The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6

by Katherine Hayton

  Just plant refuse, with a few large, white petals browning as they decayed. The cleaning crew on point duty must have missed this one. If it was anything like the bouquets that Holly used to buy weekly from her favorite florist, give the foliage a couple more hours at room temperature, and no water and the basket would start to smell.

  Holly picked it up by the edge and placed it out in the hallway. Standing there, at the open door, she had second thoughts and took it through to the bathroom instead. The unit in there, currently suctioning away the steam from her shower, would hopefully take away the scent of rotting flowers, as well. Holly closed the door back to the room.

  Well, that had used up all of five minutes. Where had Crystal gotten to and why hadn’t she left behind a deck of cards?

  A few minutes later, there was a tentative knock on the bedroom door. Holly checked that the robe covered everything she needed it to, then opened it up an inch to peer out into the hall.

  “Change of clothes for you,” the goth girl from the cemetery said, holding out a neatly starched pile. The way she averted her gaze told Holly that she’d been schooled in Holly’s attire before she came up here.

  “Thank you,” Holly said, taking the clothes from the teenaged girl. What was her name? Something old. “It’s very kind of you to help out, Elvira.”

  Holly half closed her eyes against a wince, thinking for a second that she’d chosen incorrectly, but then the girl gave her a small smile and a nod.

  “Don’t thank me,” she called over her shoulder, quickly walking away down the corridor. “Thank my cousin Aidan. He’s the one who told me to make myself useful.”

  Chuckling, Holly closed the door and dressed in the maid’s outfit provided. Although the waist of the dress was a little tight and the bodice a little loose, it pretty much fit. Better than wandering around in a robe.

  Unsure of the protocol, Holly decided that she’d better err on the side of caution, and pulled on her underwear even though it was still quite damp. Better that she be physically uncomfortable than a gust of wind flick up her skirt and make her morally so.

  Leaving her own clothing, now joined by a robe, on the side of the tub to dry, Holly quickly walked downstairs hoping to find her sister.

  As she strode across the entrance hall, Arnold gave her a nod. He was still directing the cleanup of nature’s spillage, though it seemed to consist more of polishing the floorboards now. There was no water left so soak up that Holly could see.

  “Crystal?”

  As Holly pushed open the door to the cupcake room, she saw her sister pull away from the opposite door with a startled look on her face. “Oh, good. Elvira found you then,” she said, crossing over to give Holly a quick hug.

  They’d just sat down at their chairs before the decorating bench when a woman outside in the main hall began to scream.

  Chapter Four

  “Why didn’t you send someone to fetch them?” Wendy’s shrill cry, quite unlike her usual anxious but polite tone, echoed around the double-height entry hall, as piercing as a bat’s sonar call.

  “Wendy!” Crystal ran over to the visibly distressed woman. “What is it? Can we help?”

  Wendy turned a tear-and-makeup-streaked face toward Crystal and clutched at her shoulders as though she were a lifeline.

  “Nobody has gone to fetch Sheila and Derek. How can there be a wedding when we don’t have a bride and groom?”

  Holly raised a hand to her throat, plucking at the loose skin there as her eyes teared-up in sympathy. Her worst thought had come true, then. The blessed couple might be safe and dry somewhere, but it wasn’t in the church where they’d planned to be.

  Holly rushed over, putting one arm around Wendy and the other around Crystal. “I’m so sorry, Wendy. What a run of bad luck you’ve had.”

  They stood there for a moment, three women posed like a statue of mourning, then Holly broke away and clapped her hands together.

  “Well, we’re not going to be able to get anything done standing here. At least come through into the kitchen so you can tell us what’s been happening at your end!”

  The three of them filed back into the cupcake room, leaving behind them a motley collection of open-mouthed men. As Holly closed the door, she could hear Arnold snapping back into his position as authoritarian. “Don’t just stand there like a fool, boy. There’s a ton of work to be done!”

  “Have something to eat. That’ll make you feel better,” Crystal said, shoving a cupcake toward Wendy, even as the woman shook her head.

