Intrigue in the Village (Turnham Malpas 10) (16 page)

Willie muttered something she didn’t quite catch. ‘What did you say, Willie?’

‘I said, spare a thought for poor Vera.’

‘Well, I am. But it affects me a lot more than you if he dies. I don’t want him to die, believe me. My home’s just right for me. I’ve landed on my feet.’ Maggie looked across at Vera again and saw the Rector had got her smiling. What the blazes was there to smile about in the circumstances?

Vera had thought she wouldn’t smile ever again. She was glad someone had got the Rector for her. Then all of a sudden she remembered. ‘My God! I never thought about our Rhett! He doesn’t know.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Gone for a weekend to Weston with his friends. If Don dies, he’ll never forgive me. I’ll have to tell him.’ The smile gone, she wept again for Rhett and his hurt if his grandad, the only father figure he’d ever known, died.

‘Soon solved. I’ll ring the camp and leave a message.’

‘But I don’t know the number.’ Vera moaned quietly, feeling her pain all over again, only worse for Rhett’s sake.

‘No worries.’ Peter took his phone from his pocket and dialled enquiries.

After he’d contacted the holiday camp and left a message for Rhett, Peter offered to take Vera to see Don before she went to bed.

‘But I can’t visit this time of night. They won’t let me.’

‘They will if you’re with me. I can go any time I like. Then I’ll drive you back tonight or you can stay all night if you want to.’

‘You’re very kind. I could come back on the bus tomorrow, couldn’t I?’

‘Just as you wish. I’ll go get the car. Wait here.’

While Peter got the car, Vera nipped to the loo and tried to get rid of the traces of her tears. If Don was conscious, she didn’t want him seeing her looking like something the cat had dragged in and forgotten. Her image in the loo mirror didn’t do her spirits any good whatsoever. Her hair was straggly, her eyes swollen, her skin grey with the worry and her clothes looked as though
she’d been wearing them to bed. A bit of lipstick would give her a lift.

The door opened and in came Maggie Dobbs. ‘All right, Vera? Sorry about Don.’

‘The Rector’s taking me back to the hospital.’

‘I understand he’s bad.’

‘Oh, he is. Couldn’t be worse.’ Vera felt the tears coming again, but she wouldn’t let ’em, not in front of Maggie Dobbs.

‘Let’s hope you have better news when you go back.’

‘Thanks.’ Vera finished putting her lipstick on, sorted her straggly hair, put her comb away, snapped her handbag shut and left without another word.

Maggie watched her leave. Something niggled at the back of Maggie’s mind about Vera. As she flushed the loo, it almost came to her, then it was gone. Whatever was it? Something important, but what? Was it about Don? No, she knew nothing about Don. Nothing at all. She went back to finish her drink, still puzzling. She couldn’t listen to the others, as it grew into an anxiety that jangled her nerves and ruined her evening. Then, it hit her like a thunderbolt. The seance! That was it! Evadne
had
been talking about Vera, not Venetia! Oh God! What a mistake to make! Was it all her fault? Was that it? She’d seen Jeremy only the other morning, taking his rigorously imposed daily constitutional through Home Park, so she knew he was all right.

Sylvia nudged her. ‘What do you think?’

‘What about?’

‘About getting a card and signing it for poor Don.’

‘I . . . of course. Count me in. If he lives that long.’

‘Maggie! What a thing to say.’

‘You don’t fall on your head from a great height and then prance about like a spring lamb. You’re usually in your box in no time at all. Goodnight.’ Maggie left the three of them looking appalled and went home. Home? Was that what she called it? She could hardly bear to put the key in the lock and see where it had all happened. Tabitha, for some reason best known to herself, was sleeping in the middle of the carpet and Maggie stood on her tail. Tabitha gave the most horrendously agonized yowl and fled for her cat flap.

The gin and orange had had no effect on Maggie’s nerves so she went straight to the sideboard, fished out the brandy and poured herself a double, for purely medicinal purposes. She sat down in her rocking chair, reached forward and poked at the fire to improve the blaze. By mistake she missed replacing the poker on her fire iron stand and it crashed on to the tiled hearth, the sound reverberating around the cottage and scaring the living daylights out of her. Was every object trying to warn her that she’d gone too far this time and meddled in things she frankly didn’t understand? Or was there nothing
to
understand? She’d only meant her seances to be a bit of fun, a change from the telly.

Sitting there with her feet on the fender and the brandy glass cuddled in her hands, Maggie contemplated her position. Had she become a medium without knowing it? Had she really got influence? She recalled the seance when she’d . . . well, whatever it was, she’d felt different, more involved. She swallowed the last of the brandy. Perhaps practice made perfect? The rocking chair swung back and forth furiously. She’d pretended for so long, but now it might be for real. If that was so, then she had the kind of
power she’d never possessed in her life. Old Fitch got his power through money. Was she getting hers through the spirit world? There was only one way to find out; have another seance and see if it happened again. The brandy began to take effect, the rocking chair slowed its pace and Maggie fell asleep.

She woke when Tabitha jumped on her knee.

‘You stupid cat! Frightening me like that!’

Tabitha’s eyes appeared unusually large and knowledgeable, far too intelligent for a normal moggie. The hairs at the back of Maggie’s neck prickled slightly, and she felt goose pimples on her arms. Tabitha stared at her, purring as she kneaded her claws into Maggie’s flesh. Surely Tabitha wasn’t a witch’s cat, was she? Her Dave had found Tabitha, extraordinarily thin and soaked to the skin, straying on Exmoor when they were on holiday, and brought her to their caravan to be looked after. Maybe it was all Tabitha’s fault. Perhaps she really was a witch’s cat and had been guided to Dave by the spirit world. Was Exmoor significant? No. It was just an old moor like any other. Could have been Ilkley Moor or Dartmoor or the moors where them Brontës lived and died.

