’ Association. We’d all had a laugh about it at the time but what if it were true?

Stop it, Vicky! Get a grip! A
surge of hope filled me. When we’d set off, I’d noticed Mrs Poultry’s fuel gauge was only a quarter full. When we’d stopped, the needle had hardly moved. Bodmin lay to the northwest and Exmoor to the northeast. Both were 120-mile round-trips. We’d left Rumble Lane shortly after ten. It was now midnight. Mrs Poultry drove at twenty-five miles an hour, meaning it was highly unlikely I was anywhere but Dartmoor. This thought was surprisingly comforting.

Annabel may well have scoffed at my Girl Guide past, but hadn’t I snagged the Star Tracker badge at first go? I knew Gipping was to the southeast of Dartmoor so all I had to do was find the Polaris and then I’d find north.

Turning in a slow circle, I studied the starry sky and managed to locate the Plough. I drew an imaginary line upward and . . . there it was!

Blast!
I’d been walking completely in the wrong direction – farther away from civilization and closer to the treacherous bog and swampland that surrounded the notorious Dartmoor Prison from which the very terrain acted as an escape deterrent.

I turned to my right and, glancing continuously over my shoulder, made sure the Polaris was always at my seven o’clock. I made my way over a high, grassy knoll and down the other side towards a bank of tall, majestic cypresses in the distance – not wild trees like hawthorn or mountain ash.
Cypresses, Vicky! Human life!

I broke into a run . . . and that was when I stopped paying attention and stumbled straight into the bog.

It only took three steps before the ground began to quake. It happened so fast that I didn’t have time to leap aside. I was sinking. Being dragged under. The oozing mass of peat and stinking vegetation reached my knees, then thighs. Desperately, I struggled to free myself but only sank deeper, horrified by the strange seething hissing sound the bog made.

I began to scream for help. The thick, glutinous muck sucked me farther in. I was waist-deep. Then chest. Oh God. I really was going to die.

I screamed until my voice went hoarse and then, miraculously, my feet found firm ground. But what did it matter? I was still stuck in thick, cold mud.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of a dog barking. It was coming closer. A fat English bulldog waddled into view. It stopped on the edge of the bog, woofed twice, and promptly sat down on its haunches.

‘Ahoy there! Ahoy!’ A tall man in his early sixties came striding into view. Over his red and white striped pyjamas he wore a greatcoat and, to my utter joy, carried a walking stick and a life belt.

‘By Jove, young lady. You’re in a bit of a pickle.’

Pulling me out wasn’t easy but the man was extraordinarily strong. I clutched the life belt – HMS
Dauntless
– and was dragged facedown across the stinking mire to safety. Exhausted and miserable but so happy to be alive, I just sat for a moment in shock.

‘Admiral Charles Gunn. Retired. Dog’s Horatio,’ said the man, retrieving a hip flask from his inside pocket. ‘This’ll have you shipshape in no time.’

‘Vicky Hill,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

The admiral gestured to the cypress trees. ‘Live down there, what,’ he said. ‘Not far. Get you cleaned up.’

As the admiral used his walking stick to pick our way through several more bogs, he told me he liked to work on his ‘little hobby’ at night and that as Horatio had ‘bilge problems’, they were often outside.

The admiral had seen a car drive past his cottage at approximately twenty-three hundred hours.

‘At first, I thought it was two lovers going off for some nooky,’ he said. ‘But when only one person came back, I smelled a rat.’

‘You saved my life,’ I said shakily.

‘These bogs are death traps,’ he declared. ‘Even the locals never venture there in broad daylight, let alone at night. I bought the cottage for that reason. Keep people ashore.’

I felt sick as the full horror of my ordeal began to sink in. Mrs Poultry was a local. She had known about the danger of these moors and had deliberately chosen this spot.

Her intention had been to kill me.

T
he admiral lived in a picture-postcard thatched cottage next to a little stream.

I did my best to clean up my appearance in the bathroom – or ‘head’ as the admiral called it. I smelled dreadful – even Horatio gave me a wide berth. Fortunately I was able to rinse off most of the stinking mud from my cagoule in the handheld shower.

The admiral gave me some cream long-john thermals, which I had to roll up, and a heavy wool sweater. It was far too big but clean and warm. My shoes were another matter as the admiral’s feet were twice my size. In the end, I borrowed his massive Wellington boots.

All I could think about was finding my landlady.

As the daughter of a professional thief, I knew Mrs Poultry would not leave Gipping without her silver. As her arthritis was so severe, I felt sure she had to have an accomplice. An idea began to form in my mind.

Back in the low-beamed kitchen, Horatio slept soundly in his basket next to the Aga. The admiral handed me my third hot toddy, and said, ‘We must call the police.’

‘There isn’t time,’ I said. ‘I must get back to Gipping immediately.’

‘Nonsense.’ He walked over to the oak desk in the corner and picked up the phone by his computer. ‘You’re not going anywhere, young lady. You’ve had a dreadful shock.’

‘You don’t understand. I’m a journalist.’ I darted towards him and took the receiver out of his hand. ‘No police. Yet.’

‘Journalist!’ The admiral expression changed from concern to fury. He pushed me aside and stepped in front of his computer, shielding the screen behind him. ‘How low and desperate do you people get?’