‘Offer her the job. You really should,’ urged Kyt, with absolute conviction.
‘The job?’
‘The one Hogarth and Maxwell and Whitehall want you to take, with Miss Cadabra as your partner in magical crime-solving. That one.’
‘How do you know about that?’ demanded Thomas.
‘Mike popped round and asked me what I thought.’
‘Asked my father?’ He laughed in disbelief. ‘What am I? Twelve?’
‘He wasn’t sure how you’d feel about any of that. And it would be depriving me of my only son and heir if you said yes,’ Kyt explained.
‘I was away at police college and I haven’t lived at home for years. Besides, I’d be moving to Sunken Madley, not sacrificing myself to the sacred volcano. Plus I’d still have responsibility for Parhayle.’
‘Good. Well anyway, I encouraged him to ask you and I encourage you to say yes and get Miss Cadabra to run the show with you.’
‘Yes … well, I shall. But when the moment’s right. Not in open forum.’
‘Thomas, trust your old man —’
‘You’re not going to tell me you know all about women, are you?’ he asked, with a shade of teenage weariness.
‘No, I’m going to tell you that I have had more experience of people than you have, thanks to avoiding an early grave at the hands of the Flamgoynes.’
‘Fair enough,’ conceded Thomas fairly.
‘And I’m telling you: ask Miss Cadabra. Over pudding.’
‘Surrounded by my father and my best friend?’
‘With her Uncle Mike and her kindly host on hand,’ Kyt corrected.
‘So when she’s merry with sherry and that nice bottle of wine I brought over the time before last?’
Kyt leaned against the sink, folded his arms and looked his son in the eye.
‘What makes you assume she’ll want to give you an answer straight away?’
‘Hm. Well, I’ll consider it. Soup ready?’
***
‘Wonderful shepherd’s pie, Mr Trelawney,’
‘Kyt, call me Kyt.’
Amanda looked at the inspector. It seemed disrespectful to first-name his father, but Thomas nodded and smiled. She turned back and replied,
‘Kyt it is. Please call me Amanda.’
‘Amanda. Thank you for the culinary compliment. It’s Thomas’s favourite.’
‘So I gather.’
‘But you were about to relate the most startling thing you learned on your two-shilling tour of Cardiubarn Hall.’
‘It would have been easily worth a pound or even a guinea! At the very end, down in that crypt-cellar-dungeon place, just as I was looking for the grimoire my great-grandmother had been reading the asthma spell from, I heard a voice, child-like. I say child-like because I could just make out a figure about my height, not little. And long, pale, sort of wavy-curly hair. She said the book was gone and I must find it and then,’ Amanda added portentously and turned to Hogarth, ‘she said she had a message for you, Uncle Mike.’
He was looking at her attentively.
‘Do go on, Amanda. You interest me strangely.’
‘The message was: it’s time for you to tell me her story.’
‘Her?’
‘Lucy.’
Hogarth gave a twitch of the eyebrows and casually picked up his cake fork.
‘Interesting.’
‘So? What is her story, Uncle Mike?’
After a brief pause, he replied casually, ‘I tell you what, Amanda. It’s rather a long tale, and, er, it’s getting late. By the way, I have to be out of the country for a while. A visit to my sister is rather overdue. But when I come back, if our good friend Kyt here …’
‘Happy to put you up, my dear.’
‘... for a few days, then I shall share with you the strange case of Lucy Penlowr. How would that be? Thomas could bring you down. It might be helpful if he sat in. What do you say?’
Amanda nodded, ‘Yes, of course. Erm ... Inspector?’
‘Indeed,’ Thomas replied readily. ‘It would be my pleasure. Also, I must admit I am curious to know of this lady and her past, which seems to have some bearing on Miss Cadabra’s history.’
‘And is something of the present moment, I’d say, given that she said it was time to tell it,’ commented Kyt.
‘Thank you,’ replied Amanda, still somewhat taken aback by her Uncle Mike’s evasive response.
Hogarth smiled.
‘That’s settled then.’
Some half an hour later, plates on the arms of comfortable chairs and glasses of dry Sauternes on coffee tables, the four sampled jam roly-poly and custard.
‘Thomas’s favourite,’ commented Hogarth.
‘Don’t I know it,’ added Kyt.
His son grinned, and Amanda remarked,
‘And very fortunate too, because it’s one of mine.’
‘What do you think of the pudding wine?’ asked Kyt.
‘Just right. My word, I shall sleep well tonight.’
‘Miss Cadabra,’ began Trelawney.
‘Inspector?’
‘There is something to which I would like to invite you.’
‘Another ball?’
‘Some might call it that,’ he agreed.
‘What fun,’ Amanda remarked, leaning forward a little with anticipation.
‘As to that …’ He explained about the proposed new post in Sunken Madley. ‘Of course, I shall be reliant on the guidance of a specialist civilian consultant with experience in matters ontological.’
‘You mean a witch?’ asked Amanda frankly.
‘Yes … the ideal and indeed the only candidate would be …’
Her eyes widened. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. You would be paid, naturally,’ Trelawney hurriedly added, hoping this was important.
‘Well … er … that’s always nice, of course, but … I must say, this is rather a …’ But then Amanda curiosity overcame her bemusement. ‘Would I be like Baker and Nikolaides?’
‘You would be working with me, not under my supervision. I would defer to you where magic was concerned, and you would …’
She could easily guess the rest. ‘Defer to you regarding police protocol?’
‘Just so.’
Amanda put down her fork and leaned her head back. It was spinning, but not from the wine. Excitement, anticipation, butterflies, relief, ramifications, complications, joy, whirled around in her brain like materials in a centrifuge.
‘Miss Cadabra — Amanda,’ put in Kyt. ‘I don’t know all of the ins and outs of your village, but I do think, from what little I know of you and the great deal I know of my son, that you’d enjoy yourself. I think you could do a great deal of good, the pair of you. A very great deal. And if he gives you any trouble, just come
