Chapter Eighteen Charm

      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