Amanderella and the Mystery of the Disappearing Vicar Chapter 3.

Chapter 3.

 

Lower Wobbleford.

 

Amanderella closed the papers, thoughtful but untroubled.

“Very well,” she said. “Leave them with me.”

Lady Maudy inclined her head in gratitude, and Amanderella saw her to the door with quiet courtesy.

When the house had settled again into its usual stillness, she looked once more at the neat bundle of documents. Despite careful reading there was nothing in them that gave any clue at all about the identity of ‘G’ nor any indication of his fate. Yet one thing was unmistakable. “G” had been the only man who understood the entire arrangement. Everyone else had known only their own small part, and the Spruckmedders had kept themselves at a tactful distance from the practicalities.

There was only one sensible next step. The following morning dawned pale and brisk, the sort of weather that encouraged clear thinking and firm decisions. Amanderella finished her tea, folded her map, and wheeled her motorbike out of Mrs Gaffletter’s immaculate shed with the care due to both machinery and polished floors.

Mrs Gaffletter appeared, arms folded, apron starched into submission.

“You are going off again,” she said. It was not a question.

“Yes,” Amanderella replied mildly.

Mrs Gaffletter surveyed the sky, the motorbike, and Amanderella’s boots with equal suspicion.

“Well,” she said at last, “I suppose someone must go gallivanting about the countryside, though why it has to be you I cannot imagine. Perfectly good people stay at home and mind their own business.”

Amanderella waited. Mrs Gaffletter was only warming up.

“You will take a scarf,” she continued. “The wind is sharp, and sharp winds lead to sharp tempers, and sharp tempers lead to untidiness. And if you are caught in the rain, you will not drip on my hall floor. I will not have puddles. Puddles are the beginning of chaos.”

“I shall be careful,” Amanderella said.

“And you will not be back for supper,” Mrs Gaffletter went on, narrowing her eyes. “I can always tell. Whenever you say you might be, you never are. So, I shall not put a plate out. I do not hold with wasted food.”

“No,” Amanderella agreed. “I may be away for some time.”

Mrs Gaffletter sniffed, the sniff of a woman who disapproved of lateness, motorbikes, mysteries, and the general behaviour of the outside world.

“Well then,” she said, stepping back with reluctant dignity. “Off you go. But mind the roads. And the weather. And the people. Especially the people.”

Amanderella smiled behind her goggles. “I shall.”

She kicked the starter. The motorbike gave a cheerful growl.

Mrs Gaffletter folded her arms more tightly. “And if you bring back anything that whistles, drips, glows, or tries to escape, it will not cross my threshold.”

Amanderella nodded solemnly. “Understood.”

Only then did Mrs Gaffletter allow herself a small, dignified nod, the closest she ever came to wishing someone good luck.

Amanderella set off down Wimple Terrace, the wind tugging at her scarf and the day stretched out before her, as full of possibility as a blank map.

The mystery of The G would not solve itself.

Lower Wobbleford was situated where the good grazing land gave up the struggle. To the north, the hills were soft and green, dotted with sheep who looked as though they had been painted into the landscape by someone with a fondness for order. But as the road dipped southwards, the fields grew stonier, the hedges more wind‑battered, and the soil turned the colour of old iron.

Amanderella gripped the handlebars as the road hugged the edge of the coast. To her left, the cliffs weren’t high or grand; they were low, crumbling walls of soft rock. They looked like they were falling apart on purpose, with just enough rock-fall to hide narrow hidden paths. From the road, you’d never know a person could climb down there, but she could see the faint tracks where boots had worn a way to the sand.

She sped past small, curved coves that looked like perfect little swimming spots with the tide in. But she knew the trick. When the water dropped, those innocent blue pools would turn into traps of jagged rocks and thick, black mud. It was the kind of place that looked like It was a place that wore a mask of seaside charm by day, only to reveal its jagged teeth when the tide turned.

The road smoothed out next to long banks of grey pebbles. These shingle beaches were deep and steep. She knew that if a boat landed here, the stones would soak up the sound, allowing a crew to haul a heavy hull up onto the shore in total silence. No splashing, no wooden thuds, just a quiet slide into the shadows.

