What The Cat Dragged In (The Celtic Witch Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  “What will you do?” Dilys asked. Maddie was also looking at me expectantly.

  “I think that first, I need to talk with him properly,” I said. “Now we know his name, I think that will give me a way in to find a connection with him. Then I need to establish what he wants, and how we can help him find peace.”

  “Sounds straightforward,” Maddie said.

  “Sounds like you need Harkin,” Dilys said.

  “Sounds like I need another cup of tea,” I said, and got up to refill the kettle. It was not going to be straightforward. I had a feeling that the ghost would not be easy to lay to rest. He had shown he was not tied to one place, and he had shown he wanted to push at protective circles.

  What else did he want?

  Oh, he would not be easy at all, I thought.

  Eleven

  And he wasn’t.

  I took Harkin and went out into the garden. I had a small willow structure, like a woven cave, in the opposite corner to where the body had been found. I had knocked down part of the garden wall so that when I sat in the middle of the tree-cave, I was half in the garden and half out on the wild moorland that bordered this side of the garden.

  This was, to me, the epitome of hedge-riding. I didn’t deal in the fully wild places. I was no shaman. But nor was I a kitchen witch, or any other of the more well-known kinds with rituals and scripts.

  I was all about the edges, and borders, and boundaries of things.

  Being neither one thing nor the other, one foot here and one foot there, made it hard to explain who I was and what I did. People do like their definitions. But I sought out, and rode, the ever-changing waves of energy. I dealt with earth energy, animal energy, plant energy, and the powers of the realms just adjacent to our own. I didn’t delve into the deeper kingdoms nor ascend up the world tree. My place was partly here, partly there, working for the good of those around me.

  I gathered up moss and heather, old dry grass and brown, dead leaves. I took them into the willow cave and put them in the centre. As a cushion, it would be damp and the wetness would seep into my bones. But that didn’t matter. I sat down. I used to do this cross-legged, but there seemed to be quite a difference between sitting like that as a seven-year-old and sitting like that as an ancient woman in her twenties. Goodness knew what my thirties would hold. I got myself comfortable and Harkin came to nestle in my lap.

  I could feel the ghost’s presence. I cast my mental circle but then threw another one around that, and invited the ghost into the space between the two circles. He was close to me, but I was still protected. I was mindful of how he had tested the boundaries the previous day.

  “Robert Cameron.” I said it both out loud, and in my head.

  The ghost’s energy rippled. A man’s figure began to form out of the air in front of me, like the atmosphere was hardening slightly. I could not detect any of his facial features. Luckily for me, he had retained enough earth-knowledge to clothe his form in the fashions of the sixties. I’d encountered plenty of ghosts who had forgotten basic etiquette like that. Or, in some cases, wilfully ignored it. They were the ones who liked to leap around in the buff, waving their bits in the air and giggling.

  Yes, ghosts have a strange sense of humour. It explains why you lose so many odd socks.

  “Hello, Robert Cameron,” I said again.

  His face appeared. He had a strong jaw, floppy hair like the Beatles, and piercing eyes. He stared at me, and opened his mouth.

  And he faded away.

  “Robert Cameron! Come back! I want to help you.”

  The presence dissipated. It was still trapped between the two circles but it was nothing more than mist, now. I called for him but it was pointless. There was nothing for me to do, so I opened an exit for him and let him leave.

  Now what?

  ***

  Maddie thought that she had the answers.

  “We need to find out more about him,” she told me. “Maybe the name is not enough, you know? So let’s look into who he was. We need to know if he was a stranger here, that sort of thing. Yeah?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. It seemed like a good plan. It would distract us from Maddie’s troubles, too. “But how do we do that?”

  She looked at me like I was mad for a moment, then understanding dawned on her face. “Oh my gosh. The internet, right? Look, I’ll do that. I’ve worked out how to get data on my cell phone but you’re gonna need to be out of the house.”

  “Why don’t you leave the house?”

  “I would, but you have other things to do.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure you do. You need to get out and talk to people. You know everyone in the town, right? So you need to go talk to the oldest people here, all the real seniors, and find out if anyone remembers this Robert Cameron.”

  At the mention of his name, something hissed in my ear.

  I agreed, and I hoped that the ghost would stay behind rather than follow me out into the town.

  ***

  The drizzling rain had cleared. The sky had patches of bright blue showing between fluffy white clouds, and that instantly lifted my spirits.

  I wondered if spirits had spirits that could be lifted.

  Smiling to myself, and half-aware that I was coming out with the sort of odd things that Great Aunt Dilys was prone to, I made my way into town and sat on a bench to watch the comings and goings of the market square. It was midweek, and rather quiet. I spotted two teenagers sneaking down the street and diving down a side alley, and smiled to myself. We had a small gang of “troublemakers” whose most serious crimes seemed to be avoiding maths lessons and smoking a single cigarette with great drama and flair.

  I did some maths in my head. How old would someone have to be, I thought, to have known Robert Cameron before he died? That was, if he really was local.

  Anyone born at the start of the sixties would now be in their late fifties. But they would have been a child, and so unlikely to remember if Robert Cameron had been a resident here.

