Authors: Kerry Greenwood
‘Now,’ said Ms Bray, who having been given a chair, a platter of mixed delicacies and a glass of Meroe’s lavender and apple punch—and a little time to absorb some nourish-ment—was looking more cheerful. ‘I need to know all the things that you didn’t tell Jonesy and his mate.’
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‘And the reason we should tell you is . . .?’ asked Jon.
‘Because I can sneak them into my report, which is incomplete, so no one will know that there was a suspicious delay. His report will have been made by now and you left things out. I know you did.’
‘How?’ asked Jason.
‘Because people always do, especially innocent people,’ she told us, perfectly sure of herself. And, as it happens, she was correct. We all looked at one another. Meroe began to speak. Calmly she told Ms Bray about the gathering of witches, the recipe for soul cake, the suspicions she held of Barnabas and his use of ordeal poisons to reveal treasure. She followed this up with a full disclosure of names, addresses and phone numbers, all of which Ms Vickery wrote down when Lucifer allowed her the use of her biro. To her credit, Ms Bray did not laugh, though she blinked a couple of times.
‘What’s the significance of the soul cake, anyway?’ she asked.
‘It’s a social ceremony,’ said Meroe. ‘People would go from farm to farm in the old country in autumn, singing, accepting a spiced cake and a drink of wine, and conferring luck on the people within. It was probably a fertility ritual. Almost all of the old ones are.’
‘Right,’ said Ms Bray.
‘But the song,’ said Mrs Dawson, ‘is a compound of several English wassail songs. Same procession, same visit, but beer or cider instead of wine. My point being that the version we are hearing is from England and would be known to people like folk singers and choristers, not to the general public.’
‘Not witches?’ asked our police person.
‘No, that is not the song we sing,’ said Meroe, and did not elaborate.
‘All righty then,’ said Ms Bray, getting up reluctantly. ‘Come along, Constable, detach your puddy-tat and we shall be going, with many thanks. It will take hours to type all this up.’
‘What happened to poor old Vincent Wyatt?’ I asked.
‘They took him off to the hospital for a check-up,’ said Ms Bray. ‘Reckon he might have had a brainstorm of some sort. He’s got a place to live all right. He’ll probably be back to see what they’re doing to his shop tomorrow. You did nice work at that hostage scene, you know, Ms Chapman. It could have gone pear-shaped real fast.’
I assented. By pure luck I had managed to do the right thing. Constable Vickery detached Lucifer, paw by paw, and handed him to Trudi. Ms Bray surveyed us all and then gave a brisk nod.
She didn’t exactly say ‘Mind how you go’ but she conveyed that impression. I ate a thoughtful salmon cracker or two after they had gone. They were very tasty. Trudi, rewarding Lucifer for not leaping, took one apart and gave him the filling.
‘Hey,’ said Jason, who had been told that Earthly Delights would not be opening in the morning and had just under
stood what that meant to him, ‘What am I going to do?’
‘You aren’t sacked or anything,’ I told him. ‘You can take a day off, like the rest of us.’
‘I don’t want to take a day off,’ he muttered.
‘Hey, me neither,’ I said feelingly. ‘But we’re all in this together, Jason. Don’t you get any silly ideas about leaving.’
‘No,’ he protested. ‘Course not! I just meant, you know, I’ve got used to working. I wake up every day at four, I make bread, that’s what I do, that’s what I am.’
‘As well as our Jason,’ Jon told him. ‘There’re a number of things you could be doing tomorrow. I suspect we all have tasks which could be expedited with a little paid help.’
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Jason, who had been looking sullen when he thought himself volunteered, brightened up at the mention of payment.
‘He can hold the lights for my photographer,’ said Mistress Dread. She was in her daytime tweeds and properly known as Pat. She gave Jason an evil grin. ‘New catalogue for the leather underwear.’
‘Ten an hour for weeding,’ offered Trudi.
‘Twelve for erecting my insoluble flat-pack bookcase,’ said Mrs Dawson.
‘And mine,’ said the Professor, who was always short of book space.
‘Or you can do a little light cooking for Jon and me,’ offered Kepler. ‘I have always wanted to learn how to make a cake.’
‘Deal,’ said Jason to Kepler. Jason was always going to view cooking as far superior to any other activity.