  “Let me go and check for the real kitchen,” Holly suggested. “I’ll see if there’s any chance of getting a nice hot cup of tea or coffee while we sort everything out.”

  “Tea or coffee won’t help,” Wendy cried out, wearing her misery like a badge of honor. “Everyone in the township wanted to see my daughter’s day be wrecked. Well, they got their wish times ten, didn’t they?”

  Holly ran back to Wendy, grabbing her shoulders and giving her a tight squeeze. “Nothing is ruined, not yet. It’s only a bit of water falling from the sky. All of this will just make a great anecdote. That’s what the minister said.”

  As Holly pulled away, Wendy seemed a tad calmer. She managed to give a watery smile, before holding a tissue up to her face as the tears began to fall again.

  “I’ll just be a moment,” Holly said. “Maybe a shot of brandy in our coffee wouldn’t go amiss, either.”

  At Crystal’s startled look, Holly flapped her hand. “Not you. I haven’t gone completely mental.” As she walked out of the room to find the actual kitchen, Holly muttered under her breath, “At least, not yet.”

  The kitchen was stuffed full of wait staff and other helpers from the manor house. When she walked into the room, the murmur of conversation came to a halt. Holly tried not to feel self-conscious as she asked if there was a kettle or coffee maker they could borrow.

  “It looks like we’re going to be in for a long day,” she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere as a man unhooked one from its position near the wall. “Thank you,” she said as he handed it over, then nearly dropped it as Holly discovered it was already full of boiling water.

  At the door, she turned back. “Uh, I don’t suppose you have coffee or tea, as well, do you?”

  As a man buried deep in the wall of staff sniggered, Holly blushed crimson. Then the sharp rap of heels against the polished floorboards came from the opposite end of the room, and a moment later Arnold stood in the doorway.

  “Fetch Mrs. Waterston what she needs, boy,” Arnold said, addressing a man almost in her age range. “It looks like we’ll all need to share. At the rate the council staff are working, we could all be stuck here for a few days yet.”

  “Stuck here?” Holly’s mouth dropped open in horror. “I thought the tree was just blocking the road back to Christchurch. Has something worse happened?”

  A man standing near her happily filled her in, “There’s a whole pile of trees down now. Between here and Christchurch in the one direction, and blocking us from Hanmer Springs in the other. Given the current forecast, it’ll be hours before anybody can even venture out to clear them. The storm’s not blowing itself out. If anything, it’s getting worse.”

  “Goodness. So, we’ll be stuck here for tonight?”

  “Tonight. Tomorrow.” Arnold shrugged. Even though his face remained impassive, Holly noticed a softening of his shoulders. “We’ll all need to muck-in to clear the way back to town once this awful weather finally clears.”

  Holly nodded, even though she had no idea of how she could help to clear a road back to town. “Thanks for this,” she said, holding the kettle aloft while another man put some teabags and a jar of coffee in her hand. Holly had to tuck them up underneath her chin. Otherwise, the whole lot would have fallen.

  “It looks like we’ll be here for quite some while,” Holly told Crystal and Wendy when she reached the cupcake room again. “Thank goodness, we brought all these cakes!”

  The jo
ke fell flat against the backdrop of Wendy’s deepening worry. “I just wish that someone had thought to fetch Sheila and Derek the moment it started to rain.”

  “To be fair,” Crystal said, “I don’t think anyone was expecting this to happen. Isn’t it better knowing that they’re safe with their cousin while you’re okay here?”

  But Wendy couldn’t be mollified that easily. She buried her face in her hands, and her shaking shoulders told Holly the woman was crying again.

  Instead of trying to cheer her up, Holly laid an arm across Wendy’s shoulders and rested them there as a comfort. “Let it all out,” she said in a whisper. “Once you’re feeling better, we can think about what we’re going to do next.”

  Leaning back, Holly snagged one of the strawberry cupcakes and used her front teeth to tear the paper away from the cake. Crystal started to giggle, presumably at the dollop of frosting that Holly’s action deposited on the end of her nose.

