“Lead the way,” Holly called out to Emma, falling into step behind the young woman as she hurried through the maze of back corridors. They turned through three different sections of the house before they arrived at an innocuous wooden door.
“Does someone else want to take the lead now?” Emma said. “I’m not great with heights.”
“It’s indoors,” a colleague scoffed as Holly stepped in front.
“Doesn’t matter.” Emma fell into the back of the line. “I don’t like them, either way.”
The back stairs were steep and narrow. Everything about them shouted that they were built for service, not comfort. The wood had visible splinters poking up—where Holly could see through the thick layer of dust, that was.
Emma stayed put, but called up after a moment, “There’ll be a door at the top. It’s meant to be locked, but they lost the key ages ago so just left it hanging open. You should have no trouble getting into the loft. I think there’s a skylight up there, too. If you open that, the reception might improve.”
At the head of the staircase, even Holly had to admit that dizziness was circling, though she didn’t usually have a problem with heights. It was a relief to push open the door and step out into the space of the loft, rather than be aware there was a steep fall waiting behind.
The others followed through in single file, all the staircase would allow. Holly crossed over to where a patch of light pierced through the dim gloom. The skylight.
She tugged and pushed at the handle. No response except her hands got dirty, and Holly twisted a tendon in her wrist.
“Let me have a go,” a young man said.
Holly was happy to step aside as he put his young might to the task. She looked down at her cellphone—still no reception. Holding it above her head for another yard of height didn’t make any difference.
“It’s stuck,” the young man pushing at the skylight said in disgust. He stepped back while a colleague stepped forward, an eager face looking like it wanted nothing more than to prove him wrong.
“Does anybody have any bars?” Holly asked. She tried to dial and held the phone up to her ear, just in case the display was having a laugh. Nope. No dial tone. The numbers beeped in her ear, and then nothing more happened.
“I don’t have anything,” the first man to help with the skylight said. Holly wished they had tags to help her out. She struggled with names at the best of times.
“Anyone?” Holly asked again, turning to face each of them in turn. The consensus was no.
“Ah!”
The man at the skylight managed to push it open. Only an inch, but Holly hurried over, seeing if the clear air helped out any.
Her display resolutely insisted that there was no reception. She and the young man worked together, hitting their palms flat against the sides of the window to push it further open. Still nothing.
Panic started a slow creep up Holly’s body. It began by freezing her toes, then pumped icy blood up through her thighs, her abdomen, her chest, until she struggled to breathe.
“What else?” she cried out, biting her lip to stop herself from shouting anything more. “Isn’t there anything in this place that we’ve forgotten?”
Blank faces were the only answer. With slumped shoulders, Holly began the steep trek back downstairs.
As she reached the wooden door, Holly heard a cry from the main hall. With Emma once again leading, they ran through the twisted maze of corridors until they emerged into a buzzing crowd.
“What is it? What’s happened?” When no one responded to her call, Holly pushed herself forward, craning her neck to see if Arnold had recovered. William saw her and stood up, gripping her by the upper arms.
“I’m sorry. Arnold had a convulsion. He’s dead.”
As Holly stared at William with wide eyes, her head shaking in denial, the front door to the manor house banged open. In the entrance stood a young woman in a wedding dress, Mud caked her from the bedraggled train up to her thighs. The rest of her was sopping wet.
“What?” Sheila asked in a testy voice. “Ain’t you ever seen a bride before?”
The crowd moved back, revealing Arnold lying prostrate on the floor. Sheila raised a hand to cover her shocked mouth, her eyes darting over the entire wretched scene.
“What the—” Sheila broke off, as if unable to process everything in front of her. She took dainty steps across the floor, stopping a few yards away to stare at the scene again.
That’s when her gaze fell upon the saucer, with a cupcake overturned nearby. In the flurry of activity following Arnold’s collapse, it had dropped to one side.
