The Blackmail Blend

by Livia Day

  ‘A perfectly legitimate business arrangement,’ said Queen Beatie quickly.

  ‘So I got Xanthippe to do some digging,’ I admitted, looking Lise directly in the eye. ‘About the sister you mentioned when we were discussing the poison pen notes.’

  Lise didn’t look so relaxed and friendly now. She squeezed Stewart’s hand harder and then let go, regarding me through the lenses of her hipster glasses. He looked furious at me, which was not unexpected. Lise just looked sad. ‘What do you think you found out about her?’ she asked finally.

  ‘I know she belonged to various writer forums under the name Emily Heart. She was a member of the romance writers guild. I know she wanted to get published, quite desperately. I know that she suffered from depression.’ I took a deep breath, because this was the hard part, and I felt terrible about it. ‘I know she died a few months ago, and you said you don’t blame yourself any more. But it occurred to me that if she wrote Queen Beatie’s new bestsellers, then you might blame someone else.’

  Lise lifted her chin defiantly. ‘Congratulations, you guessed right about my sister’s tragic story. That doesn’t prove anything. I came here to write a story to expose that monster for what she is. That doesn’t mean I’m a murderer.’ She glared at me, still preserving her dignity. ‘I suppose those police officers out there are expecting me to talk with them now?’

  ‘You might be on their list,’ I agreed.

  ‘I’ll go do that, then.’ Lise flounced out the door.

  Stewart advanced on me, his face very flat. ‘I couldae told ye about her sister if ye asked me.’

  I rolled my eyes at him. ‘Really, I had to ask? You brought me in to solve this.’

  ‘No, Tabitha, I brought ye in tae fix this,’ he hissed, and then he followed Lise out into the corridor.

  ‘Now all that is settled, I rather think I’d like someone to make me a cup of tea,’ said Queen Beatie, with an expectant look at Debbie and Sally, her last two ducklings.

  Sally broke first. ‘I’ll see if there’s a kitchen for guests to use,’ she sighed, picking up the ironic gift basket with its hefty supplies of Queen Beatie’s Blend.

  ‘Without sweetener, I think,’ said Queen Beatie. ‘I’m sweet enough.’

  I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

  George Orwell, "A Nice Cup of Tea," Evening Standard, 12 January 1946

  Xanthippe had selected the police officers to support us in this final act—between the two of us and our family connections we know most of the cops in Hobart. I was half expecting Bishop to be standing in the corridor even though I knew he was deliberately keeping himself out of it—instead we had Senior Constables Terry and Macca, both regular customers at Café La Femme.

  I gave them both a brief wave as I stepped out of Queen Beatie’s room, and turned my attention to Stewart. He stood against the wall, watching Lise give her preliminary statement to Terry.

  ‘Ye didnae haftae dae it this way.’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to have to give a theatrical performance,’ I shot back. ‘But I couldn’t keep quiet about it once it started snowballing.’

  ‘Ye wanted it tae be her,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Don’t be stupid about this.’

  ‘Yer with Bishop,’ he ground out.

  I tugged at his elbow until he turned to look at me. ‘I know. It’s not about that.’

  ‘Oh aye, so it’s a massive coincidence is it, that I start seeing someone and ye accuse her of bein’ an attempted murderer within the week?’

  I stepped very firmly on his foot. ‘Not fair and not true. I hope it’s not Lise. I don’t want it to be her, Stewart. I like her. I was happy for you.’ At least, I was trying very hard to be and I totally would have got there eventually once I got used to the idea.

  We stood there together, watching Lise talking to Senior Constable Terry. I was beginning to think I was wrong. She wasn’t fazed at all about all this. No spark of nerves or guilt.

  She also hadn’t kidnapped me, pointed a Glock at my face and chased me through the Botanical Gardens, so we were definitely doing better than last time I did this.

  ‘Tell me what you’re thinking,’ I said to Stewart in a low voice.

  ‘Ye dinnae want tae know.’

  ‘Try me.’

