Amanda Cadabra and The Hidey-Hole Truth Read online

  ‘No, Mrs Cadabra, you are not my chief suspect.’ the detective replied meekly. ‘I assure you I am not here to make an arrest!’ he added with a touch of playfulness belying his solemn expression.

  ‘Hm,’ responded Senara with a responsive glint of amusement in her larger eye. ‘I thought the police had no sense of humour.’

  Trelawney’s face was inscrutable. ‘Not … officially.’

  ‘Ha!’ laughed Senara appreciatively. Trelawney was relieved at having, finally, established some sort of rapport with Mrs Cadabra. He knew from experience that it was essential to achieve a measure of concord with a witness, especially when interviewing them regarding a possible murder investigation.

  ‘There is one question I should like to ask, given that your family perishing does not seem to be quite the sensitive subject that it might have been —‘

  ‘Do go on,’ Senara prompted.

  ‘Just on the off-chance that something may, now, in retrospect, spring to mind,’ he said tentatively.

  ‘Get to the point, young man,’ she uttered.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who would could have wanted to bring about the untimely deaths of your family?’

  Senara replied without hesitation, ‘Anyone who had met them, I would have thought!’

  Trelawney turned to Perran, who responded, ‘If their habitual disregard for their baby daughter is anything to go by, Sergeant, I shouldn’t think they endeared themselves to many people.’

  Trelawney gauged that this was the best he could do with that line of enquiry.

  ‘If the perpetrator’s aim was to wipe out your entire family … have you had any threats to your own lives?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, no,’ chuckled Senara.

  Trelawney decided that the person who would attempt to get the better of Mrs Cadabra would be exceptionally brave, desperate or foolhardy.

  ‘Well … thank you both for you, er … frankness and for allowing me to run over what is probably well-trodden ground.’

  Mrs Cadabra nodded graciously.

  ‘I am here, as you know,’ he recapped, ‘at the request of Chief Inspector Michael Hogarth, who is retiring. He has continued to take an interest in the case. He always considered it unfinished business, you see, and now that he is only two weeks away from his last day at the office, he is passing it on to me to see if I can make any further progress.’

  ‘Good,’ Senara returned approvingly, ‘because as you will know, the coroner declared that the family did not perish as a result of the accident, and the cause of the deaths was inconclusive, and,’ she continued, punctuating with a waggle of her index finger, ‘without death certificates, there is no probate, and without that, young Amanda cannot inherit what is rightfully hers. I hope you see, Mr Trelawney,’ she added with a hint of pathos, ‘that this is gross injustice against a poor orphaned girl.’

  At that moment, ‘the poor orphaned girl’ in question, was in the workshop, singing along under her dust mask to Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Using the rhythm to help her as she worked, Amanda Cadabra moved her arm back and forth, gently sanding the rough edges off a sliver of oak veneer. It was destined to replace a missing piece from a 19th-century bookstand, sitting on the other end of her workbench. This was delicate work, a process that she needed to attend to carefully by herself. Meanwhile, there were certain other tasks that Amanda could delegate. Twisting around, she looked at the brush resting in the gluepot, warming on the single ring electric hob on the opposite side of the workshop.

  ‘Mecsge ynentel,’ she bade it. Instantly, by itself, the brush moved from leaning to vertical, so that it stood upright in its lake of adhesive. Then, as if guided by an invisible hand, gently it began to stir the Scotch glue.

  Satisfied that the task was under control, next Amanda turned her attention to a hammer she’d left beside the loose backboard laid in place upon a cupboard. She had already tapped the panel pins lightly into place. At her word, ‘frapka’, the hammer picked itself up and commenced banging the thin nails into place, to the pulse of the bass of the song that was playing.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ sang Amanda. ‘Be happy.’

  In the vice attached to her grandfather’s workbench, a particularly dense block of Brazilian walnut was clamped. A saw sat still in the shallow cut Amanda had managed to make earlier.

  Rather than attempting to apply herself physically to the task, she said over her shoulder, ‘Ahiwske’.

  Energised, the saw began to move to and fro to the beat of the music.

