by Lavie Tidhar
I stared all around me, everything else forgotten, for the moment. The world smelled of chocolate again. It smelled of milk and almonds, of strawberries and vanilla. It smelled of peaches and raspberries and orange blossom. It smelled of bubblegum and mint and baked wafers. It smelled like the world smelled back when it was perfect.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” a voice said. I realized I had shut my eyes.
I knew that voice.
I opened my eyes.
Waffles McKenzie’s butler had his shirt-sleeves rolled up and he was chewing on the end of a chocolate cigar. He regarded me with those sad large eyes. I realized they were the colour of chocolate, and wondered why I’d never noticed that before.
Eddie stood beside him.
“Miss Faulkner,” the butler said, in that soft, sad voice.
“Hello, Mr Farnsworth,” I said.
31
I was drying out next to a vast oven. Steam rose from my clothes. The air was scented with baked pastries.
“It was you,” I said. “All this time it was you.”
The butler and Eddie were playing cards, betting chocolate coins. Eddie was winning. He gave me a sheepish grin but kept his eyes down. He knew I was angry. He’d dragged me into all this, and while I was running around trying to solve the case he was hiding all the while.
Foxglove – Mr Farnsworth – cradled the sodden teddy in his arms. He stood and paced, the cards forgotten. He was both like and unlike the butler had been. He looked the same, but now he moved with barely suppressed energy, and there was a new, determined set to his mouth.
“Thank you for bringing back my teddy bear,” he said.
“It was my fault,” Eddie said. “I shouldn’t have got you involved, Nelle.”
“Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused?” I said. I was almost shouting.
“I didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” he said. He looked contrite. “Nelle, I didn’t have a choice! They were after me, but to them I was just a kid, and you’re just a kid. The only one they really wanted was Mr Farnsworth.”
“You,” I said, turning on the former butler, pointing an accusing finger.
“Yes, Miss Faulkner.”
“Don’t Miss Faulkner me!” I said. “You were there, all the time! You were hiding in plain sight? As a … a butler?”
“It’s a profession with a long and most respectable tradition,” Mr Farnsworth said. “But you knew, didn’t you? You knew already, before tonight.”
“I suspected it,” I said. I thought about it all, finally putting everything together. “You helped Waffles set up his gang. Why? To fight Prohibition? But you were just helping the Consortium!”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Mr Farnsworth said softly. “And besides, how else would I know what they were planning? I had to be close.”
I said, “As a butler, you could watch everything going on and no one even knew you were there.”
“No one ever suspects the butler,” he said, though he had the good grace to look sheepish when he said it.
“Nelle…” Eddie said.
“No! And you!” I said. “He helped you, too, Eddie, didn’t he? He supplied you with candy. Old surplus chocolate bars, so you could become this big-time gangster. You weren’t even a bootlegger, not really – you didn’t have to smuggle anything into the city. It was already here.”
“They raided the factory,” Mr Farnsworth said, “but they never found the old cellars. I’d been running extra batches for months beforehand, knowing the day would come. Not wanting to believe it, but preparing for it nevertheless. I stored away everything.”
“And you could go in and out through the sewage pipes,” I said.
“Yes.”
“It was easy. And no one would ever know, because everyone knew the factory was shut down. Abandoned. Empty.”
“Yes.”
“You know the truth of it, Nelle! I am the victim of a great conspiracy. The Consortium –” he all but spat the word – “those hacks! Those faux-chocolatiers! Assassins! Murderers! I never wanted anything but to make people happy, by making candy. Candy is happiness, Nelle. And they took it away from me.”
“You don’t understand!” I said, almost shouting. I was wasting time, interrogating him, and he didn’t even know. “It isn’t the Consortium, it isn’t about the candy, even – it’s about the factory, Mr Farnsworth.”
“What about the factory?”
“Mayor Thornton wants to tear it down! He wants to build new homes on it.” I took a deep breath.
