Something in the Waters – Chapter One

Lovely people, dragons are incoming!

More worryingly, so are a whole plague of geese and swans, and some deeply suspicious ducks. Do not trust the ducks. Not these ones …

But they do come bearing the new Beaufort Scales mystery, which will be out in all its muddy, feathery glory on the 20th of this month. Yes, in a week. No, I am not organised, and yes, I’m 90% sure I’ve got webbed feet after all this wading about in stories.

However. There will be cake. There will be tea. There will be floods and peril and sandwich attacks, and poor Mortimer had almost stopped stress-shedding there for a moment. Almost.

And all of that, of course, means it’s time to share the first chapter with you. Read on below, and pop back next Friday for chapter two!

Of course, you may prefer not to read on, and not to pop back, and rather wait until you can get your talons on the whole muddy mess at once. You are fabulous, and you can get your ebook pre-orders in now at all your favourite retailers (links below). Paperbacks will be coming soon, and the audiobook will follow in January, read once more by the wonderful and talented Patricia Gallimore.

Pre-order Something in the Waters on Amazon

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Pre-orders are pure magic for an author, and not just in a ‘boost my delicate ego’ way. Because retailers like pre-orders. It tickles their algorithms even better than cake, if such a thing is possible, and means they suggest the book to other readers who also have reservations about waterfowl and a dire need for cake (don’t we all?). So the most enormous, heart-felt thank you for getting your orders in early. You are fabulous.

Of course, if you’d rather not pre-order, but would still like to get your talons on an early copy (you need to be comfortable loading the ebook onto your reader yourself, though – instructions are provided, but just so you know!), you can grab Something in the Waters over on Ko-fi right now. All you lovely Ducky and Keith subscribers will already have yours, but it’s available to buy for everyone!

Yes, I’ll grab it now!

And with all that out of the way – read on, lovely people!

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Chapter One

Miriam

Miriam stood in the main doorway of the village hall, partially protected from the persistent rain by the little shelter over the door. Water dripped from the hood of her waterproof jacket and somehow aimed directly into her wellies, making her think flip-flops would have been a better choice. But winter had wrapped Toot Hansell in a firm, cold-fingered grip, the last of the leaves long gone from the deciduous trees, gardens sunk deep and quiet into the gentle dreams of hibernation, and the rain had a chill she could feel even through her trousers, which she’d donned in place of her usual long skirts as a nod to the weather. She was regretting it now. The rain never got into her wellies when she had a skirt on.

She plucked at the front of her jacket, shaking her arms and trying to get the worst of the rain off before she ventured inside, and Priya shouted, “You’re letting all the warm out, Miriam.”

“Sorry.” She hurried in, pulling the door closed behind her, and set her large (and distinctly damp) hessian carrier bag down on the floor so she could struggle out of her wellies, placing them on the mat and frowning at her sodden socks.

“You didn’t walk, did you?” Pearl said, pausing as she unpacked bundles of soft willow twigs from a cardboard box onto one of the tables, four of which had been pushed together in the centre of the hall to form a large square. It was already scattered with scissors and glue guns and some alarmingly large hammers to go with disproportionately small nails. “It’s not really the day for it.”

“It never seems like the day for it at the moment,” Miriam said, taking a couple of Tupperware containers from her bag and carrying them to the tables, socks squishing unpleasantly.

“Rubbish,” Rose said cheerfully. She was already seated, and attempting to untangle a cat’s cradle of ribbons in various pinks and pastels and other gentle colours. They looked as if some small creature had been nesting in them since last year, and with Rose that was always a possibility. Miriam had discovered a hibernating dormouse in the older woman’s linen cupboard when she’d been looking for a hand towel once. She still wasn’t sure if it had been invited or not, but given the fact they were endangered she rather supposed it had been there for safekeeping. Now Rose said, “No such thing as bad weather. Only the wrong clothes.” She gave Miriam a critical look. “Waterproof trousers, Miriam.”

“Far too hot.” Miriam replied. “Plus they’re only good when one’s outside. I can’t stand sitting around in them after.”

