by Tamara Berry
“The middle part is a drinking cup, see?” Lenora points out. “That’s the only thing we could find that was close. I don’t know what the rest means.”
I can tell the exact moment the image registers, because the unmistakable taste of chocolate fills my mouth. “I do,” I say. “It’s Penny Dautry.”
“But Penny Dautry doesn’t drink,” Rachel protests. “Or only a sip or two at holidays, I’m sure. She doesn’t even like to take communion.”
“It’s not ale,” I say and point out the additional details she’s drawn. “It’s the traditional things that accompany it. The cup means drink, yes, but the things around it are refreshments. Like bread. Like cake.”
As neither girl was present when Penny’s chocolate cake was unloaded on me—along with that angrily flung hundred pounds—they don’t feel the prescience of this statement. All they show is excitement at having another one of their riddles solved.
“Cake! Of course.”
“I haven’t had a piece of Penny’s cake in ages.”
“You’re lucky. I only had a bite one time, and that was because I stole it from my dad’s plate. Oona thinks too much sugar is bad for kids.”
As much as I’d love to debate the merits of Penny’s secret recipe, I stop the girls before they fall too deep into their rabbit hole. Knowing what I do about the general’s real wartime associations—and about Penny flinging money at me in fear and anger—I don’t have time for rabbit holes.
On a hunch, I ask, “Which of the pages belonged to Sarah Blackthorne?”
Lenora stops and blinks at me. Rachel tilts her head and ponders the question. Neither girl has an answer forthcoming, which resolves me on one thing: I need to figure out where I left the notebook. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it has a very important bearing on the murder case. And not because it’s a hit list. If my suspicions are correct, it’s even worse than that.
“Mrs. Blackthorne didn’t have a page,” Lenora eventually says.
“Yeah. We didn’t see anything that might have been her.”
Of course they didn’t. Why would they have, when she was the one who wrote it?
“Okay, you two. That’s everything I need.” I push myself up to a standing position, taking a moment to clear away all the sketches Rachel has made. No way am I leaving evidence like this lying around in a library where anyone can find it. “You’ve done excellent work figuring that notebook out. I can’t thank you enough.”
“But what do we do now?” Lenora asks.
“Yeah. Oona took our copy away, so we can’t finish.”
“You don’t need to.” It’s a point I’m very firm on. “The information you’ve provided is more than enough. You two are going to take the weekend off and behave like normal human girls instead.”
They seem unimpressed by my decree. “How do normal human girls behave?” Rachel asks.
“Yeah, and what about the full moon coming up?”
“Go to the cinema,” I order and scour my admittedly dusty repertoire for other activities that might appeal to two intelligent and lively young women. “Take selfies in front of national monuments. Shoplift. I don’t know. You must have had lives before all this werewolf stuff happened. Can’t you just go back to it?”
The two girls share a look that spells trouble with the caps lock on. “I mean it, Rachel,” I warn. “Remember what we talked about before.”
Rachel nods with a solemnity that does her credit, but there’s a spark in Lenora that makes me uneasy. “And call Zahra from your stepmom’s office,” I say, fishing the pair of phone numbers out of my bag. I slide them across the table. “She has a proposition for the pair of you.”
That, at least, distracts Lenora enough not to press the issue. Assuming that proposition is a euphemism for important record-keeping work rather than the care of six squealing children, she slips the number in her pocket.
“What are you going to do, Madame Eleanor?” Lenora asks.
“I’m not entirely sure yet,” I admit. But paying a visit to Penny Dautry tops the list.
* * *
I’m only about a kilometer outside the village before the scent hits me. At first, I blame it on hunger. I haven’t eaten since Nicholas’s eggs this morning, and we already know I have a weakness for all things sugar- and chocolate-related.
“Is someone making s’mores?” I ask aloud.
