by Agatha Frost
“The first card is…” Evelyn flipped one over and a smile formed immediately. “The Three of Cups.”
“Is that good?”
“Three women holding cups in the air, their arms linked,” Evelyn explained as she ran over the details with her finger. “It’s a symbol of celebration, friendship, and sisterhood. Do I need to say more?”
“I don’t think so.” Em glanced around the retreat and exhaled softly; the peace had well and truly returned. “I hope to see you again, Evelyn. You’re welcome to come and stay on my narrowboat any time you like.”
“As are you at my bed and breakfast!” Evelyn smiled from ear to ear. “You’ll love Peridale. It has …”
While Evelyn abandoned her reading to enthuse passionately about her home village, Em’s mind soaked in the wider environment.
The laughter from the terrace. The prickle of the draught from the nearby window. The joyous music. The smell of spiced wine and cinnamon. The purring from Crescent. The crackling of the fire.
For Em, it was perfection.
Escaping to Crescent Moon Yoga Retreat hadn’t been to ignore Christmas – merely to escape its most capitalist trappings – but Em was grateful the spirit of the day had reached deep into the countryside to be with them.
And best of all, she had new friends to enjoy it with.
Candle Crimbo Bash
A standalone prequel set 3 months before the first book in my Claire’s Candles series, Vanilla Bean Vengeance (OUT NOW)
People often referred to the secret Candle Crimbo Bash of 1999, pulled off in the candle factory behind owner William Warton’s back, as the ‘best Christmas party Northash had ever seen.’ Though most employees from that time had moved on, the legend only continued to grow.
“I heard they kept going until the police cleared the place out around four in the morning,” someone had told Claire during her first week at the factory, nearly seventeen years earlier, “and I heard it was responsible for more break-ups and new romances than any party since.”
Claire hadn’t paid much attention when she’d heard mutterings that ‘this was the year’ in the aftermath of Halloween. In the early days at the job, while still in her late teens, Claire had longed to experience a similar party. Now in her mid-thirties, her time at the factory had taught her that although everyone wanted the party, nobody wanted to step up and organise it.
But this year, the buzz didn’t stop.
William Warton was dead.
Things were different.
On the last Friday before Christmas, almost twenty years to the day after the first legendary party, Claire found herself by the label-sticking station she worked at five days a week. Tonight, she wasn’t working – she was experiencing her very first Candle Crimbo Bash.
“They’re going to be talking about this party for years!” called Damon – her closest work friend – over the loud music as he passed her a can of chilled toffee apple cider. “Can you believe we’ve pulled this off?”
She couldn’t, but if ever they had needed a secret Christmas party minus upper management, this was the year. Cracking open her drink, she took in the crowded factory. Lit by the soft, flickering light of fifty candle jars taken from the rejects bin, the employees of the Warton Candle Factory, drinks in hand, mingled on the factory floor and the metal walkways above. Festive outfits had replaced lumpy blue jumpsuits, and for the first time in months, smiles shone on the familiar faces.
Given how Nicola Warton had been running things since her father’s death, no one had reason to smile much lately.
“Think the buffet is open,” Damon said, craning his neck in the canteen’s direction. “Did Jane from the tearoom end up doing the spread?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied as they followed the crowd that had also noticed Flavio peeling foil off the trays. “Might have given the game away.”
More pilfered candles lit the canteen. The only electric light came from the serving window that opened into the factory’s small kitchen. Wearing his usual chef’s whites, Flavio busied himself with cleaning the kitchen while a line formed at the buffet table.
White paper plates and red napkins in hand, Claire and Damon shuffled down the line. The table held bowls of crisps, trays of sandwiches, tubs of coleslaw and potato salad, a prawn ring, and an array of miniature finger foods. There were mini sausage rolls, mini quiches, mini spring rolls, mini pizzas, mini scotch eggs, and mini pickled onions skewered with mini chipolatas and mini cubes of cheese. All the desserts – French fancies, eclairs, mince pies, profiteroles, doughnuts – were tiny, too, and Claire helped herself to one of each.