“Just take them off when you get where you’re going,” Rose said, twisting in her seat and kicking out a leg to demonstrate the fact she’d evidently been wearing luminous green leggings (they matched her short hair) and knee-high, dinosaur-print socks under her own. Her Great Dane, Angelus, looked at her in alarm, as if he thought she might need saving from the dinosaurs.

“If this rain keeps up, I’ll consider it,” Miriam said truthfully, and went through to the hall’s compact, slightly shabby kitchen, where Jasmine was filling the kettle from a large glass bottle of water. Her Pomeranian, Primrose, was lying in the corner with a dog chew between her paws, and she broke off her gnawing to bare her teeth at Miriam. Miriam ignored her, in the hope the horrible dog would return the favour. She never liked to think the worst of anyone, but she was certain Primrose spent all her free time plotting the downfall of the human race. “Hello Jasmine, love. Have we got enough water? I brought some extra.” She set a matching bottle down on the worktop, next to the one Jasmine had just emptied.

“I think we’re okay,” Jasmine said, flicking the kettle on. “We’ve still got half a crate left from yesterday’s delivery. The toilet’s making dreadful noises, though. I don’t think we should use it.”

Miriam tried the tap, and frowned at the water that gurgled into the sink. It wasn’t too bad, she supposed, not when one considered what people dealt with in other parts of the world. It didn’t smell, and it was only barely discoloured when one ran it into a glass, milky with trapped air and suspended grit, but she didn’t fancy drinking it, boiled or not. And it was most out of the ordinary for Toot Hansell. She’d never known the village to have trouble with the water before.

“It’s got to be this rain,” Gert announced, collecting glasses to take through to the hall. “Playing havoc with the springs. I had a bath last night and when I got out it looked like I’d been rolling in chalk or something.”

“Mine’s exactly the same,” Miriam said, picking up an array of mismatched mugs. “It is odd, though. It’s not like we haven’t had rain before.”

“Not like this,” Jasmine said. “It feels like it’s never going to stop.”

Miriam couldn’t argue with that. The Yorkshire Dales were hardly known for being arid, of course, but this was excessive. She felt as if she could barely remember their last sunny day, and her garden was rapidly becoming a swamp. Despite this, though, the levels of the waterways that encircled and cradled Toot Hansell were oddly low. It was as if the rain was building up in the land rather than making its way to the proper places, and the water that was still in the wells and springs that supplied the houses was distinctly unpleasant.

As the entire village’s water supply was private, the county water board wanted nothing to do with the problems, and several calls to the Environment Agency had resulted in nothing more than an assurance that it was likely just the rain and would go away on its own. After some enthusiastic complaining, though, Skipton council had sent someone out to take a look. They’d snapped some photos and siphoned some water into a few sample jars but pointed out that it wasn’t their responsibility either, and now any sort of progress on a solution was somewhat stalled.

Meanwhile, a spate of stomach upsets and some rather nasty fevers had led to a general agreement on the village Facebook group that no one should drink the water. Connor at the deli had taken it on himself to create a very official-looking graphic to make everyone pay attention, but Miriam doubted anyone had really needed telling. Some of the descriptions of the aftermath of drinking it had veered into the unpleasantly graphic.

But a bit of rain and some technical difficulties weren’t the sort of thing that could slow down the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute. They had a Valentine’s Day market to prepare for, after all, gifts to make and schedules to plan and tasks to allocate, and one couldn’t make a fuss about a little inclement weather or water shortages. So Miriam went back into the hall with the mugs, setting them on the table among the steadily growing collection of cakes and slices and biscuits, glue guns and ribbons and tiny heart-shaped baubles, as the remaining ladies of the W.I. emerged out of the rain, damp but good-humoured.

* * *

Miriam squinted at the tangle of willow, dried flowers, and ribbon on the table in front of her, put an extra blob of glue onto a clump of pink feathers to fix them in place a bit more securely, then nodded in satisfaction. She got up and carried her wreath to the little stage at the front of the hall, where a dozen others were already laid out neatly, waiting for the glue to set. They ranged from classically pink-themed creations, crowded with hearts and glittery spangles (Gert), to a cheery flow of rainbow colours (Pearl), to minimalist and natural-looking (Alice), and … well, interesting. Miriam set hers (lots of dried flowers and feathers, with a dusky pink theme) down in a spare patch of space next to Jasmine’s, which featured a smothering of red ribbons that were already slowly unravelling.

