The Great Witchy Cake-Off

by Jeannie Wycherley

  I calculated the risk and decided we were on dicey ground. I couldn’t be sure what would happen if she dropped that water on Ross’s head.

  I’d had my suspicions about Bertha for a while, but I didn’t understand her link to Murgatroyde or why either of them would have wanted Janice Tork-Mimosa dead.

  “Hand me the evidence bags, Alf,” Murgatroyde repeated, “and then nobody needs to get hurt.”

  From above came the sound of another large joist creaking. Outside, a guy line twanged. The sides of the marquee flapped ominously. What could I do? Reluctantly, I bent over and picked up two of the three evidence bags that had spilled on to the floor when George had been knocked flying. The third had landed near Silvan. I glanced from it to him. We locked eyes. I rolled my left shoulder back slightly, indicating Bertha with her vial poised above poor Ross’s head. I blinked twice and an understanding passing between us.

  Silvan reached for the third bag and held it out to me. I pretended not to see him doing this. Instead I stood slowly and held up the two bags I’d already picked up allowing Murgatroyde to see them clearly.

  Timing was everything.

  As Murgatroyde reached to take the bags from me, I threw them straight at her face, bent my knees and spun around. Using one hand I sent a blast at the space Bertha had been inhabiting. She’d obviously anticipated something would happen because she’d side-stepped. Instantly she tried to fire back at me. I deflected and rapidly sent a heat spell her way. It obliterated her vial of water, the glass cracking in her hand and the water turning to a puff of steam that rose harmlessly into the air.

  “Go!” I shouted at Ross and he took the hint, apparating safely out of harm’s way as the vial shattered on the ground where he’d been a moment before.

  Meanwhile, at the same time that I’d thrown my evidence bags, Silvan tossed his own at Murgatroyde, confusing her as to the direction of each threat. She struck out blindly, her magick awry. While I concentrated on Bertha, still armed with her own wand, Silvan piled pressure on Murgatroyde who shied away from his advances.

  I’d like to say Murgatroyde was no match for a dark wizard, someone as well-practised in the dark arts as Silvan, and to be fair, she probably wasn’t. But funnily enough, it was mild-mannered Mindi who came to our rescue.

  “For heaven’s sake,” I heard her mutter. She raised her arms and clapped, just once, and the next second, the cameras were flying through the air of their own accord. One took out Bertha with a hefty clunk to the side of her head and the other toppled onto Murgatroyde, pinning her to the ground. “That’ll do it,” Mindi said mildly. “I’m off for a cigarette break.”

  I jumped on top of Bertha, shoving my knee into her solar plexus, grappling with her to retrieve her wand. When I snapped it into several pieces and dashed it to the floor, she glared at me with unconcealed hatred.

  “Why did you have to interfere?” she spat. “We had it all figured out.”

  I shrugged. “Then you shouldn’t have brought your baking programme to Whittle Inn. We don’t suffer fools—or murderers—gladly here.”

  We gathered together in the bar awaiting a couple of George’s team to arrive to sort out the arrests. George had his arm in a sling, and Millicent hovered over him with concern, her pain-alleviating spell already kicking in. Silvan had a beauty of a black eye. I wasn’t sure whether the joist had caught him, or George had, either way it was going to look spectacular. Raoul and Faery Kerry, looking a little shaken, sat with Mindi, Patty and Boo. Ross hovered by the bar, his laptop set up, and flicked through endless screens collating evidence of the information he had gleaned.

  George had handcuffed the producer and Bertha together, the cuffs laced between the back of their chairs. They weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. The evidence bags lay on a table in front of me. The most important of these, the scarf—or Zephaniah’s seven down crossword clue as I’d always think of it in the future—had finally given the game away. I’d seen it under Murgatroyde’s bed, hidden in her suitcase, but actually it had been Janice’s. I’d seen her wearing it and the photo in the paper had reminded me of that. I held up the bag to show Murgatroyde.

