Chapter Sixteen Dead as My Love

      In the morning I apologised to Jake.

      ‘That’s OK. I suppose because you hear it everywhere, it just got on your nerves,’ he said handsomely. ‘I’ve changed it to something else now.’

      ‘Thanks, Jake. That song just seems to be haunting me. It was even playing on the phone when I was put on hold the other day,’ I explained. ‘By the way, Chas is calling in sometime before too long – he rang last night.’

      Jake knew the situation (or what we thought was the situation!) so he evinced no surprise at this, and went off in Grumps’ car to collect Kat. They planned to spend the morning listening to some friends rehearsing their band. If the DNA test proved Chas wasn’t my father, it would be time enough to tell him then…

      When I went to Grumps’ study to collect the latest chapter or two of Satan’s Child, which had recently galloped off in an unexpected direction just when I had thought it was about to come to an end, he was removing the wrapping from a rectangular cardboard box.

      ‘Morning, Grumps,’ I said, putting down his cup of tea with the two biscuits balanced on the saucer – after a brief flirtation with Garibaldis we were back to the Jammie Dodgers again, I saw. ‘Have you been buying things at auction, or has someone sent you a present?’

      ‘Neither. Nor do I get the feeling that this contains anything good.’ He lifted the lid, took a brief look inside, and then slammed it down again as though something evil might escape.

      He looked rather pale. ‘As I thought!’

      ‘What’s the matter, Grumps? Is it nasty?’

      ‘A warning – unwelcome, if not entirely unexpected. Mann-Drake has evidently arrived in the village, for Zillah found this on the doorstep addressed to me early this morning.’ He looked up at me seriously. ‘Until I have taken steps to protect us all, should he contrive to introduce himself to you, have nothing to do with him. Certainly do not invite him across your threshold – and warn Jake. I will speak to Zillah myself.’

      ‘He might not tell me his name,’ I pointed out, starting to feel as if I had suddenly stepped straight into the world of one of Grumps’ novels and wondering if he himself could tell the difference between reality and imagination. ‘What does he look like?’

      ‘Perfectly ordinary and harmless, though he has a voice that could charm the birds off the trees. In recent pictures from the internet he looks not much different from the last time I saw him, though he was dressed up in some ridiculous outfit, like a conjuror.’

      ‘Yes, Jake showed me those – eerily lit from below, and with a sort of cowl shadowing his face!’ I agreed, thinking that Grumps himself always seemed entirely unaware of his own eccentricities of dress, though of course he never looked ridiculous, just odd.

      He gestured to the box. ‘He would have used the powerful conjunction of the ley lines at the Old Smithy for dark purposes, and this shows me the depth of enmity he feels towards me, because I managed to purchase the Old Smithy while he was incapacitated with severe appendicitis. I found it disappointing that it was not fatal…’

      ‘Grumps!’ I exclaimed, staring at him. ‘You didn’t have anything to do with his illness, did you?’ Then I realised what I had just said and added, ‘No, of course you didn’t! What am I thinking of?’

      ‘Ill-wishing can lead to the opposite outcome to that desired, or rebound upon one’s head; though it seems to me that to wish something bad upon another person, when your heart is pure and unselfish in its intentions, should not cause such an unfortunate result,’ he said ambiguously. ‘It is a very grey area.’

      ‘Right…’ I said. Not that I agreed, it was just that I knew how pointless it would be to get into an argument with him on the subject.

      ‘We must protect ourselves while I consider my strategy, my dear Chloe. Florrie Snowball can help me there, for luckily her one great skill is the very thing we need now.’

      ‘You mean Mrs Snowball from the Falling Star?’

      He nodded, so it looks as though I was right in suspecting her of being another of his coven, along with the Frinton sisters. I wondered if there were any more in Sticklepond, whom I didn’t yet know about.

      ‘Do you know how the Falling Star got its name, Chloe?’

      ‘Yes, of course. The rock in the middle of the courtyard is supposed to be a meteorite. It’s got a brass plaque on it that says so, and that it mustn’t be moved because that would be unlucky. But it can’t have actually fallen there, because then the pub would be sitting in a huge crater, wouldn’t it?’

      ‘The sign means that it must never be moved from where it came to rest,’ he said, which was another of the kind of statements he was prone to make that could be interpreted in more ways than one. Really, sometimes his conversation was enough to make you feel dizzy.

      ‘It’s really inconvenient where it is now, because it’s right in the middle of the courtyard and cars are always getting scraped against it. I expect stagecoaches did too.’

      ‘It’s on one of the ley lines, the last landmark of significance before the conjunction here at the Smithy – and there may be three, for I am currently researching the possibility of an even more ancient one.’

      ‘Oh, right. How exciting for you, Grumps!’ I said, though I was still puzzling over where Mrs Snowball’s speciality came in. Unless he’d heard about the coffee machine, of course, and thought large amounts of caffeine might sharpen our wits?

      ‘If you could leave me now, Chloe – I must burn this,’ he indicated the box, ‘and then perform one or two rites to negate its power. You might put some more wood on the fire before you go.’

      ‘OK,’ I agreed, because although I was naturally curious about what was in the box, I wasn’t curious enough to actually want to see it.

      Anyway, this whole enmity thing between Grumps and Mr Mann-Drake was really just two old men playing an advanced real-life game of Dungeons and Dragons, wasn’t it? Or that’s what the logical part of my mind said, anyway!

      On the night of the new vicar’s welcome party I was at home in the sitting room, cutting the thin, almost transparent printed sheets of Wishes into small strips and feeling like Billy No-mates, even though it didn’t sound like the most exciting event ever. Jake was at Kat’s place (doing college work, allegedly) and the telly was absolute rubbish.

      In the end, I put the Bride and Prejudice DVD on for the hundredth time just for the bright colours, cheery music and Bollywood dancing. I know all the words to the songs, so I could sing along while I was working.

      I’d expected Poppy to ring me by mid-evening, but when she didn’t I assumed either the party was going on much later than she’d expected, or the new vicar had been a bit of a damp squib in the ex-pop star department.

      I suspected the latter. But since we were meeting up at the Falling Star after dinner on Monday night anyway, I supposed she and Felix would regale me with all the details then.

      Next morning I woke even earlier than usual and decided to walk up to the Spar to get a newspaper and stretch my legs, before attempting to prise Jake out of bed in time for college,