A Spell of Murder Read online

  The woman’s body lay on the floor of the staff room and teachers stood around it in a protective circle.

  ‘Ms Hardcastle, is it?’ the Inspector asked.

  Ms Hardcastle, the school Headmistress, was an occasional customer of Temerity’s. Temerity had sourced her a bronze statue of the Greek goddess Hera last year and a Victorian ouija board set the year before. The Headmistress nodded.

  ‘Aye. This goes fer all o’ ye: dinnae touch anythin’, dinnae move anythin’. My Constable here will be takin’ all the evidence from the scene, so if ye could all keep to that end of the room please and let him do his job.’

  The teachers shuffled reluctantly away from the body.

  ‘Poor Molly. I don’t know what happened. One minute she was making a cup of tea – look, that’s her favourite mug. She always drinks out of the same one. We tend to stick to our favourites.’ Ms Hardcastle pointed to a red china mug with a tea-stained white glaze interior; there was no pattern or slogan on the mug, Temerity noticed. No World’s Best Teacher or Best Friend or even something like You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Work Here, but It Helps! which would probably have prompted an eye roll from Tilda.

  Temerity knew the procedure: don’t touch anything, don’t move anything. Even in a misty, tiny Scottish village, the police had their rules. The surprising thing wasn’t so much that Lost Maidens Loch had a forensics expert – Alf Hersey, who was also everyone’s doctor – but that it had seen as many dead bodies as it had.

  ‘May I?’ Temerity looked at the Inspector, who nodded. She knelt down next to the young woman.

  ‘Aye, let’s have a look at her,’ the Inspector sighed.

  Temerity gazed at the young woman’s body. There was a slight foam residue at the edge of the woman’s mouth; Temerity glanced again at the mug. She bent her head as close as she could to the body without touching it and sniffed, knowing that some poisons could leave a scent after they had been ingested, but she couldn’t detect anything.

  ‘What was her name?’ Temerity stood up and walked over to where the teachers were gathered. A tallish man, probably in his early thirties, wiped his eyes. He was dark-haired with green eyes that were set rather close together and his face was unshaven.

  ‘Molly Bayliss.’ He sniffed. ‘I can’t believe she’s… I mean… this is…’ He burst into tears and sat down on one of the mustard-coloured chairs. Temerity watched as Ms Hardcastle rubbed his back like she would a child.

  ‘There, come on, Ben. It’s a shock for us all,’ she said as he started wailing.

  Pull yourself together, man, Temerity thought, looking back at the dead woman. Everyone else is managing not to fall apart. She felt, maybe unkindly, that there was something of a performance about his tears, but then chided herself for being unfeeling. Grief struck everyone in different ways. She knew that as well as anyone.

  Molly Bayliss was probably in her late twenties and she was – had been, Temerity corrected herself – very pretty. Her brown hair was just longer than her shoulders, with subtle golden highlights – today she had worn it loose. Her brown eyes would have been lovely on a normal day, now, they were stretched open with the horror of whatever had been done to her – Temerity speculated a poison that had brought on breathing difficulties or heart arrhythmia intense enough to kill. More than that, her pupils were fully dilated, giving her an even stranger appearance. Molly wore make-up and her fitted cream sweater and navy trousers were smart and well-made.

  Temerity remembered seeing Molly around the village, but she hadn’t ever spoken to her; on the occasions their paths had crossed, Molly hadn’t seemed like anyone that wanted to be sociable. That was fair enough; Temerity liked most people in Lost Maidens Loch, but they were, on the whole, terrible gossips. If you were new to the village and wanted to keep your business to yourself, then good luck to you.

  Temerity knew from Kim Hyland’s expression that he suspected some kind of foul play.

  ‘Okay. We’ll be talking to all ye later today,’ Inspector Hyland told the teachers. ‘Please stay at school, but ye may want to send the bairns home – where ye can.’ He nodded at Ms Hardcastle.

  Temerity regarded the younger policeman who stood silently next to Hyland. He was tall and well-built with the kind of dark red hair and blue eyes that showed his Scots heritage. His uniform’s epaulette told her that he was a constable. Is he new to Lost Maiden Loch? Temerity wondered. We’ve never had more than one policeman.

