The Chocolate Magic Cozy Mystery Box Set Books 1 to 7

by Olivia Swift

  “Bart might have some way of finding out,” said Magda.

  This morning, Sam went off to the yard and said he would be at the café by mid-morning.

  “Will make sure the builders know what they are doing first.”

  True to his word, Sam arrived at the café but said Declan would be a little while as he was driving the digger. A little later, they fastened back the wrought iron gates and watched with bated breath as the mini digger came along the alley with very little room to spare.

  The chairs and tables had been moved to make way for the dig. Customers in the café were intrigued. Declan found that he was the entertainment value and even the customers inside the café were standing up to look out of the windows.

  “Are you making a new section Magda?” Elsie, one of the regulars asked.

  “Maybe a little garden?” her friend added. Magda shook her head.

  “Just curious about the history,” Magda replied. “There used to be steps down and a doorway when the bank was a house and had servants,” Magda told them. “I’ve asked Declan to arrange what he digs up as a background for the outdoor model railway.”

  “Then you could plant miniature plants to make it look authentic,” Elsie said. Everyone watched Declan as he jolted backwards and forwards with the digger. He stopped and came across.

  “Your turn,” he said to Sam, who was enjoying a quiet coffee. He drained the cup and went to continue with the digging. Declan took a coffee and sank into a seat. The rubble came out and was added to the railway. It took longer to do that because the digger was an old machine and it wasn’t easy to operate. Sam stopped and looked down into the hole. He waved Magda over. Most of the customers came as well. He pointed. The steps were visible and the outline of the doorway. The covering on the wall stopped at ground level and the older, original was revealed.

  Magda stepped gingerly onto the first stair.

  “Back in history,” she said. “I wonder if the Hoffstanders are watching me from somewhere.” She climbed back up and Sam said he would clear out the rest.

  “Did you say Hoffstanders?” Elsie queried. Magda nodded and said it was that family who had owned the house a long time ago. Elsie nudged her friend. “Rosie, wasn’t that the name your mom said was in your family?”

  Rosie nodded and agreed.

  “The name Makerstone is not in the family by any chance as well?” Magda asked. Rosie jumped as if she had been stung. Magda asked if she was feeling unwell. Elsie put a hand on her friend’s arm.

  “Rosie’s mom was a Makerstone before she married, and she only passed away a month ago.”

  “Oh, no. I am so sorry,” Magda said. She pulled out a chair and sat beside them. “You always miss your mom no matter how old you are.”

  Rosie managed a smile. “I am fine, Magda.”

  “Maybe your ancestors lived in that house,” Magda remarked. “Did your mom ever mention anything about her family?”

  “We weren’t allowed to talk about it. Apparently, there was a skeleton in the closet somewhere. I don’t know where.”

  “We were looking at the newspaper archives and it looks like Mr. Hoffstander who lived in this house went out one day and just disappeared. They searched but never found anything. It seems nobody ever found out what happened to him.” Magda roughly outlined the story.

  “I know my grandmother was a Hoffstander and she married a Makerstone. My mother was Makerstone before she was married. I never connected the bank building with the name,” Rosie said.

  “It’s up for sale,” Elsie said. Magda nodded.

  “We would like to buy it but whether we ever will or not is up to planners, banks and real estate agents.”

  “Good luck,” Rosie said. “I will go through the old photos and see if I can come up with anything for you.”

  “That would be wonderful. If we get the keys, you can have a look around where your ancestors lived.” Magda was rewarded with a smile from Rosie as she pushed back her chair and went back to work. Then she came back with a small plate.

  “Care to try the new gin and tonic truffle?” she asked, and the two ladies gave the new addition the thumbs up.

  Sam pulled out all that he could with the digger. Then he and Declan shoveled out the rest from the tricky corners. They had revealed a stone stairwell and quite a sizeable patch of stone at the bottom where the doorway would have been. Magda and the others came to look down.

  “Back at seven?” Declan asked and said he would take the digger back to the yard. Rosie took hold of Magda’s hand and tried the stone steps where her great grandparents had once had a servant’s entrance. Magda felt a flutter of something telling her that there was activity of some sort in the area, but she kept that to herself.

  They closed up the cafe and drove home. Over dinner, she told Sam that there was something in the area of the steps. “I wonder what Merle will make of it.”

  “At least we know about the Makerstones,” Sam added. “Rosie might come up with a photo that helps.”

  The cats were suspiciously quiet and lay together on the sofa until the food packets came out. There were no fallen pictures or magazines. Sam and Magda wrapped up warmly, found flashlights and drove back to the café.

  They relocked the wrought iron gate when everyone was inside and opened up the café to drop off purses and other bits and pieces.

  “No room for seats. We will have to stand,” Merle said. She organized them in a circle as best the space would allow; some of them stood on the steps as well. She began by asking for protection for them all. Then she instructed everyone to take deep breaths, try to empty their minds of any distractions and to imagine themselves in a balloon of blue protective light. The whole group was used to this and, where they could, held hands.

