Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons) Page 15

  No one jumped out, but a voice said, “Come in, Ms Martin. And shut the door. I don’t want PC Clown Car out there to see us.”

  Alice considered her options. She thought she recognised the voice, and she didn’t feel particularly afraid of its owner, but at the same time, he was in her house. She really should go and get Ben.

  “Please, Ms Martin. I didn’t want to sneak in like this, but as it appears you’ve already attracted quite a bit of attention I didn’t have much choice. I don’t really want the police in my business.”

  “And why do you want to talk to me?” Alice asked, still not moving. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark of the room beyond, and she could see a figure reclining comfortably in her chaise longue. Her chaise longue. The one she’d ordered all the way from London. She pursed her lips in disapproval.

  “Because I have a feeling that you’re going to be pointing the police at me. And I would really rather that didn’t happen. I only want the same thing as you. I want to know who killed Norman.”

  Alice stepped into the room and pulled the door to behind her. There was a soft click, and the reading lamp went on, illuminating Stuart Browning looking very much at home on her plush red and gold chaise longue, with his feet up among the cushions.

  “Please take your shoes off,” she said. “I don’t wear shoes in the house. And certainly not when I put my feet on the furniture.”

  Stuart looking startled, and maybe slightly deflated that she seemed less worried by his presence and more concerned with his footwear, then nodded and stood up. “Have a seat, Ms Martin.”

  “No thanks.” She was still holding the frying pan at attention.

  He sighed. “Look, I know you must have found the emails, to call me S.B. I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick.”

  “What does it matter what I think? The inspector will have those emails, too.”

  He shook his head. “I know for a fact that Norm was super-careful about his personal email. He’d only have had his work account on his phone or computer. His private one he used just on one tablet, and that’s the email I always contacted him on. So if you found it, she didn’t. She’ll be looking at an email address with nothing on it but junk mail and church stuff.”

  Alice thought about it for a moment, then said, “And? You were at the church. She’s going to look into you.”

  “She’s going to look into Stuart Browning, antiques dealer and legitimate businessman. Which I am.”

  “But not all you are.” Alice lowered the pan. It was starting to make her shoulder ache, and she’d rather lost the element of surprise. “Who else are you?”

  “Call me a childhood friend.” He grinned, the expression lupine in the soft light of the reading lamp.

  “A before-prison friend?”

  He chuckled. “You have done your homework.”

  “I know people.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “So, if you’re now a legitimate businessman, why don’t you want the inspector looking at you?”

  He tapped a thumb against his tooth and looked longingly at the chaise longue. “If you’re not going to sit, can I? My leg’s killing me.”

  “Just keep your feet off my furniture.”

  He grumbled but sat down in the middle of the big seat, his leg stuck straight out in front of him and his foot on the floor. “It hurts. It should be elevated, I’m sure of it.”

  “You shouldn’t push old ladies if you don’t want to face the consequences.”

  He looked at the pan pointedly. “I’m glad you at least left the ‘harmless’ bit out.” He didn’t ask what had bitten him, which was one less concern, at least. Alice wasn’t at all sure how convinced he’d be if she told him the massive teeth marks had come from Primrose. Just a good thing Mortimer hadn’t bitten him that hard.

  Aloud, she said, “So. You don’t want me to tell the inspector about the emails.”

  “Well, obviously you’d be incriminating yourself anyway, because you must have stolen his tablet.”

  Alice made a noncommittal noise. She’d preferred him earlier, squalling about his leg.

  He grinned again. “But yes, I’d rather avoid drawing any undue attention. Some of my business dealings are not exactly pure as the driven snow. I mean, I got out of the drugs and all that about the same time Norm did. More money to be made in arts and antiquities, for an enterprising fellow.”

  “Why were you sending all those emails to the vicar, then?” She’d never called him by his first name before, and she wasn’t about to start now. “They were rather aggressive.”

  He sighed. “They weren’t. It’s just how I talk to old friends. I liked Norm. We were close when we were kids, and he did good. When he started the whole man-of-the-cloth thing, he helped a lot of people. Kind of a shame he didn’t stay around home to do it, you know?”

