It is October in Gasper’s Cove, and at Seaview Manor a tea party of formidable seniors has turned to their favourite subject: who’s next. Colleen, who sorts costumes at the recycle depot and helps out at Rankin’s General, is a practical woman who thinks all this talk of witches, wandering cats, and death coming in threes is nonsense, right up until it isn’t?  Here is the first chapter of this Halloween Gasper’s Cove cozy mystery.

Chapter 1

“The thing is, who’s next?”
Colleen knew where this conversation was going. Once again, death was on the agenda.
“You’re right. We’re at two, aren’t we?” Bernadette said, looking over the floral rim of her china cup. It was Wednesday afternoon in a corner of the deserted dining room of Seaview Manor. She was happy when her daughter joined her friends at their weekly tea party.
Here we go, Colleen thought. Death comes in threes. They all believed it. Colleen settled in to listen. She raised her own cup. The aroma, sharp but soothing, caught her off guard. This was no ordinary tea. She took a sip. There was something familiar about the taste, but she couldn’t place it.
“What is this?” Colleen asked.
At the other end of the table, Joyce Evans answered, “Nothing special, just a little extra sage,” she said. “Sage is for wisdom. That’s where the name comes from.”
“A different tea every week,” Colleen’s mother said to her, putting an oatcake on her plate. “But I want to know. Apart from Paddy Kelly on the second floor, who else passed?”
“Bobby, you know Mac’s Border Collie,” Minnie Weekes said. Min was well informed and well dressed. Today, she had a new perm in her lavender hair and a necklace with button earrings to match.
“Oh no,” Colleen said. She remembered the collie, a classic tricolour. “But he was old, wasn’t he?”
Joyce looked up. “Seventeen. Practically unheard of for a dog that size. He was getting lame,” she added. Joyce had sewn gold buttons onto her shirt. Colleen had a vague memory of Joyce’s tearoom off Front Street in Gasper’s Cove, attached to her small alterations business. Colleen wondered if these tea parties at the Manor were Joyce’s idea.
“What happened?” Colleen asked. “He was a lovely dog.”
“He was looking out the window and saw a cat. He was the only dog I knew who could herd cats,” Bernadette said, chuckling. “The cat looked back at him, and Bobby keeled over right there. He died of the excitement in less than a minute. Fell off the couch, took the afghan with him.”
“Poor old boy,” Minnie said. “At least he went in his own home.”
“A blessing, wasn’t it?” Bernadette mused. “Who do we think is next?”
Colleen felt uneasy. This was nonsense. And it didn’t seem to her to be healthy talk for women at the end of their own lives.
“Come on, ladies, what are you? A coven?” she teased, hoping to divert the conversation.
The tea party seniors glanced at each other.
“What exactly do you mean by coven?” her mother asked.
“Witches,” Colleen explained. She looked at the paper silhouettes of pumpkins taped to the walls of the dining room, “like at Halloween.”
Bernadette paused as if waiting for permission to speak. A few of the women moved their heads slightly. Why not? They seemed to agree. After all, Colleen, in her sixties, would be one of them soon.
“Be careful about what you say about witches,” Bernadette told her daughter. “In the old days, every community had one.”
“Come on, Mom,” Colleen protested. “Those were old wives’ tales.” Immediately, she wished she could take her words back. Here she was, sitting in a circle of old wives. “Witches weren’t real,” she added, trying to recover. Colleen was a practical person and proud of it.
The women ignored her.
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Joyce said tartly. “Witches came over on the boats from Scotland with everyone else. They were needed. Someone had to enforce the rules.”
“The rules?” Colleen asked. Her mother and her friends, she decided, were losing touch with reality.
“Hard times,” her mother explained. “Everyone had to be decent, pull together.” It was important that her daughter understood how life was then. “If you didn’t, it would get back to the witch. Things would happen.”