  “This could have been a simple coincidence,” I said. “Yes, we found this scarf under your bed, and it’s the same as the one I’d seen Janice wearing, but there’s no reason why two women wouldn’t have similar scarves. Janice was a classy woman. When I first saw this, I imagined you were trying to emulate her. We only wanted to ask you about it. If you hadn’t over-reacted when we brought it into the marquee, we might have never progressed any further.”

  Silvan grunted. “The reaction was fake, wasn’t it? I’m guessing you were trying to alert Bertha to your predicament. You needed her help and she wasn’t in the tent at the time. But she came running when you yelled.”

  Murgatroyd ignored Silvan and glared at George instead. “I didn’t kill Janice and you can’t prove I did.”

  “I know. You hadn’t even arrived at Whittlecombe. We had Ross check out the CCTV at Paddington Station. It showed you getting on the train in London and arriving into Exeter. The time frame clearly demonstrates you arrived after the murder. It was the perfect alibi.” George pointed at Ross’s screen. Divided into quarters, we had four pictures of Murgatroyde on the platform in London, on the train, alighting at Exeter and getting into a taxi outside the station in Exeter at around the time Janice was murdered. The time stamps gave her the alibis she needed.

  “It could also have been a coincidence that you were already on your way down to Devon. Almost as though you knew the programme would require another producer,” George said. “But I don’t think so. How could you have known that in advance?”

  “I just wanted to see how things were going with the programme.”

  “Well, I’ll definitely be asking your bosses whether they had given you prior permission to come down here to Devon, but my instinct says they only agreed to you being here after Janice had been murdered.”

  “But I didn’t kill Janice,” Murgatroyde repeated doggedly. “You can’t make that stick.”

  “We will however prove conspiracy to murder. You’ll go down for a long, long time.” George nodded, entirely self-assured. “It might go easier for you if you just spill the beans. How did you persuade Bertha to do your bidding?”

  “No comment.” Murgatroyde sat back in her seat and stared up at the ceiling.

  “I think I might be able to help with that.” Ross’s quiet voice drifted among us. “Bertha Crumb is a pseudonym for Bertha Louise Sawley, who was born to Murgatroyde Jane Snippe nee Sawley on 29th May 1994.”

  I did a double take. Mother and daughter? I’d never have imagined Murgatroyde was old enough to be Bertha’s mother, and I couldn’t see a resemblance. But then there was all the make-up she was constantly covered with. Murgatroyde could have been an alien from another planet and I might not have been able to tell given her obsession with concealer and all manner of cosmetics. Her filthy room lay as testament to that.

  “Murgatroyde Jane Snippe, date of birth 11th November 1967.”

  Early fifties? I blew out my cheeks. I’d thought she was my age. Maybe I needed to learn contouring or something.

  “They were working together?” asked Patty, and George nodded. Patty slid an elegant finger underneath her glasses to wipe at a tear. “Poor, poor Janice. She thought Bertha was a hard worker. She often praised her. Said she’d like to progress her career.” She peered over her sunglasses at Bertha. “How could you do that to her?”

  Bertha fidgeted on her seat and Murgatroyde shot her a warning glance.

  “I didn’t realise it was Janice.”

  There was a shocked silence in the marquee. Bertha’s face collapsed in sorrow. “We were after Patty!”

  “You were trying to kill Ms Cake?” George sought clarification.

  Bertha let out a noisy wet sob. “It was normally Patty who checked on the set first thing in the morning. I’d been waiting for her.”

  “
But Patty was staying at The Hay Loft and she needed to wait for Raoul to give her a lift back here,” I said.

  Patty opened and closed her mouth, stunned beyond words.

  “Oh my,” said Faery Kerry on Patty’s behalf.

  “So, it was a case of mistaken identities,” George said. “That doesn’t carry any less of a penalty, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you have against Patty?” Raoul wanted to know. “It’s thanks to her we have jobs at all.”

  Bertha looked down at her feet. Murgatroyde glared at Raoul and refused to answer.

  “What I don’t understand, is why you bothered with all the theatrics? Why stab her with a cake knife when you could have used a hex?” Mindi asked them both, her face doleful. “You’re witches. You could just throw a curse out and have done with it.”

  “That’s what I wanted to do!” Bertha said. “But mother said we needed to make it look like some mortal had done it.”