Sheila’s eyes widened, and she jerked her head around, searching the faces of the crowd.
“Where is Crystal Waterston?” she demanded, pointing her finger to the cupcake as if it had offended her.
Holly stepped forward, a stranger’s hand on her lower back helping her. She turned and frowned at the man behind her, who wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“I’m Holly Waterston. I’m Crystal’s sister,” she said.
“You!” Sheila advanced one step, then another. The care with which she placed her feet took on a malicious air.
“That man died eating one of your cupcakes?” It was posed as a question but came out as more of an accusation. In her shocked state, Holly could only shake her head.
“First, you try to poison my father-in-law, Brian Masters. Now, you’re trying to poison my entire wedding party.”
Sheila extended her hand, pointing the finger of blame squarely at Holly’s chest. “Someone needs to arrest this woman! She’s a killer!”
Chapter Six
Ten minutes later, Holly was seated in the cupcake room, her legs shaking so much that she couldn’t stand.
“How could anybody think that?” she asked. The question had been foremost in her mind since Sheila leveled the dreadful accusation at her. Although Holly had already requested it several times, no one had given her an answer.
“I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Waterston,” Elvira said. She, Aidan, Esmerelda, and Emma had escorted Holly away from the scene, while another party took Sheila upstairs, so she could clean herself up. Whatever endurance event she’d fought through to get here, had left its mark.
“What did you do with Arnold?” Holly asked, changing tack. Her mind was buzzing, a low hum that disrupted her thoughts. She frowned as soon as the question was asked, uncertain if she’d already heard the answer.
Aidan stepped over and placed his hands on Holly’s shoulders. “They’ve taken Arnold into a downstairs room and laid him out on the bed. As soon as we can reach the emergency services, they’ll arrive and clear up this whole, awful mess.”
“I can’t believe that this is happening,” Holly whispered, placing her hands over her face.
Sheila had uttered something very similar as she walked upstairs. The shock of Arnold’s death had hit both women hard.
Pulling her hands away, Holly gave a short, sorrowful laugh. “I thought the worst thing that could happen today was getting lost at the church.”
Aidan offered her a smile. “That was hardly a bad thing. After all, you got to meet me.”
Esmerelda clucked her tongue at that while Elvira rolled her eyes. The gesture was so similar to the “Oh, Dad!” expression that had lived on Holly’s face as a teenager, that she gave a run of genuine laughter. It soon petered out as the horror of the situation recurred.
“I wonder if we could build a reception tower and stick it up through the skylight?”
Aidan shook his head. “The answer is no.”
“I feel like I should have been able to do something more,” Holly whispered. “That poor man.”
“You weren’t the only person there, you know,” Esmerelda said.
Holly raised her eyebrows in surprise. The woman hadn’t spoken to her up to that point. As every face turned to her, Esmerelda got a mulish expression on her face.
“There’s no need to stare at me like that. I’m just saying what’s
obvious. There were a hundred or more of us stood in that room when the man collapsed. You did a lot more to help him than most.”
There was a pause while Esmerelda crossed her arms over her chest.
“I didn’t even know the words to the song,” she muttered. “That’s how much use I was.”
“Auntie’s right, you know.” Aidan raised himself from an awkward crouch and moved to lean against the bench. “It’s a terrible business all around, but you have nothing to recriminate yourself for.” He chewed the edge of his bottom lip, looking at the strawberry cupcakes, their frosting hardening into a shell. “Unless you really did poison a cupcake.”
“For goodness sake!” Holly called out, leaping to her feet. “Arnold didn’t even have a bite from it. That would be some pretty powerful poison!”
Aidan shot a satisfied look at Emma and Holly realized that she’d broken free of her shock.
“Okay, you got me. Still, something seemed to happen.”
“Yes,” Aidan replied. “A middle-aged man had a heart attack in a moment of extreme stress. It’s terrible and not being able to call for help added insult to injury, but I don’t think anyone could have handled things better.”
