Gingerbread and Ghosts

by Agatha Frost

  Julia thought about the information for a second, but it didn’t intrigue her as much as the file Johnny had given her. A fingerprint could belong to anyone, and it could take days if not weeks until they matched it.

  “There was something I wanted to tell you, actually,” Barker said as he reached into his pocket to pull something out. “I’ve been meaning to tell you all week, but –”

  Before Barker could finish his sentence, the smoke alarm in the kitchen began blaring. Julia ran into the kitchen just in time to see Jessie pulling a blackened tray of gingerbread men from the oven with a sheepish smile.

  “Forgot about them,” she said as she dumped them in the sink before dousing them with water. “Oops.”

  After opening the back door and fanning at the smoke alarm with a towel, Julia walked back into the café, but Barker had gone.

  “Urgent work call,” Evelyn announced as she turned over a tarot card. “The Ten of Swords! Oh dear, Julia! I suspect that whatever he wanted to tell you wasn’t good. The cards have spoken and something untoward is coming your way.”

  Julia smiled at the eccentric B&B owner as her mind began to wonder what Barker had been trying to talk to her about. She made a promise that the next time he reached into that inside pocket, she would pay close attention.

  9

  After closing the café and squeezing in a spot of Christmas shopping at the out of town retail centre with Jessie, Julia found herself wrapping up the results of her spending on the sitting room floor.

  She took a sip of wine, her finger holding the wrapping paper together over the twin pack of socks for Sue’s husband, Neil. She ripped off a small piece of tape, secured the paper in place, spun it around, and folded in the edges before taping them down. She had never thought socks were an adequate gift, but according to Sue, Neil was in desperate need of new socks because he did not have a matching pair in his collection. After writing the tag, Julia popped it under the tree with the baby clothes she had bought for Sue’s twins.

  Leaning into the crackling fire, Julia sipped more of her wine as the Christmas music station played on the TV. Barker was in the dining room, tapping away on the typewriter while he worked on his debut crime novel. She was waiting for her Christmas spirit to kick in, but as long as her gran was behind bars, she was not sure it was ever going to happen. She leaned across to the coffee table she had pushed out of the way earlier, grabbing her mother’s photo album, which she had hidden between two magazines. She flicked through the pages, landing on another picture of her parents’ wedding, this time with all four of her grandparents.

  Her mothers’ parents, Frederick and Barbara Dixon stood on her mother’s side, grinning at the camera. Frederick died before Julia was born, and Barbara died when she was a baby, so she had no memory of either of them, but her mother had always painted a lovely picture of them. They were much older than her father’s parents, having had their only daughter, Pearl, in their forties. On her father’s side stood Dot, looking much like the woman outside the court from the front of The Peridale Post, her arm looped around Albert. From looking at this picture as a little girl, Julia had regretted not knowing Grandpa Albert the most. Even through the picture, he looked so jolly and happy.

  “What are you looking at?” Barker’s voice asked from behind the couch, startling Julia.

  Out of habit, she snapped the album shut as he threw a cushion on the floor to sit next to her. For a moment, they sat in silence staring into the fire before Julia opened up the book.

  “My parents,” Julia said, passing him the photograph of her mother and father. “It would have been my mother’s sixty-fourth birthday on Christmas day.”

  “She was a Christmas baby?” Barker said, accepting the album before flicking through some of the pictures. “She was so beautiful. You look just like her.”

  “I do?”

  “You could be her sister.” Barker held up her picture to Julia’s face. “Spitting image. I was never sure if I should ask about her, or if I should wait for you to open up.”

  “I was a little girl when she died,” Julia said, the words catching in her throat. “Christmas has always been a weird time for me since then. We’d always have Christmas dinner, open the presents, and then we’d reset the day and pretend it wasn’t Christmas, and it was just Mum’s birthday. Dad would make bacon sandwiches, even though we were stuffed, and then we’d play party games, and move all the furniture out of the way and dance until we felt sick. When we’d had cake, we’d resume Christmas, and sit in front of the TV playing board games until Gran fell asleep in her chair in the corner.”

