Fruit Cake and Fear

by Agatha Frost

  “The TV people are here,” Jessie mumbled, nodding to a van adorned with a satellite dish. “They’ll probably want to talk to you.”

  “Good luck to them,” Julia said as they walked around the edge of the village green. “I don’t want to talk to them.”

  They approached the crowd in front of her café, who were being held back by blue and white crime scene tape and uniformed officers. A white tent had been erected at the entrance of the alley where Julia’s brand new bike was still in the back yard. Through the window of the café, she could see right through the beaded curtain to the men in suits in her kitchen.

  “Julia!” Shilpa, the owner of the post office, cried. “We’ve just heard!”

  “Is it really her?” Amy Clark, the church organist, asked, as she plucked a small bobble off her pale pink cardigan. “They won’t tell us anything.”

  “It’s awful, either way,” Malcolm Johnson, the president of the Peridale Green Fingers whispered, his large frame looming over the crowd. “She was the same age as my Chloe.”

  “Just awful,” Mary Potter, the owner of The Comfy Corner, sniffled as she dabbed her nose with a handkerchief. “She was such a lovely girl. Worked some Saturdays at my restaurant. How did you find her?”

  All eyes in the crowd turned to Julia. She looked around the sea of faces, and out of the corner of her eye noticed somebody pointing her out to a woman who was being followed by a man clutching a giant camera. Barker slipped out of the white tent, and she hurried forward to catch his attention.

  “The damn cold case team!” Barker cried as he ducked under the tape. They walked away from the scene and rounded the corner of the post office where he leaned against a red phone box. “This is my village, and they’re not letting me anywhere near her. Acting like they’re all high and mighty, but I just want to help. Happy to use my officers for crowd control, but won’t tell me what’s going on.” Barker paused and inhaled before looking down at Julia. “Why is it always you, eh?”

  “She was there before it was my café,” she said, her brows tensing. “The storm knocked over a tree and – it doesn’t matter. Has anyone spoken to Evelyn yet?”

  “They haven’t officially identified the body,” Barker said, glancing over his shoulder and towards Evelyn’s B&B. “But from what people are saying about this girl, how can it be anyone else?”

  “I’m pretty sure it was her,” Julia said. “She was wearing her Head Girl badge.”

  Julia looked towards the B&B, her heart stopping when she spotted Amy Clark scurrying towards it, her pastel pink cardigan and pale blue skirt sticking out. Leaving Barker leaning against the phone box, Julia set off at a run after her.

  “Amy!” she called. “Where are you going?”

  Amy turned around and glanced at Julia, but she continued on towards the B&B, not stopping until she was unclipping the garden gate. She shuffled down the path and yanked on the metal chain next to Evelyn’s door. The musical doorbell chimed out around the B&B as Julia followed Amy up the garden path.

  “Somebody needs to tell her,” Amy muttered over her shoulder as she fiddled with the buttons on her cardigan. “It’s better it comes from a familiar face than a man in a suit.”

  “They have people trained for this,” Julia whispered, glancing at the police station across the road. “Please, this isn’t –”

  Before Julia could finish her sentence, the door burst open, the strong scent of incense hitting them both in the face. Amy coughed and wafted at the dusty cloud of smoke with a hand. Evelyn appeared through the smoke, the sweet and spicy burning sticks in each of her hands.

  “Amy! Julia!” she exclaimed as she wafted the sticks around her head. “What can I do for you? I’m just showing my new guests one of the rituals I picked up during my travels in India three winters ago.”

  “They’ve found her, Evelyn,” Amy blurted out, her cheeks burning red. “They’ve found her.”

  Evelyn’s arms dropped to her sides. Just from how quickly every muscle in her face sagged, Julia could tell the B&B owner knew exactly who Amy was referring to.

  “Found who?” she asked with an uneasy smile. “I’m quite busy, so if you –”

  “Astrid,” Amy said quickly, the name jumping out of her mouth. “Julia found her in the basement under her café. Didn’t you, Julia?”