“He wants the land, Mr Farnsworth,” I said. “That’s why those detectives from Prohibition have been looking for you all this time.”
Mr Farnsworth stared at me, his mouth open in shock.
“He would never!” he said. Then his eyes narrowed and his face hardened in a way I didn’t like. “Well, he cannot have it. He will never have it! I—”
He was going to say more, but right then there was an almighty crash in the distance and his eyes shone and his lips tightened to a line.
“They’re coming,” he said.
I stared at the factory, lit up like a birthday cake. No wonder they were coming, I thought. Mr Farnsworth had made sure they would.
Eddie made distressed faces at me.
CLANG! CRASH! BANG!
And I realized it was the main gates. They were being battered down.
“Miss Faulker,” Mr Farnsworth said. He was the dignified butler again. “Thank you again for returning my teddy. You had better leave now. I do not wish to place you in danger.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
Mr Farnsworth looked at me sadly. As though he could somehow read my mind, he said, “Making friends has never been easy, for me.”
I nodded. There seemed nothing to say. The gates groaned in the distance. They sounded like they were weakening.
“Goodbye, Mr Farnsworth,” I said.
“Goodbye, Nelle.”
He turned. His back was to me. It was as though he had already forgotten I was there.
I looked at Eddie. Eddie looked worried.
Mr Farnsworth began pressing buttons on a big control panel.
“Eddie, what is he doing?” I said.
“He knew this could happen,” Eddie said. “He made plans.”
“What kind of plans?” I said. “We have to get out of here!”
“No! I’m not leaving!” Eddie said. “Mr Farnsworth is going to reopen the factory. He’s already making new candy, Nelle! He’s never going to give the factory to Mayor Thornton! Never! You’ll see. Everything’s going to be all right, Nelle!”
I wanted to hit him. Then I realized that despite the tough-seeming exterior, underneath it he was just lonely, and scared.
“I promised your grandma I’d bring you back,” I told him gently.
CRASH! GROAN…
THUD.
We looked at each other. Mr Farnsworth strode across the platform and disappeared from view, going down the metal steps to the production floor.
“Eddie, we need to get out or we’ll be in a lot of trouble!”
Something in my tone must have penetrated into his thick skull because he nodded. I took his hand in mine. It was dry and warm. We ran to the stairs. We heard a car in the distance, coming close, not hurrying. It stopped outside the building and the engine stilled.
I heard two doors open and shut.
I heard two sets of footsteps on the hard, dry ground.
It was too late for us to run.
“Hide!” I said.
“Where?” Eddie said.
I pulled him by the hand, behind one of the glass vats where pink bubblegum mass pulsated as it grew and expanded. The pink mass pushed against the glass. I stared at it in horrified fascination.
It seemed almost alive.
“We know you’re in there, Farnsworth!”
The shout rang through the vast hall.
It was Tidbeck’s voice.
&nb
sp; Webber laughed cruelly.
“Hide-and-seek, Mr Farnsworth!” he said. “Hide-and-seek. You’re it!”
From behind the machine I could see only their feet.
Tidbeck’s black shoes, shined to perfection.
Webber’s boots, with spatters of mud.
They were still, waiting.
For a moment there were no human voices. The machines alone talked, thumping and churning, making more and more candy. Then a cold, clear laugh cut through the air. It came from all the corners of the hall at once. It made my hair stand on end. It rang clear as an icy bell, pure as snow. I saw Webber take a step back, heard the slither of metal on leather, the snicker of a gun safety being cocked.
Eddie grabbed my hand. We looked at each other.
We were both scared now.
“Come on out, Mr Farnsworth!” Tidbeck called. But her voice had lost its conviction. It sounded thin and alone in the hall. “This isn’t a game!”
“Oh, but it is,” Mr Farnsworth said – and his voice came from right behind the two detectives. I stuck my head around the machine for a better look. Both detectives swung round at once, guns pointing – but there was no one there.