“Can’t beat a good buffet,” Damon mumbled through a mouthful of crisps as they claimed the edge of a table in the quickly filling canteen. “My mum calls this British tapas.”
“My mother calls this common food.”
“She’s not wrong,” he replied before biting into a mince pie, “but it tastes so—”
Damon’s face twisted. He yanked the napkin from under his mountain of food and spat out his mouthful.
“Bloody hell!” he cried, scraping his tongue with his teeth. “That is rank!”
Claire took a small bite of her mince pie; it was a love or hate food. Her mother fell in the hate camp, but Claire had always enjoyed them. The crust of the pastry hitting her tongue was all she needed to know this one wasn’t good.
“It tastes,” – she paused, reaching for the right word – “salty?”
“Oh, no.” Damon’s profiterole followed the bite of mince pie. “So does this one.”
Looking around the canteen hall, Claire saw red napkins held to puckered lips as people spat out their food. She tested a sausage roll, the crisps, and then a quiche. All fine. The French fancy and a doughnut were both salty.
“Flavio?” someone called. “What’s the big idea? Are you trying to poison us?”
“Yeah,” someone else cried. “It’s all so salty!”
Flavio appeared at the window, frowning at the buffet. Like everyone else in the factory, this place hadn’t been his first choice of employment. He’d moved from Italy to Northash over a decade earlier to be with a woman he’d met over the internet. The woman had long since gone, but Flavio was still at the factory, though he’d never stopped talking about his dreams of one day opening his own restaurant.
“You people never like my cooking,” he cried, slapping a tea towel over his shoulder as he stalked into the canteen. “You give me two hundred pounds and want a full buffet, but I cannot do this from scratch with so little. I buy all the food frozen and make only the desserts, and still, you complain.”
“The desserts are the problem,” Damon said, offering his plate to Flavio. “Just try something.”
Flavio plucked out an eclair. He took a confident bite but immediately spat it into his cupped palm. Cheeks flushing dark, the tall, dark and handsome man gazed around the busy canteen. All eyes were on him as Mariah Carey wailed about not wanting a lot for Christmas in the background.
“Did you mix up the salt and sugar?” Damon asked.
“You think I cannot read English?” Flavio retorted. “See for yourself. I know how to cook.”
Leaving their plates on the table, Damon and Claire went into the brightly lit kitchen. Claire spotted three bags of sugar on the top shelf. Two were unopened, but the third was rolled to the halfway point. Rising on her tiptoes, she pulled it down and sampled the contents.
“It tastes like sugar,” she said, wincing, “but it also tastes like salt.”
“Oh, gross,” Damon said after trying a sample. “It’s like half and half.”
Flavio marched in as a crowd gathered on the other side of the serving window. He reached into the sugar bag and dabbed some on his tongue. He didn’t say anything, but he went straight to the sink to fill a glass of water.
“Sabotage,” he said, his back to them as he leaned over the sink. “I did not do this.”
“Then who did?” Claire asked, fro
wning up at the two bags of unopened sugar. “And why would someone want to?”
“Maggie is the only other person with a key to the kitchen,” Flavio said as he turned around. “She bought the ingredients earlier. The woman has never liked me.”
Claire and Damon glanced at each other with arched brows. Over the years, they had discussed the feud between Maggie and Flavio at length. Maggie ranked lower than Flavio in the kitchen but, as she liked to remind them all regularly, had worked there twice as long.
“Do you think she’d do that?” Damon whispered as they returned to the factory floor, leaving Flavio to clear the buffet of contaminated items. “We all hear them arguing in that kitchen at least twice a week.”
“But why would she?” Claire mused. “We’re the ones it affects.”
“Makes Flavio look bad?”
“I suppose.”
They naturally drifted back to the label-sticking station with their drinks, but the air had changed. The candles still flickered and the music still blared, but fewer faces smiled. Some had brought paper plates of the savoury food from the canteen, but most seemed to have forgone the buffet altogether.
