Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons) Page 12

  There was absolute silence while the old dragon stared at the chair of the W.I., then he gave a rasping chuckle, and said, “D’you know, you’re right. I am sorry, young lady.”

  Alice nodded. “As you should be,” she said, and walked into the church with a very straight back. Miriam fluttered her hands about, mumbled something Mortimer couldn’t quite understand, then fled after her.

  Walter looked at Beaufort. “You do find them,” he said, then closed his eyes and squatted there like giant winged toad, his nostrils flaring, while Mortimer looked around anxiously. It felt very exposed out here. The road was out of sight beyond the high churchyard wall, and the vicarage was lost at the other end of the graveyard, barely glimpsed through the trees, but there was no cover on the church steps. He plucked at his tail and waited.

  For a moment, it actually felt like things might go smoothly, that he might have overreacted. Amelia stole into the church after Alice and returned with a piece of parkin, which she sat nibbling on happily in the shade of a headstone. Beaufort wandered off around the outside of the church, looking up at the roof and sighing about the lack of gargoyles, and Walter crouched on the steps, breathing slow and steady.

  “Lots of happiness, lots of grief,” he said, almost to himself. Then, “Quite recent anger. A woman, a man.”

  “Can you tell anything else?” Mortimer asked.

  “Maybe a little, if I can get a clearer scent,” the old dragon said, and got up stiffly. Eyes still closed, he snuffled his way down the steps to the path. “It’s hard. There are lots of other scents, lots of modern stuff. I don’t do those so well.” He opened his milky eyes and looked at Mortimer. “What on earth is Beaufort doing?”

  “What?” Mortimer looked around, half-expecting to see the High Lord hanging off the church steeple.

  “No, this. All of this. Everyone knows you’ve got his ear. What’s he up to?”

  “I wish I knew,” Mortimer said truthfully. “I think he just likes being involved.”

  “He’ll get us all killed,” Walter grumbled, and shuffled a little further along the path. “I don’t know about this. It’s all a bit muddled, these smells. People are very complicated. Lots of emotions.”

  He didn’t know the half of it, Mortimer thought, then saw the dog. The dog. The monstrous, long-legged thing from the village hall, just venturing into the graveyard. “Aw, no.”

  “What? What is it?” Walter looked around wildly, but Mortimer wasn’t even sure what he could see through those old eyes.

  The dog gave a delighted bark and shot toward them, and somewhere still out of sight a small voice yelled, “Angelus, come back!”

  “Walter, run!” Mortimer bellowed, and tried to usher the old dragon off the path.

  “Run? I don’t run!” Walter planted his four squat legs and roared. The dog stopped so hard his nose almost hit the gravel of the path, and the faint voice shrieked for Angelus again.

  “Mortimer?” Amelia scrambled to her feet. “What do we do?”

  “Get out of here!” He tapped Walter’s shoulder awkwardly, trying not to look at the dog. The great, slobbery, barking, toothy dog. “Lord Walter, we really—” Walter backhanded him with surprising strength, sending him sliding across the path, and the dog gave a yelp of excitement and bounced forward, legs stiff. “Ow!”

  “Walter? Mortimer? What’s going on?” Beaufort came around the church at an ungainly gallop, and Mortimer righted himself, flinging his wings wide to make himself look bigger.

  “Shoo!” he said to the still-bouncing dog, and Walter gave him a withering look.

  “Shoo? You should be ashamed to call yourself a dragon. Let’s eat him.”

  “No one eat him!” Beaufort shouted, just as Alice and Miriam appeared on the church steps with a tall, unfamiliar man following them.

  “Why not?” Walter demanded.

  “Who’s there?” the man on the steps said, and the dragons froze. “I heard voices! Have you got friends out here?” he asked the women, looking about the place uncertainly. The dog barked, and bounded toward Mortimer then away again. Mortimer gave a horrified squeak at the back of his throat.

  “Angelus?” the distant voice called, coming closer.

  Walter growled.

  “Walter,” Beaufort hissed warningly.

  “Can anyone else smell that guy?” Amelia said, her voice clear and carrying. “He stinks.”