  “You think that’s funny?” Holly challenged. “You should try this one-handed!”

  Crystal accepted the challenge and went one better, positioning the cupcake on the edge of the bench and attempting the feat of eating it without using either hand.

  “What are you two doing?” Wendy said, raising her head when the two sisters were giggling hysterically. “Are you having a slow-motion food fight or something?”

  “Cupcake,” Holly said, depositing one on the table in front of Wendy. She then looked intently at her watch. “Two minutes. No hands.”

  For a moment, Wendy stared at her and Crystal with a blank expression, the stains of mascara and eyeliner down her face lending her the appearance of a sad raccoon. Then the corner of Wendy’s mouth twitched, and she buried her face straight into the cupcake. With a snuffle of frosting and a spatter of crumbs, she ate through the whole thing, then sat back, trying to lick frosting off her nose with the tip of her tongue.

  “Mighty impressive skills you’ve got on display there, Wendy.” Crystal rubbed her forefinger and thumb together. “How about we wager a little money on the next one?”

  “No.” Wendy shook her head, not without a measure of regret flitting across her face. “My stomach is in such knots that I’m not sure I could handle another one. At least wait till this one’s settled.”

  “Besides which,” Holly said, plugging the kettle in and looking through the cupboards until she scored one full of mugs, “if we’re stuck here for a night or even longer, then we’ll be fed up with eating cupcakes by the end!”

  “Two nights?” Wendy shuddered. “Right now, I don’t think I’ll last through one.”

  She stood up and paced the length of the room, looking upward as a bang from the ceiling sounded like someone upstairs had fallen over. “I wish we had cell phone reception out here, at least. Sheila must be worrying herself sick!”

  “We’re all worried,” Crystal said. “But there’s nothing we can do about it, so we may as well start making the best of it.”

  Wendy ran a hand through her hair, the style that Meggie had worked hard to achieve that morning, gone into a tangle. “I’m sure that one of the staff here must have a four-wheel drive. We could try to make it over to Sheila and Derek. I’d much rather risk a couple of hours discomfort for the chance to sit with them, knowing they’re happy, than stay here and not have a second of peace.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Crystal said, tipping her head to one side. “Unless the trees have come down on the narrower stretches of the highway, you’d be able to drive off-road for a few minutes to get past them.”

  “Are you sure?” Holly looked from Wendy to Crystal and back again. “If even the council won’t go out in this weather to clear the blockages, I don’t know if anybody should.”

  “But we’re not driving over the bridge from Hanmer, or trying to get all the way out from Christchurch,” Wendy pointed out. “It’s barely a ten-minute drive from here to Geoffrey’s place. Even if we take it really slow to be safe, we could be there and back in less than an hour.”

  She clapped her hands together, apparently becoming more entranced with the idea by the second. “Let’s go, Crystal. You can be my passenger seat navigator since we’ll need to keep our eyes peeled in all directions.”

  “But you don’t even—” Holly began, but they were both gone. The two women hurried out of the room, chatting a mile a minute about their dangerous plans.

  Rather than follow them, Holly settled back to have a cup of tea all by herself. She had no desire to get into a car with any undue risks added to the journey. After her recent road accident—or deliberate sabotage, to be more precise—Holly would be quite happy never to drive or be driven again.

  That option wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, but there was no need for her to volunteer.

  After a few minutes, Crystal and Wendy bustled back into the room. They had such an air of excitement about them that Holly instantly knew they had scored a vehicle suited to the task. The less-happy looking owner must be the man hovering behind them. He shifted from foot to foot nervously, coughing when Crystal neglected to introduce him.

  “Oh. This is William,” Crystal said, clapping a hand to her forehead. “He’s lending us his car for the journey and doesn’t even insist on coming along.”

  The strain in William’s jaw suggested to Holly that the decision may have been taken entirely out of his hands, but she didn’t say anything. Just wished her sister and Wendy luck and looked after them with a bemused glance as they ran down to the back door.