  Amy nudged Julia in the ribs with her elbow and nodded at Evelyn. Julia opened her mouth to speak, but she did not know what to say to the woman who was pleading with her eyes to deny Amy’s crazy tale.

  Instead, all Julia could do was nod. She looked pathetically down at the floor and watched as the incense sticks tumbled from Evelyn’s hands and sizzled against the carpet. With the weight of ten men, Evelyn dropped to her knees and let out the deepest and most painful moan the village had ever heard. Julia could not hold back her tears.

  4

  Julia felt like a spare part in the days following the discovery of a body underneath her café. With the forensics team still combing over the building, she was not allowed anywhere near, so she stayed home, pacing back and forth in between bursts of nervous baking.

  “What are you working on?” Jessie asked as she wandered into the kitchen.

  “Another version of my mother’s fruit cake,” Julia said as she sieved flour into the bowl. “Since my birthday cake is currently going mouldy in the café’s fridge that I’m not allowed to touch, I thought I’d make it again so you can at least try it.”

  “I still haven’t tried all of these yet,” Jessie said as she opened the fridge to point out the half a dozen other cakes Julia had baked so far. “With you in here and Barker tapping away in the dining room on that stupid typewriter, I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  “Why don’t you go and see Billy for a couple of hours?” Julia suggested. “I’m sure he’ll keep you entertained.”

  “He’s gone down to the coast with his dad,” Jessie said with a sigh as she looked down at her phone screen. “He can’t seem to get a signal. He tried video calling me earlier, and I couldn’t tell what was a pixel or a nostril.”

  Jessie tossed her phone onto the counter and doubled back to the bathroom. She closed and locked the door, only to scream and rip it open.

  “He’s done it again!” she cried. “Barker!”

  Julia followed Jessie into the dining room. Barker’s fingers were typing at lightning speed, the old keys clacking loudly against the paper. He rolled onto the next line and gulped down some cold coffee without looking up.

  “Huh?” he said as he carried on typing.

  “Is it so difficult to put the toilet seat up when you go?” she cried. “Or at least wipe it? I lived on the streets, and even I’m not an animal!”

  “Mhmm,” he mumbled as his typing sped up. “Sure.”

  “And your underwear!” Jessie cried, her arms flapping. “Why is it so difficult to put them in the washing basket? You put them next to the washing basket, but never in the washing basket.” Jessie paused for breath and folded her arms against her chest as she waited for a response. “Are you even listening to me?”

  “Washing basket,” he said with a nod, not taking his eyes away from the paper. “Gotcha.”

  Jessie grunted and turned on her heels, her face bright red.

  “You deal with him!” Jessie snapped, looking Julia dead in the eyes. “Because if I don’t walk away, I’m going to bash his head in with that bloody machine!”

  Jessie stormed out of the dining room and into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her as she went. Julia inhaled and forced a smile as she tried to remember what it was like being a teenage girl full of hormones.

  “Barker,” Julia said softly as she approached him. “I know you’re trying to catch up on those pages you lost, but Jessie has a point. This is her home, and you need to be a little less – messy.”

  “I’m not messy,” he shrugged, finally looking up from the page. “And I’m not catching up, I’m starting again. Everything that is happening right
now has just inspired me to write. My house being destroyed, the body under your café, it’s all great material! There are so many more interesting cases to write about other than the Gertrude Smith one.”

  “I thought they were still shutting you out of the case?”

  “They are,” Barker said, after gulping down more cold coffee. “Which is what makes it so interesting. I get to fill in the blanks of what I don’t know. My creative juices are flowing, and I need to get it all down on paper before I explode.”

  “Perhaps you should lay off the caffeine for a while?” Julia suggested as she picked up the cup. “Just lift up the toilet seat, okay?”

  “I thought I did,” he mumbled as he began to type again. “I’ll try.”

  “Don’t try,” Julia said as she walked away. “Just do it.”