“It’s his public announcement system,” Eddie said beside me. “He can watch, and talk to, every part of the production floor. He said they took away his workers, but they couldn’t take away the machines – so now the machines can do everything themselves. All he has to do is press the right buttons.”
At that moment the bubblegum machine we were hiding behind made a high-pitched, sickening whine. The raw bubblegum mass blew outwards, splattering the sides of the glass. I took Eddie’s hand in mine and we began to run.
“What was th—” Tidbeck started to say, and the glass casing exploded.
Glass fragments shot through the air, falling on the floor with a sound like rain. I couldn’t help it – I turned to look. A mass of pink goo exploded out of the machine, and globs of sticky raw bubblegum fell everywhere, splattering against the walls and on the floor.
I saw Tidbeck half-turn, her arm raised – and a mass of bubblegum came down on her in a giant splatter.
She screeched in rage. She was almost swallowed by the mass. She tried to fight it, but it stuck, and as it did it began to solidify, responding to the air, so that Tidbeck’s movements became slower and slower.
“Get me out of this!” she screamed. Mr Farnsworth’s disembodied voice laughed coldly all around us.
Webber cursed and came to Tidbeck’s help. From somewhere he brought out a knife. He scraped the pink bubblegum off her as best as he could.
When she could move again, she was furious.
“That was a big mistake, Farnsworth,” she said. Eddie and I had scampered up one of the low platforms above a wafer press. Large wafer squares emerged out of an oven and were chopped precisely and pressed down on to flavoured fillings. From there we could see everything.
Tidbeck marched towards the centre of the room like a gunslinger from an old movie. The gun was in her hand. She had blotches of pink all over her face and clothes.
The conveyor belts continued to move, endlessly carrying bars of chocolate. Tidbeck knocked them aside contemptuously. Chocolate fell on the floor and broke, dirtying it. Mr Farnsworth howled through the unseen speakers.
Tidbeck smiled.
Then she raised her gun, closed one eye, took aim high overhead and pulled the trigger.
32
The gunshot echoed through the room. High above, a vat of chocolate milk exploded.
Milk rained down everywhere, and with it came shards of glass. It splashed the machines and dribbled on the floor and created a brown waterfall that fell down in sheets and turned into a tepid lake when it hit the floor.
Mr Farnsworth howled again, unseen.
“I could do this all day!” Tidbeck screamed.
An alarm began to wail, somewhere in the distance. Webber sauntered towards the wrapping machines. The chocolate kept coming. Webber pulled off a long metal bar with a screech of groaning metal. He hefted it in his hands and smiled. Then he attacked the wrappers.
Sheets of beautiful paper tore and ripped. Webber’s arms rose and fell in a blur of motion. Bits of wrapping paper flew everywhere, rising on unseen currents, dipping and rising like butterflies, drifting to all corners of the factory. Webber howled with glee. Tidbeck took aim with her gun again and squeezed the trigger, and a mound of multi-coloured lollipop-hard sugar exploded.
“Ow!” Eddie said. He touched his cheek and when he took his hand away there was something sticky and red on his finger. He put it in his mouth.
“Hey, it’s sweet,” he said, surprised.
He’d been hit by a sugar shard.
“Stop!” Mr Farnsworth screamed.
“Come out!” Tidbeck shouted. “You are under arrest!”
“I will destroy you!” Mr Farnsworth said. “How dare you, come over here, to my place, mine! You think you could take it from me? I have done nothing but bring people joy! This is my chocolate factory, this will always be a chocolate factory! How dare you, you…?” Words failed him.
Tidbeck smirked.
“Who are you going to tell?” she said. “There is no one here, Farnsworth. No one here but us.”
She raised her gun again and fired, and another tank of milk exploded high overhead.
“Mayor Thornton sends his regards!” Tidbeck screamed.
Mr Farnsworth howled again on the public announcement system. The sound filled the whole of the factory, a cry of terrible anguish and distress.