  “Hadn’t you better go with them?” Holly asked as William stayed standing. “They won’t know where you’ve parked.”

  “Are your friends always this insistent?” William asked, his brow furrowing into lines that added a decade to his age. “I’m pretty sure I began this conversation by saying no they couldn’t borrow my car.”

  “You’d better get after them,” Holly advised. “If you leave them to their own devices for too long, then things will just get worse.”

  Taking pity on the fellow when his face deepened into distraught lines, she leaned forward. “If you don’t want to do it, then just tell them you’ve changed your mind. Won’t somebody else on the staff have an off-road vehicle, too?”

  William nodded, then shook his head. “We car-pooled out here for the most part and the manor house laid on a bus out of Hanmer Springs. They don’t like it when we fill up the parking lot when they’re staging a big party. I only brought my car along because I missed my alarm and woke up late.”

  “They’ll be very careful,” Holly said. “You don’t need to worry on that account. Neither of them wants to end up stuck in a ditch by the side of the road. If it’s not safe to drive, they’ll turn straight around and bring your vehicle back.”

  “You think so?” William’s face turned eager, and Holly nodded, hoping that it was the case.

  “I do.” She pointed to the rear entranceway. “Now, get after them before they stand out in the rain for so long, your car seats end up being drenched.”

  William scurried out the door, a new worry pasting itself into the lines on his forehead. Holly sat back and stared after him, continuing to look in the same direction long after William had disappeared.

  “Knock, knock. Not interrupting anything, I hope.”

  Holly jumped at the sound and then turned with a smile. She recognized that voice from earlier. “Aidan! What are you doing here?”

  “Well,” he said with a grin, “I had so many options that I didn’t know what to choose. I could’ve stayed at the church and sat on a hard, wooden pew waiting for a wedding that wasn’t happening.”

  Holly snorted, but Aidan shook his head and continued, “Or, I could risk the drive through a constant downpour to arrive at the manor house where there are three servants to every person and somebody laid on a whole heap of cupcakes!”

  Holly pulled a tray closer and handed him a strawberry cupcake. With the freshly cut fruit forming part of the decorations, they needed to be
eaten first.

  “I don’t think the staff here will appreciate it if you refer to them as servants.” She grinned at the thought of them being in a Downtown Abbey skit. “But if you are going to, please give me full warning so I can stand in the background and watch all the fun!”

  Aidan painstakingly peeled the paper wrapper off the cupcake. “I might take your first warning to heart, at least until I know that I can make a speedy exit.”

  He looked back to her from the cupcake and pointed to his cheek. “I guess that’s an advertisement for how good these are.”

  Holly reached up and traced the skin of her cheek in the spot he’d indicated. A glob of frosting was stuck there, and she quickly wiped it up with her fingertip, popping it into her mouth.

  “We were having a competition,” she said, flushing a bit at the thought of what she must look like. A drowned rat that’s got into the bakery her mind gleefully provided.

  “All of you?” Aidan asked, looking about the otherwise empty room. “Must have been a fierce contest, indeed.”

  Holly laughed so hard that she raised her hand to hide her open mouth. “There were other people here earlier,” she said between bursts. “I’m not making it up.”

  “Never said you were,” Aidan said, taking an enormous bite of his strawberry cupcake. A white smear of frosting soon landed in much the same spot that Holly had just wiped clean and she smiled.

  “Are there still many people waiting down at the church?”

  Aidan shook his head, taking a minute to deal with the mouthful he’d just bitten off the cupcake. “A lad from here came to tell us the news about the road closures. He invited us all back here.”

  Aidan shrugged and took another bite—the last one—screwing up the napkin and tossing it in the kitchen bin like it was a penalty shot.

  “He said they had plenty of rooms, but we’ve all got to wait for the head butler to assign them.” Aidan dipped his head in closer to Holly and dropped his voice to a whisper. “It’s all fascinating. I feel like I’m living in the middle of a period drama and something grandiose is about to happen.”