The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

the Elsa information that was taking up three quarters of her brain activity as it was assimilated, and the intolerable heat that made her entire body feel like a melting ice cream: uncomfortably soggy and sticky. Everything was beginning to make so much more sense now, but Meli knew that there was a lot more to uncover. She suspected that more than one villager housed their own grisly skeleton in their cupboards in true Agatha Christie style, and in true Agatha Christie fashion, she was going to root them all out. She strongly suspected that they were all somehow related to Elsa, and to Finn’s death. Had Elsa killed Finn? No, that was just too terrible to be true, but nonetheless, the thought curdled the lemonade in her stomach.
    Meli didn’t stop until Cal arrived home. He was late, but she hadn’t even noticed. As she hadn’t given a thought about dinner, Cal took them all out to have dinner at the pub.
    As soon as Meli had Cal on his own, she relayed the gut-retching details of how she found SS on the table. Meeting his surgically fixed expression, she could tell that at first he thought she was joking, but she quickly put him straight on this. Without comment, he went to the kitchen, and poured them both a large scotch. After a short debate, the best explanation Cal could come up with, with his usual premise that there had to be a perfectly logical explanation, was that Quassi was responsible. With a growing sense of irritability, Meli listened to him expound, with growing confidence in his own deductive powers, that Quassi must have found the body, retrieved it, and brought it home and deposited it on the table. Why couldn’t he just admit that strange things were happening? That someone was coming into their home, taking things, trying to scare her? Was he so blinkered that he could have successfully auditioned for the role of one of the three blind mice in panto? After a short, sulky silence, and without giving in to the angry rebuttal that was trying to prise itself from her mouth, Meli drew breath, and went on to fill him in on some of the other events of the day, including the revelations about Elsa’s past. She was careful to stick to the bare facts, having made a personal pact not to share any more of her own theories, which were like throwing feathers at a stone wall and expecting them to penetrate.
    “I do feel sorry for her,” she commented. “And I can’t make up my mind whether any of this makes it better or worse for us? For all we know we will keep upsetting her and adding to her instability. I wonder if she ever had any help after Finn died, you know, counselling?” She was silent for a moment, then added with conviction in her voice. “But whether she did or not, she does seem to need help now, although a doctor or a psychiatrist might be more in order.”
    “I doubt they would do anything. She isn’t a danger to anyone except maybe herself, as the vicar implied,” Cal sighed with exasperation. “We’ll just have to play it by ear.” Meli bit her tongue. That was easy for him to say, when he wasn’t living with the intimidating presence of Elsa twenty-four hours a day.
    Lying beside Cal, unable to sleep even though midnight had slipped by, Meli contemplated her lot. At some point, the thought flicked through her mind, that the interested buyers before them had in fact had a lucky escape, and that the only luck fate had deemed fit to show them, was bad luck. Otherwise, they would be living somewhere quite happily, with fantastic neighbours who would by now have become their best bosom chums. But then, wouldn’t that be boring by comparison? Her teeth flashed in the darkness. At least each day here was filled with surprises, and despite everything, she loved it. Just those troublesome skeletons between her and paradise.
    She rolled over, trying to put some distance between a pig-grunting, sweating husband who kept encroaching on her space, searching for that elusive cool spot that his sleeping brain wouldn’t believe didn’t exist, if only he could find it. A leg suddenly launched itself across her hip and instantly stuck there, like a huge hairy fly to flypaper. Using the persuasive power of her elbow, she rammed it into the soft fleshy bit, just beneath his ribs. With a grunt of forcibly vented air, he rolled over, his departing thigh like a wax treatment as it painfully removed a layer of skin and hair from them both.

    “Morning mum.”
    Now who could that cheerful