“Come out or this will go badly for you!” Webber shouted. He rested with his hands on the metal bar. He was breathing heavily, his face red. Bits of wrapping paper fluttered everywhere in the air. Dirty chocolate mud covered the once-pristine floor. Gum and candy shards were splattered against the walls. “Come out and we can be merciful, Farnsworth! Ain’t nobody here to help you!”
Beside me, Eddie did something very stupid.
“No one here but us!” he shouted. He stood up very tall. Or, at least, as tall as he could. I was still taller than him, just about.
Both Tidbeck and Webber turned and looked in our direction. Tidbeck’s face warped in an ugly sneer of recognition. Webber just looked angry.
“Come over here, kids. You don’t want to get hurt,” Tidbeck said, with an awful, sugary sweetness in her voice.
“Oh, Eddie, no!” I said, horrified.
“What?” his pale freckled face was turned to me. “Look what they’re doing!” he said. “We could be witnesses, we could tell everyone, they’d have to believe us, they’d—”
Everything happened kind of fast then.
Firstly, Webber came after us. He didn’t run so much as lumber, the metal bar still in his hands. I looked around helplessly, then my eyes aligned on the ladder leading up to the higher ramps.
I pulled Eddie after me and we began to climb. My palms were sweating and it was hard to hold on to the rungs.
“Come down from there, kids!” I heard Webber shout. When I finally reached the top ramp I leant down to help Eddie up. Behind his mop of red hair I could see the whole factory floor spread wide below us. Webber was directly underneath us now, trying to climb but having trouble. He kept cursing and hitching his belt up, but eventually he began to follow.
“Hurry, Eddie!”
I pulled, and he collapsed on the metal floor beside me. I saw Tidbeck looking this way and that, her gun out, her eyes searching. There was no sound from the public announcement system. Then I heard an engine roar to life. Tidbeck turned and turned, wildly, trying to find the source of the sound. Webber had almost reached the level we had just vacated.
Then I saw it.
It was one of the golf buggies they used to use in the factory in order to get around.
It had the Farnsworth colours.
It had an open top.
It had Mr Farnsworth, grinning maniacally, behind the wheel.
The cart’s he
adlights shone ahead, catching Tidbeck in their beams. She turned, one hand raised to shield her eyes, the other still holding the gun.
The golf cart, with another roar of its engine, sped and ploughed straight into her.
I screamed.
Detective Tidbeck was knocked aside by the impact. She rolled and the gun fell from her hands and slid fast across the floor. Farnsworth whooped in triumph and began to turn the cart. Tidbeck pulled herself up, her face a furious mask of pink bubblegum and dirty chocolate milk.
“We have to do something!” I said.
“What!” Eddie said.
Below us, Webber was still reaching for the rungs on the ladder. He looked up at us and smiled an awful smile.
“Well, do something!” Eddie said.
Then I remembered the marbles Cody had given me. I’d forgotten about them, but they should still be there…
I reached in my pocket and my fingers closed around them.
I pulled them out. Looked at them in my hand.
Then dropped them down on Webber.
His feet were still on the ramp. The marbles bounced with a gentle chime. Webber looked surprised. He tried to change position – and slipped on the marbles.
He fell like a sack of cookie dough.
There was a heavy thud.
Then silence.
When I looked down I saw that he was lying peacefully on the ground. He wasn’t moving.
I was very quiet. I climbed down the ladder and stepped carefully over the ramp and the marbles, and slid down the rest of the way.
Eddie followed.
We stood over Webber. His chest was rising and falling evenly. He was breathing.
He still had that surprised look on his face.
“Whoa,” Eddie said. “His head’s gonna be real sore when he wakes up.”
“You think?”
I felt shaky but I didn’t have time to worry about Webber or what I’d done. Just ahead, Farnsworth had turned around and the little golf cart’s fender was aimed straight at Tidbeck again.
She stood, shaky but upright, and the gun was back in her hand. She must have scrambled for it while we were busy dealing with Webber. It was dripping with dirty chocolate water.