Miriam surveyed the others, then said, “Rose, have you put skulls on yours?”

“Just a couple of bird ones I picked up,” Rose said. “Plus some feathers. Adds a bit of interest.”

“I put extra hearts on mine,” Carlotta said. “And some of those little adult dice. That’s interesting.”

Miriam made a face. She thought she preferred Rose’s sort of interesting. “More tea?” she asked the hall at large, and was rewarded with a chorus of acceptance. She took the two big teapots from the tables and wandered into the kitchen, the door swinging shut behind her. The kitchen was low-ceilinged, a lean-to that had been added onto the back of the hall as a much later afterthought, and the rain was a ceaseless monotone on the roof, splashing from the overflowing gutter and painting the windows in a shifting flood that distorted the slumbering garden beyond. It should’ve been soothing, but the long days – weeks, even – of rain had her unsettled. She felt like the village was slowly sinking under the weight of it all.

A crate of glass bottles of water sat on the worktop, half of them empty, and Miriam pulled her attention off the garden, scolding herself for being silly. It was just rain. She filled the kettle from one of the bottles, then examined the label to distract herself. The bottle was heavy and square-shouldered, and the label was minimalist in the way only very expensive things are. A swirling logo decorated the front, and small print ran up one side, both on translucent backgrounds. Sourced: better than water. On the other side, similarly small, was 100% Toot Hansell, refined, purified, and bottled at the source. She sniffed, and looked around as Alice came into the kitchen to wash her hands.

“Utter tosh,” Miriam said, showing her the bottle.

Alice barely glanced at it. “All the better than water nonsense? I’m not even sure what that means.”

“I know. It is water, so how’s it supposed to be better than itself?”

“I imagine they simply think it sounds impressive. Although we do have very good water.” Alice turned the tap on, and it spat angrily, gurgled, banged about in the pipes, then disgorged a trickle of milky liquid into the sink. Alice grimaced, but washed her hands in it anyway and added, “Usually.”

“I suppose we should be grateful Lachlan’s giving us all this,” Miriam observed, meaning the owner of the bottling company.

“I suppose we should,” Alice said, her tone non-committal. “I don’t imagine one gets as rich as him by giving things away, though.”

Lachlan was new to the village, and Miriam was fairly sure the water donations were a ploy to get everyone to like him, but it was also desperately handy. He’d turned up as soon as the complaints about the supply being undrinkable had appeared on the Facebook group, handing out crates of bottles and waving off thanks, talking about being “all in this together” in the manner of someone who’d never been in this at all. But one couldn’t deny the fact it was helpful.

She offered the bottle to Alice, tipping a little over her hands to rinse them, and was about to point out that, so far, Lachlan hadn’t asked for anything in return, and it would be quite a hassle if the whole village had to trek all the way to Skipton to buy water, but movement through the window distracted her. She leaned over the sink, peering out into the sodden garden. Nothing. It must’ve been a combination of the endless rain and the low afternoon light. 

She started to turn away, then caught that same fleeting glimpse, stolen through a momentary gap in the rain on the window, revealing a slight figure in a calf-length dress, a cardigan, and slippers, mired in the garden.

“What on earth—” she started, then the figure was gone again. Not just lost in the rain, gone, as if a curtain had been pulled over them. She blinked, and set the bottle down to hurry to the door.

“What is it?” Alice asked.

“There’s someone out there.” Miriam opened the door onto the rustling, grey-hued dampness, hesitating on the threshold as she strained to see over the low drystone wall at the bottom of the hall’s garden into the churchyard that adjoined it. Alice joined her, peering dubiously at the dull afternoon.

