“Are there many of them?”
“Oh, no—remarkably few, considering how fascinating pagan licentiousness must appear to ladies whose idea of ultimate degradation is being trapped in their hostess’s lavatory with an unsinkable turd.”
The inspector looked a little startled, but at once recovered composure.
“By ‘merely folksy’, would you be referring to the membership of the Flaxborough Folklore Society?” he asked.
“In general, yes.”
He took from his pocket a folded sheet of paper.
“I’ve a list here of the people who belong to it. All those who turned up at the meeting last Wednesday night—the one from which Edna Hillyard disappeared—have been questioned. I haven’t seen reports of all the interviews yet, but I do know that they tally in most particulars and that they contain no suggestion of what might have happened to Miss Hillyard.”
“Do you believe them, inspector?”
“No.”
Miss Teatime leaned forward. “May I?” She took the list from the inspector’s hand.
After a brief scrutiny, she said: “All very respectable people, Mr Purbright.”
“Yes, indeed.”
“But you suspect, do you not, that a trained psychical investigator, with proper equipment, might detect a sepulchre or two beneath all this whiteness.”
“I have an open mind on the subject, Miss Teatime.”
“How refreshing to encounter an unprejudiced policeman. You have no idea what a rara avis you are, Mr Purbright.”
She rose.
“If you will make yourself comfortable for a few moments, I shall see what comes of submitting this list to a few preliminary psychometrical tests.”
Half-way to the door, she stopped and came back to pick up the workbasket.
“What is that for?” Purbright asked.
“It contains my resonating orgonoscope,” explained Miss Teatime.
In her bedroom, she relaxed against stacked-up pillows after pouring half a tumbler of whisky and lighting one of her little chocolate-coloured cigars. She read again through Purbright’s list and underlined in pencil the names of Mrs Gloss, Mrs Pentatuke, Mrs Gooding and Paracelsus Parkin.
Rejoining Purbright a quarter of an hour later, she handed him the list.
“Your consort of viles,” she announced.
“You have been quick.”
“Ah, we do not depend upon things like the old Ouija board nowadays, inspector. With a modern orgonoscope, it is possible to pre-set the vibrations. Then all one has to do is read off the radionic dials. Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“That is kind of you, but I think not.” He put the sheet of paper back in his pocket.
“To be quite fair,” said Miss Teatime, “there are other names there which produced some reaction on the multi-oscillator unit. However, I thought you would wish me to keep the field as narrow as possible. Those I have indicated are the real off-the-scale ding-dongers.”
Purbright thanked her and prepared to leave.
“Oh, by the way...” She pointed to the pocket in which he had slipped the list of folklorists. “Had you noticed something rather interesting about the holders of office in that organization?”
He frowned. “No, I don’t think so.”
“It seemingly has no president.”
“But there is a chairman. Mrs whatsername—Framlington. Not all these societies have presidents.”
“If you will look in the current issue of the local paper,” said Miss Teatime, patiently, “you will find in the report of the quarterly Revel, as they call it, a reference to Miss Hillyard’s having been the winner of a prize. The name of the prize was the President’s Maypole Trophy.”
Purbright gazed at her admiringly.
“You are being very perceptive today, Miss Teatime.”
She laid a finger delicately against the side of her small and nicely shaped nose.
“Exceptive, Mr Purbright,” she corrected. “It is the spirits that should be given credit, not ourselves.”
“KILLER CURSE PUT ON HEALTH CHIEF
IN VOODOO TOWN.”
Purbright looked with disbelief at the identity of the paper Love had just handed him. It was none of the national news organs, but the usually prosaic Eastern Evening Advertiser from the next county, an early edition of which reached Flaxborough in mid-afternoon.
“Not more poultry, surely,” murmured the inspector, beginning to tackle the main text of the story.
“No,” Love said. “Sage.”
Purbright scowled at the page before him. “Jokes, Sid, we can do without just now.”
“It’s not a joke. Read on a bit. You’ll see.”
According to the Evening Advertiser report, a cleaner in the department of the Flaxborough Medical Officer of Health had come across what appeared to be a sort of wreath propped against the door of Dr Cropper’s private office. Attached to the wreath was a white card with his name on it. Supposing it to be something agricultural that had been left for analysis, she laid it on a sheet of paper on the doctor’s desk.
Only then did the cleaner notice an object twisted amongst the twigs and leaves that made up the wreath. It was a snake. She ran screaming out of the office and locked it behind her.
When the department staff arrived, two of the men—a clerk and a health inspector—went into the office prepared to deal with the snake. They found it was a grass snake or “slow-worm” as people in the locality would have called it. It was dead.
There were interviews with the cleaner and the clerk, a man called Hodgson. Hodgson it was who had identified the snake. He thought he knew what the wreath had been made from, too, although it was half rotten and looked as if it had been buried for some time. Sage, diagnosed Mr Hodgson.
“I beg your pardon, Sid,” said Purbright, and read on.
The paper recapitulated some of the allegedly occult goings-on which had given Flaxborough recent notoriety; then spread itself on an interview by telephone with Denise Cornelius, demonologist and author.
“Common or garden sage,” Miss Cornelius had revealed to the Advertiser, “was once considered a very powerful harm-dealing magic when it had been kept in the ground for a certain period and dug up with prescribed ceremony. English witches valued its malignant properties highly. The most terrible use of ‘sage-rot’ was in conjunction with a reptile-type charm. The purpose of that combination invariably was to kill. And I have no doubt that it worked.”
The Russians, added Miss Cornelius, were known to have organized the re-establishment of witch covens in England and America. Their recruitment of evil powers was far advanced.