  Two dragons and two women turned to join Amelia in staring at the man. “What?” he demanded of Alice and Miriam. “What? Did someone say something? Someone said something.”

  Walter lunged at the dog. The dog gave a yelp of real alarm and bolted across the graveyard, the old dragon scuttling after him in drooling pursuit.

  “Walter!” Beaufort roared, and charged after them. Amelia threw herself into the chase, and Mortimer turned frantically on the spot, not sure whether he should join them, or, or what? Keep an eye on the man? He did stink, of old, ingrained violence, and Mortimer didn’t want to just leave him with Alice and Miriam. But what could he do? It wasn’t like he could singe him or anything. How could they explain that? Alice had hold of one of the man’s arms and was talking to him severely, and he pulled away from her, starting down the stairs. Mortimer took a hesitant step after Walter, hearing the not-so-distant woman still shouting for Angelus.

  Then Alice grabbed the man’s arm again, and he pushed her, and she fell back on the steps with a little cry of astonishment. Mortimer gave one furious roar, a sound he’d never made before, never even thought he could make, and charged.

  11

  DI Adams

  DI Adams had relieved Sergeant Graham Harrison after her interesting little meeting with the Ellis and Martin women. She wasn’t really sure there was much use keeping watch on the vicarage, except to see who else might bumble past. But she wanted to think things through before she did anything else, and there was no point braving the ridiculously narrow, winding roads all the way back to Skipton, not if she was just going to have to come back here again anyway.

  She’d found the tiny village shop and bought some supplies, although it was mostly Lucozade and biscuits. The packaged sandwiches were not only a brand she’d never heard of, they had the dried, shrivelled look of things that had not heard of stock rotation. The pretty little village square, with its stone well in the centre of the marketplace and happy tumbles of flowers in hanging baskets on every available post, had a couple of nice-looking village pubs, plus a greengrocer and a bakery that seemed to double as a deli, but she hadn’t been in the mood for braving more locals.

  An old woman clad entirely in yellow houndstooth print, including her hat, had tapped on the inspector’s car window while she was checking her phone and demanded to know if she was investigating flower thefts. DI Adams had said it wasn’t really her department, and the old woman had turned around without another word and marched off, muttering about the declining standards of police work in the modern world. Then an astonishingly round and red-faced man with badly fitting false teeth had accosted her as she got out of the car and demanded to know what the police were going to do about whoever was vandalising his tractor. That had been more than enough contact with the locals for one morning, and the shop had been the closest thing to her. She grabbed some supplies and fled.

  But, as it turned out, she needn’t have worried about food. She looked a little guiltily at the small pile of Tupperware containers on the passenger seat of the car. First it had been morning tea, delivered by a pretty woman who looked younger than the white streaks in her hair suggested. DI Adams recognised her from the village hall (Davies, Pearl), and she brought a tartan thermos and shortbread fingers that were so buttery and indulgent that the inspector didn’t think she’d be able to eat more than one.

  Somehow they were all gone, although she had at least managed to make them last until after lunch. That had arrived carried by a very, very small man, who whispered that Gert had sent him, and that it was all vegetables in case she was o
ne of those meat-haters. He handed her a white casserole dish capped with a dome of flaky pastry, all nestled into some sort of quilted pot-holdery thing and still piping hot, took a set of cutlery and a bottle of homemade lemonade out of a carrier bag, and tiptoed off again. When another W.I. member (Robinson, Teresa), a tall woman with a heavy mass of grey braids and an evident fondness for pink Lycra, came by with peanut cookies, DI Adams started writing down who had brought what so she could figure out how to get the containers back. Village life was very odd, but the food was good. She could give it that. No wonder Sergeant Harrison hadn’t seemed too worried about being on stake-out duty.

  Now she leaned against the bonnet and stretched luxuriously in the sunshine. All the sitting around and unseasonable warmth was making her feel dozy, which worried her in some undefined way. She wasn’t a dozy person. Even as a child, her mother never tired of telling her, she never slept in the day. “Always up, always prying, prying, prying. Questions. Looking. No wonder you don’t have a boyfriend, all those questions!” But it had always seemed to her that there was too much to know to waste time sleeping.