  His fingers brushed against mine and then he yanked them away as if it was himself he was angry at. ‘I kissed ye. I kissed yeou, and we never talk about it. Am I no’ supposed tae find someone else? Ye wannae leave me on a shelf like a library book, on the off chance that this thing with Bishop blows up in yer face.’

  I breathed in and out. Was that really what he thought of me? ‘Fine. I let you go. Consider yourself released. Run free into the world, and shack up with as many potentially murderous fellow journalists as you like. Just don’t stop being my friend.’

  He gave me a desperate sort of look, and squeezed my hand for real this time.

  Sally returned, carrying a cup of tea in a standard hospital-issue cup. She smiled awkwardly at us as she made her way back into Queen Beatie’s room.

  I looked up and for a brief moment I caught an expression on Lise’s face, just for one second, a gleam of anticipation that didn’t make any sense, unless…

  Fuck.

  Stewart caught his breath for a moment and I knew that he had seen it too. We reacted in unison, hurling ourselves through the door, chasing after Sally and tackling her to the ground.

  The teacup rose and fell, splashing hot tea over Queen Beatie’s lap. She screamed like she did everything else—dramatically.

  Stewart’s eyes caught mine. ‘Ye were right,’ he said, and I would have done anything to make the hurt in his voice go away.

  ‘You were right too,’ I said, pushing myself to my feet and offering him a hand up. ‘I was jealous, despite my best efforts. A tiny bit.’

  His mouth quirked slightly. ‘How tiny?’

  ‘You know those sandwiches I made for the high tea?’

  ‘The really small sandwiches wi’ grass in them.’

  ‘About half of one of those. And they were mint and cucumber, you barbarian.’

  Stewart shook his head, and gave me an exasperated look. ‘Whatever ye say.’

  Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy, doesn't try it on.

  Billy Connolly

  ‘So it was Lise after all,’ said Bishop as we shared tea and toast in bed, two days later.

  ‘I didn’t want it to be,’ I sighed.

  He gave me a sidelong look. ‘Am I missing something?’

  I hadn’t told him about the part where Lise and Stewart were sleeping together, and I had been slightly more than half a sandwich jealous of the whole thing.

  ‘I mean—I’m glad it wasn’t the café. Though this whole thing isn’t going to help with our reputation as murder mystery central. We’re one mysterious corpse away from being added to a tour bus route.’

  ‘Don’t tell Xanthippe,’ he said quickly, only half joking. ‘She’ll probably make it happen to boost publicity.’

  I sighed. ‘Lise used peanut oil. She laced the tea with it. It was Lise’s idea to make an ironic gift basket to take to hospital.’

  ‘She formally confessed?’

  ‘Xanthippe got a few minutes alone with her and pointed out that a court case was a really good way to expose what Queen Beatie had been up to—how she took advantage of Lise’s sister, among so many others.’

  ‘My sister is an evil genius,’ Bishop sighed, putting his mug of tea down.

  I gave him a funny look. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘
Well, a court case will also put Café La Femme back in the papers with another weird crime.’

  ‘Evil genius,’ I hissed. ‘That woman is diabolical.’ Even when she’s being nice, there’s another agenda going on.

  ‘Meanwhile, I managed to completely not interfere in a case involving my sister and my girlfriend,’ said Bishop, stealing the last piece of buttered toast. ‘Never mind your achievements. I’m proud of me.’

  I gave him a slightly buttery kiss on the cheek in congratulations, but that didn’t completely hide my reaction to what he had said.

  Bishop gave me a searching look. ‘Girlfriend,’ he said.

  I flinched again. Damn it.

  ‘Do we need to talk about this, Tish?’

  ‘I’m fine, I can quit any time I want.’

  His eyebrows drew together. Even his eyebrows were handsome. Who has handsome eyebrows? My boyfriend, that’s who.

  ‘Tabitha, did you just think the word “girlfriend”? Because you flinched again.’

  ‘Boyfriend,’ I admitted with a groan.