  After washing the coffee cup and hiding the jar of coffee in Mowgli’s food cupboard, Julia continued working on her cake, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door seconds later. She listened out and waited for a moment until it became obvious nobody else was rushing for the door. Sighing to herself, Julia yanked off her apron and dumped it on the counter.

  “I guess I’ll just get it,” she called out as she walked down the hallway towards the door. “It’s not like I’m doing something.”

  Pushing forward a smile, Julia checked her reflection in the mirror and dusted the flour out of her hair before pulling on the door. Her smile quickly dropped when she saw who was on the other side.

  “Alistair?” Julia exclaimed, her head recoiling. “What a surprise.”

  “I hope you don’t mind me showing up like this,” the old man said as he leaned his entire body weight onto a twisted wooden cane. “I suspect you’ve been expecting me.”

  Julia stepped to the side and let the man in. It had crossed her mind to speak to the man who had sold her the building that was now a crime scene, but she had not expected him to turn up on her doorstep. In any other scenario, she would have hunted him out immediately after finding the body, but she had been sitting on her hands, if only to prove to Roxy and Johnny that she was not the dog with a bone they insisted she was.

  “Can I get you some tea?” Julia asked as the old man hobbled into the sitting room, the top of his back completely hunched as he used the cane like a third limb. “Or maybe some cake? I have a fridge full of the stuff.”

  “Peppermint and liquorice, if you have it?” he said as he lowered himself into the armchair next to the roaring fire. “I recall you offering it to me when we had our meetings about the building, and I rather liked the taste.”

  Julia retreated to the kitchen and quickly made two cups of tea. Even though he had not asked for some cake, she plated up two generous slices of Battenberg, if only to get rid of the products of her nervous baking.

  “I tried to call ahead, but I think your mobile telephone number has changed,” he said breathlessly as he leaned his head back against the headrest. “I don’t remember that walk up your lane being quite so long.”

  Julia smiled sympathetically as she placed the cake and tea on the table next to the chair. She cast her mind back to the last time she had seen him. It was on the day he handed over the keys, and even though he had not been a spring chicken, he had not seemed so frail.

  “How are you?” Julia asked, perching on the edge of the couch. “You look – well.”

  “You shouldn’t lie to an old man,” he said through a shaky smile. “I’m riddled with arthritis, my blood pressure is haywire, and I’m recovering from a stroke I had before Christmas. Haven’t been the same since, but they look after me up at Oakwood. I’m grateful for you buying my shop every single day because I wouldn’t be able to afford that place otherwise.”

  He rested his eyes for a moment and seemed to be drifting off to sleep, but they quickly shot open, and he began to rub his swollen knuckles. Julia sipped her tea and waited for the old man to speak again.

  “I wanted to come and see how you were,” he started after taking a shaky sip of the tea himself. “I wanted to come the second I heard, but I’ve been full of a cold all week and today is the first day I’m feeling like myself. When I heard about Astrid, you were the first person I thought of.”

  “I’m okay,” Julia said, not wanting to let him know she had not been able to shake the image of Astrid’s skeleton from her mind. “It’s Evelyn I’m concerned about.”

  “Ah, yes,” Alistair said with a nod. “The girl’s mother. How is she?”

  Julia had not seen Evelyn since she had helped her up off the floor of her hallway. After settling her in her sitting room and shooing the guests back up to their rooms, Evelyn had turned and kicked her out. She had not been seen in the village since, although officers had been spotted going in and out of the B&B.

  “She’s holding up,” Julia lied. “As well as can be expected.”

  “Twenty years is a long time to hold out hope,” he said heavily. “I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes, but I understand loss. My Mildred died last year. We retired up to Oakwood together, and it’s not been the same since she left me. We never had children, so I gather it will be a different kind of loss, but a loss all the same.”

  Julia nodded and took a small bite of the cake. She thought about the questions she had been wanting to ask Alistair in the last couple of days, but now she was face-to-face with the man, she was not sure he would hold up to intense questioning.