One of the ladies, Annie something, had arrived late and eased herself away from her walker and into a chair. “If a man cheated a neighbour, the next morning he’d get up and find his cattle keeled over in the field,” she said.
Minnie nodded; she’d heard of that happening. “A well, that was another big one,” she reminded the group. “Cross a witch and it would suddenly dry up.”
“That, or the water would become so bitter you’d be afraid to drink it.” Bernadette fingered the call button that hung from a cord around her neck, remembering.
“But the worst thing you could do was break someone’s heart,” Minnie continued. “My very own grandmother knew a fisherman one time. He dumped a girl on her wedding day. The next time he went out to fish, a squall took him. Out of the blue, he went down with his boat.” The women murmured; they knew this story. “The thing is, the day he was lost, the sea was as flat as glass. No word of a lie.”
“So, you’re saying these witches kept everyone on the straight and narrow?” Colleen asked. Did they really believe this? She considered the present world and all its troubles. “Where are they now?”
“Around,” Joyce said. “Only quieter. Just ask Maybelline.”
“Maybelline?” Colleen was confused. “Do I know her?”
“You sure do,” Joyce said. “She used to follow you home from school when you were a little girl. Don’t you remember? Black as mascara.”
Bernadette laid a soft hand on her daughter’s arm. This was her mother’s code for saying nothing. “Maybelline,” Bernadette said brightly. “Haven’t seen her for weeks. How’s she doing?”
“Oh, you know that cat,” Joyce laughed. “Comes and goes as she pleases. Shows up when she’s hungry, gives me the news.”
“She came to my door,” Annie said. “Thursday. But she didn’t want to come in. Too bad, she’s always good company.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Joyce said. “Maybelline has a lot going on, particularly this time of year.” She waved a thin hand at the paper jack-o’-lanterns on the wall. “She has her rounds.”
Colleen looked at her watch. Annette, her manager at the Recreate and Recycle Depot, would wonder where she was. “Ladies,” she said, standing up. “I hate to leave you, but I have people waiting for me.” The women looked at her with interest. It had been a while since they’d had obligations to keep.
“My daughter,” Bernadette said with pride, “has two jobs. Down at Rankin’s General part-time, and at that recycle place on Fridays. She’s in charge of sorting the donations and clothes that come in.”
“Clothes from strangers?” Joyce asked, concerned. “You be careful now, never know where they’ve been.”
“True enough,” Colleen said. “But we’re busy these days. People are in looking for costumes.”
“Costumes,” Minnie sniffed. “The fuss they make nowadays. They spend good money on store-bought dress-up, decorating the houses, pretend witches hanging from the trees in the front yards…”
“That’s right,” Bernadette agreed. “I sent my kids out with pillowcases and dressed up in sheets to be ghosts.” She’d had nine children, including Colleen, and hadn’t had time to fuss.
“But we made candied apples, remember?” Minnie pointed her knuckled fingers with their loose wedding rings at Joyce. “You made those special popcorn balls. All the kids went to your house first.” The ladies laughed. For a moment Colleen glimpsed the housewives these women had been, long before they’d lost their own kitchens.
Joyce gave herself a minute to bask in her reputation as a champion popcorn ball maker, then leaned forward into the group. “They’re buying Halloween these days,” she said. “They forget what it’s about.”
The women exchanged looks. They knew exactly what Joyce meant.
“What are you saying?” Colleen asked. She looked at the faded eyes around her. Somehow, this was no longer just a group of old women passing the time.
Her mother spoke first. “You never know who’ll come out of retirement, do you?” Bernadette asked. “You never know.”
Keep reading. Potions and Notions is available as an ebook, exclusively on Amazon and free to read in Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. You can find it here.
Potions and Notions is one of four seasonal Gasper’s Cove novellas. All four are collected in Gasper’s Cove Quick Cozies Books 1–4: Witty and Whimsical Nova Scotia Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, available as an ebook, a print anthology, and an audiobook.