Читать книгу The Chocolate Collection - Trisha Ashley - Страница 28

I saw the notorious Mr Mann-Drake for myself the very next day and, like Felix, I found it hard to square his appearance with his reputation…though, admittedly, his appearance was very odd.

He was going into Marked Pages as I was coming out, after my usual cup of coffee on the way back from the post office with the Chocolate Wishes orders. When he made a strange sort of half-bow and doffed his wide-brimmed felt hat, wishing me good morning, I guessed who he was even though he looked nothing like the photograph of him I’d seen.

It must have been taken while he was standing on a box, for instead of being tall and cadaverous, he was more like a skull on a short stick, wrapped in a Victorian-style evening cloak. His hair was dyed even blacker than Jake’s and plastered flatly to his head and though his skin appeared slightly mummified, his eyes were as dark, bright and alert as a lizard’s.

In fact, he looked like an old-fashioned music-hall magician, except that there was something slightly reptilian about him that gave me the creeps, even though his voice fell like drops of liquid honey into the air. Grumps was right about that.

Poppy rang later that day from her mobile and she must have been up in one of the paddocks, out of earshot of her mother, because I could hear sheep bleating in the background and a blowing noise, which she said was Honeybun being friendly and wanting to say hello. I was only surprised that for once her phone was in working order.

‘Did you call so Honeybun could communicate with me?’ I asked. ‘Only I’m melting couverture and I’ll have to turn the temperature down and tip a bit more in, shortly.’

The chocolate spends over an hour being heated and stirred before the next stage, when you put more of the couverture chocolate drops into the Bath to cool it down, and once started on the process I don’t stop, short of a power cut.

‘No, of course not, it was because Raffy Sinclair’s just been here and I thought you’d like to know.’

‘What, he’s been to Stirrups?’

‘Yes, he caught us just as we were having our elevenses. He said he intended visiting every house in the parish over the next few weeks to introduce himself, starting with Mr Lees and the members of the Parish Council. He’d seen Effie Yatton already and after us it would be Felix.’

‘That seems pretty keen – he’s only just arrived.’

‘He certainly is keen. He’s already had a meeting with the Parochial Church Council and he’s started saying morning and evening prayers in the church every day too, which is more than poor old Mr Harris managed. He said anyone who wanted to join him would be welcome.’

‘But doesn’t Mr Lees practise the organ in the afternoons?’

‘Yes, but he’s usually finished and gone for his tea by then, though he sometimes plays it late at night when he calls in to lock up the church on his way home from the pub. People complain about it, but being blind he says day and night are all one to him, and takes no notice.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard him playing once or twice faintly, when the wind has been in the right direction and my bedroom window open. But I thought he was deaf and dumb as well as blind, the Pinball Wizard of the mighty Wurlitzer?’

‘Oh, no, he can hear perfectly well, and talk if he wants to – he just doesn’t usually want to. He must have talked to Raffy, though, because they’re going to the Falling Star for a drink together tonight.’

‘What? Raffy can’t invade our pub!’ I protested indignantly.

‘They’ll go in the back bar and I don’t suppose he’ll make a habit of it, he’s just being friendly.’ She paused, then added, apologetically, ‘He is warm and friendly, you know, Chloe, though I found it a bit hard talking to him, knowing he treated you so badly. I think he noticed there was something wrong.’

I could imagine: Poppy’s thoughts and feelings scud across her expressive face like clouds across the sky.

‘As soon as Mum went to make him some fresh tea, he told me he’d bumped into someone he knew at university the previous day, Chloe Lyon, and Mr Merryman had told him you were a friend of mine! He said it had been quite a surprise to find you were living in Sticklepond.’

‘I bet it was!’

‘That’s what I said, and then I think he realised you’d told me all about him, because he said it seemed to have given you a bit of a shock when you ran into him in the High Street, but he assumed that you’d long ago forgiven and forgotten and moved on with your life, just as he had.’

‘What does he mean, just as he had?’ I demanded indignantly. ‘I was the wronged one – and I was doing just fine with the moving-on bit until he chose to turn up on my doorstep.’

‘Yes, but of course at that point he was assuming you were married, because he’d seen you that morning with Jake and thought he was your son.’

‘But why on earth should he—’ I began, then remembered. ‘Oh, yes, I think Jake did call me Mum when he was leaving, the way he does when he’s trying to wind me up.’

‘I told him you weren’t married and that Jake was your half-brother, and you’d practically brought him up singlehanded. He looked really surprised.’

‘There, that just goes to prove he never even looked at the letter I sent him after I got back from university, or he would have known all about Jake! And now I suppose he thinks I’ve been pining for him all this time and that’s why I’ve never married.’

‘Oh, no, I’m sure he doesn’t, Chloe! I explained that you’d spent the last few years building up a really successful chocolate business and he’d actually eaten one of your Wishes at his welcome party.’

‘I wish it had choked him!’

‘You don’t really think that, it’s just his arrival’s temporarily stirred up all the hurt feelings again, that’s all. But I’m positive he’s an entirely different man from the one who let you down, a nice man.’

‘Can leopards really change their spots?’

‘Yes,’ Poppy said simply. ‘Even the blackest sinner can repent. And he must have done, or they wouldn’t have let him enter the Church, would they?’

‘I suppose not,’ I agreed reluctantly, only half believing in this metamorphosis from rock god to man of God. ‘Did he say anything else interesting?’

‘No, there wasn’t time, because Mum came back with the fresh tea and a plate of Bourbon biscuits and started flirting with him, which was hideously embarrassing. And she told him she was going to start attending church services, though I shouldn’t think she ever has, apart from the occasional wedding.’

