Authors: Kerry Greenwood
‘Isn’t it about time that you whispered into my shell-like ear what all this is about?’ I asked, handing him a cup.
‘Yes, probably,’ he agreed. ‘All that I can tell you. Some of it is secret, and it isn’t my secret.’
‘As long as it isn’t Georgie’s secret,’ I muttered.
‘Georgie? No, nothing to do with Georgie. Surely you weren’t really worried that I might want George rather than you, ketschele?’
‘No, why should I think that?’ I asked, allowing myself to be scornful now that I knew I was safe. ‘Just because I’m short and fat and dumpy and mousy, and she is tall and gorgeous with baby blue eyes and blonde ringlets? The very first time I saw her she was wearing your blue dressing gown and she looked like a
Vogue
cover.’
‘Oh,’ said Daniel. ‘She is tall and glamorous,’ he admitted. ‘And she does have blue eyes and blonde hair. But she has a heart of pure marble and just as many brains cells as can calculate an expense account to the nearest pfennig, dollar or euro as required. Whereas you are kind and funny and compassionate and witty and acerbic and beautiful and as sweet in my mouth as honey,’ he said, and put down his cup to kiss me passionately.
After which I agreed to omit the topic of Georgiana Hope from any future discourse and returned my lover to the matters to be discussed, from which I had been continuously distracted for days by one thing and another.
‘Why did we go to see that horrible old man?’ I asked.
‘Because he was there when Max Mertens stole the treasure from Salonika,’ said Daniel.
Well, there was an answer. And just then someone pinged my doorbell and a gruff voice said, ‘Police here. Open the door, please.’
They sounded like a couple of very unimpressed officers who wanted to come in right now and it seemed only sensible to allow them to do so before they got crosser than they already were. I buzzed them in and Daniel and I met them in the atrium.
‘Corinna Chapman,’ I said, doing my ‘I remind you of your English teacher’ impression, which always works on offi
cials. I held out my hand and the primary police officer took it automatically, and then didn’t quite know what to do with it. He was a stocky man with a ground-in scowl. His companion was stockier and even more grim. ‘How can I help you?’
‘You can let us into your bakery,’ he replied, moderating his tone.
‘Certainly, I’ll get my keys,’ I said. No point in demanding explanations. Something bad had happened and I could only hope that it hadn’t happened in my kitchen.
‘You know me,’ Daniel told the second policeman. ‘What’s afoot, Jonesy?’
‘Nothing good,’ grunted Jonesy. ‘You been here all night, Daniel?’
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‘Except when I went out to get the croissants at about nine,’ Daniel replied. ‘Why?’
By now I had fetched the keys and led the way down to the street. We got to the corner of Calico Alley, where I was firmly stopped.
‘You don’t want to go down there, ma’am,’ said Jones to me. ‘You come and look, Daniel, if you want.’
‘Do I want to?’ asked Daniel.
‘Depends how much you like splatted dead bodies,’ said the first officer through his teeth. ‘You didn’t hear anything this morning?’
‘No, not a thing. Splatted, eh? Fallen?’
‘From a great height,’ said Jones. ‘Old lady in this building saw him dancing on the roof of the flats opposite. Then he said, “I’m a bird!” and took off to fly...’
‘Except he didn’t,’ concluded the first policeman. ‘Splatted.’
‘Like Dusty says,’ confirmed Jones, which told me that his fellow officer was called Miller or Rhodes, and also that someone was dead in my alley. I was shaken. Why choose my alley to die in? Plenty of other alleys in the city. I was beginning to feel hunted, or possibly haunted. Did this have anything to do with Meroe’s magical revenge?
‘Forensics’re on their way,’ said Miller (or Rhodes). ‘But he had a squashed roll or a cake in his hand and we want to know if it came from your bakery.’
‘I’ll come in through the apartment,’ I said. ‘I’ll be able to tell if anything is missing.’
I ran into Insula and dead-heated them as they came in through my alley door. They looked around at the shining clean, carefully polished machines, the mopped dry floor and the utter absence of anything resembling bread or cakes or rolls or buns.
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‘I’m closed over the weekend,’ I told them. ‘I clean up and polish everything on Friday night and I give all the leftovers to Sister Mary for the Soup Run. If your man has a cake, it didn’t come from here.’
‘We know Sister Mary,’ said (provisionally) Miller, thinking about it. ‘She doesn’t waste a crumb. Leftovers from the Soup Run go to the community farm chooks and ducks. Not that there are many leftovers. The crips, veggies and losers eat most of it.’