  “Sounds a lot like my family,” Barker said with a laugh. “Growing up with all those brothers meant Christmas Day was hectic, to say the least. Mum always got us exactly what we wanted. I don’t know how she did it. We never asked, she just read our minds. It’s like she spent all year watching and waiting for us to show interest in something and then she’d make a note and save up for it for Christmas. I remember watching ‘Home Alone 2’ and obsessing over how cool the Talkboy was, and lo and behold, there was one under the tree on Christmas Day in 1992.”

  “I wish I could have met your mum.”

  “Likewise,” Barker said as he flicked through the album. “If she was anything like you, I imagine she was an extraordinary woman.”

  Julia nodded that she was, but the truth was, her memories were sparse and faded now. She could remember snippets of time and smells more than specific details. She accepted the photo album back and replaced it in between the magazines before reaching out for a pair of slippers she had bought for her gran.

  “How’s the book coming along?” Julia asked as she peeled the price sticker off the bottom of the slippers. “And more importantly, when can I read it?”

  “Soon,” he said with a mysterious smile. “And I think I’m almost done. A couple more chapters, and then I guess I’m finished. I’m going with the working title of The Girl in the Basement, but I need to run that past Evelyn first.”

  “How did she take you writing a book based on her daughter’s body being found under my café after twenty years?” Julia asked as she folded the paper around the slippers. “She didn’t seem to want to kill you in the café today.”

  “She was surprisingly okay with it,” Barker said as he stood up. “In fact, she claimed to have foreseen it, so I think that got me some extra points. She thinks it’s a great idea that Astrid lives on in my book. I said I wouldn’t do anything with it until she had a chance to read it.”

  “As long as I can read it first,” Julia said with a wink as she ripped off a piece of tape. “I keep trying to find chapters lying around, but you hide them well.”

  “On purpose.” Barker walked over to the couch and let out a yawn. “Imagine if the books take off. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  “I suppose you need a publishing deal first?” Julia replied, not having given the idea of Barker actually finishing the book much thought. “Or maybe you can publish online? I hear that’s a trendy thing to do these days. A woman came into my café who swore her cousin’s friend’s sister had sold a million books doing it all herself online.”

  Barker smiled uneasily at Julia for a moment. He rubbed across his jaw, his eyes trained on her as though he was about to share bad news.

  “About that –”

  Before Barker could finish his sentence, Jessie burst through the door laughing, with Billy right behind her. They slammed the door in its frame, chattering between themselves as though they were the only two people in the world. Jessie kicked off her Doc Martens and jumped over the couch, landing in the middle with a thud. She tossed her head back on the couch and let out an exhausted sounding laugh.

  “How was ice skating?” Julia asked as she attached a pre-written tag to Dot’s gift. “You look like you had fun.”

  “It was hilarious, Miss S,” Billy said as he joined Jessie on the couch. “You two should have come. It was proper top quality.”

  “
I’m sorry we missed out on the ‘proper top quality’ fun,” Barker said, winking over the couch at Julia before mouthing ‘I’ll leave you to it’.

  Barker retreated back to the dining room, the tapping of his typewriter keys floating through seconds later. Julia listened to Jessie and Billy recount every fall and stumble on the ice while she finished wrapping the presents. By the time they were all under the tree, Billy and Jessie had decided to walk to the takeaway chicken shop out of the village, leaving Julia and Barker alone again. She walked to the dining room with every intention of asking him what he had been about to tell her, but he looked so deep in thought as his fingers pounded down on the keys, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth, she did not want to disturb him. She knew how irritating it could be to be in the middle of a complicated recipe that required a lot of deep concentration only to be interrupted in the middle of weighing out the rare and expensive ingredient she had spent days tracking down online.

