sake," Bella snapped. "Don't pretend you're here for anything other than causing trouble."
Yolanda continued to wave the smoking object like a priestess in the performance of an arcane rite. Bella grabbed her arm and attempted to hold it in place. She was surprised to find the psychic was quite strong, and for a moment they stood there like two ageing female wrestlers, each trying to throw the other to the mat. Bella finally won, for which she was thankful as it did her good to see that her hours of yoga and athletic training were doing something besides lengthening her life on this miserable planet. She mastered Yolanda's arm, lowered it, and knocked the green cigar from her hand. She stamped upon it till it was extinguished while Yolanda moaned, mumbled, and murmured about God, purity, evil, black, the night, and the sun.
"Oh, stop your nonsense." Yolanda's arm still in her grasp, Bella began to march her towards the gate.
Yolanda, however, had other things on her mind. She put on the metaphorical brakes.
Legs as stiff as a two-year-old's in the midst of a tantrum, she planted herself firmly and would not be budged.
"This is a place of evil," she hissed. To Bella, the woman's expression looked wild. "If you won't purify, then you must leave. What happened to her will happen again. All of you are in danger."
Bella rolled her eyes.
"Listen to me!" Yolanda cried. "He died within, and when that happens in a place of abode - "
"Oh rubbish. Stop pretending you're here to do anything other than spy and cause trouble. Which you've done from the first and don't deny it. What do you want now? Who do you want now? Looking to talk someone else out of living here? Well, there's no one else yet.
Are you satisfied? Now, get the hell - Be gone before I phone the police."
It seemed that the idea of police finally got through. Yolanda immediately stopped resisting and allowed herself to be propelled towards the gate. But still she nattered on about death and the need for a ritual of purification. Bella was able to determine from Yolanda's rambling that all of this was due to the untimely passing of Mr. McHaggis, and truth to tell, the fact that Yolanda seemed to know about McHaggis's death inside the house did give Bella pause.
But she shook off the pause - because, obviously, Jemima could have told her about McHaggis's death since Bella herself had mentioned it more than once - and with no further conversation between them, she directed Yolanda from the property to the pavement.
There, Yolanda said, "Heed my warning."
To which Bella said, "You bloody heed mine. Next time you show your face round here, you'll be explaining your presence to the coppers. Understand? Now scarper."
Yolanda started to speak. Bella made a threatening movement towards her. That apparently did it, because she hustled down the pavement in the direction of the river. Bella waited till she disappeared round the corner into Putney Bridge Road. Then she went back to what she'd intended to do. She grabbed the laundry basket and approached the serried rank of rubbish bins with their neat labels upon them.
It was in the Oxfam bin that she found it. Later she would think what a miracle it was that she'd opened that particular bin at all, for she emptied the Oxfam bin least often, as items for Oxfam were tossed away infrequently by herself, by residents of her house, and by people who lived nearby. As it was, she had nothing to deposit in the Oxfam bin on this day. She merely removed its lid to take note of when it was likely to need emptying. The newspaper bin was itself nearly full and the plastics bin was likewise; the glass bins were fine - separating green from brown from clear kept them from filling too quickly - and since she was looking at the bins in general, she'd gone on to the Oxfam bin as a matter of course.
The handbag was buried beneath a jumble of clothing. Bella had removed this with a curse about people's enduring laziness as evidenced by the fact that they couldn't be bothered to fold what they wished to have carted off to the charity and she was about to fold it all herself, item by item, when she saw the handbag and recognised it.
It was Jemima's. There was no doubt about it, and even if there had been doubt, Bella scooped it