Harriett (The Tipton Hollow 1)

“Poor dear,” Beatrice murmured softly.

“Someone needs to fetch the constable.” Babette wrung her hands and began to fret about the gossip this would bring upon them. Right now, the last thing she needed were the eyes of the village upon her, but that thought was on a purely selfish level and unfair on poor Minerva. She glanced out of the rain-lashed window with a shiver.

“I’ll go,” Mr Montague offered. Nobody voiced any objection and silence settled over everyone as he quickly left the house.

“Why do we need the constable?” Madame Humphries demanded. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “I mean, how do we know she has not died of natural causes?”

“That’s just it,” Harriet snapped impatiently. For once she forgot her manners and lost her patience with the clairvoyant. “We don’t know that she died of natural causes. She seemed to have been perfectly fine all evening. Why now? Why has she suddenly keeled over?” She lifted a cautionary finger when Madame Humphries took a breath to reply. “If you say that the spirits told us, then I am afraid that I am going to have to throw you out of here.”

Madame lapsed into disgruntled silence. She was nothing if not intuitive and had finally picked up on the growing unease within the room.

“I cannot ever remember seeing anyone die of natural causes like this. I mean, if she had a heart seizure or something, she would have clutched her chest, not her throat,” Mr Bentwhistle muttered as he studied the body beneath the blanket almost clinically.

“Please? Do we have to discuss this right now?” Constance gasped. Unable to ignore the shaking in her knees for a moment longer, she slumped into the nearest chair and turned her gaze away from the disturbing sight of Minerva’s body lying in the middle of the rug.

While none of them put voice to the fact, they had indeed had a warning of a death in Tipton Hollow, but could it be a spiritual warning? Or was there a murderer in their midst?

Harriett moved closer to the fire and was grateful for its meagre warmth. She tried not to stare, she really did, but she found herself studying each occupant of the room individually. They all looked just as shaken as she was, but could one of them be responsible for the cold-blooded death of the woman at their feet? She swallowed and turned away.

While the minutes ticked by she gave herself a stern lecture. There was nothing to say that Minerva’s death hadn’t been of natural causes. It was very important that she not let the tension, nervousness and discomfort generated by the séance cloud her judgement and her thinking.

It seemed an indeterminable age before Mr Montague returned. His face was florid and he panted from the speed he had run to the constable’s house, but he waved his hand at the sherry Harriett held out to him.

“I won’t, if you don’t mind Harriett.” It wasn’t lost to him that Minerva had been drinking sherry before she had died. Not that he thought Harriett was involved in anything underhand, but he had rather gone off sherry now. “I couldn’t find the constable, but Charles has gone to the Constabulary in Great Tipton to fetch someone,” he gasped and took a seat before the fire. “It’s awful weather out there tonight. I don’t relish anyone having to journey out in that.”

“Do you think she drank the sherry and it went down the wrong way?” Eloisa asked with a frown. So far this evening she had been relatively quiet, but she was clearly observant and had been watching events unfold with a keen eye.

“I have had things go down the wrong way several times, as I am sure that we all have, but I have never choked like that,” Tuppence replied in confusion.

“What do we do now?” Beatrice asked nervously. She hated the thought of having to walk home alone, especially after the message warning them to be afraid of the dark, but she didn’t relish the thought of having to stay in Harriett’s house for too much longer. Her gaze turned toward Harriett, and she felt a pang of sympathy for her friend. She had considered her life-long friend to have been very brave to allow Tipton Hollow’s first Psychic Circle to be held in her home. How she was coping now with a death in her very own parlour, heaven only knew. Beatrice mentally winced at that and quickly turned her thoughts toward the village constable. With any luck, he shouldn’t be too much longer. After all, Tipton Hollow was a fairly small village where nothing much happened. After his nightly rounds, he would almost certainly go home with the intent of retiring to bed. Once he got home, he would receive the message and make his way over to Harriett’s house, inspect the body and then they could all go home. At least she fervently hoped that would be the case.

“We have to wait. We don’t know if Minerva died of natural causes or not. Because of that, we cannot simply go home and leave her here in the middle of the rug. Not only would it be unfair and highly ill mannered of us to leave Harriett to deal with a body by herself, but I am certain that the constable will want to ask us a few questions about what happened,” Mr Montague replied matter-of-factly.

Out of all of them, he appeared to be the one who was handling the crisis the best. Although his breaths still came in heavy pants, and his cheeks were still flushed with exertion, he exuded a gentle reassurance that made Harriett intensely glad that he was there.

“Thank you, Hugo,” Harriett whispered. While she was glad that her Uncle Charles had gone for help in Great Tipton, she knew that he would be as useless as a colander in a rain-storm and didn’t handle crises well at all. He would undoubtedly keep his distance and allow Babette to deal with the ‘household’ matters of arranging the removal of the body. Still, at least he had agreed to be parted from his beer long enough to get help.

“I don’t know anything,” Madame Humphries wailed, casting desperate eyes around the room. “How can I be questioned? I was in a trance at the time. You saw me,” she turned toward Miss Hepplethwaite, who once again began to make soothing noises. “I was not aware of what was going on in the room,” she added firmly.

“But you were here, and that’s enough,” Mr Bentwhistle argued, his voice as stern as the gaze he landed on her. Whatever else Madame Humphries was about to say remained unspoken and she, along with the rest of the room’s occupants, lapsed into disgruntled silence.

CHAPTER FOUR

The next hour passed incredibly slowly. The eleventh hour came and went as the clock on the mantle ticked steadily on. At a quarter to midnight, the rattle of the front door and the dull murmur of voices heralded the arrival of Charles and the village constable, Fred.

“Oh, thank heavens you are here,” Babette gasped and hurried to the door. She flicked a quick, almost dismissive glance at Charles when she reached the hallway. Her attention was locked on the men who entered the house behind him. She nodded politely to Fred, and beckoned them all inside and out of the rain. Fred paused just inside the hallway and motioned to the men behind him.

“This is Detective Inspector Bosville, from Great Tipton Constabulary and his colleague, Detective Brown,” he motioned to the tall, distinguished looking man behind the policeman. “You know Doctor Woods.”

Babette nodded at each man and entered the parlour. “Everything has remained untouched, gentlemen. To be quite frank with you, we didn’t know what to do.”

Harriett waited anxiously for the men to appear in the doorway. She had no idea why she felt nervous because she had done nothing wrong, but the idea of having policemen in the house unnerved her. She was a churchgoing person who lived well and abided by the law, just like everyone else of her acquaintance. Although she knew the village constable, Fred Dinage, well, she had never had any business dealings with him before. She had no idea what to expect.

She stood beside the hearth and tu

rned her curious gaze toward the rest of the men who entered, presumably from the constabulary; some detective something or other. She swallowed nervously and tried to keep her face impassive while the brandy she had consumed earlier began to gurgle alarmingly in her stomach.

She nodded respectfully to Doctor Woods, then turned her attention to the man who stood beside the village’s doctor. Detective Isaac Brown was of average height with short dark brown hair. His almost angular face was so severe that it was almost forbidding and was accompanied by a dark scowl. His suit was certainly nothing out of the ordinary, but the way he carried himself gave him an air of command that wasn’t lost on anyone within the room. He ignored everyone, and skirted around Fred to kneel beside the body to inspect it. When he lifted the blanket to study Minerva’s body, Harriett quickly turned her gaze toward the tall man who remained beside Fred.