  “Bertha!” Murgatroyde warned her daughter.

  “Oh, Mother, they know most of it anyway.” Bertha glowered back at her.

  “You were trying to frame Rob Parker,” I said. “Conveniently he’d had a little run-in with Janice on that first afternoon. Nothing serious but witnessed by several people.”

  Something twisted in my stomach as I thought through the chain of events. “You put Rob in the frame for it, but you didn’t care who else you hurt along the way. You planted the weevils in my storeroom, thinking you’d alert the health department to issues with hygiene at the inn. Unfortunately for you we nipped that in the bud before you could process a complaint. So then you had to frame Rob.”

  “Perhaps you were trying to contaminate his fridges or the food itself when we spotted your djinn that night we came home late from the Hay Loft,” Silvan suggested, “and you abandoned the attempt.”

  Bertha shrugged. “I realised not enough people would be made sick, because only a few of the crew chose to eat from the sausage van on any one night. The food at the inn was far too good and most of the crew wanted to eat here.”

  “So you sabotaged the gas supply.” Silvan nodded knowingly. “I found elements of magick in the hole where the gas workers were digging. I knew there’d been some sort of interference.”

  Of course. That’s what he’d been checking for. “You two purposefully blocked the gas at the entrance to the inn, forcing the closure of our kitchen?” I asked.

  “Knowing that you’d use Rob for everybody’s dinner,” Silvan confirmed.

  Dastardly, as my great-grandmother would have said.

  “Then either Bertha or Murgatroyde contaminated something in Rob’s van and completely innocent, he served up everyone’s sausages.” Fury burned in my veins. “You took an innocent woman’s life and you may have ruined an innocent man’s livelihood! Don’t you care at all?”

  Murgatroyde shrugged. “It would have been worth it,” she said, “if it had killed Patty’s career stone dead.”

  She rocked forward on her chair, her face twisting with hatred. “Patty, Patty, Patty! Always blasted Patty getting all the jobs and making all the decisions. I’m just as good a producer as she is, but do you think I can get work? No! I hate her.” She spat at Patty who recoiled from the onslaught. “Do you hear me? I hate you!”

  “So that’s what it was all about,” I said, after Bertha and Murgatroyde had been taken away to the police station in Exeter. “They just wanted to ruin Patty’s career.”

  “Patty and Murgatroyde have been rivals for years,” said Mindi. “Patty’s star has always shone more brightly than Murgatroyde’s, and the shows she’s produced have reaped big rewards for Witchflix. She’s the mighty Witchflix producer of choice for a range of baking and reality programmes because everything she touches turns to gold.”

  “Perhaps Murgatroyde didn’t think she could get a look in,” Faery Kerry suggested, her face downcast.

  “That’s no reason to kill someone,” Raoul replied, and his eyes had lost their twinkle. “She was a decent woman, Janice. She should have lived out her life in peace.”

  We all nodded in agreement, mourning a life wasted. Then Ross quietly interjected. “I found your videos, Raoul.” He looked at me. “While I was in the marquee, Bertha managed to send a text before you killed her phone. That brief signal was enough for me to triangulate her phone and log it. With that data I managed a definite hit. It was her phone that had sent video messages to Raoul.”

  “And were they the genuine article?” Raoul asked.

  “No,” Ross shook his head, an emphatic denial. “Most certainly not. The images were of Janice, and there were images of Pierre de Corduroy, but they had been manipulated. It’s not at all difficult these days to do that with the range of software that’s widely available, but these had been enhanced magickly. It was impressive and convincing. Murgatroyde had managed to make a whole film. Fairly indecent. Utterly immoral.” Ross wiped his hands on his trousers in distaste.

  “So Janice wasn’t having an affair.” Raoul looked troubled. “I gave her a hard time about that, but she was blameless all along.”

  “Anybody in your shoes might have done the same,” I said. “Between them, Murgatroyde and Bertha had plenty of skills. They knew what they were doing. They manipulated a great many people.”

  “It’s a pity we didn’t see through them,” Faery Kerry said.