We gathered up the remains of the feast and went severally to our own apartments. I looked in on Mrs Pemberthy. She seemed much recovered, complained for ten solid minutes without drawing breath, and Traddles nipped at me. So that was all right. I was so tired I could barely drag one foot after the other.
‘Bath,’ said Daniel, and I ran one lush with violet foam and sank into it while he read more Winnie the Pooh and my nerves, which had been sticking out on wiry protuberances and short-circuiting, sank back into my body and began to assume their proper function. I patted myself dry and dressed in a nightgown, and the last I saw of Daniel, he was placing a cat on my bed and telling me that he would be back as soon as he could.
Then he was gone, Horatio was purring, and I plunged so deeply asleep that I might have been drowned and dead.
I woke at four, slapped the alarm, started to get up, remembered that I didn’t have to, breathed a prayer of thankfulness and snuggled down again. ‘O Sleep it is a blessed thing beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given, she sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, which slid into my soul...’ Poor Coleridge spent his whole life chasing sleep, which is how he became an opium addict. He knew about its healing powers.
When I woke again at about ten o’clock I felt fine. Until I realised that even at this very moment the SOCO were looking for traces of an LSD trade in my bakery. Still, I was sure they wouldn’t find any there.
I let the Mouse Police onto the balcony, where I had set their litter tray. Horatio woke and yawned elaborately. Daniel wasn’t back. Moreover, there were croissants in the freezer and the coffee was soon on and I decided to allow myself a slow, comfortable breakfast in the company of the charming animals and the latest Jade Forrester. To get a paper I would have to go all the way down to the atrium, assuming that’s where the paper boy might have left mine, and I didn’t feel that any news would be good enough to be worth the walk.
Cats snuffled and crunched their way through bowls of kitty dins. I heated my croissant and buttered it without haste. Jade built her plot. The sun sneaked in through the blinds, so that I raised them and revealed a coolish dry late morning. I had missed last night’s dinner and I didn’t care, though the food would have been excellent. This was not going to be a morning to do anything but pass the time as pleasantly as possible.
At least I was comfortable when the terrible news came. It was announced quite coolly by a man in a white coat, who called me down to my bakery at about noon. The paper clad
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persons were still pottering around, and the bakery looked a little dishevelled. But it was nothing a good morning’s cleaning couldn’t cope with.
‘I’m Nicholas Timoleon,’ he told me, pushing back his glasses. ‘I’m afraid that I have some bad news for you, Ms Chapman.’
‘What? Someone has been dealing LSD from my bakery?’ I was aghast.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That would count as the good news. The Mass Spec. and other tests are back. What we have, Ms Chapman, is a biological contamination emergency, and here are the notices which quarantine your shop. If you have any personal possessions you would like to remove, I can allow that if you do it right now. Otherwise I must ask for your keys.’
‘Oh, my God.’ I almost sank down onto the step, but I needed to stay alert. Personal possessions? Yes, the laptop, the sheaf of bills I had been working on, a book or two and the recipe collections from which Jason had been learning to read. I gathered them into my arms.
‘What do you suspect?’ I asked. I heard my voice tremble.
‘Ergot,’ he told me, and conducted me onto the stairs. I heard the door close behind me with a curiously final click. I was shut out of Earthly Delights.
I couldn’t think of one sensible thing to say or do when I got back into my own apartment, so I went out onto the balcony and smoked a Gauloise. That occupied some time. Then I went in again, turned on the computer and searched for information on ergot. Some of it I already knew, because it is a flour contaminant. Rye, particularly, though it also affects barley. A wet spring, a cool summer, and voila! Through the soft grains comes the red-purple fungal body called
Claviceps
purpurea
. I was told that the indoleamine called ergotamine could be made to yield lysergic acid. Effects of ergotism: mania, paralysis, nausea, gangrene—oh, that poor man with his missing hands! The girl with her feet! Had I done this?
I was horrified to my soul but I kept reading, since lack of knowledge is not comforting either. Dancing manias, St Anthony’s Fire, things which I thought belonged to the Middle Ages, when whole towns went mad. But in 1951 one sack of contaminated flour sent the whole of Pont-Saint-Esprit out on a dreadful, irreparable trip. They had a name for the toxic dough which had poisoned, maddened, killed them. They called it
pain maudit
. Evil bread. I wept. I had been baking evil bread. I wept myself out and sniffled and had another Gauloise.
