Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons)

by Kim M Watt

  A skinny, faintly-trodden trail branched off from the main footpath that ran through the woodland and meandered its way to a small gate at the back of Alice’s property. Miriam hurried along the trail, trying not to lose her sarong to some of the more over-friendly shrubs and long grass along the way. She didn’t pause when she got to the little wooden fence, just let herself through, and only looked up when she stopped to pull the sarong back down over her knees. It had been impossible to run with it all the way down to her ankles. The detective inspector was standing by the back door, watching her with a certain amount of unsurprised exasperation, while Alice stood next to her with her arms crossed and Ben hovered at the corner of the house looking like a new boy at school who can’t remember where his classes are.

  “Hello, Miriam,” Alice said.

  “Um. Hello.” Miriam hesitated where she was for a moment, suddenly aware that she hadn’t brushed her hair yet, and that she wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing here. Alice certainly didn’t look in need of moral support. Her hair was neatly brushed, and her pale blue blouse was printed with darting swallows, and it looked crisp and freshly pressed over a pair of flattering three-quarter trousers. She gave Miriam a smile that suggested she’d been expecting her for morning tea, rather than being in the middle of a Situation. “Is everything alright?” Miriam asked. “What happened?”

  “I had a visitor,” Alice said. Miriam thought she could hear a barely detectable tremor in her voice, something that would go unnoticed to anyone who hadn’t shared a hundred cups of tea and slices of lemon drizzle cake and glasses of dark red wine with her. She wondered if the older woman’s arms were crossed because she was cold, or to hide a shake in her hands. She straightened her back and marched across the lawn, feeling suddenly steadier. Stronger. Maybe there wasn’t much she could do, but she could be here. Sometimes that was all that was needed.

  “I did tell you to stay home,” DI Adams said, sounding tired.

  “You said I wasn’t under house arrest,” Miriam replied, putting her shoulders back and crossing her arms in an unconscious imitation of Alice.

  “This is a crime scene. Why are you two always in my crime scenes?” That tic had started up under the inspector’s eye again, and she put her fingertips on it with a sigh.

  “Maybe I should make some tea,” Alice said. “Everyone’s very tired.” She didn’t look very tired, though. She looked like she’d just got back from some four-day spa weekend. Miriam looked down at herself and realised there was flour all over her shirt, drifting onto her folded arms. At least her top was white. She dusted herself off surreptitiously.

  “No tea,” DI Adams said. “You two stay right there where I can see you. PC Shaw?”

  “Yes, ma’am?” Ben looked so alarmed that Miriam felt sorry for him.

  “Can you please try to ensure that no one else comes charging into the crime scene?”

  He flushed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  The inspector turned back to the women and waved an admonitory finger at them. “Stay.” She went to the back door, taking her phone out, and Miriam tried to see what she was looking at. There was a sheet of paper held to the door by something she couldn’t quite make out. It was difficult to see against the dark wood, but it looked – well, it looked like – she gave a little, horrified gasp.

  “Is that a knife?”

  “Yes,” Alice said, and this time she did sound tired. Miriam looked at her more closely, seeing a dusting of make-up covering the shadows under her eyes, and unfamiliar lines around her mouth. “Quite a big one. A kitchen knife, if I’m not mistaken, Inspector?”

  “Shh,” the inspector said, not turning around.

  “It looks like a kitchen knife of some sort,” Alice said to Miriam. “And a note.”

  “A note? What does it say?”

  “To stop digging around the vicar’s murder,” Alice said, and rubbed her eyes.

  “I did say shh,” the DI said, turning around finally.

  “Who sent it?” Miriam asked, one hand pressed to her chest. “Is it a threat?”

  “Well, the knife would indicate so,” the inspector said, and Miriam felt her ears go pink. “Although quite a sensible message, really. Not that you two seem very good at listening to sensible messages.” She pointed at Alice. “And you heard nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Your bedroom is where?”