  Bishop moved the tea tray down to the floor beside the bed and looked at me seriously. ‘Do you want to go back to taking it slow?’

  ‘No!’ I protested. Seriously, this relationship was stressful enough. The last thing I wanted was to take occasional nakedness out of the equation. ‘I think that might actually kill me. I was thinking, though … maybe we could try it from a different angle.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s the girlfriend part I’m having trouble with. You know, serious relationship, settling down, all those—things I never do. It’s ridiculous, I am aware that it’s ridiculous. I’m in my mid-twenties, this is when people’s clock starts ticking, right? But mine isn’t. I’m not even sure if I have a clock but if I do it definitely hasn’t started ticking.’

  ‘People have clocks?’ Bishop looked alarmed. ‘Is this a baby thing?’

  ‘THIS IS SO MUCH NOT A BABY THING,’ I said with actual horror.

  ‘Good. Well. Good.’

  We both sat next to each other for a moment, silently melting down in our individual bubbles of panic.

  ‘Try again,’ he said finally. ‘I think my pulse rate is nearly back to normal.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be your girlfriend,’ I said, and the flinch was hardly even noticeable, I swear. ‘But I’m not sure if I’m cut out to be a girlfriend. I feel the feelings. It’s the job description that does my head in.’

  ‘Does this happen a lot? I mean, with your previous relationships?’

  ‘To be honest,’ I mused. ‘It’s never really come up before.’ Let’s not get into the fact that most of my previous relationships involved me spending more time with their culinary mothers than themselves, and I’d never had a single man in my life who felt like an investment in a shared future. ‘But I think—the ‘girlfriend’ word means more when it’s about you. So I’m not ready for us to use it. Does that make sense?’

  Bishop nodded slowly, but there was something else in his face. Not suspicion. Caution, perhaps. ‘This isn’t—about anyone else, is it?’

  This would be a really good time to explain about the complicated friendship I had with Stewart, and the kissing, and the tiny sandwich of jealousy. If I was a proper grown up, I would totally have that conversation with Bishop right now, get things out in the open.

  But I wasn’t ready. And I hadn’t seen Stewart since the hospital. He wasn’t replying to my texts, and I didn’t know how to feel about that.

  ‘No,’ I said with a smile. ‘No one else.’

  ‘Just us.’

  ‘You and me, and my mouth that talks too much, and my brain full of chocolate profiteroles.’

  Bishop reached out and brushed my cheek with his very warm hand. ‘I like your squishy chocolate brain.’

  ‘And my mouth?’

  His fingers slid into my hair, and his tongue swiped along my lower lip. ‘I also like your mouth.’

  I melted into him, a kiss that only ended when the next one began, and again, and again. ‘Do you know what my mouth really wants you to do right now?’

  He laughed softly against me, and I felt the vibrations all the way down through my skin. ‘It wants me to put the kettle on again, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Good man.’

  Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world.

  T'ien Yi-heng

  A week after Lise was arrested for the attempted murder of Beatrice ‘Queen Beatie’ Wilde, I decided it was time to reclaim Tabitha’s Breakfast blend. I served my favourite tea all day in the café, wafting warm peach and chrysanthemum from the kitchen to the tables;glad to be able to greet my customers with a bright smile and a guilt-free kitchen. Only twelve of them asked about the mysterious high tea murder attempt, which was better than yesterday.

  Every time the door jangled I looked up, expecting Stewart for his mid morning coffee fix, his lunchtime coffee fix, and one of his three daily afternoon coffee fixes.

  I hadn’t seen him all week, and the coffee machine was starting to feel neglected. She and Stewart had a special connection.

  My staff noticed, too. I overheard a whispered conversation between Lara and Yui wondering whether Stewart was sick, or possibly dead, because surely his caffeine-blood ratio had dropped to unhealthy levels by now. Nin warned them to scatter using only her stern eyebrows, but not before I had overheard the last, terrible rumour that he might be cheating on us with another café.

  I really hoped the coffee machine hadn’t heard that, it would break her heart.