“It was the water,” Elvira said in a small voice. At some point, she’d worked herself into the corner of the room. With her black clothes already dampened from the rain and her shoulders tucked in, Elvira looked tiny. A miniature of a person. Her weak voice fitted that appearance so well that it took Holly a moment to understand the significance of what the girl had said.
“The water?” Holly frowned as she thought back through the sequence of events, and as the motions added up, she nodded. “Elvira’s right. He collapsed straight after he drank the glass of water.”
“Joan,” Esmerelda shot back. “Her name is Joan.”
But Holly wasn’t listening. “It was just tap water,” she said, puzzling over the event. “I poured it straight out of the faucet in the kitchen. There should be nothing wrong with it.”
Aidan shook his head. “I’m telling you the poor man had his heart fail at the wrong time. He was thirsty to begin with, which can be a sign of an imminent heart attack.”
“It could just have been a sign that Arnold had been talking for minutes without a break,” Holly pointed out. “We should get some water from the kitchen and bottle it up for testing.”
Aidan stared at her as though she’d gone loopy. “He didn’t get poisoned from tap water, okay?”
“You don’t know that, Aidan,” Elvira said. “There are all sorts of stories online about the bacteria and stuff that can grow in water. Look what happened in Havelock North.”
“What happened there was mismanagement. Look, I’ll prove it, okay?” Aidan strode toward the door leading to the kitchen. “I’ll drink a glass of water and show you that it’s nothing to do with it.”
“No!” Elvira scampered across the room and dragged at Aidan’s elbow. “It could be something growing in the pipes, like what happened at the Cadbury factory in the UK. It could be a strand of E. coli.”
“What—?” Aidan stared in confusion down at the panic-stricken face of his young cousin. “It’s not going to be anything like that.”
He shook Elvira free and walked out of the room. Although Holly wanted to believe that he was right, that she hadn’t poured a glass of poison and handed it straight to Arnold, a string of fear was plucked inside her belly, reverberating along her nerves.
The four women followed Aidan as he walked into the kitchen. First he picked up a champagne flute, looking at the cut strawberry out in the sink with moue of distaste. Next, he spied the box of clean glasses and hooked one out, then poured out a glass of water. Over Elvira’s continuing protests, Aidan swallowed it all down, then wiped a hand over his mouth and sighed in satisfaction,
“See,” he said, “nothing wrong with it!”
As Holly relaxed back against the kitchen counter, Aidan’s face suddenly changed, twisting into an expression of distress. He raised his fingers and began to claw at his throat.
Chapter Seven
When Elvira screamed, Aidan dropped the act. While Holly stared at him in horror, his hands fell to his side. An expression of genuine upset replaced his fake acting as the rising volume of his cousin communicated that he’d chosen the wrong time and the wrong place.
“You really are a disappointment to the family sometimes,” Esmerelda said, throwing her arms around Elvira and comforting her with a hug. “You must get that from your father’s side, because it’s got nothing to do with my family tree.”
She walked the distraught teenager out of the room, Elvira’s sobs lessening as the reality that everything was okay hit home.
“She’s the kid with the sick mother, right?” Emma asked, cocking an eyebrow at Aidan.
The man’s face colored and he dropped his eyes to the floor, shamefaced. “Yeah. Her mother has multiple sclerosis. She’s had a flare-up lately, it’s gotten pretty bad.”
“Nice timing, then.” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.
Holly managed to draw in a breath. After his playact, her chest had tightened up so dramatically that her lungs refused to do her bidding. As oxygen once again flowed through her body, Holly’s muscles also began to unclench.
“How about you don’t do anything like that again?” she said. “If you’re going to act up, I think you need to work out how to pick your moments.”
A chastened Aidan followed the two women back into the cupcake room, with Emma still shaking her head.