Maggie sprang to her feet, put Tabitha in her basket by the fire, placed the fireguard around it and made her way up to bed. The bulb in the bathroom flashed and went out the moment she switched it on. Well, she wasn’t going hunting downstairs for a new bulb at one o’clock in the morning, she’d get washed in the dark. Maggie peeped out of the bedroom window before she shut the curtains. The village was as peaceful as it always was. From her window she could see lights on in Willie Biggs’s cottage. They’d be watching one of those late-night films Willie was so fond
of. The Rectory’s bedroom light was on too. There wasn’t a sound. It was amazing how quickly she’d got used to the quiet of the countryside. Dave would have loved it here. Oh, Dave! Why did he have to die so unexpectedly, so devastatingly? It wasn’t fair. She wondered if the Rector had got back yet and if he had, what news of Don he had brought.

Then a thought sprang into her head and comforted her. She never pretended to get any messages to do with the weekender who came so regularly, and that was because she knew nothing about the woman at all. When she was pretending to be a medium she used information she already had in her head about the people concerned, like with the dinner ladies, so she
couldn’t
have become a real medium. The Senior sisters, for instance, had concocted their own interpretation of what she’d said. Maggie grinned at the memory of finding the wedding cake on the school doorstep.

She was on the verge of sleep when she remembered that Don’s fall had had nothing to do with anything she knew about him and Evadne was made up, a figment of her imagination.

It was four o’clock before she finally fell asleep through total exhaustion, and when, at about six o’clock, Tabitha crept under the blankets and cuddled up to her, it felt comforting, like a kindred spirit . . . Kindred spirit indeed. A cat! What nonsense. But she didn’t throw her out, as she normally would have.

The next morning was Sunday and the only way Maggie was likely to find out about Don was to go to church. By a quarter to eight she was dressed and ready. Checking her face in the mirror she had to laugh despite
her anxiety. Fancy, her, Maggie Dobbs, lifelong sceptic, off to church! Her Dave would have laughed if he could’ve seen her. Deep down she wondered if she was drawn by fear, but near the top of her consciousness, she acknowledged she genuinely needed to know about Don, and that was all.

At seven fifty-five, Maggie entered the ancient doors of her parish church for the first time and crept down the aisle. There couldn’t have been more than thirty people in the congregation and she felt each one of them was staring at her. She decided to sit near the back, two rows behind the worshippers sitting furthest from the altar. She knelt like she’d seen on the telly but didn’t know what she was supposed to say, so she silently mouthed, ‘Please help Don.’ Then in case there were other seriously ill men called Don she added, ‘Don Wright, that is.’

Maggie sat up and settled to listening to Mrs Peel on the organ. She glanced down and read the words embroidered on her kneeler. ‘Forgive our sins.’ Had she sinned? At this moment, contacting the dead didn’t seem like pretence.

The Rector arrived with the choir and the whole panoply of the Church at its most majestic held her attention. During prayers, Peter made a special mention of Don and prayed for his quick recovery. Maggie sighed with relief. At least he was still alive. She felt better until the closing prayer, which was delivered almost poetically by Peter, like an actor on a stage: ‘Keep us from falling into sin, or running into danger . . .’ Danger. What a word to choose. Maggie got that creepy-crawly feeling in her insides, and by the time the service concluded, she was a bag of nerves all over again.

She hadn’t realized that Peter would be shaking hands
with everyone at the door; there was no escape for her. Those intense blue eyes of his looked straight into hers and she felt this overwhelming need to ask him if she was consorting with the devil by holding seances. He gripped her hand and said how pleased he was to see her, that Kate Fitch had said what a good job she did at the school and how delighted he was that she was so quickly becoming a valued part of village life.

Confronted by such crystal-clear Christian affection, Maggie scuttled off to the safety of her home, completely nonplussed.

Her regular seance night came around all too quickly. Maggie followed the same routine except that, having shaded the light on the low table by the fire and placed the chairs around her table, she got out a wine glass that had once belonged to her grandmother, gave it an extra special wash and polished it until it shone, placed it upside down in the middle of the table and then around it, in a large circle, she placed in order the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, written out in her own hand, bold and unmistakable.

This was the same but different. She might not get any results, but as it would take much longer than the trance, they’d get their money’s worth.

They all expressed surprise at the changes.

Maggie explained. ‘Thought we needed something a little extra.’

‘But what do we do?’ asked Linda.

‘I know.’ Greta Jones placed a finger on the upturned wine glass. ‘We all do this and ask a question and it spells out the answer.’

‘How can it? It can’t speak,’ Linda replied scornfully.

‘It moves to each letter and spells it out.’ Maggie said this with a smile.

Venetia was scornful. ‘Who pushes it?’

‘The spirits guide it.’

Linda, still unemployed, had reached new depths of scepticism. ‘I bet. You’ll just push it.’

Maggie looked shocked. ‘I most certainly will not.’

‘Well, I’m not paying five pounds for a load of cheating,’ stated Linda, arms folded and lips pursed.

The Senior twins said together, ‘We will! It could be interesting.’

‘Go on, Linda,’ said Greta Jones. ‘Give it a whirl. You might hear something about a job.’

Linda brightened and nodded her head. ‘All right, then.’

The weekender hadn’t come this time, something about staying at home to do the decorating. Instead, Angie Turner accompanied Linda, who hadn’t asked if that was all right.