  Finally, when the last customers for the day had dispersed and I had sent my nosy staff out into the world, I mopped the floors and made up a plate of delicious leftover baked goods. I put it on a tray with a pot of my Tabitha tea, and another of Café La Femme’s best coffee.

  Time to grovel, or whatever it took to get my friend back.

  But when I went up to the office upstairs, he wasn’t there. I met his boss coming out, and almost dropped my tray. ‘Hey Simon. I see you’ve remembered where your office is!’

  ‘Tabitha!’ said Simon. ‘Are you looking for Stewart?’ He inhaled the fragrance of my tea tray as if he was hoping that the refreshments were for him.

  ‘No, I am taking this upstairs to greet our new neighbours who are totally a thing,’ I lied easily. ‘Where is Stewart?’

  ‘On the road somewhere.’

  I blinked. ‘What road?’

  ‘We got some funding to send one of our bloggers out into the sticks, exploring Tasmanian tourist sights. Tried to talk him into it for weeks and he wasn’t interested, then suddenly—bang. He begged me for the job, took off a couple of days ago. Seriously, can I have that cake?’

  I passed him a wedge of quince jelly cheesecake, because he was providing information. Simon managed to fit almost half of it in his mouth with the first bite.

  ‘How long is he going to be gone?’ I asked.

  Simon shrugged and chewed. ‘Until he runs out of money or things to write about. A few months. Hey, that cinnamon crumble muffin looks amazing…’

  ‘Free samples. Let me know what you think.’ I shoved the tea tray on to Simon’s desk, and walked away, pulling out my phone.

  Five oh-so-casual texts from me to Stewart, with no reply.

  After a minute’s frantic thought, I typed:

  Please let me know you’re OK and that we’re still friends.

  Ten months later, I still had not received a reply.

  OBSESSIVE AMATEUR DETECTIVES (AND THE AUTHORS WHO LOVE THEM) by Livia Day

  [originally presented as a Guest of Honour speech at CrimeSceneWA in November 2014]

  Hobbyists and obsessives are my favourite kind of people, in real life and in fiction. There’s something deeply compelling about those who specialise in an interest so completely that it takes over their entire life, and affects the way they see the world. I’m an obsessive kind of person myself, so I recognise kindred spirits when I see them.

&
nbsp; The first adult books I read were crime novels, because that was what my dad had lying around. (He also had a lot of literature lying around but I knew from the start that wasn’t going to work for me) The first adult crime writer who made a deep, lasting impression on me was Dick Francis.

  Dick Francis was a career jockey first, and the world he lived and breathed was the racetrack: everything from the horses themselves to the people who owned them, bet on them, rode them, and obsessed about them. So he went with ‘write what you know’ which like any conventional writerly wisdom has taken a battering in recent years, but still holds its value.

  You don’t have to care about the racing world to enjoy a Dick Francis novel—I certainly didn’t. Part of what made the protagonists of the Dick Francis brand of novel so compelling to me, apart from the fact that they were really quite lovely men, was that they were immersed in a world I knew nothing about, a world just as alien and magical as something I could get from Anne McCaffrey or C.S. Lewis. They knew their own world so well that it became a kind of superpower, and the crimes they got wrapped up in were always so extremely thematically relevant that only the hero could unravel them to the end.

  Very few of Francis’ heroes were law enforcement professionals, and only a handful continued beyond a single novel. Mostly they were the amateur specialist, with a skill set and knowledge that made them relevant for that single, standalone story. Even when he branched out beyond heroes who were jockeys, his heroes were usually former jockeys, or otherwise professionally connected to the racing world. Occasionally they might be the outsider, brought in to learn about the world of horse-obsessed reprobates for the first time. My favourite and most-reread of his novels, Longshot, came about twenty-eight years into his one-book-a-year career, and features a survivalist writer who enters the racing world as a stranger invited to write a biography. His own books are used as dangerous tools to inspire a serial murderer, so only he is qualified to survive and overcome that murderer, and save the day.