  Alice pointed to a window resting open above them, to the left of the lean-to roof.

  “And everything was locked?”

  “Everything on the ground floor, yes. Upstairs, my window was open, as you see.”

  “No other signs that someone tried to break in?”

  “None at all.”

  The inspector watched Alice for a long time, as if deciding whether to believe her or not, then wandered a little closer to the wall, staring up at the open window.

  “Do you think it was Stuart Browning?” Miriam whispered to Alice.

  “No,” Alice whispered back.

  “Why not? Amelia said he stank. And he was very rude.”

  “I’ll explain later,” Alice said, then smiled as the inspector turned around.

  “What are these scratches?” the DI asked, pointing at several sets of parallel lines scoring the stone among the ivy. Some of the leafy strands were disturbed, pulled loose of the wall. Alice and Miriam looked at each other, then went to stand next to the inspector. Miriam swallowed a sigh. They were very dragonish scratches.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Detective Inspector,” Alice said. “An owl, perhaps?”

  “An owl?”

  “Yes. Maybe it was chasing mice in the ivy.”

  DI Adams looked at Miriam. “They do that?”

  Miriam shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not much of a twitcher.”

  The inspector turned to Alice, her expression carefully blank.

  “Bird-watcher,” Alice explained. “Ornithologist of sorts, I suppose.”

  The inspector nodded slowly and followed the path of the scratches up to Alice’s window. “Mice inside, are there?”

  “It does happen,” Alice said with a sigh. “The perils of life in the country.”

  Miriam personally thought that mice wouldn’t dare take up residence inside Alice’s house, and maybe the DI shared such reservations, because she took some photos of the scratches, then said, “Mind if I go in and take a look from inside?”

  “Be my guest,” Alice said pleasantly.

  DI Adams pulled on a pair of latex gloves as she walked to the door, and paused on the threshold to glare at the two women. “Don’t touch anything. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Alice said, and Miriam nodded firmly, trying her best to look trustworthy. The inspector looked unconvinced, but she vanished inside, and Miriam rushed to take a closer look at the note. It was printed in black font on plain white paper.

  “‘Get ur noze out of the vicars biz!!’” she read aloud. “‘Or els itll be bad for u!!!’”

  “Very imaginative,” Alice said. “And it’s in that funny font Rosemary likes so much, and keeps wanting to use for the newsletter.”

  “Comic Sans,” Miriam said, making a face and peering at the knife more closely. “This is fancy.” It had a smooth, deeply polished wooden handle with loops of some bronze-coloured metal securing it, and the long, fine blade had Japanese characters stamped into it.

  “Hmm.” Alice came to stand next to her, peering over her shoulder. “You’re quite right. I hadn’t looked that closely. How odd to waste a good knife on something like this.”

  Miriam gave her an alarmed look and was about to ask if she was sure she was feeling alright, because Alice never missed anything, when the inspector shouted from the window above them, “Hey! I said don’t touch anything!”

  “We’re not,” Miriam said indignantly.

  “Well, move away, anyway.” The inspector frowned at them both until they retreated from the door, then she vanished back into the room.

  �
��How can you be sure it wasn’t Stuart Browning?” Miriam asked Alice, keeping her voice low in case the DI was still lurking beyond the window.

  “I had a lot of visitors last night.”

  Miriam listened as Alice described the night before in quick, precise sentences, her voice low and emotionless. She found herself wanting to put her arms around the taller woman and tell her it was all somehow going to be alright, but Alice wasn’t the sort of person who invited hugs. She didn’t even look like she needed a hug, but no one could really be that calm after finding a stranger in their house, could they? She’d have been scared enough if Stuart Browning had knocked on her door, let alone turned up in her reading room. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she whispered.

  Alice shrugged. “I’ve had worse nights.”

  Miriam tried to imagine that and couldn’t. “So Beaufort and Mortimer are trying to find out something about this Violet person?”