  Of course, it could just be all the food making her sleepy. She never normally ate pie in the middle of the day. She never normally ate pie, full-stop. But then pie very rarely tasted like that one had done. Never mind the shortbread and the peanut cookies. She patted her belly absentmindedly. She must have needed it. Something was certainly a little off. She’d had a persistent headache since the visit to the Ellis house, when her eyes had started going all funny. Every time she’d looked at the ground in the garden, it had been like she just couldn’t find anything to focus on, and her gaze had drifted off at strange angles. She’d only been drunk once or twice in her life, and it had been a bit like that, as if nothing was quite right, her senses suddenly rendered untrustworthy. Maybe a migraine? She rarely got them, and they were usually accompanied by the annoying little swimmers in her vision, but maybe this was some new variation?

  “Joy,” she said to the churchyard, and became aware that she could hear someone shouting for their dog. And there had been those completely empty plates that Ellis had claimed were for pixies. Wouldn’t put it past her, but it was cream you left out for pixies, and at night, not in the middle of a nice sunny morning. DI Adams shook her head. And she could blame her mother for that particular piece of useless information. It was like when she’d seen that stuff in London. Her mother had been terribly sympathetic, had listened as her daughter described the horrible tricks her mind had played on her, and then she’d gone and said it was real. The shouting afterward had been real, that was for sure.

  The dog walker was still calling for her dog, getting a little closer. A woman, sounding increasingly anxious. DI Adams wondered if she should go help. It was probably the kind of thing the police did around here. But she did have a house to watch. She looked at the vicarage, then fished in her pocket and pulled out the scale, running her fingers over the smoothness of it, holding it up to the light to see the way the sun shone through it, turning it into something between shot silk and stained glass. She still couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be. Some sort of art thing, maybe? But what was it made of? And why had it been under the bed?

  A sound caught her attention. Didn’t catch it, seized it. It set the hairs on her arms leaping away from the skin, and a chill ran up her back, leaving her suddenly breathless. It had been, what? A howl? No. A roar. Something that her animal heart recognised even if she didn’t. Something toothed and clawed, something to be held at bay by fires in the night, something … Something like London? No. Not that. That had been stress. Exhaustion. This sounded real.

  “Angelus!” the dog walker wailed, and now DI Adams could see her, a small woman trailing a leash and trotting as rapidly as she could toward that terrible sound. Howard, Rose, also from the W.I., the one with the Great Dane that was as tall as her, near enough. No wonder it had got away on her. Christ, she was almost ninety, and looked like a chihuahua could get away on her. The average age in Toot Hansell was proving to be a little concerning. There was another woman too, younger, with some fluffy thing in her arms. Shaw, Jasmine. The constable’s wife and possible accidental poisoner. DI Adams focused on the women and let the rest fall away. Whatever that noise was, these civilians were not equipped to deal with it. She was. In theory, anyway.

  She shoved the scale back into her pocket and ran toward the dog-walkers, booted feet sure on the grass. “Ladies! Ladies, stop right there!”

  The women turned toward her. Shaw was pale, her eyes huge, and the fluffy dog was wriggling wildly, trying to get free.

  “My Angelus is in there!” Rose wailed. “And did you hear that sound?”

  “I’m sure it was just the wind, Mrs Howard,” DI Adams said, feeling sure of nothing of the sort. “But stay here while I go take a look, alright?”

  “Angelus!” Rose shouted again, and DI Adams winced. She had some lungs on her. Shaw’s dog obviously thought so too, because she writhed so wildly that she flung herself free of the younger woman’s arms and bolted through the gateway arch and into the churchyard, headed for the source of the roar.

  “Primrose!” Jasmine screamed, and ran after her.

  “Stop!” DI Adams bellowed, and Rose gave her an apologetic look, then ran into the churchyard, surprisingly quick for such a little old thing. “Oh, Christ,” the inspector said, and gave chase.