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. But they were in slippers.” Miriam frowned. No one would be out here in slippers on a day like this. But she was sure that was exactly what she’d seen. And a cardigan, not a waterproof jacket. She couldn’t see them now, but she had done, she was sure of it, and she couldn’t just leave them out there. Not dressed like that. She pulled her socks off, keeping her eyes on the garden.

“Miriam, wait,” Alice said, but Miriam had already stepped out into the grey afternoon, the grass soft and slick under her bare feet, water squishing between her toes and rain chilling her face.

“Hello?” she called, hurrying to the wall and leaning over the stile. “Is someone there?”

“Miriam!” Alice called after her. “Come back and get your coat. You’ll catch your death.”

Miriam ignored her, peering into the skeletal stands of trees in the churchyard, then checking each way along the wall, as if someone might be crouched there waiting to jump out at her in some strange prank. But the trim grass among the gravestones was empty, the bare trunks of the trees too slim to hide anyone other than a child. Miriam was sure she hadn’t seen a child, not with those slippers and that cardigan. She turned away from the wall and trekked around the hall, paying no attention to the steadily increasing weight of her sodden jumper and the chilly trails the rain was plotting down her neck.

At the front of the hall the road was empty in both directions, no one out walking on such a miserable day, not even dragging a reluctant dog along. The only cars were the ones parked at the kerb, all of them belonging to the W.I. She stood there frowning at the deepening afternoon, aware of a chill collecting on her arms that was nothing to do with the cold January rain. She could taste something oddly brackish at the back of her throat, as if she’d been drinking the stale tap water, and the day seemed dimmer than it had a moment ago. She took a shivering breath, hugging herself tightly, then looked around as an umbrella swung over her.

Teresa looked down at her, her face serious. “Are you alright, Miriam?”

Miriam looked back at the hall, finding the front door wide open and the W.I. packed into the gap, all of them watching her with worried faces.

“I saw someone,” she said. “I’m sure I did. In slippers. They can’t be well, dressed like that in this weather.”

No one answered for a moment, then Alice stepped out into the rain, her wellies on and the hood of her sky-blue coat pulled up over her silver hair. “Then I think we’d best find them, don’t you?”

“I’m ready!” Jasmine called, pushing out after her and struggling on her luminous yellow Police Community Support Officer jacket as she came. “I can coordinate!”

“Joy,” Gert said, but Jasmine barely glanced at her.

“Miriam, come in and dry off,” Priya said, waving at her. “I’ve turned the heating all the way up. It’s ever so efficient since Amelia fixed it. It won’t take a moment, then you can go out again.”

Efficient was an understatement when it came to the hall’s old boiler, which was what one got when a dragon put themself in charge of repairs. But as tempting as it was (she was already shivering, and had lost feeling in her toes somewhat), Miriam abandoned the shelter of Teresa’s umbrella to continue her circumnavigation of the hall. “There’s no time. They can’t have gone far – perhaps they got over the wall and into the church before I got there?”

Teresa hurried after her, trying to keep the umbrella over them both, her running shoes squelching in the wet grass. “Did you recognise them?”

“I only saw them through the window. It was too far away to tell.”

There was no one on the other side of the hall either, and Alice caught up to them as they reached the garden to the rear again. “Teresa, you go back,” she said, handing Miriam her jacket as the younger woman climbed over the stile into the churchyard. Miriam took it, pulling it on without taking her eyes from the dripping trees and damp gravestones. That brackish taste at the back of her throat seemed to have intensified.

“Are you sure?” Teresa asked. She was shivering in her koi-print leggings and light jumper.

“Yes, no point all of us getting pneumonia,” Alice said, giving Miriam a pointed look.

Miriam looked away from the churchyard finally, her cheeks flaring with heat. “I’m sorry. But I really did see someone. And we can’t just leave them.”

“Of course not,” Teresa said. “You go on. I’ll get the kettle on again for when you find them.” She headed back to the hall with her trainers squidging audibly.

“Sorry,” Miriam said again.

“Not at all,” Alice said. “Enough of us have decent clothing to be out in. Shall we check the church?”