It’s a rhetorical question, since there’s no one around to answer me. It’s also an unnecessary one, since I’ve arrived at my destination. I follow the trail of that smell around the side of a cute whitewashed clapboard house to find not just a campfire, but a full bonfire taking place. A heap of scrap metal appears to be ablaze on a pyramid of firewood, and next to it, Penny Dautry is emptying an industrial-sized bag of flour on top.
The flour does a pretty good job of quenching the bulk of the flames, which means they die down enough for me to identify those pieces of scrap metal as baking pans. Lots of baking pans, all of varying shapes and sizes.
“Hello?” I call, afraid to startle Penny into throwing herself onto that fire. She’s covered from head to toe in white powder, the checkered apron she’s wearing over her dress doing little to protect that garment. “Penny, are you all right?”
She turns to find me standing a few feet from the fire, dressed in my usual dark layers, the flames flickering on my face. The image must be a startling one, because she starts laughing in a way that seems wholly inhuman.
“You’re too late, Madame Eleanor,” she says as she throws another large bag onto the fire. This one must contain sugar, because the scent of toasted marshmallows magnifies tenfold. “I’m not giving you any more money. I found a way out.”
One of the pans buckles under the weight of all that burning sugar, sliding off the heap and sending ashes flying in every direction. I don’t dare pick it up, since I have no idea how long it’s been burning and I don’t have a pot holder handy, but the grass is damp enough that I don’t fear an immediate brush fire.
“Maybe you should take a few steps back,” I warn. “That pyre doesn’t look very stable.”
She doesn’t heed my advice, opting instead to draw closer to the flames. Whipping the apron off, she adds it to the top like a floury garnish. “There,” she says, watching the fabric burn. “That’s the last of it. I’m never baking anything ever again.”
I’m happy to report that my first feeling on hearing this isn’t, as one might suspect, a pang of hunger for all the lost chocolate cakes. Relief is my prevailing emotion. Penny sounds less like a woman who’s about to immolate herself on the altar of baked goods and more like a woman who’s reached a decision.
The former is tricky. The latter I can work with.
“Good for you,” I say as I draw a few tentative steps closer to her. “Now you can concentrate on your poetry.”
She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t appear very conciliatory, either. She mostly just looks hot. The combination of the exertions of the bonfire and the heat of it have beads of sweat breaking out on her brow.
“Why don’t we go inside and see if we can’t find you something to drink?” I suggest.
She raises a finger at me. “I mean it, you know. I don’t care who you tell or what you try to get the others to believe. My baking days are over. Now I really am free.”
I nod. There’s that word again, free, the release from bonds that are somehow associated with Sarah Blackthorne. And you, the remaining money in my bag says.
“I can’t wait to hear all about it,” I say. “But I really think you should go inside and sit down. You look exhausted.”
I’m not kidding—she does look rather worn down, her hands covered in flour and ash, her hair blown loose from its knot—but it’s not until I say the words aloud that she seems to feel it. Penny sags as though I’ve just cast a spell, her shoulders drooping as her knees bend. I hurry to her side and prop her up, urging her away from the fire and into the house.
Her kitchen is a t
estament to the decision to cast her baking supplies into the netherworld. Cupboards are thrown open and the contents spilled all over the counters and floor. A trail of flour leads from the pantry through the mudroom to the back door. Even the refrigerator hangs open, an empty pink box with chocolate residue sitting alone on one of the empty racks.
“The living room, I think,” I say in a voice of firm decision. I pause to fill a glass with water from the tap before leading Penny into her main room, where a pair of comfortable chairs are arranged in front of her fireplace. That, too, bears the signs of a recent plundering, the wood bin emptied and a box of matches spilled on the mantel.
I push the water glass in her hand and wait until she drinks every drop before settling into the seat opposite her.
“Now,” I say. “I want you to tell me everything. Starting with how long Sarah Blackthorne had been blackmailing you before she died.”
Her glance at me is sharp but unsurprised. That lack of surprise, that dull acceptance of my appearance here, tells me everything I need to know: Penny has been expecting me. Penny has been expecting me because she believes that I have every intention of picking up where Sarah left off.
