Harriett (6 page)

“
Is there nothing we can do?” Tuppence whispered but she knew
there wasn’t.

“
She is gone, my dear. Whatever took her was swift,” Mr
Montague’s face was solemn and regretful as he studied the group.
“There was nothing any of us could do to help her.”

“
Poor dear,” Beatrice murmured softly.

“
Someone needs to fetch the constable.” Babette wrung her
hands and began to fret about the gossip this would bring upon
them. Right now, the last thing she needed were the eyes of the
village upon her, but that thought was on a purely selfish level
and unfair on poor Minerva. She glanced out of the rain-lashed
window with a shiver.

“
I’ll go,” Mr Montague offered. Nobody voiced any objection
and silence settled over everyone as he quickly left the
house.

“
Why do we need the constable?” Madame Humphries demanded. Her
eyes were wide and frightened. “I mean, how do we know she has not
died of natural causes?”

“
That’s just it,” Harriet snapped impatiently. For once she
forgot her manners and lost her patience with the clairvoyant. “We
don’t know that she died of natural causes. She seemed to have been
perfectly fine all evening. Why now? Why has she suddenly keeled
over?” She lifted a cautionary finger when Madame Humphries took a
breath to reply. “If you say that the spirits told us, then I am
afraid that I am going to have to throw you out of
here.”

Madame
lapsed into disgruntled silence. She was nothing if not intuitive
and had finally picked up on the growing unease within the
room.

“
I cannot ever remember seeing anyone die of natural causes
like this. I mean, if she had a heart seizure or something, she
would have clutched her chest, not her throat,” Mr Bentwhistle
muttered as he studied the body beneath the blanket almost
clinically.

“
Please? Do we have to discuss this right now?” Constance
gasped. Unable to ignore the shaking in her knees for a moment
longer, she slumped into the nearest chair and turned her gaze away
from the disturbing sight of Minerva’s body lying in the middle of
the rug.

While
none of them put voice to the fact, they had indeed had a warning
of a death in Tipton Hollow, but could it be a spiritual warning?
Or was there a murderer in their midst?

Harriett
moved closer to the fire and was grateful for its meagre warmth.
She tried not to stare, she really did, but she found herself
studying each occupant of the room individually. They all looked
just as shaken as she was, but could one of them be responsible for
the cold-blooded death of the woman at their feet? She swallowed
and turned away.

While
the minutes ticked by she gave herself a stern lecture. There was
nothing to say that Minerva’s death hadn’t been of natural causes.
It was very important that she not let the tension, nervousness and
discomfort generated by the séance cloud her judgement and her
thinking.

It
seemed an indeterminable age before Mr Montague returned. His face
was florid and he panted from the speed he had run to the
constable’s house, but he waved his hand at the sherry Harriett
held out to him.

“
I won’t, if you don’t mind Harriett.” It wasn’t lost to him
that Minerva had been drinking sherry before she had died. Not that
he thought Harriett was involved in anything underhand, but he had
rather gone off sherry now. “I couldn’t find the constable, but
Charles has gone to the Constabulary in Great Tipton to fetch
someone,” he gasped and took a seat before the fire. “It’s awful
weather out there tonight. I don’t relish anyone having to journey
out in that.”

“
Do you think she drank the sherry and it went down the wrong
way?” Eloisa asked with a frown. So far this evening she had been
relatively quiet, but she was clearly observant and had been
watching events unfold with a keen eye.

“
I have had things go down the wrong way several times, as I
am sure that we all have, but I have never choked like that,”
Tuppence replied in confusion.