“So much for a legendary party,” Damon said with a sigh in a moment of quiet between songs. “Heard some people talking about getting a minibus to hit the bars in Manchester if this party turned out to be a dud.”
“On Mad Friday? It’ll be heaving.”
“Least it won’t leave a literal bad taste in our mouths.”
“The night is still young.” Something bright red near the staff room door caught her eye. “Can you hold my drink? Nature calls.”
Leaving Damon to sink against the wall with their cans of cider, Claire pushed through the chattering crowd towards the staff room. Part locker room and changing room, and the location of the bathrooms, the staff room was a melting pot of people at every time of the day. Tonight, it was apparently the place to sneak off for a cheeky Christmas kiss away from prying eyes.
“Go on,” she heard Maggie wheedling, holding mistletoe above her head. “Just a little one. It’s Christmas, Kevin.”
“And I’m still married,” said Kevin, the cleaner, as he gently nudged Maggie to one side. “Maybe it’s time for a glass of water?”
Exhaling, Kevin walked away, leaving Maggie to lean messily against a locker. Against a green Christmas jumper, her short and spiked dyed hair looked an even more vibrant cherry hue than usual.
“Whaddya want?” Maggie slurred when she caught Claire staring. “Hmm?”
Claire had heard rumours that a group had gone to drink at The Hesketh Arms immediately after the Friday shift ended and came straight back to the factory when the Crimbo Bash started. If Maggie’s bleary eyes and sloppy balance were any clue, she had been one of those people. Claire passed an unopened plastic bottle of water to Maggie from her locker’s secret supply stash.
“I hate Christmas,” Maggie announced, throwing the mistletoe to the ground. “Nothing ever goes how you want, does it?”
“You could say that.” Claire guided Maggie to a seat on the bench in the middle of the room while couples smooched to either side. “Speaking of which, the buffet hasn’t gone to plan. Someone has contaminated the sugar with salt and ruined all of Flavio’s desserts.”
“Ha!” Maggie barked. “Good! Deserves it. Pompous idiot. You know I’ve been here twice as long as he has? Has me washing up and fetching and carrying like some dog. I’m a decent cook, but he never gives me the chance. I make a cracking omelette. Ask my daughter.”
That Maggie even had a daughter was news to Claire. It wasn’t that the factory workers and kitchen staff purposefully remained separate, but it was how things worked out.
“Flavio said you were the only other person with a key to the kitchen?”
“Did he now?” She blew a raspberry. “Oh, I see where this is going. He’s trying to stitch me up. It’s not enough that I went and bought all the stuff for this party this afternoon – which no one thanked me for, by the way – but now he wants to blame me because he’s a rubbish cook? Ha!”
“Did you buy the sugar?”
“I didn’t put salt in it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Maggie drunkenly swayed to one side, bashing into the couple there. In trying to right herself, she leaned too far the other way and did the same thing; both couples moved without ceasing their canoodling. “Didn’t want Nicola finding out, so we kept it all off the official ordering. Went to the frozen food warehouse outside the village and got everything except the sugar and butter. Didn’t have any, so I got it when I got back.”
“Where from?”
“The twenty-four-hour place on Park Lane.” Maggie pushed herself upright. “Is there salt in the gin?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Good.” She thrust the untouched bottle of water back at Claire. “Time for another drink.”
Maggie stumbled through the doors and back into the party, leaving Claire to follow behind.
“You took your time!” Damon returned her can of cider. “Did I see Maggie come out of there before you?”
“She claims she doesn’t know anything.”
“Let’s just forget it.” Damon shrugged. “It’s not important.”
Claire nodded, but something in the back of her mind couldn’t let it go. Being the daughter of a former detective inspector, she’d spent her life overhearing stories of strange cases with complex explanations. Something about sabotage at a secret party screamed for further investigation.