“A few years—three, maybe.” Penny sags in her chair, her head resting against the floral needlepoint cushion. From where I sit, the flowers look eerily like wolfsbane. “It’s hard to say because it didn’t feel like blackmail at first.”
I nod. “She presumed upon your good nature the first few times, begged help under the guise of friendship.”
Penny’s voice wavers. “She told you that?”
“No, Penny. She didn’t tell me anything. She didn’t have to.”
She accepts this with a wary look, unsure if I’m referring to my mystical abilities or my role as Blackmailer 2.0.
“It wasn’t much money at first,” Penny says somewhat vaguely, as one recounting a long-ago tale. “Just a few pounds here and there. I didn’t mind helping her, not really, not when I know what it’s like to be a woman living alone without any independent source of income.”
I nod, all too aware of the parallels to my own situation.
“I would have kept helping her, too, if she’d only asked. But she didn’t ask. She demanded. She—” Penny’s voice breaks off in a sob. I take a risk and lean over to clasp her hand in mine. There’s burnt flour caked into the creases of her palm, but I rub my thumb over the lines of it anyway.
“How much did you give her?”
“Over the years? Thousands, most likely. I had to. She said she was going to tell everyone—” She breaks off and turns her head away. “It sounds so silly when I say it out loud, but you don’t understand, Madame Eleanor.”
I clasp her hand tighter. “I do understand. More than most. Where does the cake really come from?”
She heaves a sigh. “It’s a shop about halfway between here and London—you probably haven’t heard of it. No one has. That’s how I was able to get away with it for so long.”
I subdue the selfish urge to pry the name of the bakery out of her. As much as I’d like a long-term pipeline to those chocolate cakes, the mere idea that they still exist somewhere in this world will have to be enough.
“How did Sarah find out?” I ask.
“She followed me one day. It was after Old Man Petersham died. I slipped out early on the morning of his funeral—I always take my little Mini—and she was waiting for me when I got home. She acted like it was a great joke, a secret between the two of us, and left it at that. But then she showed up a few weeks later, and . . .”
And began a long-term assault on Penny’s good nature, threatening the exposure of her chocolate cake ruse for the sake of a few extra pounds.
“The funny thing is, I’m really very good.” Her eyes meet mine. “At baking, I mean. I used to make a chocolate cake—my own chocolate cake—that was quite scrummy. Nothing compared to the other one, but I never got any complaints. Unfortunately, I was terribly behind for the school bake sale one day and thought it wouldn’t matter if I donated something store bought. Just the one time, you understand.”
I understand that part, too. Once you start lying—once the deception takes hold and delivers in a big way—there’s no turning back. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a chocolate cake and the admiration of an entire village or fake mediumship and being able to pay your sister’s medical bills. Our paths are essentially the same.
The only difference is, I never got caught.
I reach into my bag and extract all the money of hers I have left. “This isn’t everything you gave me the other day, but I ran into a few expenses I wasn’t anticipating.”
Penny opens her mouth, but I prevent her from speaking by pressing the bills into her hand. “I’ll give you the rest back as soon as I have it. It was never my intention to make you feel threatened, Penny. I promise on my honor as a witch and your friend.”
“My friend?” she echoes.
“Well, I hope we’re friends, but I understand if you aren’t feeling too kindly toward me right now.” I attempt a smile. “And I want you to know that I support whatever decision you make. I meant it when I said your secrets are safe with me. I like you—and that chocolate cake—far too much to just throw them away.”
“Well,” she says, the single word carrying a wealth of meaning. “Well.”
“Although we should probably head out back and extinguish the flames either way, because I’m afraid you’re going to set your neighbor’s shed on fire.”
She laughs, so startled by the sound that she immediately claps her hands over her mouth.