  “I will call out first,” Merle started and asked if there were any spirit people there. She was going to say that she could feel someone coming closer when Declan broke in.

  “I can see him,” he said. “He’s in the doorway, tall man with a head of dark hair and wearing a dark suit.”

  Nobody was the least bit surprised that Declan spoke out first. They all knew he could see spirits and took it for granted. He had thought everyone was the same when he was a youngster but kept quiet when he realized they thought he was strange.

  Merle loved it because although she could feel someone there, she could not see it. Declan could see what was there but could not feel anything or interact. Between them, it seemed to work.

  “Hello. We know you’re in the doorway. Thank you for coming forward. We mean you no harm.” Declan said that the figure was more visible and had stepped toward them. “Can you see us? Can you make a noise if you can see us please?” There was a pause when they all stood silently and then a slight thumping noise happened. They all let out a collective breath and Merle said thank you. “I think you are sad about something. I can feel a sort of unhappiness around you. Am I right?” The thump came again, and Magda joined in to ask if the man was someone from the house that belonged to the Hoffstanders.

  5

  There was another noise. Declan said that the man looked sort of hopeless.

  “He looks like he doesn’t know if he should go or stay.”

  “Are you worried about something, Mr. Hoffstander?” Magda asked. “Can we help you?”

  “He looked toward you there, Magda. Ask him again,” Declan suggested. Magda tried again to ask why he was unhappy and if they could help him.”

  Merle asked if she could help him find the way to the light. “Why are you still here?” she asked. There was no response.

  “Are you looking for your wife and daughter?” Magda queried and after a pause there was a bang that seemed to come from under their feet.

  “Did you know that the house was sold?” Merle asked and told him two noises for no and one for yes. She asked again and there were two distinct noises.

  “The house had to be sold because there was no money,” Sam said.

  There
was no noise, but Declan said that he thought the man was crying. “Can’t be sure but I think so.”

  “Listen to me, Mr. Hoffstander,” Merle said. “Your daughter married and then they sold the house and made a new start. That was not a sad thing. You have at least one great granddaughter that I know about.”

  “She is called Rosie,” Magda added.

  “He is looking in your direction again,” Declan told her and looks a bit brighter.

  “Did you know my great grandparents who owned this stable?” Magda went on and gave their name which was Hungarian and distinctive. There was another utterly loud bang.

  “Thank you,” Merle said and asked if he knew the house had been owned by the bank for many years. There were two bangs when she repeated the question.

  “He’s all mixed up,” Sam remarked.

  “They couldn’t find you, Mr. Hoffstander. They searched and searched and never found anything. Were you attacked?” Magda asked. After a little while there were two noises.

  “So, he wasn’t attacked or killed,” Bart surmised. “Did you just walk away, Mr. Hoffstander?”

  “He’s looking at you in a sort of surprised way,” Declan observed.

  “Did you just walk away?” Merle repeated the question and there was one very loud bang. They were all taken aback at that response.

  “He just left,” Sam said. “He just walked out on them.”

  “Is that why you are so sad now?” Merle asked. “Because you walked out on the family?”

  She asked again and there was one muffled noise in response.

  “Oh dear,” Magda said. “Where did you go?”

  “He has used up all of his energy,” Declan told them. “His image is very blurred now and going away.”

  “I wish we knew where he went and why,” Magda remarked.

  “You are not going to believe this but the last thought that came into my head was Ireland,” Merle told her. Magda had no reply to that. Merle talked them back to reality with her usual visualization of asking them to see themselves as a rising balloon, reaching a level of peace and awareness the higher it rose.

  They made their way into the café and took seats. Rula had left the machine switched on and she and Katie passed around coffee and hot chocolate.

  “Wow! We saw him. If Rosie can find a photo, we can get Declan to verify that it really was Mr. Hoffstander,” Sam said and passed Merle a glass of water. She always felt a great need to drink it when her mind had been working on something like that.

  “He wasn’t killed or injured. He just left,” Bart said. “It gives us another line of inquiry.”

  “And Ireland. How strange is that, when we go in another three weeks?” Magda added.

  Merle had regained her composure and asked Declan to describe the man in detail. He went through the description again and said that the man was wearing what he thought would be expensive clothes at the time, but they were a bit rumpled and the worse for wear.

  “Interesting,” Merle replied. “He felt so depressed and miserable really. I could believe that somebody feeling like that would let himself go.”

  “I’ll chase up the records of ships leaving shortly after the search for the missing man,” Bart told them.

  “It would prove that he did actually just go away, if you found it,” Branston joined in.

  “I wonder why,” Sam mused.

  “Money or women,” Rula said with a practical streak coming in.

  “Or maybe both,” Katie added. “Maybe he went off with somebody.”

  “Maybe his wife always thought that and that was why she never talked about it and the family never knew,” Magda remarked.

  “Does it put anyone off owning the building?” Sam asked. They all shook heads and Magda said that she was glad they had found the doorway to the cellar.

  “Even if we do not get the building, we can make a feature of the stairwell.” She added that the hills for the outdoor model railway could be planted with miniature shrubs and evergreens. “I wonder how Rosie will react.”

