Trisha Ashley 3 Book Bundle

‘Maybe it was, in which case, Mann-Drake is clearly on the wrong side!’

‘She’s afraid he will try and start his goings-on here in Sticklepond. Raffy says he is going to go and talk to him when he comes back from London, though none of us is convinced that’s really a good idea, or that it will have any effect.’

‘No, if Mr Mann-Drake is styling himself somewhere between Aleister Crowley and Sir Francis Dashwood, I don’t think he’ll be swayed by a bit of a chat with the vicar, even if he is Raffy Sinclair.’

‘I hope Mann-Drake isn’t going to hold orgies at Badger’s Bolt,’ she said earnestly. ‘Apparently he’s converting the cowshed into some kind of big room, very oddly decorated.’

We couldn’t say any more then, because Jake and Kat came in and, since it was dark enough, Jake offered to demonstrate his firestick technique to Poppy before she left.

‘Stay for dinner?’ I offered. ‘Kat is, and we’re having pizza and ice cream in front of the TV tonight.’

‘I suppose I could. Mum was going out later and the work experience girl is there to help her at the moment, so I don’t suppose she’ll mind – if she notices at all.’

She went into the garden with Jake and Kat while I lingered behind and rifled the battered leather rucksack that does duty as Poppy’s handbag, removing a tiny bottle of viscous fluid from the junk at the bottom. ‘To induce love in the eyes of another’ it said, in a small spiky hand on the label: ‘Two drops to happiness.’

She’d seemed sincere about not falling for Raffy, but he didn’t appear to have lost much, if any, of his considerable charisma, so if there was even the slightest risk of her succumbing to it, then I needed to divert her attentions elsewhere.

Of course, this stuff probably wouldn’t work, any more than Grumps’ magical efforts ever did, but I would lose nothing by giving it a go as soon as I got her and Felix together and had the opportunity…

The revelation that Raphael Sinclair was the new vicar of Sticklepond appeared in the local paper and spread like wildfire around the further reaches of the district, relegating the news about the lido and tennis courts to second place, though in the village people were still seething about that, of course.

It didn’t seem that I could go anywhere without hearing Raffy’s name, and even dropping in for coffee with Felix meant I had to listen to a lecture on being grown-up and moving on, and how great it was that someone like Raffy should deign to come and lord it over our lowly little village!

‘Though the whole thing will probably be a seven-day wonder, because of course he’s been out of the public eye for years now, even if his music hasn’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose any of the younger people will be very excited, it will be just us oldies.’

‘Jake is,’ I said, wondering gloomily if I now ranked with the oldies.

‘Jake’s different. And I’ve told Raffy that if he wants to join us at the Falling Star tonight – or any other night – he’s welcome,’ he said, slightly defiantly.

I stared at him. ‘I certainly won’t be going if he does! What were you thinking of? It’s always been just the three of us!’

‘There’s no reason why it can’t sometimes now be four, is there? I didn’t think you’d mind. You said you would have to get used to seeing him about.’

‘Yes, but seeing him walking about in the village is one thing,’ I said (I turned tail and fled whenever I glimpsed him in the distance), ‘but having him sitting opposite me in the snug at the Star is another!’

Felix was looking at me with unwonted criticism. ‘Raffy said you might still feel like that, and he wouldn’t come unless you said you didn’t mind.’

‘Well, I do mind having my personal space and my social life – what there is of it – invaded! My forgiveness doesn’t stretch that far yet.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit petty?’

‘I don’t think so – and I thought you understood how I felt,’ I said, and after that we came as close to an argument as we’d ever got in our whole lives.

That was all Raffy’s fault, too.

Chapter Twenty-two Darker Past Midnight (#ulink_760e750a-70dc-5413-9f73-070495f008fe)

When I went to collect Grumps’ chapter on Saturday morning (all days of the week being equal, as far as Grumps and I were concerned) Zillah, who was sitting at the kitchen table shuffling the Tarot with practised skill, told me he had gone out.