“It’s not the cake that brings them comfort, Penny. I mean, it is, obviously, since I don’t know a man, woman, or child alive who doesn’t dream of it on their plate, but it’s more than that.” I get to my feet and extend a hand her way, holding it there until she slips her palm against mine and rises alongside me. “It’s the ritual of it that really matters. Death comes for us all, eventually. Even though we can’t see it coming, we know there will be some things—family, friends, neighbors, Penny and her chocolate cake—that will always be there when we need them.”
It’s one of my better speeches, if I do say so myself, full of mysticism and hope and the dark promise of the great beyond, but I forgot one small thing: death. As in, literal death, Sarah Blackthorne lying cold in a morgue until her murder is solved, a killer somewhere on the loose in the village.
Five minutes in Penny Dautry’s company would convince even the hardest of police detectives that she’s no guiltier of killing Sarah than she would be a fly, but she can’t see that. Not when she so clearly has a motive and was present at the committee meeting.
“Madame Eleanor, it wasn’t me. I didn’t—I couldn’t—If you could just—”
“I know,” I say. “And don’t worry. I will.”
“But how do you know what I’m going to ask?”
Because it’s the same thing everyone has been saying to me since this whole business started. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s also why Penny took the cake first to Castle Hartford and then to me.
Bribery, plain and simple.
Bribery for the one person in the village who’s friends with Inspector Piper. Bribery for the one person in the village who can force him to turn the tides of his investigation elsewhere. Of all the reputations I’ve been saddled with in this lifetime, this one remains the most inexplicable to me.
“I’ll take care of Inspector Piper,” I promise as I lead her to the backyard. I have no idea how we’re going to extinguish that blaze, but I have high hopes that the rain will kick in and lend a helping hand. “But tell me one thing first—do you know anything about a notebook Sarah might have carried? In her purse or on her person, full of strange markings?”
Confusion puckers her brow. “No, I never saw anything like that. Sarah didn’t care much for reading—or for writing.”
I’m not surprised by that. The notebook isn’t a journal or a memoir, and it’s defini
tely not some light reading before bed. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a list of all the people in the village Sarah Blackthorne was blackmailing before she died. Old Man Petersham. Penny Dautry. General von Cleve. The mysterious lovers.
All those people, all those potential murderers.
And a single book that holds the key to it all.
Chapter 14
“You’re wearing an awful lot of clothes for dancing naked in the moonlight.”
I jump as the low sound of Nicholas’s voice accosts me from the back door. Years of sneaking through rambling old houses in search of ghosts means that few things can scare me anymore, but a warm, living man speaking inches from my neck is one of them.
I whirl to find him standing even closer than I at first suspected, leaning so close I could easily kiss him. “Where the devil did you come from?” I demand.
“I walked down in hopes of convincing you to spend the evening together, but I see you’ve anticipated me.” He casts an appraising look over me, his omnipresent smile lingering on the edge of his lips. “I don’t suppose you’re not wearing anything under that trench coat, are you?”
I cinch my belt tighter. “Are you mad? It’s pelting down rain out there. I have on like eight layers to protect my nether limbs.”
“There go all my plans.” He sighs. “All right. Lay it on me. What are we doing, and what’s the likelihood that one of us will end up dead by morning?”
The irony in his voice doesn’t escape me. “I don’t recall inviting you to share my adventure. In fact, I don’t recall inviting you at all.”
“I know, but if I sit around waiting for you to come to me, I’ll die an old maid. I was hoping to take you dancing—and no, not the moonlight kind. The real kind.”
The real kind? As in, two people enjoying a night out on the town? As in, arms and legs entangled as two bodies move as one?
“What’s wrong?” He tsks and feigns a worried look. “Uh-oh. Can’t you dance? Did I finally discover the one thing Madame Eleanor doesn’t excel at?”
“Of course I can dance,” I say, my voice sharp. I can’t help it—he’s caught me so far off guard that it’s a wonder my mouth works at all. Here I am, up to my knees in blackmail and murder, and this man can only think about whisking me away for a night of carefree entertainment?
