Kitchen Witch Read online

  Kitchen Witch

  by Cora Buhlert

  Bremen, Germany

  Copyright © 2017 by Cora Buhlert

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image © by Amanda Dodds

  Cover design by Cora Buhlert

  Pegasus Pulp Publications

  Mittelstraße 12

  28816 Stuhr

  Germany

  www.pegasus-pulp.com

  Kitchen Witch

  Rosslyn Grove was exactly what it sounded like, a quiet leafy Hampstead sidestreet lined with Victorian semi-detached houses rendered in red brick.

  Once upon a time, these houses would have been middle class homes, occupied by lawyers, doctors, professors, merchants and civil servants, not to mention artists, writers and intellectuals of every stripe. But those days were long gone and nowadays, like all of the nicer neighbourhoods of London and a few of the less nice ones, Rosslyn Grove was the province of millionaires only.

  Cause in point, when parking at the curb, Detective Inspector Helen Shepherd of the Metropolitan Police had to squeeze her clunky dark green Rover between a silver gleaming S-class Mercedes and a cute little BMW convertible. Helen suspected the millionaire owners of those luxury cars wouldn’t be too happy about that, but then she didn’t give a damn. They should consider themselves lucky she didn’t have their cars towed for obstructing access to a crime scene.

  Rosslyn Grove 22 was something of an exception to the rule of the street, since it was a freestanding single rather than a semi-detached house. It was equally Victorian, equally red brick and surrounded by the same type of wall as the other houses on the street, yet something was different.

  For starters, there was no car in the driveway, only an old black bicycle leaning to the wall. And while the garden behind the brick wall was certainly beautiful, it was also a lot less manicured than those of the adjacent homes. All over the garden, chimes and crystal ornaments dangled from the branches of trees and shrubs. Fairy circles sprouted from the grass and in a corner, there was a small altar, covered with stones, sea shells, pieces of wood, candles and little figurines. It was all very enchanting, but certainly not the latest fashion in garden design. What was more, the current tenant of Rosslyn Grove 22 seemed to be fond of growing herbs and vegetables in the front garden, something that millionaires rarely felt the need or urge to do.

  The front door was flanked by two mischievous looking stone gargoyles, which seemed to positively snuggle up to the two uniforms guarding the entrance. Dangling from the canopy above the door, there were yet more crystal chimes, a veritable riot of them.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” Police Constable Martin Jackson, one of the uniforms guarding the door, greeted Helen, “Quite the fairytale glade, isn’t it?”

  “It’s certainly lovely,” Helen agreed, “Though not quite the design sensibility I would expect in this neighbourhood. Camden Town, sure, but here? Too wealthy and too upper class for chimes and vegetable gardens.”

  “Well, it is Hampstead,” PC Jackson replied, “And Hampstead always had its share of artsy folk.”

  “Though nowadays, the only artsy folk who can afford to live in this neighbourhood are washed-up rockstars and actors with delusions of poshness.” Helen looked around the garden again. “I suspect our victim was neither.”

  “Not a famous name, at any rate.” PC Jackson pointed at the ceramic tile beside the door that bore the tenant’s name in a script so heavily ornamented that Helen had to squint to make it out. As far as she could tell the current inhabitant of Rosslyn Grove No. 22 was one Eudora Pembroke.

  “Though I have to admit, I only read the gossip mags when I’m visiting my gran,” PC Jackson said.

  Helen nodded absentmindedly, because a movement glimpsed from the corner of her eye had attracted her attention.

  “Talking of gossip, Constable, it seems we have attracted some attention.” She nodded towards the wall separating the garden of 22 Rosslyn Grove from the adjacent one, a wall behind which someone had just ducked in a clumsy attempt to hide themselves.

  “She’s been watching us for at least fifteen minutes now, ma’am,” PC Jackson replied, “Seems to be harmless, though. I noticed her as soon as we arrived.”

  “Your garden variety nosey neighbour then,” Helen said with a devilish smile, “Come on, Constable, let’s make her day and find out, if she’s seen anything.”