“Well, it’s official,” Damon called as he drained his drink. “This party is nowhere near the legendary status I—”
A blaring fire alarm cut off Damon mid-sentence. Above, the sprinklers hissed into life, giving them a split-second’s warning before water gushed from the ceiling. Screams roared over the music as one by one the candles fizzled out. Ditching their cans, Claire and Damon joined the river of people streaming towards the factory’s front doors.
“S-seriously?” Damon’s teeth chattered as they swapped the warmth of the factory for the unpleasant cold of the icy courtyard out front. “That can’t be a coincidence, can it? I thought someone was turning them off?”
“They were,” Claire said, pushing her wet hair from her face before fishing her phone from her jeans. “It was my Uncle Pat.”
Claire didn’t need to hunt for Uncle Pat’s number; he was one of her most frequent contacts. Phone to her ear, she walked through the front gates of the old factory and looked down at Northash’s lights twinkling in the valley below. Beyond the sloping hills of Ian Baron’s farm, her parents’ cottage was lit up on the edge of their cul-de-sac.
“He’s not picking up,” she said, hanging up the phone. “Probably too loud down there.”
“Maybe we should have gone to your mother’s Christmas party after all?” Damon clung to himself, shivering, as his icy breath puffed into the air. “People are fleeing in every direction. Probably not a good idea to stick around, considering the mess in there. Taxi?”
“I think everyone had the same idea,” she said, taking in all the phones pressed to ears. “Let’s walk. Shouldn’t be too bad.”
By the time they reached Trinity Community Church at the bottom of the steep and winding Warton Lane, Claire was eating her words. Narrow and iced over, it had taken clinging to each other and the wall to stop their backsides from landing on the frosty pavement.
“Pub?” Damon asked when they reached the festively decorated village square.
“Looks busy.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Damon set off and nodded for her to follow. “Why don’t we get some beer from the shop, go to mine, dry off, and then get a taxi over to Manchester? It’s not too late to make a wild night of it. Last chance before New Year’s Eve.”
Claire wasn’t keen on the idea of going so far from the village, but she followed Damon anyway. They walked along the row of shops opposite the pub and turned right at the post office onto steep Park Lane. The Park Inn p
ub was just as packed out as The Hesketh Arms, although Claire doubted she’d find very many locals in the village’s ‘other’ pub.
Once inside the brightly lit convenience shop, Damon headed straight for the alcohol section on the far left, but familiar bags of sugar drew Claire into the baking aisle. She crouched in front of the shelf and checked the tops, but they were all sealed shut. Still, she picked up a bag and joined Damon at the counter.
“Worth checking to see if it was a dodgy batch,” Claire said once they were outside. “Could be a joint salt and sugar factory.”
“You’re mad.”
“I’m curious.” She ripped open the top of the bag before dipping her finger inside and then sticking it in her mouth. “Plain old sugar. Perfectly sweet. No salt detected. Which means if Flavio and Maggie are telling the truth, someone else had to have added the salt at the factory. And if the sprinklers are connected, it really was sabotage to ruin the party.”
“But who would do that?”
“Someone with access to both the kitchen and the sprinkler system,” Claire said, pausing in the shadow of the square’s central clock tower as they headed towards Damon’s flat above Marley’s Café. “I don’t know who it could be, but my uncle might.”
Damon groaned. “Does that mean what I think it does?”
“C’mon,” she said, linking arms. “It won’t be that bad.”
Leaving the village square behind, they crossed the bridge over the canal and headed all the way to the cul-de-sac where Claire’s mother, Janet, was throwing her annual Christmas party. Usually, Claire was obliged to attend, but this year she’d insisted she had other plans, although she hadn’t been specific about what those entailed. The first rule of Candle Crimbo Bash is you don’t talk about Candle Crimbo Bash.
“Crikey, Claire!” Janet cried when she opened the door to the large, detached cottage. A civilised party roared behind her. “You look a fright. Why are you all wet and holding a bag of sugar?”
“You always taught me it was rude to attend parties without a gift.” She handed over the bag, stepped inside, and asked, “Where’s Uncle Pat?”
