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‘Right about what?’ Kelly said.

Glynnis took a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m afraid to tell you that according to the Stones of Mayhem, something very unfortunate might be soon to happen to you.’ She lifted up a big brown pebble. And from the look of this, I think it might involve a toad.’

20

A Growing Sense of Conspiracy

Kelly had to admit to feeling a little spooked by Glynnis’s words, so, shortly after being told that something unfortunate was set to happen to her, she made her excuses and said she should be getting back.

Glynnis insisted on walking her out, giving her a brief tour of a garden illuminated by pretty night lights, of which Glynnis seemed remarkably proud, even if she did point out, when regarding a spotlighted vegetable patch, that someone had been poaching her turnips.

Kelly considered asking whether or not she’d inquired of her resident ghostly friends if any of them knew anything about it, but didn’t want to risk the wrath of a woman whom she was starting to believe could, in fact, be a real life witch.

She headed back in the direction she thought the Howling Gail Inn was in, but she was a little bit tipsy, and therefore quickly found that she had lost her way.

Rather frustrated that she was able to become so lost in such a small village, she picked out the only landmark that was still visible against the starlit sky, the aqueduct, and decided to head in that direction, hoping that she would soon find her bearings.

However, she hadn’t gone very far when she got the distinctive impression that there were footsteps following her.

Unnerved, she quickened her pace, only for the footsteps to quicken theirs. Unsure what else to do, she broke into a light run, hoping to outpace whoever might be following her. However, the tap-tap-tap of footsteps continued to keep pace.

Soon, she emerged from among the houses and found the aqueduct towering in front of her on the other side of a small field. She could see lights moving across it, perhaps a couple of people walking in the dark in the direction of the hill that led up to the Hanging Tree.

Still nervous that she was being followed, she decided to head towards the end of the aqueduct in the hope that the lights might belong to Edward, out for another late-night jog.

However, as she got closer, she heard voices. It sounded like two men speaking, but she couldn’t be sure if it was the same two men she had heard up on the hilltop.

‘Right here,’ she clearly heard a voice saying. ‘I’ll do it right here.’

With one part of her concentration still on whether or not she was being followed, it was something of a shock for Kelly to hear the other voice say, ‘Will you shoot him or just push him off?’

To her stunned amazement, she realised she was listening to two men talk about a possible murder.

‘A gunshot would be too loud round here,’ the first man said. ‘Everyone would hear it. Plus, it wouldn’t really be realistic for a miner’s son to have a gun, would it?’

‘Maybe a pickaxe, then,’ the first man said. ‘If you really want people to think it was him.’

Terrified, Kelly turned and fled, afraid of being spotted, as the man leaned over the aqueduct and waved his torch about, only just missing where she had been crouched by a bush twenty feet below.

She could hear the footsteps that had been pursuing her again too, and wondered whether this was someone connected with the two men plotting the murder up on top of the aqueduct. She had wandered just outside the village, so turned and sprinted for the nearest streetlights at the end of a quiet residential street. Just as she reached it, her foot slipped in a pothole, and she went crashing to the ground.

She got lucky. Rather than landing on the hard road, she found herself on her knees on a grassy patch of verge. She climbed back up, picked some grit out of her sore palms, and brushed dirt off her jeans.

Just as a torchlight shone directly into her face.

‘Well, well, what do we have here?’ came a familiar voice.

‘Ambrose,’ Kelly said.

‘It’s me indeed, lass,’ he said. ‘I was just out getting a little bit of air. What on earth are you doing?’

She opened her mouth to tell him what she’d overheard. But what if it had been Ambrose who had been following her? And what if he was in with the men on the aqueduct, whoever they were?

She closed her mouth and shrugged, then said, ‘I was just taking a walk, but I got a little lost.’

‘I’ll take you back to the inn,’ Ambrose said a little too quickly, as though he were keen to get her off the streets, perhaps away from where she could overhear the conspiracy.

After all, she was a reporter, and reporters had a tendency to sniff out crimes and reveal truths even when people thought they were being secretive. And it might be that Ambrose had got wind of what she was up to.