  “I believe so. I suggested they try the vicarage again, since the police seem rather occupied with the two of us.”

  Miriam shivered. She didn’t like the idea of the police being occupied with them. “So what do we—” she fell quiet as the DI let herself out of the house and looked at the two women with an expression that said she knew exactly what they’d been talking about. Miriam hoped not. She didn’t fancy explaining dragons to the detective inspector.

  “There’s a tech team on the way here to dust for prints and see what other evidence we can pick up,” she said. “Do you need anything from inside, Ms Martin?”

  Alice raised her eyebrows. “I take it we’re not to stay.”

  “You can if you want, but we may be some time, and you won’t be able to go inside while they’re working.”

  “You need the whole house?”

  “We can’t be sure it hasn’t been broken into, Ms Martin. We’d like to check everything, the garden included. You don’t have to let us, of course, but this has become a crime scene. And a warrant is … very formal.”

  “You’re welcome to look wherever you want, Detective Inspector,” Alice said. “I’d just like my handbag.”

  “Of course. I can have PC Shaw take you to the village hall and keep you company while we search.”

  Alice gave a very small smile. “I’d rather go to Miriam’s.”

  “Yes, you must,” Miriam said firmly. “We’ll have breakfast.”

  The DI looked like she wasn’t exactly enthused by the idea, and Alice added, “Unless you’re arresting one of us, Inspector, I believe we’re free to do this.”

  The DI sighed, and shrugged. “PC Shaw will accompany you. You’re not under arrest, but I’d rather know what you two are up to. Neither of you has been exactly cooperative so far.”

  Alice opened her arms with a smile. “You have my whole house. What more do you want?”

  The inspector looked unconvinced, but she started inside to get Alice’s bag. At the threshold she paused and looked back. “Ms Martin, do you know anything about a local custom involving rabbits?”

  “Rabbits, Detective Inspector?”

  “Yes. Dead rabbits, left outside my car door.”

  “Rabbits!” Miriam said, nodding. “You know, Alice.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, tell me about rabbits, Ms Martin,” DI Adams said, leaning in the doorway.

  “Rabbits,” Miriam said, still nodding, and grabbed Alice’s arm. “The ones that—”

  “Ms Ellis, please let Ms Martin answer.”

  Miriam managed to stop nodding, although her head still felt very wobbly and she could feel a fake smile stretching the corners of her lips. She squeezed Alice’s arm hard enough to make the other woman wince.

  Alice looked from Miriam’s death-grip to the inspector, and back at Miriam, and for a moment the world seemed far too light and airy. Miriam wondered if she was going to faint with the sheer stress of it. Then Alice patted her hand and smiled.

  “Oh,” she said. “Rabbits. Of course. You must have caught someone’s eye.”

  DI Adams frowned. “Ms Ellis said it was a sign of respect.”

  Miriam opened her mouth to say that it was the same sort of thing, but her tongue was sticky, and all that came out was “Hunh.”

  “A very specific sign of respect,” Alice said, ignoring her. “No one would go to all that trouble for just a little pleasantry. I do believe you have an admirer.”

  The inspector glared at her and said, “Pleasantry? It was a dead rabbit.”

  “Very tasty with potatoes,” Alice said.

  DI Adams looked like she had something more to say on the matter, but finally she just turned and went inside. Miriam could just hear her mumbling, “Fantastic.”

  There was a little confusion over how they were going to get to Miriam’s, because Ben’s Smart car was too small to fit them all in, and DI Adams said she didn’t want Alice to take her own car. She also didn’t want anyone to take her car and didn’t want to leave the house to take them, so Miriam and Alice ended up walking back to Miriam’s on the road, with Ben Shaw creeping along behind them in the tiny car.

  Miriam opened the front gate, and she and Alice waited while Ben unfolded himself from behind the wheel with a groan.

  “You poor thing,” Miriam said. “You must be exhausted.”