“You know, your cousin had a point, though.” When Aidan started to open his mouth, she flapped a hand at him as though irritated. “Not the water, I don’t believe that for a minute. But the glass could have had something on it. Didn’t he wipe it down before he took a drink?”
Holly started to slowly nod, seeing the memory roll, frame by frame, in her mind’s eye. “Yeah. I’d just grabbed it out of the same box you took one from in the kitchen because the rest of them all had strawberries in them. He wiped it. I thought it must be a lipstick stain or something.”
Emma walked toward the door, checking back over her shoulder as Holly and Aidan stared at her, confused. “Well, the glass should still be sitting on the floor out there. About time we roped that patch of the floor off as a crime scene, just in case.”
Holly followed Emma through into the main hall, keeping her eyes closed to a squint until she verified that Arnold’s body had been moved. When they got to the place by the grand staircase where he’d collapsed, Holly got a shock.
“Where is the glass?” she asked, moving her toe across the spilled crumbs and shards from the dropped cupcake and saucer. “Even if it smashed, there should be pieces here.”
Aidan stepped around the edge, careful not to put a foot into the middle of what might be evidence. He shook his head. “Nothing. Did somebody take the glass back into the kitchen? You were headed there when Arnold collapsed, weren’t you?”
Holly slowly nodded, looking at the floor as though the glass might appear at any moment. She sighed. Even the worst of a ‘man-look’ would have shown it up by now.
“I had it in my hand,” she said, her fingers curling in unconscious imitation of the gesture. “I turned to go back to the kitchen, and then I got twisted around and lifted forward when the staff surged to Arnold’s aid. I don’t remember what happened to it after that.”
“You must have put it down.” Emma put her hands on her hips. “But either way, it’s not here, is it? Maybe somebody else picked it up and tidied it away.”
Aidan nodded. “We should check in the kitchen. Perhaps they tidied it back into its box.”
The three of them walked through to the kitchen, Holly’s face dropping when she saw the bench was clear.
Emma tipped the box up, showing six flutes still inside and a gap where the one Aidan had taken and Arnold’s one had been resting. “Well, that’s a no-go. I wonder if it’s worth checking in the room they
took Arnold to.”
Holly withdrew a step, her hands wringing together. “I don’t think I can,” she said apologetically, a tremble starting in her shoulders. “I’m just not built for this kind of thing.”
“I’ll check,” Aidan said. “It’s the least I can do after traumatizing everyone. Give me a minute.”
As he left, the front door opened again, protesting the movement with a squeal. It must have swelled with the rain, the wood now rubbing against the jamb as it moved.
Holly and Emma walked through to the hall to see who it was. To Holly’s surprise, she saw the minister standing on the doorstep.
“Why on earth have you come here?” she asked, then blushed at her forwardness. “Sorry, I mean, I thought you would be drier and safer in the church.”
The minister nodded. “Much drier, I’m afraid.” He shook his head, and drops of water flew out to either side, much like a dog shaking itself dry. Except, when he stopped, the minister looked just as damp.
“I brought the girls along. Their parents decided to stay at the church, rather than crowding in here, but the youngsters wanted to check on their friend.”
He turned, seeming surprised that the teenagers he referred to weren’t standing behind him. After a moment, the minister walked back outside and looked about, giving a wave.
“They’re still in the car,” he said, wandering back inside. “Elvira is here, isn’t she? I couldn’t remember if she left before we heard about the roads closing, or not.”
“She’s here,” Holly said. “Aidan brought her along when he came here. Esmerelda is also about somewhere, though I don’t think they traveled together.”
“Goodness, no. They wouldn’t,” the minister exclaimed but didn’t add anything that would have let Holly know what he was talking about.
With a squeal, two teenage girls pushed through the door, holding a paper above their heads for the scant protection. Considering how hard the rain still poured down, they’d come off lightly. Wet from the knees down, but both girls’ hair was dry.
The Sweet Baked Mystery Series - Books 1-6 Page 20