  He sounded genuinely sorry, and Alice moved a couple of books off one of the chairs and sat down. “Why didn’t he?”

  “Too many memories, I think. He did some pretty bad things. I mean, I was no boy scout, but the things Norm would do for the right price …” He shook his head. “Too much for him to face.”

  “So he wouldn’t talk to you?”

  “It took me about ten years to track him down the first time. And I didn’t do it to ask him to work with me, or anything like that. I just wanted to make sure he made out okay. And when I saw what he was doing – well. You know. Getting kids off the streets. Letting them sleep in the church, giving them somewhere safe to go. I just wanted to tell him I was impressed, you know?”

  “But he didn’t want anyone from his old life back.” Alice was leaning forward in her chair, the pan held across her knees, and something had slipped in her precise, nondescript accent. There were softer edges there.

  “I turned up in Manchester once I found him, and he slammed the door in my face. But then I sent him a phone with email already set up, everything untraceable. We talked. We even met a couple of times. He was so afraid that I’d give him away somehow, that even being in contact with me would make someone look more closely at his past. I tried to explain he’d paid for what he did, and that everything he’d done since was more than anyone could ask of him, but he didn’t believe it. I don’t think he felt he deserved to be forgiven.”

  Alice nodded. “And then he moved.”

  “Yeah. He up and left. Sent me the phone back. But I found out where he’d gone, and figured good on him, you know? Nice quiet place. Maybe he felt he’d finally earned it.”

  “Those emails were new, though. You were asking to meet.”

  “Yeah, once I tracked him down I sent him the tablet. Told him he deserved at least something that wasn’t just for work. He sent me a note – an actual note – to say thanks, then that was it. No emails, and the old email address just bounced back.”

  “But he gave you the new one.”

  His mouth twitched. “Not exactly. But it’s not hard to find the email for vicar@toothansell.com. It’s right on your cute little website.”

  Alice gave him a severe look. “It’s a very professional website.”

  “It has lambs and daffodils on it.”

  “What did you expect, skulls and crossbones?”

  He laughed and went to put his leg up on the chaise longue again, then caught her glare and just shifted his weight with a sigh. “Anyhow, I found the email, and he gave me his new personal one, I suppose to keep anyone else from stumbling across me. There are a few of us from the old days who have gone legit, or near enough, and we wanted to meet up. Bit of a reunion. We’re getting on, you know? I thought Norm might be up for it, but I wasn’t going to push it.” He shrugged, ran his hands back over his hair, and sighed. “And then I hear – this. I came up to have a sniff around, see if it was maybe someone from back then who caught up with him.”

  “It was a poisoned cupcake,” Alice said.

  “Yeah?” He gave a short, unhappy laugh. “Well. That kind of rules that theory out,
then.”

  “I think so,” she said thoughtfully, and got up. In a gap on the bookshelves there was a bottle of Scotch whisky and two glasses. They were cheap, the sort of glasses that look like you could drop them on a stone floor and they wouldn’t even chip, and they were old and scratched, and utterly out of character with the rest of the house. They were also the only ones Alice ever used to drink whisky. She’d never needed both before, but now she poured a little in each and handed one to the man in her chaise longue before taking a sip of her own. “Do you know someone called Violet?” she asked.

  He swirled the whisky, sniffing the fumes, and nodded appreciatively. “This deserves a better glass.”

  “You’ll have no glass if you’re complaining.”

  “No, no. Just saying.” He sipped his drink, then said, “I think Norm had a woman of that name hanging around back in the day. Bit wild, as I remember. I can ask around.”

  “Do that,” Alice said.

  Stuart took another sip, watching her over the rim of the glass. “What bit me?” he asked finally, his eyes sharp and dark.

  Alice smiled at him, a sweet old lady smile. “Best not to ask,” she said.

  After he was gone, slipped out the back door and over the fence, she checked the locks and ran the bath she’d promised herself. She sat on the side as it filled, checking the temperature with one hand, watching the bubbles rise and build and the steam smear itself across the mirror. Funny how the past always seemed to catch up. So often you thought you could just pick and choose what you carried with you, but it never worked that way. It all came along, in one form or another, and bled around the corners of your life until you laid it to rest or made peace with it. And maybe that was okay. Maybe that was how it was meant to be. We’re the sum of all our lives in the end, the good and the bad and the terribly, unbearably ugly. It’s all in what we do with it.