She swung the motorcycle inland, and suddenly the horizon vanished. The lanes became a tangle of high hedges and sharp, sudden turns. It felt like the roads had been built specifically to make people get lost. One wrong turn and you’d be looping back on yourself, which was exactly what you’d want if you were being chased by the law.

As the sun dipped lower, she hit the flat marshlands. A cold, wet mist started to crawl out of the grass, swirling around her boots. The fog played tricks on her eyes; every old gatepost or twisted bush looked like a person standing still. Out here, you couldn't tell what was real and what was just a shadow. Everyone looked like a ghost, and every movement felt like a secret.

The mist began to thin as the motorcycle climbed away from the damp marshes, and the first flickering orange glows of Lower Wobbleford appeared ahead. It wasn’t the sort of town that loomed out of the dark or hid behind iron gates; it just sat there, solid and sensible, nestled into a fold of the hills.

The town was a cluster of sturdy stone cottages and shops, their windows glowing with the unremarkable warmth of tea‑time. It didn’t feel sinister, and there was certainly nothing dramatic about the way the smoke curled neatly from the chimneys. It was simply a place that had existed for a very long time by knowing exactly when to look away.

Amanderella slowed the bike, the engine’s growl echoing off the narrow walls of the High Street. She noticed an eye peering briefly from behind a geranium in an upstairs window, not out of fear, but out of a well‑practised curiosity. In Lower Wobbleford, people prided themselves on minding their own business. They didn’t ask why a woman was arriving on a motorcycle at dusk, or what might be tucked into her panniers.

However, she knew that by tomorrow morning, everyone would know she had arrived. Information here was like a local currency; most people kept their secrets to themselves, but almost everyone was willing to trade a bit of gossip or a helpful observation if the price, the person asking, was right. It was a town built on quiet understandings and very long memories.

As she rounded the last bend, the road widened just enough to reveal the village’s most determined building. A wooden sign stood just outside the church gates, its paint cracked in a dignified sort of way. Someone had clearly repainted the lettering at least once in the last fifty years, but the board itself looked older than that by several centuries.

It read, in steady black capitals:

ST GILBERT THE LAME

Below the name, someone had added Founded 1754 in smaller letters, though the “4” had begun to peel, giving the impression that the date was trying to escape.

Amanderella slowed the bike.

The church behind the sign was squat and weather‑beaten, its tower leaning a fraction westward as though bracing itself against the prevailing wind. The churchyard wall sagged in places, repaired many times by people who believed in “good enough” rather than “perfect”.

She parked beside the wall and removed her goggles. The sign creaked gently in the breeze, as if acknowledging her arrival.

A single lantern glowed by the porch, its light flickering in the breeze. It made the shadows in the churchyard stretch and shrink like creatures deciding whether to approach or retreat. Lower Wobbleford was quiet, not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of a place that had learned the value of keeping its thoughts to itself.

Somewhere in the distance, a sheep bleated with the weary resignation of an animal that had never approved of coastal living.

Directly opposite, across the cobbles, stood The Smuggler’s Arms.

It was a long, low inn of grey stone, its roof sagging in the middle like a polite bow. The signboard, a heavy wooden affair hanging from an iron bracket, showed two indistinct figures hauling a barrel between them. Time had worn away their faces so thoroughly that they now resembled determined root vegetables, but the barrel was immaculate. Someone had clearly decided that the barrel was the important part.

Warm light spilled from the windows, and the faint smell of frying drifted across the square. A cat sat on the doorstep, giving Amanderella the slow, assessing blink of an animal who had seen strangers before and found them mostly unremarkable.

The square itself was quiet. Not empty, just quiet in that way places are when everyone is indoors, pretending not to watch. A curtain twitched in an upstairs window of the inn. Another shifted in a cottage beside the church. Lower Wobbleford was taking note of her arrival with the polite, practised curiosity of a village that had always known more than it said.

Amanderella tucked her goggles into her pocket and looked from the church to the inn and back again.

“Well,” she murmured. “That seems about right.”