  So that meant I was looking for someone who were now in the sixties, at least.

  There hadn’t been a lot of information in the newspaper. I wondered if the police knew more than they had said. It would be worth talking to Adam, I realised. And we had to arrange that dinner date he’d suggested. I was just making up my mind to wander over to the part-time police station to see if he was around, when I heard a familiar tap-tap of a walking cane.

  Jemima Rideout would be the right age, I thought as I watched the older lady make her way towards me.

  But she was not remotely local. She’d retired here.

  She smiled at me and settled herself on the bench next to me. “Did you eat those chia seeds?” she asked. She didn’t mess around with small talk, did Jemima. The ex-journalist was direct. She had an immensely thick skin, and expected everyone else to be as resilient.

  But then, she’d spent her career travelling the world and witnessing some of the most awful things a human being could do to another human being, and I guessed she’d earned the right to be plain spoken.

  “I planted them, actually,” I confessed, and I was treated to another feature of the redoubtable Ms Rideout – her loud and gurgling laugh. She tossed her severe black bobbed hair and slammed her cane on the pavement a few times.

  “You did not,” she said. “Oh, did you really?”

  “No, I’m messing,” I said. “I tried them on porridge, like you said, but they all got stuck in my teeth. How’s Monty?”

  “He drew blood yesterday,” she said, and she sounded a little proud about her vicious parrot’s antics. “That’s another cleaner who won’t come back. Oh well. I didn’t like the way she treated my leather sofa, anyway.”

  “You’re good at investigating,” I said. “How would you find out about someone from the past?”

  She sucked her teeth for a moment and then said, “Oh, that dead man was in your garden, wasn’t he? I imagine you want to know who he was, and so on.”
/>   “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

  “His name was in the paper.”

  “But that was all.”

  “I am sure more information will soon come to light.”

  “What information? Where will it come from? How will the police find out?”

  “It depends. Was he a local man?”

  “I don’t even know that,” I said despairingly.

  “If he’s local, you’d go to the parish records,” she said. “If I were looking into this, I’d speak to the vicar.”

  “And if he’s not local? He died way back in the sixties. My cousin is looking him up online but I bet she won’t find a sausage about him.”

  “Speak to the police,” she said to me, as she got to her feet. “Also, if you don’t like the chia seeds, perhaps add some chopped papaya to your breakfast. I’ll bring some round.”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  I called in at Caffi Cwtch on the way to the vicarage, hoping to see Billy but he was not there. I bought a large bara brith from Alston who muttered something about a plague of tourists, which I ignored. I’d seen a family in matching cagoules out in the market square. January was an odd time to visit our little town. He should have been grateful for the extra business.

  The vicarage was next to the church, so it was on the way home. Like most Welsh towns, the predominant religion was what everyone just called “chapel”, and the Church in Wales was much smaller and less well-attended.

  I knew, and liked, Reverend Horatio Lewis very much, so I was disappointed when his housekeeper answered the door and told me that he was out until later in the day. He had such a large parish to oversee that catching him was like catching fleas, Bridget told me.

  I thanked Bridget and continued on my way home, feeling like I’d achieved absolutely nothing at all.

  And when I stepped into the kitchen, Maddie’s face told me that she had had no luck either.

  “I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?” I said, kicking off my boots.

  “Good luck with doing that,” she said morosely. “Great Aunt Dilys has taken it outside. Something to do with slugs, I think.”

  I sighed.

  Twelve

  Maddie went outside to hunt down Dilys in the undergrowth. I checked on my animals, including a small half-blind cat that Harkin had led to me. It had been sleeping rough for a while, and was matted with fleas and lice. I gave it another small meal.

  I stood for a few minutes in the utility room but there was currently no sign of the ghost.

  “Robert Cameron?” I said out loud, experimentally.

  The animals and birds rustled in their nests.

  I felt restless. I wanted to get rid of the ghost, and I wanted to help Maddie – no, let’s be honest, I simply wanted to “fix” her. I also wanted to dig over the rest of the garden, make up some fresh herbal remedies, visit a few patients, and catch up on my reading-for-pleasure.

  So I did none of those things, and instead I went back inside to call Adam.

  He answered, apologised for his brevity and said he was on the way out of the door. I took a deep breath – why did I always feel so nervous when talking to him? – and reminded him of the half-organised dinner date.

  He laughed. “Shouldn’t I be asking you?”

  “I’m a modern woman. But maybe you should,” I said. “Go on then.”

  “Ah, right. Bron, do you want to do dinner tomorrow night?”

  “Oh, how lovely! I’d like that,” I said, feigning a girlish laugh. Then I became serious. “But not, er, not that place we went to last time.”

  The problem with living in a small town is that there are limited eating-out choices. Our local Italian had a menu that seemed to consist of two items: spaghetti Bolognese with very lumpy, fatty meat in a tomato sauce that leaned heavily towards ketchup; and a lasagne that had rather too much cheddar cheese in it to be really Italian. There was a fish and chip shop, and a few pubs did food, if you were into scampi and chips in a basket, and didn’t mind eating while someone played pool inches from your ear. I’d had a dart land in the middle of a block of Stilton while eating a ploughman’s lunch, once.