‘Out? But he hardly ever goes out in the mornings!’

‘Another change. That Hebe Winter came to see him yesterday – you could have knocked me down with a feather when I found her on the doorstep, looking down her long nose at me. And then there’s a phone call and off he goes up to Winter’s End right after breakfast. Drove himself too, and he doesn’t often do that, either.’

‘His sciatica wasn’t bothering him any more, then?’

‘Cleared up completely.’

Grumps’ visiting seemed very odd, but I supposed they were discussing ways of defeating the encroachments of Digby Mann-Drake, for which an alliance of sorts evidently needed to be forged. He hadn’t looked as if he could do anything more exciting than pull a rabbit out of a hat, but appearances can be deceptive.

Zillah, pushing aside the remains of her breakfast, had begun to lay out the cards into a familiar pattern, but she looked up and added, ‘He said the latest chapter was on his desk.’

I was sure this book was twice as long as any of his others. And was it my imagination, or had his writing taken a darker turn? I only hoped his hero was up to the challenge!

Grumps returned in an expansive mood and when I took his printed chapter back he informed me that Hebe Winter had invited him to attend an emergency meeting of the Parish Council on Tuesday, in an advisory capacity.

‘But they had a meeting only on Thursday!’

‘Events regarding Mann-Drake have taken yet another turn since then, and there is no time to be lost, Chloe. I knew of his plan to close down the tennis club and some picnic field or other, but now he is trying to levy a charge on the householders living along the edge of the Green, simply for driving across a strip of grass to their property.’

‘How on earth can he do that?’

‘He is trying to resurrect some obsolete ancient right conferred with the Lord of the Manor title. Six houses are affected, and each has received solicitor’s letters demanding either a one-off payment of fifteen per cent of the house’s value, or a very steep annual rental fee. It is, as they say, money for old rope.’

‘I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I would have thought they needed a good lawyer, rather than a warlock,’ I suggested, and he gave me a stern look.

‘Fortunately, the vicar is more far-sighted than you, for it was he who suggested consulting me about Mann-Drake. I find myself quite liking him.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, but I absolve him from everything in the past except stupidity and self-centredness. I hear your sciatica has magically disappeared, by the way, Grumps?’

‘Quite vanished,’ he agreed. ‘A momentary twinge…or three.’

Felix said he couldn’t meet us in the Falling Star that evening, because he was going to play darts with Raffy and the gardeners from Winter’s End in the Green Man instead. He did do this sometimes, only not on a night when he usually met us, so I supposed he was still sulking over our spat.

But at least it meant that Poppy and I could have a good girls-together session, when she told me all over again about the things she was looking for in a man. It was a fairly modest list really, and all the qualities and assets were possessed by Felix, such as not living with his mother (he rarely even sees Mags and has never lived with her) and having his own hair and teeth.

‘I’m even starting to feel desperate enough to try the lonely hearts columns one more time,’ she confessed, so it was a pity Felix wasn’t there, so I could have tipped the love potion straight into his drink – and probably hers too, for good measure – then maybe banged their heads together. It was so blindingly obvious to me now that they were made for each other, that I didn’t see why they hadn’t realised it.

‘Don’t do anything hasty,’ I counselled.

‘But the time is slipping by faster and faster and I would really love to have children,’ she said sadly. ‘I can’t leave it too late and right now I’m starting to think I’d settle for a Mr OK, never mind Mr Right!’

‘Give it just a little more time,’ I suggested. ‘Remember what the cards said about patience paying off in the long run?’

‘Yes, only I’m running out of patience. But what about you?’ she asked, then said Jake had confided in her the other night that he was afraid I was falling for David all over again.

‘I suppose he could be your Mr OK, if you wanted to settle down,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But you keep saying you don’t want to get married or have children.’

‘No, I don’t. David may have some thought of us getting back together – I’m not sure – but he’s forever talking about a woman called Mel Christopher, so on the whole, I think not. Do you know her?’