  He nodded heavily. “Graham’s coming out from Skipton to relieve me.”

  “That’s good.” She led them around the back, to the kitchen door she’d left wide open in her sprint to Alice’s. “Let’s get you a bite to eat at least.”

  Ben looked dubious, then said, “Well, as long as you don’t tell the DI.” He deposited himself in a chair at the kitchen table while Alice put the kettle on and Miriam fussed with her apple cake. It hadn’t burned too badly, but the coconut flour did make it dry out terrible easily. Never mind. Enough cream and no one would notice.

  They couldn’t talk very freely with Ben at the table, which was no doubt exactly as the inspector intended, and as tired as he was, he steadfastly refused to discuss the investigation.

  “I don’t know much, anyway,” he said, taking an enormous bite of scrambled eggs on toast. “The DI kind of keeps everything to herself.”

  “But that person at the church, the Stuart Browning fellow …?” Miriam asked. She still wasn’t convinced that he could have had nothing to do with it. No one who just turned up inside someone’s house unannounced like that could be up to any good.

  “Some antiques dealer.” Ben finished his eggs and helped himself to a slice of cake. “This is amazing, Miriam. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” she said, and wondered where the dragons were. They wouldn’t come rushing up to the door, not after last night, but she just hoped they weren’t getting themselves into any more trouble. They were all in enough of that as it was.

  Ben was replaced rather quickly, not by Graham, but by the tall skinny detective constable called James, who had been helping DI Adams at the village hall on the first day of this whole horrible thing. Miriam couldn’t believe that it had only been a couple of days. It felt like an awful lot longer. It was still so terrible to think of the vicar, alone in his silent, worn rooms, treating himself to a cup of tea and a little cupcake. Small joys turned against him. She sighed, loudly, and both Alice and James looked at her in surprise. He had his phone and a slice of cake in front of him, and she was reading something on her e-reader. It was an oddly domesticated scene.

  “Are you quite alright, Miriam?” Alice asked.

  “Yes,” she said, looking at the crossword she’d been trying to do in the local paper, although mostly she’d been doodling on the ads. “No. The poor vicar. It’s just all so, so horrible.” A tear blobbed onto the newsprint, and she wiped at her eyes hurriedly. This was no good, crying in front of Alice and a strange police officer. This was no good at all.

  James cleared his throat loudly and said, “Shall I put the kettle on?”

  “What a good idea.” Alice moved her chair next to Miriam’s and patted he
r back with surprising compassion. “Poor you. We haven’t even had time to grieve, have we?”

  “No,” Miriam managed, trying not to sound too blubbery. “And I saw him. I found him! And I just, I’m just so sad for him, all alone in that big old place, and all he wanted was some cake and tea—” She was definitely blubbering now, there was no getting around it. Partly for the vicar, partly from tiredness, partly for the horrible fact that there was a police officer in her kitchen, a detective-type police officer, and that meant she might still be going to jail, and all because she had belladonna growing in her garden. She hadn’t even done anything! Well, apart from aiding and abetting dragons in a housebreaking, and withholding evidence. She broke into fresh sobs, and Alice handed her a tissue. She took it with shaking hands, hoping that her cellmate would be half as nice to her.

  “There we go,” Alice said, still rubbing her back. “You have a good cry, Miriam. It’ll all be fine. You’ll see.”

  Miriam wondered momentarily whether Alice was quite right, and kept crying, just stopping to sniffle a thank you to James when he put a mug of tea down in front of her. He retreated to the door and stood there looking pointedly out at the garden.

  The DI knocked on the back door just as Miriam’s sobs were dying down to hiccoughs, and she burst into a fresh wail as James let the inspector in.

  “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t! I know I have belladonna in the garden, but I didn’t!” Or at least that was what she tried to say. Judging by the confused looks on everyone’s faces, it was mostly just a bray of snuffly sound.

  “Is she alright?” the inspector asked.