  “Do you have any idea how she got down there?” Julia asked, deciding to cut to the chase. “I never even knew there was a basement under the building.”

  “It was my workshop,” he explained, his swollen hands resting on the chair arms. “I made my toys down there. Everything in my shop was hand carved by me, and I did a roaring trade until about thirty years ago when everyone started playing computer games. Nobody wanted what I had to offer, but I hung on for as long as I could. Finally shut up the shop in July of 1997. It was painful, but I knew I was doing the right thing. Rented the place out. It was taken over by a travel agent, and then one of those mobile phone shops, but neither lasted long. Didn’t suit the village and what people wanted. It was empty for three years before you came back home. People said the building was cursed because nobody could succeed there, but you proved them wrong. Maybe I was the curse, or maybe – just maybe it was real after all, considering what has come to light.”

  Alistair paused to carefully lift his tea to his lips again. Each movement looked painful, but he pushed through. He set the cup on the table again and turned to Julia.

  “I suppose you want to know why I paved the yard and hid the door to my workshop?” Alistair asked with a sad smile.

  “The question did cross my mind.”

  “I wish I had an answer for you, dear, but I don’t. I didn’t pave the yard,” he said with a heavy sigh. “When I closed down my beloved toy shop, I stayed away from the building. It was too painful. I regret to say I never went back out into that yard after my last day of trading. You don’t have to do landlord inspections with those franchised businesses, you see. You know they’ll look after it. By the time I sold it to you, the whole thing had slipped my mind. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  Julia took another bite of her cake as she mulled over what Alistair had said. If he had not been the one to pave over the yard it meant anyone could have done it, and that was why they had got away with it for so many years. She quickly turned her attention to the flickering fire, forcing her mind to stop piecing things together. She reminded herself she was sitting this one out.

  “Put channel three on,” Barker said, storming into the sitting room. “I’ve just had a text from someone at the station. Oh – hello. I didn’t realise you had company.”

  “This is Alistair Black,” Julia said. “He’s the man who sold me the shop.”

  “Ah, okay,” Barker said with a nod as he shook the frail old man’s hand. “It’s a pleasure. Detective Inspector Barker Brown.”

  The old man smiled politely as Barke
r sat next to Julia and grabbed the TV remote from the table. He turned it on, and the screen of the Pretty Woman DVD menu from the night before lit up on the television. He quickly set it back to the digital channels and flicked through until he landed on the one he wanted.

  “That’s my café,” Julia said, surprised to see a female news reporter standing on the edge of the village green. “What’s going on?”

  Barker shushed Julia and turned up the volume as he moved in closer to the TV.

  “It’s been three days since a body was found in the basement of this café behind me in the Cotswold village of Peridale,” the reporter chimed monotonously as she read from a paper in her hands. “As suspected, we now have official word from the police that the body is that of missing girl, Astrid Wood, who vanished from this very village twenty years ago. Sources close to the victim have said she disappeared on the night of her high school prom and was never seen again until the recent storm, which was a knock-on effect from Hurricane Jessica over in the States, disrupting this small picturesque village to reveal a basement that has lain hidden for more than twenty years.”

  “So, it’s official then,” Alistair said with a solemn nod after Julia took the remote from Barker to mute the channel. “I don’t know if I was hoping it would be another girl, not that it would make things easier, but my nephew has been in bits since hearing about this.”

  “Aiden?” Julia asked.

  “They were an item,” Alistair said. “So in love. Grace, Aiden’s wife, is torn up too. She was Astrid’s best friend. I used to call them the Three Musketeers. Aiden never stopped talking about her. He did everything he could to keep her memory alive, even if it was just in his own home. He’s still got a picture of her on the mantelpiece. Never stopped hoping she’d come home one day, but we all knew that wouldn’t happen.”

  “I’d like to speak to Aiden,” Julia thought aloud, not realising the words were leaving her lips until it was too late. “I did find her, after all. It might provide him some comfort to speak to me.”