Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

The back door was indeed unlocked. His blood raced. If he’d been wrong about that, if the witch had put her cat out and locked up last thing like sensible people, he’d have had to go home. Now he had to go on. He let himself into the kitchen and groped his way around the familiar layout to the parlour door. All these little houses were built the same, but he was taken aback by the smell, which was strange, musky and spicy. The smell of the islands, he supposed, though he’d never been there. His mother’s cooking inclined more to meat and two veg.

The parlour smelled odd too: a dry, dusty, powdery smell he could almost but not quite identify. Also there was the smell of clinker from the embers of a fire. A couple of glowing coals and the glimmer through the gingham curtains of a distant streetlamp — all the nearer ones having been broken — was the only light in the room. It wasn’t enough to see the hand in front of his face. He stood just inside the door, breathing unsteadily, getting his bearings.

Close at hand a voice — a strange voice, ancient and creaking as the hinge outside, a voice with an accent like the singing in his mother’s church — said, “Stay where you are, child. The baron is watching you.”

Denzil’s heart pounded as if it would come out through his ears. But he did as she said. That was what that strange powdery smell was: the smell of old ladies. She was here in the dark room with him: the witch who never slept. Who turned army officers’ sons into goats.

He stammered, “The baron?”

“Baron Samedi,” she croaked in the terrible darkness, and then he understood. Those dreadful tales of his mother’s that brought the incense of Caribbean nights and passions to the backstreets of Tyneside came back to him, years after he had last thought of them. Baron Samedi, chief of the evil Petro gods; also known as Baron Cimetièrre and Baron Crois. Not a nice chap. Not a nice chap at all.

And, of course, entirely mythical. Denzil drew a deep breath, forced his shoulders back, straightened to his full height. Did this mad old woman really think she could scare him with a Haitian bogeyman? Even if he’d felt inclined to believe in gods and demons, which he did not, surely there was a question of jurisdiction? Gods are like wines: not all of them travel well.

“A witch?” he snorted, with perhaps a shade more bravado than he felt. “There’s no such thing!”

“I never said there was,” she retorted calmly. “I just said you should keep still while the baron has his eyes on you. You don’t want to upset the baron; oh no indeed.”

Denzil’s fingers were groping along the wall for a light switch; then he realised that, even if he wanted to see her, he didn’t want her to see him. His hand dropped to his side. “There’s nobody here, old woman. Just you and me, and in a minute there’ll just be you.”

“Stay where you are,” she said again, her musical voice hardening. “The baron’s gettin’ upset now. You gotta be nice to Clarice. Respectful.”

“Who?” He was thinking. She’s old and alone, and if she has a cane to defend herself with that’s the most she’ll have. I can walk out of here any time I want. Hell, I can bundle her under the stairs and take a proper look round, and she can do damn-all to stop me. He wondered why he was even bothering to talk to her.

“Me,” she snapped irritably. “Clarice Erzulie Tituba Vincour. Miss.”

Denzil laughed out loud. “Clarice Erzulie Tituba Vincour? Lady, that’s a hell of a name for a crazy old Haitian woman!”

“What you know, child?” she demanded, her rusty voice soaring angrily. “What you know about Haiti? What you know about me? You know nothin’. Nothin’!”

He felt oddly piqued by her disdain. “I know about your crazy gods — about Baron Samedi. The lord of Saturday. Also known as the lord of the cemetery and the lord of the cross. The chief of the Petro gods in the voodoo pantheon.” He’d impressed himself; it remained to be seen if he’d impressed her.

Perhaps he had, because when she spoke again her voice was softer. “You know all that? Somebody given you a good education once. Pity to waste it robbing old ladies.”

“Old ladies who produce wads of money at supermarkets deserve to be robbed. Tell me where it is. I won’t take it all.”

“You won’t take any of it,” Miss Vincour corrected him robustly. “Not while I got Baron Samedi to guard it.”

Denzil was getting cross. He hadn’t come here to hurt anyone, didn’t see himself as a mugger of pensioners, but she was getting on his nerves with all her mumbo jumbo. He started to say, “Clarice, you say that one more time—”

Then in the darkness he felt a gust of hot air move across the back of his hand and heard a soft, inhuman, panting, chuckling sound. It froze him to the marrow of his bones.

Clarice chuckled too, an old dry chuckle like breaking sticks. “I guess you’re going to tell me now that Baron Samedi’s a hell of a name for a Rottweiler.”

In the darkness, close by Denzil’s leg, the panting turned to a growl.

Death Takes the Veil by Monica Quill