I could tell that Constable Miller was not going to make Sister Mary’s list of understanding policemen, but at least he was convinced that my bakery had nothing to do with the unfortunate man’s fate. I was now fighting down an utterly unworthy urge. Who was making cakes around here? Who was open all weekend? How could I not tell these eager seekers of forensic truth that Best Fresh was their most likely source?
I struggled with my conscience. Then Daniel, with complete innocence, said, ‘There’s a new hot bread shop just down the lane. Best Fresh. Why not ask them?’ and I was relieved of temptation, just as though St Anthony in the desert had been offered a nice plate of real roast lamb in place of all those visions. Or maybe one of Uncle Solly’s salt beef sandwiches.
‘Good idea,’ grunted Miller.
‘Who’s the stiff?’ asked Daniel as I paused at the top of the steps into my own quarters. I didn’t want to go out into the alley.
‘Dunno,’ said Jones. ‘Forensics’ll surgically remove our balls if we contaminate the crime scene. If it is a crime scene. You staying here?’ he asked Daniel.
‘Yes,’ he said, consulting me with a glance and correctly interpreting my enthusiastic nod.
‘Okay, we might pop up when the scene of the crime officers have gone and have a chat.’ And with that invitation or threat, Miller and Jones exited through the Calico Alley door, tossing my keys to Daniel as they left.
We locked all the doors again and retreated, not to the apartment but to the garden, where Trudi’s tulips were waving scarlet banners and there might be some comfortable company.
There we found most of the inhabitants of Insula. Mistress Dread was not present, but Mrs Dawson was there, Professor Monk, Therese Webb, Mrs Pemberthy and Traddles, Jason and both girls. Cherie Holliday and her father were out. Jon and Kepler were in and clearly wished they were not. Meroe was glowering from the rose bower. Mrs Dawson, who had brought not only a fine Glasgow picnic rug but a picnic basket to go with it, was dispensing something from her thermos in small cups. I sipped. It was coffee and whisky, hot and unctuous with honey.
‘Used to thaw deer-stalkers who get lost in the Highlands,’ she explained. ‘Or fishermen hauled out of the North Sea. I got the recipe when I was in Mull. Very efficacious for shock. Has everyone got a drink?’
Nothing in the world, not alien invasion, nuclear accident or the sudden arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh, could deflect Mrs Dawson from being the perfect hostess. She would undoubtedly find some suitable refreshment for the aliens— a little more methyl mercaptan in that, my dears? Perhaps a pinch of sulphur?—and the Duke would probably appreciate a glass of the good whisky while she rang the palace to come and collect him. And in the event of the end of the world, then her view would be that we might as well be agreeably occupied while it happened since there was nothing else we could do to avert our fate. A good view, I thought.
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Jon sipped and grinned at me. ‘Shall I call the meeting to order?’ he asked, with gentle irony.
‘By all means, my dear chap,’ said Professor Monk.
‘It’s a scandal,’ whimpered Mrs Pemberthy. ‘He fell...he fell right past...’
Kylie, of all people, patted her hand. Therese cast a few lengths of good woolly shawl around her. Even Traddles seemed shocked. He did not offer to bite anyone, nor was the sight of Lucifer on Trudi’s shoulder enough to rouse him.
‘Tell us what happened,’ instructed Mrs Dawson. ‘It will make you feel better.’
‘I heard someone singing,’ said Mrs Pemberthy, shaking her perm until her earrings rattled. ‘Down in the alley.’
‘Wassail, wassail?’ asked Jason keenly.
‘No. Soul cake, a soul cake,’ said Mrs Pemberthy, singing a sad but monotonous little air. Meroe drew in a sharp breath and folded her arms under her breasts. ‘So I looked out. Then I heard someone saying, “I’m a bird, I’m a bird”, and he was on the roof of the flats opposite. He was dancing,’ she said.
Poor old Mrs P, I found myself thinking. Although she was one of the most genuinely irritating people I had ever met, this was a bit above the odds for anyone over seventy. Or under it, of course. Kylie, Goss and Jason weren’t looking very chipper either. Of all of us, Daniel, Mrs Dawson, Jon and Kepler and Professor Monk were seemingly unaffected. Jon and Kepler because they dealt with disasters every day, Mrs Dawson and the Professor because of their past, which had been difficult, and Daniel because he had been a soldier, perhaps. Me, I felt faintly sick and faintly drunk. Better not to have any more Hebridean Fisherman Defroster.