  ‘He certainly fits that uniform well,’ a woman to her left murmured; Temerity didn’t feel it would be appropriate to reply, but the teacher wasn’t wrong. The scene of a murder maybe wasn’t the best place to be appreciating a man in uniform, but Temerity found herself staring for just a moment. The Constable was a very good-looking man. Maybe in his early thirties, he had the kind of face women conjured up in their fantasies: strong jaw, piercing eyes and lips that she briefly imagined kissing. Get a hold of yourself, Temerity thought crossly. This is a crime scene!

  She looked away from the Constable and went back to the body. The Inspector pulled on a pair of latex gloves and squatted down beside the dead woman. He peered at Molly’s face and sniffed at her mouth just as Temerity had done.

  ‘No smell of almond,’ Temerity agreed. ‘Poisoned, though, wouldn’t you say? From the foam at the edge of her lips, the speed it happened and the fact that she’d just had a cup of tea?’

  Kim nodded.

  ‘Aye, looks like it. The Doc’ll confirm.’ Hyland sat back on his heels as the Constable knelt down next to them to take evidence bags from their scene of crime kit.

  ‘Ah, sorry, I’ve nae introduced ye. Temerity Love, local owner of Love’s Curiosities Inc., this is Constable Angus Harley.’

  Angus nodded curtly and shook Temerity’s hand briskly; his grip was firm.

  ‘Welcome to Lost Maidens Loch,’ Temerity said. ‘Seems like you arrived just at the right time.’

  ‘Seems so,’ he replied noncommittally, turned his back on her and started searching the staff room, picking up Molly’s red-and-white mug and sealing it in one of the evidence bags. Temerity thought he was rather bad-mannered, but supposed that a crime scene wasn’t the best place for social niceties.

  ‘Aye, we’ll have our work cut out now.’ Kim Hyland sighed. ‘Confidentially, I’m being laid out tae pasture and Constable Harley’s takin’ on the village. We were supposed tae be havin’ a month’s handover, but I cannae see that happenin’ now. Mrs Hyland’s gonnae string me up. We’ve got a cruise booked.’ He frowned and reached under one of the chairs. ‘What’s this now?’ he murmured. Temerity looked over his shoulder.

  Hyland pulled it out gently and held it up.

  The object was maybe five or six inches long, made of metal – pewter, perhaps, Temerity thought – with a bevelled handle and a round top with glass on one side, within a frame.

  ‘It’s a mirror, aye?’ Hyland turned it around in his fingers and laid it down carefully on Molly’s chest. ‘Lady’s hand mirror, I’d say. Though what it’s doin’ here, I don’t know.’ He stared into the glass and blinked. ‘Hmph. Not a great mirror either, come tae that. Look.’ Hyland tilted the mirror in Temerity’s direction and she saw that it wasn’t the usual silver-backed mirror, but had been painted black behind the glass.

  ‘It’s not a hand mirror, though it might have started life as one,’ she mused. ‘Someone’s turned it into a scrying mirror. That’s why you can’t really see your reflection.’

  ‘Scrying?’ Hyland put the mirror into an evidence bag.

  ‘Seeing the future. Like with a crystal ball. The same effect can be achieved with a bowl of water and black ink. The medium, or scryer, stares into something dark and their subconscious allows them to “see” images which they interpret. All manner of cultures have used the method in different ways with different tools,’ she explained.

  Hyland turned the mirror over. Its reverse side was embellished with a thistle design.

  ‘Well, as long as ye’
re here, ye may as well do your stuff. What can ye tell me aboot it, darlin’?’ He handed the mirror to Temerity, but Constable Harley snatched it away from her hands. She looked up in surprise.

  ‘Sir, with respect – letting a member of the public handle evidence?’ He scowled at Temerity. ‘Why is she even here? This is a crime scene. Official personnel only.’

  The Inspector sighed.