  Raoul nodded. “We just have to be thankful that Silvan, Alf and George did. At least they’ve saved Patty’s career from almost certain implosion.”

  Patty stared at us, then slowly reached up to remove her dark sunglasses. Beneath them, her eyes were oddly soft, a glorious chocolate brown colour. “You’ve done me a huge favour,” she said. “I won’t forget it. Thank you, Wilf.”

  By the time filming started on the final showstopper of the series it was past 5 o’clock. The challenge was due to last three hours, so we were heading for a late finish. I watched as Florence put her head down over her ingredients and started cooking up a storm. I couldn’t wait to see what she would conjure up.

  Conjure without using magick of course, because that—as we all know—would have been cheating.

  And now we had to abide by the very letter of the rules, because we had several new guests. It turned out that Murgatroyde had managed to contact the producers in a final text sent before I could block it, and they had suddenly turned up at Whittle Inn without warning.

  Outwardly calm and confident, Patty briefed them on all that had happened, and because of who she was, and because of how valuable The Great Witchy Cake Off was to the Witchflix stable, they allowed her to continue the day’s filming, saying only that they would review the footage later, and contemplate whether to take action after they had considered the events of the past week or so.

  They weren’t cancelling the series outright. We took that as a positive sign.

  The final three hours of filming passed by in a whirr of weighing and whisking, flouring and frosting, creaming and beating, moulding and icing. Florence whirled around her bench like a dervish, armed with a wooden spoon and a piping bag. I watched her create several layers of cakes, stacking them one on top of another, then carving them into a desired shape. It all looked relatively simple from where I stood, but I knew she’d pull out all of the stops.

  And so it transpired.

  Mindi counted down the time left until at last she issued her final instructions. “Time’s up! Hands off your bakes.”

  To be fair, each contestant had concocted a marvellous creation. Eloise had opted for a large witch’s hat decorated with small creatures including a bat, a rat and a spider. Scampi had a large spell book, which he had intricately iced with a spell that when read aloud would produce the perfect hot chocolate to complement the cake.

  I secretly sniffed in derision.

  I didn’t need a spell to make the perfect hot chocolate. I had Florence.

  Florence proudly accompanied her showstopper as it floated ahead of her, taking up its place on a
plinth at the front of the tent where the judges, with Luppitt on camera, awaited her. They cooed at the sight. Florence had carved a large pumpkin carriage cake. Measuring a foot and a half in height, it was a triumph. It bulged the way a fat ripe pumpkin would bulge. Florence had iced it beautifully in an attempt to catch the shadows of Autumn. She’d carefully crafted sugar glass to create the illuminated windows. Two large black rats, with blue feather plumes (cut from coloured rice paper) towed the carriage. But it was the driver I loved the most.

  Florence had created an owl, a replica of my own beloved familiar, Mr Hoo. Sporting a smart top hat and tails, his little face and merry orange eyes gazed out at the judges.

  “Tell us about your cake, Florence,” Faery Kerry instructed Florence.

  “Well this is a homage to my wonderful employer and friend, Miss Alf, who runs Whittle Inn. She’s a brave witch who takes her responsibilities very seriously, but she’s kind and compassionate too, although sometimes she can be fierce and a bit grumpy. This is her little friend Mr Hoo. I’ve created him from a vanilla cake with a caramel frosting. And then the carriage and the rats are made with a dark chocolate cake. The rats have a cappuccino frosting and the carriage’s frosting is flavoured with blood orange. And there’s a little surprise when you cut the carriage open.”

  Raoul wielded his cake knife.

  Florence gulped. “Hopefully anyway.”

  “Let’s have a look, shall we?” Raoul smiled, the familiar twinkle back in his eye, at least for the sake of the camera.

  He made two incisions and then pulled a triangle of cake out and placed it carefully on a plate. Luppitt zoomed in a little closer and tightened his focus. Standing behind Ross, who was storing the digital images on his computer, I glanced at the image the camera was picking up. Inside the cake were the shapes of little people, off out for a drive in their pumpkin carriage. Florence had made them from jelly and mousse and then carefully inserted them into the cake when she layered the whole thing together.