Amanda Cadabra and The Hidden Depths by Holly Bell (good book recommendations TXT) 📗

‘I wouldn’t trust the tea either. Although I think Dale put either a sedative or poison into his mother’s coffee earlier.’

‘Well, it’ll all go to the lab for testing.’

The rest of the team arrived at that moment, and Amanda left them to do their job. Her priority was to call Mrs Pagely and let her know that all possibility of arrest was now removed. Finally, Amanda returned with relief to the cottage to recover with Tempest, on the sofa.

Once ensconced, tea and gingernuts before her and her lap heavy with cat, she called out,

‘Grandpa!’

Perran obligingly appeared on the sofa beside her.

‘Well done, bian!’

‘Thank you, Grandpa. But you could have told me what that phrase meant: Nans Breha.’

‘I knew you’d get there in the end, Ammee love. Besides if I just gave you the answer, where would the fun in that be?’

His appalled granddaughter fairly spluttered out an indignant reply:

‘Fun?’

Chapter 42

Debrief

‘It’s just a pasty, and cup of tea,’ Amanda reassured Trelawney, setting the tray down on his lap. ‘I was sure when you called that you wouldn’t have eaten by the time you got here. And it doesn’t count as socialising with a witness, if we talk about the matter in hand while you eat.’

He grinned up at her.

‘Well, it’s very kind of you.’

‘My pleasure. The least I can do since you brought my phone back,’ she responded cheerfully, going to the kitchen to fetch her own matching supper.

Once Amanda was back on the sofa beside the well-fed familiar now sleeping off a three-helping dinner, Trelawney asked her,

‘When did you realise? That it was Hilland.’

‘That name kept bothering me: Nans Breha.’

‘Nans meaning valley, you said.’ Trelawney took a bite of his pasty.

‘Yes,’ replied Amanda, ‘but I kept feeling that, in this case, that translation was wrong. And then when he sort of took my …. Well, I let him have my phone to show him the piano pics … He’d asked to see the progress I was making, and he walked to the door with it, and I felt … I suddenly wanted my phone back … And then he locked the door, but in the most innocent-seeming way. Like Mrs Sharma turns the sign around when she needs to go upstairs or something. Only it didn’t feel like that at all.’

‘It must have been unnerving.’ Trelawney leaned down to give the fire a prod with the poker, and it flamed into renewed effort.

‘Yes, alarm bells were starting to sound in my head. Oh, and then his mother said she didn’t feel well. It was the tea, at first, that I suspected, and fortunately Tempest jumped onto my lap just as I felt I was expected to drink some.’

‘Fortunate indeed,’ agreed Trelawney.

‘Then I could see I was expected to show some interest in the pudding and I took up my spoon, trying to think what to do next when, bless him, Mr Fuffiness here put his paw right into the top of it! When I said I couldn’t eat it now, and your call and then text arrived, that brought things to a head. I tried to back away, but, in the end, I had to use magic. And then you came in the nick of time to help deal with the aftermath.’

Trelawney was picking up his pasty for a second bite when she said,

‘My hero!’

He blushed at such an unexpected accolade from Miss Cadabra. However, looking up at her in surprise, he found her fond gaze resting upon the heap of comatose fur beside her.

‘Hm,’ he commented vaguely.

In his sleep, Tempest registered his human’s naturally well-deserved tribute. Of course, he could have leaped at her assailant if she had not had the means to stop him at her disposal. It was good for her to employ her skills. It wouldn’t do for her to become lazy, he thought, before retiring into slumber.

‘Clever text message by the way,’ Amanda commended Trelawney. ‘“Don’t Alice”.’

‘You got it?’

‘Dale read it out. Yes, I thought of Alice in Wonderland and the cake: Eat Me. Unfortunately, he twigged, at least that it was some kind of warning code.’

‘I hope it bought you some time, though.’

‘A few seconds. So, did you get the final piece from Lord Vigo, as to the identity of the mysterious guide?’ Amanda asked, before enjoying her first mouthful of pasty.

‘I did, thanks to your Uncle Mike, his influence with Maxwell and Maxwell’s with some other big cheeses.’

‘Hm.’ Amanda dusted the flakes of pastry from her lips with her napkin. ‘May I know what he told you?’

‘It was all off the record.’

‘I gather it was enough for you to join the dots and end up with Dale Hilland.’

‘Yes.’ Trelawney relented. Mike would say there was no reason not to tell Miss Cadabra. ‘There was a photo on Vigo’s phone of the guide he himself had hired and recommended to Ainsley Storridge.

‘I expect Samantha had looked through his phone,’ Amanda commented prosaically.

‘You do?’

‘Yes, it would have appeared to have been quite innocent, just a typical teenage girlfriend thing,’ she explained.

‘You seem confident about that,’ Trelawney observed, thinking it wasn’t the sort of thing he could imagine Miss Cadabra would do.

‘Yes, thanks to Ruth and Kieran, my data banks for all things teenage. They gave me a list. Quite long, and including that item!’

‘Aha. I see. Inside information.’

‘Precisely. But why couldn’t Vigo just give you Hilland’s name?’ was Amanda’s next question.

‘He didn’t know it. Vigo had hired the man in a less than above-board manner.’

‘Oh, no wonder he wants it on the QT. But you recognised the photo as being that of Dale?’

‘Not at once,’ admitted Trelawney, reaching for his tea. ‘Is there sugar …?’

‘Already in. One teaspoon. Stirred not shaken,’ she added with a twinkle.

He chuckled. ‘Thank you. Hilland had disguised his appearance. But I can imagine that once Samantha Gibbs had seen him around Sunken Madley, given that she was on the trail of the guide, she would have recognised him.’

‘So, she found the guide in, and traced Ainsley’s