  ‘Angus, I know ye’ve come from a city police force an’ they do things a wee bit differently there. But this is Lost Maidens Loch. You’re goin’ tae have tae learn that we have our own ways of doin’ things. All right, laddie?’ Hyland hadn’t raised his voice – he never did – but the laddie made it plain who was in charge, even if he was due for retirement. He handed Temerity some latex gloves.

  ‘Mind ye, he’s right that we can’t contaminate the evidence before we’ve dusted it for prints. Put these on first.’

  Temerity dutifully put the gloves on. Hyland removed the mirror from the Constable’s hands and passed it back to Temerity. ‘Miss Love here has proved tae be a very helpful friend tae me over the years and I’d advise ye tae watch and learn. I’ll admit I was sceptical, once upon a time, especially as I’ve known this one since she was a bairn. But after she helped me find a missing person just with two copper rods, when a whole search team had failed, I decided tae trust her. And so did the powers that be, aye,’ Hyland added. The Constable nodded.

  ‘As you say, sir,’ he replied smoothly, his voice betraying no emotion, but Temerity met his eyes and thought she detected something like disdain there.

  Ignoring Constable Harley’s glare, Temerity took the mirror. It had the weight of pewter as she’d thought; she knew enough about antiques to recognise the engraving on the back, which dated from the turn of the twentieth century. This had belonged to more than one person, then, though it was hard to tell just by looking at it when the glass had been taken out and replaced.

  ‘I’d say that this is a scrying mirror used by someone practising mediumship, fortune-telling or even traditional witchcraft; depending on when it was adapted for scrying, it might have been used by more than one person. The mirror itself is over a hundred years old.’

  ‘Witchcraft, ye say?’ The Inspector’s eyes widened. ‘Ye dinnae think we have some kinda… occult murder on our hands?’ Temerity’s eyes flickered to Constable Harley, who was giving her a look that, roughly translated, said, I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing but that’s a big pile of horseshit and I’ll thank you to stay out of police business.

  I don’t care if every teacher in the staff room is swooning over you, she thought, as if they were reading each other’s minds. You might be pretty but I’m guessing you bypassed Charm School on the way to the Police Academy. And don’t swear.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s unlikely, but let’s see,’ Temerity replied and clasped both hands around the bag, closing her eyes.

  Sometimes, when she touched an object, she would see its whole history: a series of flashback-type visions that showed all the different places it had been kept, its different owners, rituals it might have been used in or people that might have read the sacred writing from its thick pages.

  Sometimes, there was less: she had no control over what came to her when she touched something. She had been asked to provide provenance for artefacts that, when she touched them, gave her little but the darkness they had been buried in for thousands of years. Sometimes there were unpronounceable names in lost languages or even spirits that had come to inhabit the object and had to be negotiated with, but there was always something. Temerity Love had a well-deserved professional reputation for finding – and naming – lost things.

  The mirror felt cold in her hands; she shivered, though it was warm in the staff room. It was more than the metal being cold: it was difficult to detect anything from it – no timeline, no flashes of faces and names, just cold, which seemed to radiate from the mirror into her bones. Blackness, like deep water on a moonless night. Temerity frowned and pushed for something more. But pushing against the blackness – like trying to bend the pewter itself – didn’t work, so she relaxed instead and turned the mirror over in her hands, so that the glass was facing away from her.

  She got a flash of something, then, but just for a moment. A stag, silhouetted gold against the blackness; she got a brief sense of something else in the background, but then it was gone. A stag with its powerful antlers stretching out from its strong head and powerful body, unflinching, somehow… unreal.

  She opened her eyes. Kim Hyland’s hopeful gaze and Angus Harley’s contemptuous one met hers as she blinked, trying to understand what she had seen. She explained it as best she could.

  ‘A stag?’ The Constable shook his head. ‘Helpful. Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve got tae say, ye usually seem tae get more,’ the Inspector said, kindly. ‘Maybe ye should come back tae the station in a few days an’ try again, aye. See what else ye can pick up.’