And then the cats drifted up to me as I sat there. The Mouse Police sprawled at my feet. Horatio occupied my lap. And we all looked out into the lane where the quarantine van disgorged more people and a stream of technicians began to leave my bakery, carrying sacks and bags and boxes, clothes and pieces of flooring, the vacuum bag, the rubbish bin, and even the broom.
Some undefined time later, Daniel came in and stood beside me in silence for a moment. Then he put out a hand. It felt strong and warm. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Out of this. Everyone you’re responsible for is taken care of. The girls have gone to their rehearsal and Jason is with Jon and Kepler making something called a wonder cake. And, Corinna, you are coming with me,’ he said, raising me to my feet. He provided me with clothes and watched as I inserted myself into jeans, boots and jumper and picked up my backpack.
Then we were out of Insula, where I had been so happy, and Timbo was opening the door of his big blue car. He gave
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me a hug. When hugged by Timbo, you know you’ve been in a fight. He smelt sweetly of petrol and Darrell Lea Rocky Road, his favourite fruit.
‘Willi,’ Daniel ordered. ‘You know the place.’
And then we were driving down Footscray Road towards the sea. Perhaps Daniel was going to allow me to just throw myself into it. But although my life was ruined and my career destroyed, I leaned on him and noticed that it was a nice day to be outside. The air was cool and the trees were all in blossom. Ornamental cherries in pink and lemon trees in cream and apple trees in white decorated the gardens of Footscray and then Seddon and Yarraville and Newport as we progressed.
Timbo was driving in a stately fashion, as though he was in charge of a hearse. He wasn’t even snacking as he drove, though the bag of chocolates was open on the seat beside him, as always. One day, he would reach some critical limit and they would have to disassemble the car to get Timbo out. In fact, since he liked driving so much, it might be easier just to provide some plumbing and an air supply and leave him inside his metal shell, like a large, friendly mud crab.
‘Wonder cake?’ I murmured, grasping at something Daniel had said.
‘Yes, Jason is teaching it to Kepler. What is wonder cake?’ asked Daniel.
‘It’s our charming neighbour Mary Phillipou’s recipe. I grabbed it from her when she was teaching it to Mrs Pandamus for one of those huge family gatherings. Amazingly tolerant cake, you can put berries or dried fruit or chocolate chips into it and it always rises. She also has a boiled chocolate cake which can be assembled in the time between the doorbell ringing and the unexpected relatives dropping in (with their ten assorted children) for tea.’
‘Isn’t she the good-looking dark-haired woman who came in with all those supplies for Sister Mary’s fete?’ he asked. ‘When that cake shop burned down and we thought there wouldn’t be anything for the children?’
Daniel really does pay attention, an awesomely sexy trait.
‘The very same,’ I confirmed. ‘That was wonder cake. Eaten up to the very last crumb. Where are we going?’
‘Williamstown,’ he told me.
‘I can see that,’ I informed him as we swept magnificently around into the Esplanade, with its millionaires’ houses and astonishing views of the city. I always wanted the one we children called the Admiral’s house, which had a widow’s walk and a telescope. On the other hand, if I had a view like that I’d never get a moment’s work done. Of course, I didn’t have an occupation anymore...I dragged my mind away from despair and returned to the subject. ‘Why are we in Williamstown?’
‘To have lunch,’ he said. ‘And to meet someone. You’ll like her. I think.’
‘If she’s anything like Georgie, I will personally murder you,’ I said. ‘I give you fair warning.’
Daniel laughed so hard that he slid helplessly down the seat.
‘I’m in no danger,’ he said. ‘Promise.’
We went on, up a hill and round a corner. I saw the sea.
Thalassa
,
thalassa
, Xenophon’s exhausted soldiery had cried, seeing the end of their dreadful journey. They had fought their way through the whole of Asia Minor and were at last going to shake the dust of the Persian Expedition off their sandals. I knew how they felt.
‘Daniel, that is a bathing pavilion,’ I objected as the car slowed and stopped. ‘An Art Moderne bathing pavilion, such as I didn’t know there were any left.’
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‘A bathing pavilion with food,’ he told me. ‘Come along, milady.’
‘What about Timbo?’