  “And if she found a photo,” Katie wondered as she cleared away the empty mugs into the dishwasher. They closed up and said goodbye.

  Sam and Magda found that the cats were all waiting for supper and treats but nothing broken or pushed onto the floor.

  “What are the chances of buying this bank building?” Magda asked Sam. His architect experience and work with construction meant that he did deal with these things.

  “It will take some time until all of the checks and permissions go through but after that we should be in a good position. The planners know the work Declan and I have done and should know that we will not turn the bank into Disneyland.”

  “There is no art gallery already in the town and it should all add to tourist attractions.”

  Sam said that it was promising but they should just get on with the Irish trip and wait for the planners to catch up. She said that she would fit in some time to add compost to the new railway background and look for some plants.

  The next day was normal. The customers ate, drank and bought truffles. Bart said that he would find time to check the travel situation for the time Hoffstander disappeared. Elsie arrived with Rosie. Rosie had a smile and an envelope in her hand. Bart stayed to see what they said.

  Rosie had found several photographs. She spread them out on the counter, and everyone passed them around.

  “We need Declan,” Katie said. “He was the one who saw what he looked like.” Rosie and Elsie both raised their heads and looked at her. “Oops, sorry. I should have thought before I opened my mouth.”

  She looked at Magda.

  “I don’t know whether you believe in spirits or not, Rosie. I do. Partly because when I inherited this place, I saw a cat walk through the wall.”

  Both women looked at her and said nothing. Then Rosie smiled.

  “You mean that black and white one over there?” Magda caught the glimpse of Pushkin’s tail as he went through what would have been a doorway once upon a time. Magda laughed and nodded. “Exactly.”

  “That was a ghost cat?” Elsie asked. “I just thought it was a cat.”

  “Pushkin seems to be the exception. All sorts of folk can see him. Well, because of that cat we found out that Declan can actually see if there are spirits around. The rest of us can’t but he can. We had a séance last night over by the steps to the bank.”

  “He saw a man and described him as wearing a dark suit and with a full head of dark hair,” Katie joined in again.

  “We felt that he was very sad about something. We all thought that he had just gone away and felt very sorry about it,” Rula told them.

  “So, this man on here, that is my great grandfather because it is written on the back, is still around this building.”

  Bart took a photo picture on his cell and sent it to Declan, Sam and Merle. There was a delay of a few minutes and his phone buzzed.

  “Yes, that is the man, Declan says,” Bart told them.

  “The others in the photo must be your great grandmother and her daughter, your grandmother,” Magda observed. “They never found out what happened to him.”

  “And it turned into a mystery that the family never talked about,” Elsie added.

  “So, where did he go and why?” Rosie asked.

  “And why is he back there and sad?” Katie added.

  “Did he have any Irish connections by any chance?” Magda asked. Rosie thought and said that she thought there was some connection.

  “Ireland was somewhere that my mother always wanted to visit. She said that her mother had wanted to go as well but never said why. Maybe there was something a long way back.”

  “Hoffstander sounds more German than Irish,” Rula surmised.

  “It might be that we are all just thinking about Ireland because we are going there in a few short weeks,” Magda said and explained about the trip. “It might just be in our heads.”

  “I’ll go and do some research,” Bart t
old them. “Will try and find time to look for where he might have gone.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Rosie started and hesitated, “that you are having another attempt to see him?” Magda smiled.

  “If we do, would you like to be there?” The two women both nodded.

  “I think I am more curious than Rosie, really. I remember her mother very well and I know she was always bothered by the fact that they never knew why he disappeared. It was a sort of family mystery that nobody talked about.”

  “We will try and do something,” Magda assured them. “We leave soon for Kilkenny and we have to put in an offer for the bank and set the wheels in motion.”

  “It could wait until you come back,” Rosie answered. “He has waited all these years anyway.” Magda laughed and offered them a hot chocolate on the house. Then she told Rula she would run down to the garden center and ask them to bring compost for the railway embankments.

  When she came back, she was followed by two young men with a van carrying bags of soil. They made a pile of the bags and looked at the rubble from the steps. The older of the two came and asked her how long the rubble had been in the stairwell.

  “I’m a bit of a metal detectorist1,” he confessed. “Can I run the machine over the rubble before we start?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll be interested,” Magda said. He went and brought his metal detector from the van and switched it on. The customers all made a curious audience.

  “You know,” one man said, “This café gives you entertainment that nobody else would think about.”

  “All part of the service,” Magda laughed and offered him and his friend a gin and tonic sample truffle.

  The detector beeped and everyone watched as the man, Simon, picked up a metal nail. He shook his head and threw it onto a rubbish pile. Three beeps later he picked up a button and rubbed it with his thumb.

  “This is old,” he told Magda and handed it over. She turned it over.

  “My mom had something like that in her old button box that was handed down from her mom before her,” Katie said and looked at the button. Elsie and Rosie agreed that it was not modern and handed it back to Magda.