  Together they walked over to the garden wall. “Miss,” Helen called out to the woman who rather unsuccessfully tried to duck behind a manicured azalea bush. “Excuse me, do you live here?”

  The woman looked up, barely able to contain her excitement. She seemed to be in her early forties, with the sort of casual elegance that required hours spent in spas, cosmetic studios and hair salons to achieve. She was dressed in elegant light beige pants and a cream white silk blouse, both of which looked entirely unsuited to garden work.

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  “I’m Detective Inspector Helen Shepherd and this is Police Constable Martin Jackson.”

  “Oh my God!” The woman’s hand flew to her mouth, feigning surprise, as if she hadn’t been watching the police vehicles parked along Rosslyn Grove as well as the various officers walking in and out of house number 22 these past fifteen minutes. “Has anything happened to Miss Pembroke?”

  “All I can tell you at this moment is that we are investigating a suspicious death and that investigations are ongoing,” Helen said, while the neighbour lady emitted another “Oh my God!” for good measure.

  “Did you know Miss Pembroke well?” Helen wanted to know.

  “No… I mean yes… well, I knew her like you know your neighbours on a street like this. We said ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good afternoon’ and sometimes we chatted across the fence. You know, like you do with neighbours…”

  Helen nodded, though to be honest she rarely talked to her own neighbours.

  “Miss Pembroke was quite a character,” the neighbour lady said, “She’s been living in here since forever and knows everybody, including all the celebrities who used to live around here. Oh yes, and she is — was — a witch.”

  “A witch?” Helen repeated, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.

  “Well, not a broomstick-riding, pointy-hatted, wart on her nose witch like in Harry Potter, of course,” the woman explained, “Miss Pembroke was more like a Druid or a Wiccan or whatever you call these people. She knew a lot about herbs and she gave me a herbal salve for my sciatica once, which worked a lot better than the stuff the doctor prescribed…”

  The woman held her back, as if talking about her sciatica had brought the pain back.

  “Besides, Miss Pembroke had that altar in her garden and sometimes she would do rituals, chanting and the like.”

  “I guess that explains the unusual garden d&eeacute;cor, ma’am,” PC Jackson remarked.

  “And…” The neighbour lady lowered her voice. “…I think sometimes Miss Pembroke went dancing on the Heath by night…” She lowered her voice even further. “…you know, naked.”

  A self-styled witch performing rituals in her garden and dancing naked on Hampstead Heath by the light of the full moon. That probably didn’t make her exactly popular with the city millionaires who had infested Hampstead of late.

  “Did anybody have any problems with Miss Pembroke’s more… unusual activities?”

  The neighbour lady shook her head. “Not really. Well, there was gossip, but… you don’t move to Hampstead, if you don’t like the colourful characters who live here. And Miss Pembroke certainly was a colourful character.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual today, Miss…?” Helen asked.

  “Carnes. Annabel Carnes,” the neighbour lady supplied, “And no, I didn’t. It was
just a day like any other. This is a quiet neighbourhood, you know?”

  Except for the chanting, ritual-performing self-styled witch, that was.

  “Did you see Miss Pembroke today?”

  “Not today, but yesterday morning. She said ‘Hello’ to me and got onto her bicycle.”

  “Do you know where she went?”

  Annabel Carnes shrugged. “To the shops, I think. At any rate, she came back with shopping bags hanging from the handlebars.”

  “Did you see anybody else in or near Miss Pembroke’s house?”

  Annabel Carnes shook her head. “Just Mr. York.”

  “Mr. York?”

  “I think he’s her nephew or something. A relative, at any rate. He often drops by to visit Miss Pembroke and check if everything is all right.”

  PC Jackson consulted his notebook and leant towards Helen. “She’s talking about one Nicholas York, aged thirty-four, the victim’s nephew. He found her.”

  “And where is he?” Helen wanted to know.

  PC Jackson pointed at the house behind them. “Inside, with DC Walker.”

  Helen turned around, took in the house, the garden and the empty driveway. She frowned.

  “Does the nephew live in the neighbourhood?”