“It’s the only possibility I can think of,” Miriam said. “They’d have had to run, though.” And the person she’d seen didn’t look like much of a runner. But she fell into step with Alice as they headed for the graceful old building, small but crowned with an impressive spire.

They were barely halfway to it when Carlotta shouted from the hall garden. Miriam spun around, almost slipping in her bare feet, and Alice turned a little more circumspectly.

“There!” Carlotta shouted, standing at the corner of the hall and pointing urgently toward the road and the green beyond it. “I saw someone there!” Pearl was on the road itself, peering in the direction Carlotta was pointing while her old Labrador, Martha, splashed in the overflowing drains.

Miriam ran back to the stile, scrambling over it and rushing to join Carlotta. “Who was it?”

“I couldn’t tell,” she said, trying to stop her hood falling over her eyes. “But they looked like they were in a dressing gown.”

“I saw someone in a cardigan,” Miriam said, frowning.

“I hope there’s not two of them out here,” Pearl said as Alice joined them, and another shout went up from the green. Miriam caught a glimpse of Jasmine’s bright yellow jacket in the shadows among the trees that edged its far side, then the younger woman emerged, sprinting across the grass with Primrose in her arms and half a dozen geese in fierce pursuit.

“There’s someone in there!” Rose yelled from the edge of the green, pointing at the duck pond.

“You get them, then,” Jasmine shouted back. The geese had stopped but she was still running, and the women at the church gate looked at each other.

“If they’re in there with the geese, good luck to them,” Carlotta said.

“Yes, but … a dressing gown? Slippers?” Miriam said. “We can’t just leave them.”

“Running around in all directions isn’t getting us anywhere,” Alice said, then raised her voice. “Ladies, regroup!” The words rang sharp and clear across the road and around the hall, and Miriam half expected the geese to come to attention along with the W.I. All the birds did was glower from the edge of the pond, though.

The ladies filed back into the cake-scented, welcoming heat of the hall, but Miriam lingered on the edge of the road, scanning the green with its flat, lurking pond, and the empty streets stretching to either side of the hall. Chimneys puffed smoke and windows glittered with leftover Christmas lights, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all a façade, an illusion projected on a cold and dreadful reality, one that tasted of muddy, brackish water and cold silences. She really wanted to be wrong, for there to be no one out here in their slippers or their dressing gown, lost and wandering. Wanted to just be seeing ghosts and mirages brought on by the long cold of the winter and the dreadful, endless rain.

But she didn’t think so. She thought the day was just as it felt. The sort of day that could swallow one whole, never to be seen again.

Unless they did something about it, of course.

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It’s not mirages, is it? And it’s not just the geese, either. Something is most definitely afoot in Toot Hansell, and it’s going to get a whole lot muckier before the ladies get to the bottom of things …

Check back next week for chapter two, and don’t forget you can get your pre-order in now should you fancy!

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It never rains, but it pours. 

And in Toot Hansell, that goes double… 

When Toot Hansell’s water supply turns murky, it’s easy to blame the notoriously soggy Yorkshire weather. But this winter, the rain’s endless, the water’s undrinkable, and the village is slowly turning into a bog.

The local water sprite, Nellie, could probably sort it all out – if she hadn’t mysteriously vanished, leaving behind a battalion of furious geese, which are only adding to the problems. Now the only clean water in town is arriving in pricey bottles from Toot Hansell’s new wellness guru, Lachlan Jameson.

And the rising water isn’t the only problem. People are vanishing, strange faces are appearing in the streams, and quicksand is starting to become a real concern. The dragons and the ladies of the Women’s Institute know this is more than a bit of inclement weather, and they’re not going to stand by and watch their village drown.

But the deeper they wade into the mystery, the murkier things get. Because something is lurking in the depths—and if the WI, the dragons, and one reluctantly off-the-books detective inspector don’t get to the bottom of it soon, the whole valley could be swept away.

This winter, it’ll take tea, teamwork, and all the stubborn deviousness of ladies of a certain age to keep Toot Hansell from being washed off the map… 

Beaufort Scales, book excerpt, books, chapter one, cozy fantasy, cozy mystery, Something in the waters, writing