  Amanda relied on this magical assistance. Overexertion could trigger her asthma but while she was by no means an athlete she was not a weakling either. Nor was she entirely lacking in stature. At 5 feet 4 inches, Amanda was almost of average height, and liked to think that she was nearly as tall as Emma Watson — except a dress size or two would have stood between her and Burberry-model-stardom.

  The intercom from the house buzzed and flashed. Amanda turned off the iPod player, pressed the speakerphone button with a blue vinyl-gloved knuckle, and stripped off her dust mask.

  ‘Amanda, dear!’ her grandmother’s voice boomed out. Senara believed that all communication devices required considerable volume for the speaker to be heard, rendering her audible throughout the building. But, on this occasion, Senara wanted to be doubly sure that her granddaughter would hear her loud and clear: ‘The detective is here!’

  Chapter 3

  Tea and Evasion

  ‘Are you fit to be seen?’ Senara’s voice asked through the intercom from the house.

  Amanda looked back at the workshop. This last sentence was the arranged signal to cease all magical activity, no matter how small, with immediate effect. It had been rehearsed frequently, a system by which they could avoid a visitor walking uninvited into the workshop and seeing things that would confuse and alarm them.

  ‘I will be! And then I’ll be right there, Granny.’ Amanda turned back to the tools that were busily working away as commanded. ‘Eol wicc’hudol sessablin!’ Instantly they stopped their tasks. The stripping brush subsided onto its handle, and the glue brush leaned itself neatly against the inner rim of the pot with a ‘thup’ and lay motionless. The saw came to a halt, and the hammer lay down on the backboard. Amanda looked at the bookstand as she waved a hand. ‘Aereval lytaz.’ As instructed, it rose sedately until it hovered a few inches above the bench. She gestured palm up across her body. ‘Cledstre.’ At this word the bookstand moved to the left until it was over the floor, suspended in midair. ‘Sedaasig’, she said, and it gracefully lowered itself to the ground and was still.

  Amanda checked herself in an antique mirror leaning against an armoire. Her light brown hair was still pinned up in its messy plait, her lip salve had mostly been eaten off, and her face had a fine powdering of sawdust that defined where her mask had been, and also coated her boiler suit.

  She looked carefully at the reflection of her eyes behind her close-work lenses aware that they were a giveaway. Amanda’s irises were an unusual mixture of blue and brown; chestnut continents, floating in a sea of pale indigo, that were sometimes growing, sometimes shrinking. It was a small but unfortunately revealing side-effect of her magical nature; brown predominated when she used her mystical abilities.

  Just in case this colour change was the sort of thing a detective might notice from one visit to the next, Amanda put on some clear glass spectacles to help disguise the effect, the reflection of the lenses being more visible than the eyes.

  Amanda also thought that they made her look plainer and more intelligent. Dearly as she loved her Granny, she was weary of Senara’s efforts to find her a husband. Her grandmother homed in on any potentially eligible man under sixty years of age that showed the least sign of sufficient intellect and understanding to accept her gifts, and regardless of how unsuitable her granddaughter might find them. But Amanda remained good-humoured and generally compliant, long nights in the local hospital during her childhood battling for her life with asthma had taught her no
t to sweat the small stuff. All the same, the relentless matchmaking brought out a hereditary rebellious streak.

  Amanda Cadabra came out of the workshop and shut the door behind her, startling a blackbird hunting for earthworms in the garden. It gave an irritated warble and shot away across the fences. She made her way down the path between the vegetable beds where her grandfather had been mulching and putting in poles for the runner beans. As Amanda walked, unwittingly she collected a few stray petals of breeze-blown blossom, floating into her hair from his favourite fruit trees. She paused as she reached the back door, breathing in the scents of rosemary and tarragon from the pots on either side of it, then pushed down the handle.

  ‘Boots!’ came her grandmother’s unnecessary reminder. Amanda grinned and bent to loosen the laces. Straightening, she was greeted by the sight of Trelawney, who had been dispatched to the kitchen to ‘help Amanda with the tea’.

  ‘Hello, Miss Cadabra,’ he said, smiling. ‘Detective Sergeant Thomas Trelawney, Devon and Cornwall Police.’

