“She’s not looking at all well. I heard that she was sick and I thought it was my duty to minister to her, but she was so weak, she couldn’t even lift her head to try some of my nourishing homemade calves foot jelly. And she wouldn’t hear of my making her any soup either. She said all she wants to do is sleep, so I think we should respect her wishes, don’t you?” She put a forceful hand on his arm and attempted to turn him around.
For once, Evan wasn’t about to be turned. “Look, I promised I’d stop in on her this morning, and I was called out really early on a case, so she’ll be wondering what has happened to me. Don’t worry. I’ll only stay a minute.” He gave what he hoped was a winning smile and moved past the minister’s wife.
“Try to get her to take a spoonful of the calves foot jelly,” she called after him. “She needs to build up her strength.”
Evan tapped lightly on the door, then let himself in. The schoolhouse felt cold and empty. He walked softly to Bronwen’s bedroom and pushed open the door. Bronwen was lying quite still with her eyes closed. Her face looked gray and hollow.
“Bron?” He couldn’t resist touching her, just in case.
Her eyes opened and a smile spread across her face. “Oh, it’s you, Evan. I thought it was that dreadful woman coming back. Not only do I feel rotten, but having Mrs. Powell-Jones ministering to me was one affliction too many. Sleep seemed like the only way out of eating her awful calves foot jelly. You should have seen her, Evan. She sat on my bed and kept waving this spoon in my face. And then I wanted to go to the loo again and she told me it was only a question of mind over matter and I shouldn’t let it get the better of me.”
Evan perched on the edge of her bed and took her hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you from her,” he said. “How are you really feeling?”
“A little better, I think,” she said, “but awfully weak.”
“Do you think we should call the doctor again? It’s been more than twenty-four hours now.”
“Give it another day. If I’m no better by this evening, I’ll ask him to drop in on his rounds.”
“Is there anything you’d really like—not calves foot jelly, I mean?”
Bronwen shook her head. “I can’t say that the thought of any food appeals to me. Another sip of Lucozade, that’s all.”
He filled the glass for her. She sat up then lay back with a sigh. “I feel as if I’m made of putty. I’m going to have to take Mrs. PJ’s advice and start using mind over matter. I can’t just lie here, being sick!”
Evan bent to kiss her. “You just get a good sleep, all right? I’ll pop round again later.”
As he let himself out, he noticed that Mrs. Powell-Jones was pretending to work on the garden outside Capel Beulah while keeping an eye on the schoolhouse. As he let himself out of the playground, she came running down the street to him.
“It’s all right. She’s sleeping now,” he said. “She’ll probably sleep for hours. We shouldn’t disturb her.”
“That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” Mrs. Powell-Jones said. “I wish to lodge a complaint. You haven’t been here doing your job for the past few days.”
“I was called away on a case,” he said. “I’m a mobile unit now, you know. Not confined to Llanfair.”
“I should have thought your first duty was to protect the citizens here, mobile or not,” Mrs. Powell-Jones said.
“Has something happened?”
“Only that there is a homicidal maniac at large.”
“A what?”
“That lunatic postman,” Mrs. Powell-Jones exclaimed in her booming voice. “Some stupid fool has given him a motorbike. He almost rode me down yesterday. I was crossing the road when he came careening down the hill, completely exceeding the speed limit. I had to leap for my life, Constable Evans. And he didn’t even stop to apologize.”
Evan was trying not to smile at the thought of Mrs. Powell-Jones leaping for her life. “I’m sorry. He hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet,” he said.
“Then he shouldn’t be allowed to ride it, should he? I want you to arrest him for reckless driving. Confiscate the damned thing before he kills somebody or himself.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Evan said. “I’ll try and make him see sense.”
“Talking is not enough. You have to learn to be more forceful, Constable. If you don’t act now, someone is going to get hurt.”
She strode off back to the chapel. Evan sighed and walked down the hill to the police station. Life was back to normal after the excitement at the Sacred Grove, he thought. Then he corrected himself: It wasn’t back to normal. Bronwen was ill.
He wished he could stop feeling so damned guilty. Logically his cooking couldn’t have caused Bronwen’s illness, because he had eaten the same things, but doubt still nagged at the back of his mind. Maybe there was just one piece of tainted meat, one piece that was not fully cooked, and Bronwen ate it. If only the timing hadn’t be so coincidental: Bronwen had fallen ill right after—Evan broke off in midthought and stood there, in the middle of the street—right after Betsy had stopped by to visit.
Disturbing snatches of remembered conversation flashed through his mind. He heard Betsy’s voice—“If Bronwen Price wasn’t around any longer … do you think you might be interested in me then?” And what else had she said? Something about harnessing her powers and how real psychics could just think something and it would happen. He knew that witch doctors in Africa could will somebody to die and that person died. He found that his heart was racing and his mouth was dry. Had Betsy, either knowingly or not, put a similar curse on Bronwen?
He was halfway down the hill, ready to challenge Betsy, when reason took over. What an absurd thing to think—that Bronwen had fallen ill because somehow Betsy had willed it! Everybody got stomach flu at some point in their lives. And Bronwen, exposed to all those children every day, was more at risk than most. She had even said