Mrs Pemberthy went on: ‘Then I opened the window and screamed at him to get away from the edge, but he didn’t listen, or he didn’t care, these young people are so careless, and he... jumped. Threw himself into the air. And he fell right past my window. Right past and down and hit the ground.’
‘How awful,’ said Jon, conventionally. The right thing to say to a conventional person like Mrs Pemberthy.
Kylie expressed my feelings by saying, ‘Euw!’
‘What time was this?’ asked Daniel.
‘Nine,’ she said. ‘I just put the Sunday service on. I always listen to the Sunday service. Since Mr P...went away, I don’t go to church.’
Mr Pemberthy was confined in a bin for the incurably loopy, and a good thing too. But we did not mention this.
Professor Monk patted Mrs Pemberthy on the shoulder. ‘Bear up, now, my dear,’ he told her. ‘I saw him fall too, and it was not a nice experience. But we mustn’t give way.’
She sniffed bravely into his best handkerchief. I suspect Mrs P has a soft spot for the Professor. Kylie and Goss conferred.
‘We were asleep,’ they said. ‘And you can’t see into the alley from our place. But we’ve been hearing that little song around.’
‘Around where?’ asked Daniel, too quickly. They drew in their tiny horns like affrighted snails.
‘Just, you know, like, around,’ said Kylie. ‘We’ve got to go,’ she said, getting up. ‘We’ve got to learn our lines for tomorrow.’
‘We don’t know anything about it,’ added Goss, and they both scuttled away.
‘Damn,’ said Daniel. ‘My fault. My timing is off,’ he added.
‘No matter, they’ll come around,’ said Therese Webb. ‘If they’ve got a story they won’t be able to resist telling it in due course.’
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‘True,’ I agreed. ‘Jason, did you hear anything?’
‘No, or see nothing. I was up here, helping Trudi with the weeding. I never did any garden stuff before. It’s sick,’ said Jason, Nature Boy. He was, now I noticed, grimy around the edges.
‘You never cease to amaze me,’ I told him.
‘I was here too,’ said Therese. ‘And Meroe. We are making rose petal cordial, and we came to ask Trudi for some rose petals.’
‘And they not get,’ said Trudi. ‘Not until the roses just start to fall. Then they are at their best for cordials and for oils. Myself, I saw nothing.’
‘But Meroe knows something,’ I said, tired of all this secrecy. ‘And it’s time she told us what a soul cake is.’
‘It’s the spice bread I’ve been making from that old recipe,’ supplied Jason helpfully. ‘It says Soaling Cake on the paper.’
Of course. Jason doesn’t know how to spell ‘soul’. And he was right, it seemed. Soal was the same as soul. Soaling was the same as souling. Whatever souling was. I was still entirely bemused by the whole thing.
‘And it’s a folk song,’ said Mrs Dawson. ‘But there is some other significance to it, is there not, Meroe?’
‘Yes,’ said Meroe with vast reluctance. ‘It’s the offering bread for Hallowe’en, Walpurgisnacht, for the feast of Samhain.’
‘The feast, as it happens, of the dead,’ said Professor Monk without emphasis.
‘And someone has profaned it,’ said Meroe, and burst into wild, uncontrollable tears.
This was unprecedented. Meroe weeping? For a moment no one moved. Then Daniel gathered our neighbourhood witch into his embrace and rocked her as though she was a child. We all began to tiptoe away.
Therese Webb and I escorted Mrs Pemberthy to her apartment, made her a warm milk drink and helped her into her fluffy pink gown and comfy sheep’s wool slippers. I was obscurely cheered when Traddles nipped at me. He missed, but it was a sporting attempt. Therese donated the shawl, which was a sprightly shade of cerise and matched rather well. We left her tucked up on her sofa with the TV on, her phone to hand so that she could call for help if she felt faint (and also to ring her sister for a long session of complaining) and her faithful, if smelly, companion sitting on her lap. Traddles was a rotten little doggie, but he doted on Mrs Pemberthy, possibly divining in his minuscule canine brain that if she didn’t feed him, no one else was likely to put themselves to any trouble or expense on his account.
We shut the door on Dr Phil talking about marital tolerance of bondage and discipline—‘Would it hurt you to just tie his wrists to the bedhead?’—and looked at each other.
‘There is something very wrong,’ said Therese. I like Therese. A successful businesswoman for years and years, she retired to Insula to spend her remaining time caring for Carolus and sewing, knitting, tatting, weaving, embroidering and spinning, and here she was in the middle of a black magical farce. I gave her a hug.