  ‘Amanda,’ she introduced herself confidently. ‘Don’t tell me: my grandmother’s sent you to help with the tea. ’It was Senara’s customary device for getting Amanda ‘alone with the young man’, whoever that happened to be.

  She looked entertained but sympathetic as they shook hands. Trelawney noticed that her right index finger was covered in polish, like the stains on Mr Cadabra’s hands.

  ‘Although I’m sure that you’re more than competent,’ he replied, affably,

  ‘Well, I can manage to make tea,’ Amanda agreed, moving to the sink. Trelawney leaned against the kitchen counter where he would be out of her way. She certainly exuded a quiet efficiency, he observed, and was hardly the frail waif he’d somehow expected. Nevertheless, she did have an air of fragility, something hard to define. Trelawney thought he understood why Hogarth had asked him to keep an eye on her.

  While the kettle boiled and Amanda spooned Earl Grey into the teapot, she glanced up with a serious expression and met Trelawney’s eye. The mood changed. ‘Is there any … news?’

  Trelawney shook his head regretfully. ‘I’m afraid not. I’m just here to meet your family and hear their evidence for myself, just in case.’

  ’‘Just in case …?’ Amanda prompted.

  ‘A teapot?’ Trelawney leaned over to inspect the large brown-and-beige-ringed vessel. ‘You don’t see many of those used nowadays.’

  ‘Granny likes things done properly,’ Amanda confided. She began assembling the tea tray.

  ‘How is your asthma these days?’ he asked casually.

  The abrupt change of subject caught Amanda by surprise.

  ‘My asthma?’ she asked defensively.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ask an insensitive question. It’s simply that your grandmother mentioned that you developed it as a child.’

  Amanda responded cheerfully, keen to appear strong enough to deal with both the question and the condition in equal measure. ‘Oh, I have ways to work around it.’

  ‘Can I carry the tray for you?’ he offered gallantly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, pleasantly. Picking up a large round tin on their way out of the kitchen, she followed him into the living room.

  ‘And how are you two getting on?’ Senara looked from Amanda to Trelawney in search of evidence of a spark. Amanda shot a look of amused but strained patience at her grandmother.

  ‘I was just enquiring after Amanda’s health,’ responded Trelawney, setting the tray down on the coffee table. ‘Asthma and furniture restoration.’ It was an anomaly, and it was niggling him. ‘That’s an unusual combination.’

  ‘Victoria Sandwich,’ said Senara resoundingly.

  Trelawney was thrown by this unexpected reply.

  ‘Won’t you have some, Sergeant?’ she invited him. ‘I baked it myself, and I pride myself on my cakes,’ she uttered challengingly. ‘Ammy sweetheart, do serve our guest.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Trelawney accepted politely, sitting down on the sofa.

  Amanda gave him a glance of rueful sympathy due to a man under test by Granny. She sat down beside Trelawney, pulled the lid off the vintage tin, cut a slice and passed it to him on a delicate rose-patterned plate, with a white linen napkin underneath it. Senara eyed him keenly while he sampled the cream, jam and sponge confection.

  ‘This is excellent,’ he remarked with genuine appreciation, relieved that he would not have to dissemble.

  ‘Organic free-range eggs,’ she declared. ‘From Henpecke Farm. Local,’ Senara added, to put the outsider in his place.

  Trelawney was unabashed. He laid his cake fork on the plate, applying the napkin to his lips to ensure they were crumb-free before continuing. ‘I expect it’s especially important for your granddaughter to eat healthily.’ His glance returned to Amanda. ‘In view of your … condition.’ He added pointedly, ‘Especially considering the work that you do.’

  ‘It’s important for a girl to have meaningful work, Sergeant. I’m sure you agree,’ Senara stated, receiving her cup and saucer from Amanda. ‘Thank you, dear.’ She took a sip and redirected her piercing gaze at Trelawney. ‘I myself drove an ambulance during the War.’

  Yes, for three weeks before it ended, said Amanda wryly to herself, handing her grandfather his tea.