  Constable Harley snorted, but caught Hyland’s eye and turned away, busying himself with some paperwork. Whatever, Temerity thought, her eyes boring into his back. I wish you could read my mind because I’d have some choice remarks to give you, you big… wide-shouldered… square-jawed… she realised she was describing Harley’s impressive physique and not actually insulting him, so she just glared at him and hoped he felt it.

  ‘Of course I can, if you want me to.’ Temerity was surprised at herself – she had never had quite the same feeling before of somehow being prevented from knowing more about an object. From seeing more. It was as if the mirror had been wrapped in some kind of protection, a psychic black cloth. But how could it have been and, more importantly, who would do such a thing? She was puzzled. ‘Give me a call at the shop when you need me. I’ll be there.’

  She thought of the conference. But she could hardly go now, with a murder investigation in the village, could she? It gave Temerity no small amount of satisfaction that she had an excuse to stay home. It wasn’t meant to be, she thought, as she left the policemen to their work and walked down the quiet school corridor. Alaska was too far away. She was needed here.

  She wondered how the other teachers would break the news of Molly Bayliss’s death to the children. It was a horrible thing to have to do and nothing that any teacher in Lost Maidens Loch would ever expect to have to say. They would be so upset. In a place like this, people became close. People were good neighbours to each other and many of them were family. Even if you weren’t related, people became family after a while.

  Her thoughts strayed to Patrick’s funeral: to the words that his parents had never dreamed they would say, either. To the tears they had cried, that Temerity cried still, when she thought of him. He had been taken from them all just as Molly Bayliss had: young, beautiful, with his life ahead of him.

  Temerity hadn’t been able to help Patrick. The last time she had seen him, she had experienced the first vision she had ever had, but because it was the first, she hadn’t understood what it was.

  It was too late when they found him, but if she’d known what she had seen would come true – Patrick, face down in the loch – she would have made him come home with her and not left him. Because it was her first vision, she had dismissed it as morbid thoughts, a waking nightmare. But after Patrick, she had vowed she would always trust what she saw when she touched something or someone. Her vision had never been wrong since.

  Therefore, today’s insight was even more perplexing. What did a stag have to do with a teacher’s poisoning? She had no idea, but it must mean something and she was determined to find out what.

  4

  It was a full moon and Temerity wrapped a long wool cloak around herself before making sure she had the hot water bottle strapped around her waist, on top of her thermal underwear; it was only then that she opened the door and stepped into the night.

  Tilda was waiting for her in the garden. It was fully enclosed by tall hedges, which their parents had grown on purpo
se; they had done much of their conjuring in their magic room, which was now Tilda’s library, but sometimes only outside would do.

  The cats, Scylla and Charybdis, followed her out at a leisurely pace, their fat bellies brushing the grass. Hebrides was sulking at being kept inside, but if Tilda let him out, he would spend the entire ritual swooping around them, shouting random phrases and generally putting everyone off.

  Temerity had placed a flaming torch at each axis of the space of a circle big enough for both of them, marked out in the black pebbles she had gathered at her last trip to the Eastern Scottish coast. The torch at the north of the circle was black, the east yellow, the south red and the west was blue. These were the traditional correlations for the elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

  In the centre of the circle, Tilda had set up a small occasional table that they kept in the shed for rituals and covered it with a black velvet cloth. On the table, two storm lamps glimmered against a marble statue of the Egyptian god Thoth, judge of the dead, and a black and gold statuette of Ma’at, Egyptian goddess of justice, balance and harmony. A bronze Middle Eastern-designed censer, smoking with pine resin, sat on an oven glove next to a black glass goblet filled with red wine.

  As it was a full moon, the sisters had decided to appeal to the gods for help solving the murder. Temerity had the gift of psychometry, but a little supernatural help never went amiss.

  Temerity hugged her cloak around her as she waited for Tilda to finish setting up; it was freezing cold. The moonlight made the bare trees in the garden spectral and otherworldly: rowan, hawthorn and apple – trees associated with witchcraft. The cats padded into the circle and curled up on a blanket that Tilda had placed underneath the altar table; having cat energy present in magic would definitely enhance it. Anyway, unlike Hebrides, they couldn’t keep the cats away from a circle, so it was easier to just make them comfortable.