“
What do we do now?” Beatrice asked nervously. She hated the
thought of having to walk home alone, especially after the message
warning them to be afraid of the dark, but she didn’t relish the
thought of having to stay in Harriett’s house for too much longer.
Her gaze turned toward Harriett, and she felt a pang of sympathy
for her friend. She had considered her life-long friend to have
been very brave to allow Tipton Hollow’s first Psychic Circle to be
held in her home. How she was coping now with a death in her very
own parlour, heaven only knew. Beatrice mentally winced at that and
quickly turned her thoughts toward the village constable. With any
luck, he shouldn’t be too much longer. After all, Tipton Hollow was
a fairly small village where nothing much happened. After his
nightly rounds, he would almost certainly go home with the intent
of retiring to bed. Once he got home, he would receive the message
and make his way over to Harriett’s house, inspect the body and
then they could all go home. At least she fervently hoped that
would be the case.

“
We have to wait. We don’t know if Minerva died of natural
causes or not. Because of that, we cannot simply go home and leave
her here in the middle of the rug. Not only would it be unfair and
highly ill mannered of us to leave Harriett to deal with a body by
herself, but I am certain that the constable will want to ask us a
few questions about what happened,” Mr Montague replied
matter-of-factly.

Out of
all of them, he appeared to be the one who was handling the crisis
the best. Although his breaths still came in heavy pants, and his
cheeks were still flushed with exertion, he exuded a gentle
reassurance that made Harriett intensely glad that he was
there.

“
Thank you, Hugo,” Harriett whispered. While she was glad that
her Uncle Charles had gone for help in Great Tipton, she knew that
he would be as useless as a colander in a rain-storm and didn’t
handle crises well at all. He would undoubtedly keep his distance
and allow Babette to deal with the ‘household’ matters of arranging
the removal of the body. Still, at least he had agreed to be parted
from his beer long enough to get help.

“
I don’t know anything,” Madame Humphries wailed, casting
desperate eyes around the room. “How can I be questioned? I was in
a trance at the time. You saw me,” she turned toward Miss
Hepplethwaite, who once again began to make soothing noises. “I was
not aware of what was going on in the room,” she added
firmly.

“
But you were here, and that’s enough,” Mr Bentwhistle argued,
his voice as stern as the gaze he landed on her. Whatever else
Madame Humphries was about to say remained unspoken and she, along
with the rest of the room’s occupants, lapsed into disgruntled
silence.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next hour
passed incredibly slowly. The eleventh hour came and went as the
clock on the mantle ticked steadily on. At a quarter to midnight,
the rattle of the front door and the dull murmur of voices heralded
the arrival of Charles and the village constable, Fred.

“
Oh, thank heavens you are here,” Babette gasped and hurried
to the door. She flicked a quick, almost dismissive glance at
Charles when she reached the hallway. Her attention was locked on
the men who entered the house behind him. She nodded politely to
Fred, and beckoned them all inside and out of the rain. Fred paused
just inside the hallway and motioned to the men behind
him.

“
This is Detective Inspector Bosville, from Great Tipton
Constabulary and his colleague, Detective Brown,” he motioned to
the tall, distinguished looking man behind the policeman. “You know
Doctor Woods.”

Babette
nodded at each man and entered the parlour. “Everything has
remained untouched, gentlemen. To be quite frank with you, we
didn’t know what to do.”

Harriett
waited anxiously for the men to appear in the doorway. She had no
idea why she felt nervous because she had done nothing wrong, but
the idea of having policemen in the house unnerved her. She was a
churchgoing person who lived well and abided by the law, just like
everyone else of her acquaintance. Although she knew the village
constable, Fred Dinage, well, she had never had any business
dealings with him before. She had no idea what to
expect.

She
stood beside the hearth and turned her curious gaze toward the rest
of the men who entered, presumably from the constabulary; some
detective something or other. She swallowed nervously and tried to
keep her face impassive while the brandy she had consumed earlier
began to gurgle alarmingly in her stomach.