  “No. He lives in… I’m not actually sure where, but it’s quite a way off,” Annabel Carnes said.

  “Then how did he get here? By tube? Cause there is no car.”

  “Mr. York always parks on the street,” Annabel Carnes replied.

  “Even though his aunt’s house has a perfectly usable driveway?”

  “Miss Pembroke… well, she didn’t want Mr. York to park his car in the driveway. She said it disturbed the harmony of the garden and disrupted the flow of cosmic energy.” Annabel Carnes shrugged helplessly. “Like I said, she was a bit eccentric.”

  “Was there anything unusual about Mr. York today or yesterday?”

  Annabel Carnes scrunched her forehead — or rather she tried, for the Botox keeping her face smooth made that expression quite impossible. “Not really. That is, he had a bag with him yesterday.”

  “What sort of bag?”

  “A plastic bag, like a shopping bag. He carried it when he walked up the driveway, but it was gone, when he came out again. He probably brought her food or something. He sometimes did that.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Carnes,” Helen said, “You’ve been a great help.”

  PC Jackson took up his post at the door again, while Helen ventured quite literally into the den of the witch. Though as witches’ dens went, Eudora Pembroke’s home was surprisingly cosy.

  The furnishings were antique, but of the slightly battered and eclectic sort you might expect to find an underground antique market rather than in the boutique stores of Chelsea and Kensington.

  The rooms were pleasantly cluttered. Every square centimetre of wall was covered with paintings, plaques and wall hangings. Shelves were stuffed full of books, sofas were covered in quilts and embroidered pillows and there were statues, candleholders, decorative vases and bowls everywhere. The lamps all had beaded and fringed shades, crystal chimes were dangling from the ceiling and the persistent smell of incense hung in the air.

  Detective Constable Kevin Walker met Helen in the hallway. “Morning, boss,” he said, “You’ve sure been taking your time.”

  “PC Jackson and I have been talking to a nosy neighbour.”

  “And…?”

  “Nothing of substance yet, but we got some prime gossip about the victim. So, what do we have here, Constable?”

  “Well, the victim is one Eudora Pembroke, age…” DC Walker checked his notebook, “…seventy-two. Her nephew, one Nicholas York, came to check on her this morning and found her. He called an ambulance, the paramedic suspected foul play and called us.”

  “Any evidence that the paramedic may have been on to something?” Helen wanted to know.

  “You’ll have to ask Dr. Rajiv. He’s with the victim in the living room.”

  “And the nephew?”

  “Waiting in the kitchen with a uniform,” DC Walker replied, “So who do you want first, victim or nephew?”

  “Let’s take a look at the victim and see what Dr. Rajiv has to say,” Helen declared, “The nephew can wait.”

  DC Walker made a face. “He won’t like that.”

  “The impatient type, is he?”

  DC Walker nodded.

  Helen’s mouth formed a wicked smile. “Well, in that case he can definitely wait.”

  The living room looked much like the rest of the house, cosy and pleasantly chaotic. The cosiness of the surroundings stood in sharp contrast to the body that sat slumped in an overstuffed armchair. The sickening smell of various bodily fluids hung in the air, so strong that not even the pervasive scent of incense could dispel it.

  Dr. Rajiv was kneeling before the body, taking the temperature. When Helen and DC Walker entered, he looked up, dark eyes sparkling behind gold-rimmed glasses.

  “I wish you a pleasant morning, Inspector.” He nodded to Helen. “Though I fear the morning was not quite so pleasant for poor Miss Pembroke here.”

  He examined the thermometer he had stuck into Eudora Pembroke’s liver. “I correct, the morning was not just not pleasant for Miss Pembroke here, she didn’t even live to see it, since she died last night.”

  “When precisely?”

  “Sometime between nine and eleven, I’d say.”

  “That matches the report from the paramedic,” DC Walker explained, “She said that when she arrived the telly was still running, likely left on from last night.”

  Helen took a few steps forward, until she stood right next to the forensic medical examiner, and looked down at the body.