  Leaving Barker to his book, Julia walked back into the sitting room, her handbag catching her eye. She pulled out the file of papers Johnny had given her before flicking through them, paying close attention to each of the wedding pictures. After a quick look at the clock, Julia looked at her car keys on the coffee table, deciding how she was going to spend the remainder of the evening.

  She scribbled a quick note saying that she was dropping the gifts off at Sue’s, stuck the note to the front door, pulled on her pink pea coat and yellow scarf, and jumped into her tiny car.

  Julia pulled up outside the village hall, knowing she had spontaneously decided to arrive at the right time. She jumped out of her car, just as thunderous applause poured out of the hall. She decided to hang back in the dark shadows of St. Peter’s Church until the last of the spectators had filtered out of the building.

  “I almost expected another real shooting,” one woman said.

  “I couldn’t rest until that boy playing Jimmy Monroe came out for the final curtain,” another said. “I was a shivering wreck.”

  When Julia was satisfied only the cast and crew remained in the village hall, she ditched her coat and scarf but kept Johnny’s file rolled up in her back pocket, and slipped inside, thankfully unseen. The crew, along with Jayesh and Poppy, were stacking up the chairs and pushing them to the side of the room. Without taking a second to think about it, Julia hurried down the side of the hall and began stacking up the front row of seats.

  “Hurry up!” Carlton’s quivering voice cried from the back of the hall. “I need to mop! So many footprints. Always footprints!”

  Julia gathered up as many chairs as she could and took them to the side of the hall. Not wanting to miss her opportunity, she slipped backstage. Ross’ door was open, and he was enjoying a glass of champagne as he sat back in his chair, his eyes closed, clearly exhausted by the stress of having to relaunch the play with a reshuffled cast.

  She walked over to the two dressing rooms. Marcus’ star had been removed, but Catherine’s was still there. The moving shadow in the slither of light under the door let Julia know she had picked her moment perfectly. She pulled the file from her back pocket, flattening it out before looking at the wedding photos again. She quickly turned on her phone’s recording feature, pushed it back into her pocket, and decided against knocking.

  “Oh!” Catherine cried, clearly startled by Julia. “What are you doing? I asked to be left alone.”

  Catherine had already changed out of her character’s costume and was wearing a white silk dressing gown. She had a thick layer of white cream on her face, which she was liberally applying to her hands and arms as she stared at Julia.

  “Do you remember me?” Julia asked, closing the door behind her and leaning against it so Catherine could not make a bid for freedom. “Dot is my gran, and is currently in prison for shooting your husband.”

  Catherine stared at Julia with mild curiosity as she took a seat at her dressing table. She began to brush out her bright blonde hair, the dark roots on top giving away that it was not natural.

  “What do you want?” Catherine asked with a huff. “Your family has already put me through enough. That gran of yours has left me a widow.”

  Julia opened the file, pulled out the wedding photos, and dropped them onto the dressing table in front of Catherine.

  “Not for the first time,” Julia said firmly, catching Catherine’s eyes in the mirror before she looked down at the pictures in front of her. “Recognise yourself? It’s rather impressive how much changing your hair colour can change your face.”

  Catherine flicked through the pictures at arms-length, squinting as though her eyesight was not the best. When she had been through them once, she dropped them back down and shrugged.

  “I’ve never seen those women before in my life,” Catherine said, the wobble in her voice betraying her. “What do you want from me?”

  “The truth,” Julia said as she took the photographs back. “My gran is currently locked up because someone switched the guns. If I don’t uncover the truth soon, she’ll stay there and likely be convicted at trial.”

  “And you’re suggesting that I murdered my husband?” Catherine cried, turning around in her seat. “Why on Earth would I want to do that?”

  “For his money,” Julia suggested. “Although I don’t know why you’d need it. You did okay out of your last three husbands.”

  Catherine’s eyes seethed, burning holes into Julia’s skin. For a brief moment, Julia expected the widow to launch across the dressing room to strangle the life out of her. Instead, she just stared, the muscles in her jaw twitching under the cream.