  “Come over to my place,” Adam said. “I’ll cook.”

  That sounded great. I agreed to bring some wine, and he dashed off to his shift.

  “Have you ever had a ploughman’s?” I asked Maddie when she came back inside, brushing earth off the kettle.

  “Have I ever done what to a ploughman?” she asked in horror. “You know, I’ve hardly dated. I am a good girl.”

  “No, it’s nothing smutty. It’s a cold plate of food like meat and cheese.”

  “A continental breakfast?”

  “Well, I suppose so, but with pickled onions and pork pies.”

  “What’s a pork pie?” she asked.

  “Well, that decides what we’ll have for tea tonight,” I declared. “I’m off out now to see if I can catch the vicar again. I’ll pop into town and pick up some pork pies. They are minced up bits of pork in a really hard pastry case, and all the gaps are filled with fat and gristly bits.”

  Maddie’s politeness made her keep smiling but I could see she was having to force it. “Maybe get a salad to go along with it?” she said hopefully.

  “Yeah, I’ll get some coleslaw,” I said, and left, knowing that was not at all what she meant.

  ***

  Reverend Horatio Lewis was expecting me. He welcomed me into his chaotic living room and Bridget laid out cups and plates and biscuits on the long table.

  Horatio Lewis was a corpulent man, mostly bald, with hardly any neck and great rounded shoulders that made his silhouette look like a shaved gorilla. He dressed in a severe style. He was not a modern vicar with fluffy jumpers and I didn’t imagine he ever let a trendy Christian rock band anywhere near his congregation. He liked black, and he liked Scripture, and he liked to talk.

  And I liked to talk with him.

  “Bronwen, my lamb, it’s been a long time. How have you been?”

  “Well. And yourself?”

  “Fumbling blindly along sustained by nothing but God’s grace,” he said.

  Bridget folded her arms and huffed. “Sustained by pies, more like,” she said.

  “Brid, love, I am sure there are some daffodils that need polishing or onions that need washing or whatever it is you do in the kitchen,” he said.

  “Blessings to you too,” she replied and disappeared.

  “Now, I have heard of this body that has been found between the churchyard and your garden,” he said. He raised one eyebrow, causing a pudgy roll of fat to bunch up on his forehead. “And you yourself found it. That was a shock, I imagine?”

  “It was. And it is sort of why I am here.”

  “You are not unfamiliar with death.”

  “This is true. And the body itself was fine. I’m not traumatised or anything. No, it’s the problems we’ve been having since then.”

  He cocked his head, which was a mean feat for someone with no neck. “Oh dear.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “He is lingering. Or, parts of him is. His essence. I don’t know what you’d call it in churchy language.”

  He smiled. “Go on.”

  “He was called Robert Cameron and he died in the sixties. Jemima Rideout thought that you might be able to tell me if he was a local man.”

  “I’ve been incumbent here for three decades,” Horatio said. “But that is not far back enough for you. But as it happens, the police came to call, and I had to look in the records. They asked exactly the same as you are doing. Well, minus the bit about his lingering essence. I’d call that a ghost, if I’m honest. And I do have information. Wait here. Have a biscuit.”

  He rumbled out of the room.

  I settled back into the mountain of cushions that were piled on every settee and couch in the room. Once, he had been married, and his late wife had furnished the house in a very cosy way. She’d favoured comfort and warmth, and since her death over fifteen
years ago, he had not changed a thing. So his house felt rather feminine, even now. Most new people assumed he was some stereotype of a camp gay man, but the only gay guy I knew of in the town was Gruffydd the blacksmith and he was as far from the usual perception as you could get.

  In many ways, that was his defence, pre-empting the potential animosity being different in a small town could bring.

  Funny, I mused. I was different. My great aunt was different. Billy was different, and so was Dean. Adam had been raised in Zambia, the son of white farmers. He was very different. Maddie was different, too.

  I laughed to myself as my thoughts became some kind of inspirational poster with accompanying song about how we were all different. I was still smiling when Horatio came back in, clutching a very large book bound in dull black fabric.

  I hastily composed my face into something more appropriate for the topic of conversation we were about to have.

  He put the book on the table but he didn’t open it. He laid his hand on the top of it and seemed, for a moment, to be communicating with it.

  I could believe it. Horatio was a remarkable man with a powerful spirituality that I respected and admired. He worked tirelessly for all people, whoever asked for his help. He and I differed on some matters, but we knew that we were both walking in the same direction, albeit on different paths. He occasionally warned me that my path seemed to skirt around quicksand, but I would counter that his footing was sometimes lost treading on insubstantial clouds, and we would laugh and move on.

  Then he fixed me with a stern glare. “First of all, my lost lamb, I must give you a warning.”

  “Oh?” I was being haunted. That was a warning all of its own.

  “Yes. Be mindful of people’s feelings. I can tell you that this man, this Robert Cameron, was indeed a local man, and though he died such a long time ago, it is not so long in some people’s minds.”