  For a woman in her seventies, Eudora Pembroke looked surprisingly fit — if not for the fact that she was dead. She had the look of an aged hippie, long free-flowing grey hair and loose linen clothing in cheerful colours. Around her neck, she wore a silver pendant adorned with a gleaming crystal, some kind of amulet obviously. She’d apparently reached for it at the moment of death, for her hand was still curled around the amulet. Her fingers were raw and reddened, though whether that was the result of her death or merely a perimortal allergic reaction Helen could not say.

  Eudora Pembroke’s featured were twisted, her eyes wide open, suggesting that she had not died easily.

  “Any chance that this was a natural death?” Helen wanted to know, “A fatal heart attack or something?”

  Dr. Rajiv shook his head. “Unlikely. Fatal heart attacks only occasionally lead to vomiting…” He pointed at a discoloured spot, where something had dried on the carpet. “…and almost never to bloody diarrhoea.”

  “How about a ruptured appendix or something along those lines?”

  “It’s not impossible, but if you want my best guess — though we’ll have to wait until the post-mortem to be certain — I’d say that Miss Pembroke was poisoned.”

  “Poison, huh?” Helen emitted a whistle through her teeth. “Do you have any idea what the poison was?”

  Helen looked around the room, but saw no glass, plate, cup, hypodermic or other obvious means of poisoning someone.

  “Or how she might have ingested it?” she asked.

  “Lots of possibilities at this point,” Dr. Rajiv said, “Arsenic, Parathion, Paraquat, Prazosin, turpentine, amanita, Spanish fly…”

  DC Walker began to giggle at the idea of a seventy-two-year-old woman using a potentially fatal aphrodisiac. A pointed glance from Helen quickly silenced him.

  “…privet, water hemlock, autumn crocus, daphne, corn cockle and so on. Lots of substances can cause the symptoms seen in Miss Pembroke. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem and the tox screen to be sure.”

  “Arsenic, you say?” DC Walker stroked his chin. “Could this be an accident like the case of the dead intern at the Victoria and Albert? After all, she has lots of old stuff here.”

  “Anything is possible, Constable,” Dr. Raji
v said, “Like I said, we’ll have to wait for the post-mortem.”

  “According to the neighbour, the victim was something of a herbalist…” Helen said, “…and apparently, a practitioner of magic rituals of some kind. So is it possible that her death was caused by ingesting a poisonous plant?”

  “Of course, Inspector. There are several poisonous plants which might cause the sort of symptoms Miss Pembroke experienced. Though again…”

  “…we’ll have to wait for the post-mortem to be sure,” Helen completed, “Yes, I know.”

  Eudora Pembroke’s kitchen had the sort of cosy, homey look you’d expect to find in a photo spread in Country Living. The kitchen cabinets and the table were solid wood, counters and walls covered in Delft style tiles. Shelves held various jars and tins, all neatly labelled. A copper kettle waited on an Aga stove, the curtains were cheerful and chequered.

  The kitchen would have looked pleasantly inviting, if not for scene of the crime officer Charlotte Wong in her white coverall, who was eagerly dusting and bagging various kitchen implements.

  Charlotte beamed at them, as soon as Helen and DC Walker entered, though Helen had no illusions that the smile was meant for her, for DC Walker and Charlotte Wong had been dating for a while.

  “I’ve found a used tea pot and cup as well as a salad bowl,” Charlotte Wong announced, “I also found remnants of salad and what seems to have been some kind of herbal tea in the garbage.”

  “Excellent,” Helen said, “Dr. Rajiv says the victim was poisoned, so bag anything that might have contained the poison.”

  Charlotte executed a mock salute. “Will do, boss.”

  Charlotte Wong returned to her work and began sifting through Eudora Pembroke’s kitchen garbage, while Helen turned her attention to the man who was sitting at the kitchen table.

  He was in his late thirties with dark hair that was gradually thinning and a body that was gradually accumulating fat. He was wearing a suit — not tailored, but decent enough — and a burgundy silk tie that was slightly askew. For someone who had just found his elderly aunt dead in her favourite armchair, he seemed remarkably calm.