‘She won’t be the first. He’ll have every woman in the parish drooling over him, just wait and see.’

She giggled. ‘Except Hebe Winter! He’s going out to Winter’s End in the morning and then he said he thought he might visit your grandfather in the afternoon, since she’d made such a big thing of it and he was quite interested in the concept of the museum, anyway.’

‘Visiting Grumps might not be the wisest move he’s ever made,’ I said. ‘I have a feeling Zillah has told Grumps everything she knows about Raffy Sinclair. Look, I’ll have to go and see to the chocolate now – I’ll talk to you later.’

It was late afternoon by the time I’d finished making Wishes and cleaned the workshop up again.

I felt tired and drained, but I went through into the museum because I’d promised to help Grumps check the proofs for the guidebook. It was just a short brochure, but he was now thinking of using the same firm in Merchester to privately print his definitive guide to the history of magic, an old project he was suddenly keen to resurrect, and which had so far been rejected by every publisher he’d sent it to, even the one who published his book on ley lines.

He had the proofs spread out on the desk and they didn’t take long to go through. Then, just as we finished, Zillah appeared with Clive Snowball, who was carrying an old cardboard wine box.

‘Clive’s got something for you,’ she said, with one of her gold-glinting smiles. She seemed to be on surprisingly friendly terms with the publican.

‘Mother sent these,’ he said, dumping the box onto the desk in front of us, then added, without showing any sign of curiosity about the strange objects that surrounded him, ‘I’ll be off then. There’s a delivery due at the Star.’

‘I’ll see you later at the tea dance club then, will I?’ asked Zillah.

‘No, I’ll pick you up and drive you, love: you don’t want to be walking the length of the village in those pretty silver sandals of yours, not in winter.’

I won’t say that Zillah simpered, precisely, but there was more than a hint of sashay in her walk as she went off to let Clive out again.

Grumps didn’t seem to have taken in any of this exchange but had folded back the lid of the box and was engaged in unpacking thick, greenish, old bottles, the sort that have a glass marble stopper hinged to the neck on a strong wire.

They each seemed to have several objects inside them, but when I held one up to the light I could only make out a slip of paper and what might have been twigs tied together. ‘Witch bottles? Is that Mrs Snowball’s mysterious magical speciality?’

‘Of course. Florrie Snowball makes the best and she’s built up a large stock over the years, because we all felt they would be needed, sooner or later.’

‘Oh,’ I said thoughtfully, because the purpose of the bottles is to ward off ill-wishing, and they’ve been found hidden in many old houses. ‘Are these supposed to guard us against Mr Mann-Drake?’

‘The first line of defence,’ he agreed, ‘for as boy scouts say: be prepared!’

I couldn’t imagine Grumps had ever been a boy scout, but something was puzzling me. ‘Grumps, I thought the bottles contained magic to keep witches out. So how come a witch is making witch bottles? And if she had boxes full of them in the pub cellar, then they can’t be working, can they?’

‘They work very well.’ He held one up and shook it gently and for a moment I thought I saw a glittering spark of light like a shooting star in the murky depths, but it must have been a reflection.

‘But if the charm works, then why isn’t it affecting you either, Grumps?’

He looked at me in a surprised sort of way. ‘Because my heart is pure and my intentions good, though I confess to feeling the odd twinge, should I…er…inadvertently stray over the borders of white magic, even with the best of motives. A little revenge, for instance…’ He winced slightly. ‘It is like a sort of spiritual lumbago. Practitioners of the Old Religion can take two paths and this charm works against those who have taken the wrong one, and protects those of us who have not.’

‘Right,’ I said, thinking that at least if his coven believed that, then the witch bottles should keep them all on the straight and narrow – or, as straight and narrow as magic usually is: it seems a twisty sort of thing.

Grumps handed me the bottle. ‘You’ll find a small ledge for that above the museum door, Chloe. In fact, you will find a place for them over every exterior door to the Old Smithy.’

He was quite right, too – there was. I carried the box and he placed the bottles onto ledges above the lintels. ‘Made for the purpose, you see, Chloe. Very cautious women, the Frinton sisters. They will have taken their own bottles with them to set up at their new address.’

In my cottage there was a tiny niche carved into the stonework over both my front and back doors, just big enough to hold a bottle. I’d already noticed them and put one of my ornamental angel figures in each. They seemed protection enough to me, but since Grumps showed signs of extreme annoyance when I said so, I placated him by relegating them to the windowsills among the scented geraniums, and replacing them with the witch charms.

‘Poppy tells me the new vicar intends coming to see you tomorrow afternoon, Grumps,’ I said casually, when that was done, but obviously not casually enough because he gave me one of his sharp looks.

‘If he is obeying Hebe Winter’s orders, then he is a fool. If he knows of our relationship, then he is a double fool.’

‘What has our relationship got to do with it?’ I demanded, but he didn’t deign to reply to that one. I can’t really believe in his omniscience, so it does look as if Zillah has told him something about my past relationship with Raffy, though I sincerely hope not all.

‘I’m not sure Mr Merryman ever recovered from his visit with you, Grumps. What on earth did you say to the poor man?’

He looked faintly surprised. ‘Nothing that anyone could take objection to, I am quite sure! I was busy when he arrived, so perhaps it was what I was doing, rather than anything I said. Are you asking me to be kind to the new dolt when he comes to disturb my peace?’

‘No: you throw the bell, book and candle right back at him, if you want to,’ I told him callously.