She
nodded respectfully to Doctor Woods, then turned her attention to
the man who stood beside the village’s doctor. Detective Isaac
Brown was of average height with short dark brown hair. His almost
angular face was so severe that it was almost forbidding and was
accompanied by a dark scowl. His suit was certainly nothing out of
the ordinary, but the way he carried himself gave him an air of
command that wasn’t lost on anyone within the room. He ignored
everyone, and skirted around Fred to kneel beside the body to
inspect it. When he lifted the blanket to study Minerva’s body,
Harriett quickly turned her gaze toward the tall man who remained
beside Fred.

She
physically jumped when she realised that he was staring directly at
her. His emerald eyes were almost scouring her soul as he studied
her and she struggled not to squirm beneath the intensity of his
gaze. She understood in that instant exactly why he was in the job
he was in. If she was a criminal and this man wanted to know
something, she would tell him what he wanted to know just to get
that intensely probing gaze off her.

She
turned to Babette, and caught sight of Charles as he slid past the
parlour doorway. The heavy thud of his booted feet as he climbed
the stairs signalled his intention to retire to bed without a word
to anyone. Rather disconcertingly, he made no attempt to enquire
what had happened, or offer Babette, or Harriett, any support
whatsoever. Harriett wondered why the man was there at all. Charles
usually got up early, headed to the bakery at the back of the tea
shop and worked there until tea-time. He returned home only to have
his evening meal and then headed down to the pub where he would
remain until bed-time. It seemed that nothing was going to deprive
Charles of his sleep. Not even the death of Minerva Bobbington in
his own front parlour.

“
Can somebody describe what happened?” Doctor Woods asked as
he moved to kneel beside Isaac to study the body of the
deceased.

When
Madame Humphries took a breath, Mr Bentwhistle threw her a hard
glare and stepped forward. He described Mrs Bobbington’s death with
precise, if slightly clipped words, in a voice that was calm and
controlled. Nobody offered any objection and, as soon as he had
finished, the room lapsed into expectant silence.

Mark
struggled to focus on Mr Bentwhistle’s description. He was too busy
thinking about the woman just to the right of him. She was by far
the most captivating creature he had ever seen. For the life of
him, he couldn’t describe the tumult of emotions that had taken
over his senses. Nothing in his entire life had ever affected him
like this woman before him now. Why though? Why now? Why her? What
was it about her that attracted his attention? He knew that his
interest had nothing to do with his job. This was an intrigue on an
entirely personal level, and he no idea where it came from, or what
to do about it.

In a
valiant attempt to keep his mind on the job, he mentally assessed
her. She was smallish in height. The top of her head only reached
his shoulder if they stood side by side, and she was more gently
rounded than the women who usually captured his interest. It
couldn’t be the mop of curly, light brown – almost blonde - hair,
or the almond shaped honey-coloured eyes that ensnared him, or the
slightly rosy cheeks that made her look so captivating that he
immediately wanted to know everything about her. There wasn’t
anything about her that looked even remotely criminal, and he
immediately refuted any notion that she may be involved in Mrs
Bobbington’s untimely death. He quickly closed out the small voice
that warned him that he couldn’t really discount anyone’s
involvement in Mrs Bobbington’s demise, not least the strikingly
attractive woman he currently struggled to keep his mind
off.

He took
a breath and tried to force his attention back to the reason why he
was in her house in the first place. He made a valiant attempt to
turn his attention to Doctor Woods. “Any ideas?”

The
doctor’s lips twisted in a wry grimace and he gave Mark a pointed
look. “Can I speak to you outside for a minute?”

Mark
looked at Isaac. “Take everyone’s names and addresses. I will be
back in a minute.”

“
I cannot say for definite right at this moment you
understand, but it looks like choking or some sort of seizure,”
Doctor Woods whispered as soon as the door was closed behind them
and they were alone in the hallway.

“
How long before you can know for sure?” Mark asked and
shifted impatiently against the need to get back into the room. He
hated the fact that the door was closed and he was unable to see
Harriett. While he stared blankly at Doctor Woods, his mind was
firmly locked on the mental image of her bathed in the gentle glow
of the fire.