  “They all died of natural causes,” Catherine said suddenly, her spine stiffening. “I had nothing to do with their deaths.”

  “Although, I expect you targeted them because of their poor health?” Julia said, taking a brave step away from the safety of the door. “The unhealthy diabetic in his sixties, the surgery addict with the bad lungs, the old man with cancer, and then Marcus? What was wrong with him?”

  “I beg your pardon!” Catherine spluttered, letting Julia know nobody had dared be so frank with her. “Get out of here, you little witch!”

  “When you met Marcus on holiday, did he tell you about an illness as well as his wealth?” Julia said, holding her ground. “Or was he perfectly healthy, and that’s why you switched the guns?”

  “I did no such thing!” Catherine screeched, jumping up and knocking her chair over. “Now get out, before I call the police and have you in the cell next to your precious gran for harassment and slander!”

  Julia took a step back, her hands shaking. She clung to the file harder and swallowed her fear down.

  “I know you requested the will reading be brought forward,” Julia said. “Are you planning a quick exit tomorrow after you hear what you get? Is Ross going to have to recast your part again?”

  To Julia’s complete surprise, her fear of Catherine launching at her came true very quickly. The widow charged across the room, pinning Julia to the door with her arm against her throat while staring deep into her eyes, her nostrils flared, and teeth bared.

  “Listen here, you little snoop,” Catherine sneered, her voice deepening. “You won’t stand in my way. I am entitled to every penny of that pig’s money, and I’m going to take it, and get on the first plane to whatever place I feel like. I’m thinking somewhere beginning with B. Barbados? Bulgaria? Boston? Who knows?” Catherine readjusted her arm to push down even harder on Julia’s windpipe. “You’re not going to do anything about it because I haven’t committed any crimes. It’s not illegal to inherit a man’s fortune. I worked hard for it. Do you know how difficult it was lying down next to that fat slob every night? Now, you’re going to walk out of that door, and you’re going to keep your nose out, okay?”

  Julia did not say a word, not that she could have if she wanted to. She stared deep into Catherine’s eyes as she struggled to breathe through her nose.

  “Do you understand me?” Catherine cried
, pushing down even harder. “Don’t make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

  Julia simply nodded her understanding, which was all Catherine needed to let go. She snatched the file from Julia’s hands, and before Julia could register what was happening, she was watching the papers burn in the waste paper basket. Catherine picked up her chair, sat down, lit a cigarette, and watched the fire burn, her back to Julia.

  “Close the door on your way out,” Catherine mumbled out of the corner of her mouth before blowing up a cloud of grey smoke.

  Unsure of what had just happened, Julia stumbled out of the dressing room, closing the door behind her. She pulled her phone from her pocket, glad it had recorded everything. She did not have a confession to murder, but she had a confession to everything Johnny had suspected, so that was something. She also had enough evidence to probably have Catherine charged with assault and threatening behaviour if she wanted to, but that was not Julia’s style. If she wanted to get her gran out by Christmas, she needed to play a smarter game.

  Rubbing her throat, Julia walked out of the hall, not caring about Carlton mumbling behind her as she made footprints on his freshly mopped floor. Once outside, Julia grabbed her scarf and coat from where she had thrown them on a bench, before sitting on it for a moment. As snow continued to sprinkle down on Peridale, she stared ahead at the village green in a mixture of shock and surprise.

  After several minutes had passed, Julia finally stood up and set off to her car, still in somewhat of a daze. She was so distracted by what had just happened that she did not see Poppy sitting on the wall outside the church until she had her key in the car door. Julia pulled it out and turned back to the young woman, whose red hair shone brightly against the white snow as it fell around her. She was looking down at her feet as though she was somewhere else entirely.

  “It’s cold out tonight,” Julia said calmly as she walked towards the girl. “Do you want me to drop you off somewhere?”