  ‘Just like Mrs Uberhausfest in Rattling Bridge Row,’ Senara announced. ‘We all did our bit. Of course, she did it for Other Side, but that’s all in the past and I’m the first to say that I’m glad we’ve buried the hatchet!’

  ‘I agree, Mrs Cadabra, that it’s important for everyone to have work that is meaningful.’ Trelawney was not to be diverted. ‘But it does seem an odd choice for someone whose condition is surely aggravated by a workshop where carpentry takes place.’

  Mr Cadabra supplied the response. ‘I trained little Amanda from when she first took an interest.’ He stirred his tea and continued mildly, ‘She used to toddle up the path and bang on the door, demanding for me to let her in. Not to be denied, were you, Amanda? I had to adapt a mask for you. All the same, Sergeant, I got used to keeping the workshop very clean just to be certain. And after all’s said and done, you can’t dampen enthusiasm, can you? So I started her off with bit of painting when she was just three years old, didn’t I, Ammy?’ he said to her, then looked back to the sergeant. ‘And it just went on from there,’ he ended vaguely.

  Trelawney said nothing. His mind was grappling with the picture of the family that was building up, as he was merging the old facts he’d read in Hogarth’s report with the real-life impressions he was receiving. Like a splinter on half-sanded wood, something about it all was snagging. His mind went back to his training.

  Hogarth had been Trelawney’s mentor from day one.

  ‘What is the first rule of interviewing?’ he asked the young Detective Constable.

  ‘How to tell if someone is lying, sir?’ Trelawney answered smartly.

  ‘No,' Hogarth corrected him. 'How to tell if someone is leaving something out.’

  Trelawney had never forgotten those words, but now they rang out in his head. And drinking Earl Grey tea and eating home-made cake from bone china on this pleasant March morning years later, Trelawney had the overwhelming instinct that a page was missing from the Cadabras’ story; not just a page either; more like several entire volumes.

  However, whether that had anything to do with the incident of the minibus going over the cliff, was another question.

  Chapter 4

  Sunken Madley

  Rewind 2,000 years. In the South of England, and to the north of the great River Thames, a tribe is settling and spreading. They are the tribe called the Catuvellauni. The Ancient Forest that once covered the country is long gone, and they tend their flocks on the ground cleared for crops and pasture. Yet still there are deep woods, and here, within their shade, on a raised plateau, subterranean water is forced into the light of day at a spring. Beside it, a woman stands, a staff in her hand. With her is a young couple, wait
ing anxiously. For this is a place of magic, of healing, of insight.

  The woman points her rod at the freshet and speaks the words of a spell. She passes her hands near the body of the girl. Together the three cast herbs and flowers into the tiny stream. The girl and her husband embrace the woman and with smiles depart. In the spring, a child will be born.

  Fifty years pass and here are the Romans building Verulam to the north of what will one day be Amanda Cadabra’s village. To the south, on a river that is to be called the Thames, they construct Londinium, just a dot now but in the future, it will spread and rise to become the city called London.

  A thousand years pass. The Romans have long gone. The Saxons, from what, in the future, will be Germany, have invaded, and the south of Britain begins to be called Angla Lond. England.

  Now to the north of London, from ground still shrouded by a green canopy, still sheltering the sacred spring, and so high it dominates the surrounding landscape and draws level with the Ural Mountains thousands of miles to the East, smoke rises. An open space is being made by cutting down the trees and setting fire to the wood, and from this, the place gets its name: ‘Bærnet’ meaning ‘a clearing made by burning’. A Roman road still runs through it, and off this road, amongst coppices and thickets, villages of cottages and churches are forming. A priory appears. The Benedictine monks in their black habits are tending the gardens.

  It is 500 hundred years later; the brothers are leaving the priory. Now the land is rent by the Civil War. A battle rages through and around our village. Lives are given and taken, until a hard-won peace returns. The dead are commemorated. A new church rises on the site of the devastated old one, and more farmhouses appear. The abandoned priory falls into ruin. The fields of rye give way to barley, and the barley to wheat and vegetables, sharing space with flocks and herds. The sacred spring serves only as a water source for the land, the people and animals. Its mystical past is forgotten by all but the very few.