  “Walter!” The word that rang among the gravestones was clear, the voice odd. Raspy, like a lifelong smoker, but full of more power than any pair of tar-choked lungs had any right to. Commanding, too. DI Adams thought it sounded like one of those old theatre actors, with their classical accents and booming voices. A very exasperated one.

  She ran harder, passing Rose and shouting, “Go back, dammit!” The woman gave her a little I’m sorry finger wave and sped up.

  The inspector swore, jumped a grave, hurdled a bench, and shouted as she went, “Police! Everyone stop what you’re doing!”

  Jasmine kept running. That ridiculous little dog was still running ahead of her, ignoring the woman’s panicked calls for her to come back. And now the path curved toward the church, and DI Adams saw women on the steps (Ellis, Martin, her mind supplied without hesitating), and a man as well. He pushed Alice and she fell back onto the steps, looking more annoyed than frightened, and there was another one of those roars, making DI Adams stumble and catch her hip painfully on a headstone. It hadn’t been as deep or full-throated as the first, but it was a roar nonetheless, and there was blurred movement in the corner of her eye that she couldn’t quite catch. Then the man yelped and fell over, Miriam threw herself on top of him like a rugby player diving on a ball as he slid down the stairs, and Alice scrambled up and followed them, waving a bag around like she was going to gag him with it.

  “Stop!” the DI bellowed again. “Everybody stop right now or so help me I’ll arrest every single one of you!”

  There was a last brief scuffle on the steps, then a breathless stillness, broken only by the fluffy bloody dog, which was bouncing about the place yapping hysterically.

  “Walter!” someone shouted from beyond the vicarage, and Rose caught up to them, still huffing.

  “Where’s my Angelus?” she demanded, then said, “Oh, hello, Alice, Miriam.”

  “Hello, Rose,” Alice said. She had a cotton shopping bag with Shop Local, Live Local, Love Local and a lot of cheery flowers printed on it pulled over the man’s head, and was sitting behind him with his head rested in her lap. It might have looked like she was protecting him from the stone steps, if she hadn’t also had both legs over his upper arms, and her feet hooked under his back. It looked painful, and he wasn’t moving much.

  Meanwhile, Miriam had belly-flopped on him, and her technique appeared to simply involve trying to cover as much of him with her own body as she could. “Hi, Rose,” she said breathlessly.

  “Let me up!” the man in the bag bellowed in a muffled voice. “Crazy old—” Miriam elbow
ed him somewhere and he gasped, then fell silent.

  “Get up,” DI Adams said, ignoring another shout of “Walter!”

  Neither woman moved.

  “Get. Up.” She didn’t shout. Shouting when running was one thing, but the situation was static, and she was back in control. Sort of. Either way, she didn’t need to raise her voice. But she did put a certain amount of emphasis on the words, and she had a sneaking suspicion that an outside observer might have thought she was shouting.

  Alice got up first, leaving the bag on the man’s head, and helped Miriam to her feet. The man sat up and pulled the bag off his head, greying hair dishevelled and his shirt torn at the shoulder.

  “Arrest them!” he shouted. “They’re crazy! They should be locked up!”

  DI Adams didn’t entirely disagree, but she just frowned at him. “I believe I saw you push Ms Martin?”

  “She grabbed me! And her dog bit me!”

  “I don’t have a dog,” Alice said.

  “Something bit me!” The women stared at him, even Jasmine distracted from trying to catch Primrose. There was blood on his jeans, and he pulled the leg up gingerly to reveal a neat and rather large semi-circle of teeth on the shin and the calf. “See?”

  DI Adams looked at Rose. “Does your dog bite?”

  “No,” she said indignantly.

  “Just asking.” The inspector looked back at the women on the church steps. “So what bit him?”

  “I think he was bitten before he got here and is just blaming us,” Miriam said. She’d gone a very odd shade of pink.

  “What? I don’t even think I can walk on this! It was one of your friends, one of the ones hiding in the graveyard!”

  “Walter!” someone bellowed, a little closer. They sounded as if their patience was running out.

  “Yeah, him!” the man said. “And whoever else was out there making those noises!”