  14

  Mortimer

  As soon as the church door closed after Miriam, Beaufort released Walter, who let loose with a stream of cursing that wilted the nearby daffodils. Beaufort put up with it until the old dragon stopped for breath, then pointed toward the far side of the graveyard, where the wall gave only onto the stream and the wild land beyond.

  “Home,” he said.

  Walter glared at him mutinously, and Beaufort stared back without expression. After a moment the old dragon gathered his legs under him and broke into a lumbering run, his ragged wings flaring to catch the air. He was still swearing as he gained height with great, ungraceful wing beats, and Mortimer caught the occasional “damn dog”, and “stupid humans”, as well as less palatable remarks regarding the parentage of everyone present. Beaufort stayed close to Walter all the way back to the caverns, not responding to his monologue, although he did send a warning little belch of flame at the old dragon’s toes when he started to veer toward a field full of sheep.

  They climbed steadily past the tangle of woodland that crowded up next to the stream, over the green of the grazing pastures and on into the high browns and greys of the fells, stitched with crumbling stone walls and studded with abandoned shepherd’s huts and cairns and little grottoes filled with mysterious life. They dropped lower as they reached the deep lake that lay below the dragons’ stony peak, the still waters dark and reflective and pocked with reeds. Walter dropped to the ground among the boulders that crowded the shore closest to the cliffs and spat angry purple fire at Beaufort.

  “You fool,” the old dragon snarled. “Hanging about with your human pets, acting like the last centuries haven’t even happened, eating cake and drinking tea and forgetting the rest of us!”

  Mortimer expected Beaufort to react furiously, given the way he’d ordered Walter out of the churchyard, but the High Lord just sighed, settling onto a boulder and folding his big wings along his back. The sun flushed his scales in their natural colours of emerald and gold, and he’d have looked entirely majestic if his shoulders hadn’t sagged so much.

  “I’m sorry, Walter,” he said. “I know you don’t agree with the idea of reconnecting with humans.”

  “It’s stupid! It’s dangerous! You know what happens!”

  “No, I know what happened. Times change. People change.”

  “Humans don’t. Stupid little animals.”

  Beaufort growled, a soft rumble at the back of his throat, and Mortimer exchanged an alarmed glance with Amelia. Contrary to popular myth, dragons were more inclined to settle problems with discussion rather than fighting, but some things just can’t be talked out. And he’d never heard the big dragon growl before.

  Walter grunted, unimpressed. “You’re the High Lord, Beaufort. Do what you want. But you need to realise that some of us remember being hunted. Being slaughtered. Being blamed for everything from bad crops to the damn pox. They’re superstitious things, humans. They don’t like what they don’t understand.”

  “I remember, too,” Beaufort said. “But there’s a difference between honouring memories and not moving on, Walter.”

  “They killed us for our scales. Our teeth. To prove their stupid valour. Why do you think it’ll be any different this time?”

  “You keep saying ‘they’, as if it’s all the same people. As if everyone thinks the same. They weren’t everyone, even back then. You know that, else we’d all have been extinct. The people of this tiny old village pretended they never saw us. They lied to the knights. To everyone. They protected us, even when we sometimes stole their sheep in the winters. They called us their dragons, and told stories about this hill and lake being haunted, to make sure no one would come up here. So if you want to talk about they, you need to remember that as well.”

  Walter shook his heavy head. “I still think you’re asking for trouble. Not everyone’s behind this public relations game of yours, Beaufort. Someone will challenge you.”

  “If they do, they do,” Beaufort said calmly. “But I think we’ve hidden long enough.”

  “Damn tea parties and bauble sales. What sort of dragons does that make us?”

  “Modern ones.”

  “It’ll all end in disaster. You’ve got the bloody human police involved now. It’s going to get to the council one of these days. You’re drawing attention to us!”

  “You’re the one who chased the dog!” Mortimer blurted, unable to just keep watching Beaufort taking the grumpy old monster’s tirade with barely a protest. “You’re the one who made a mess of the whole thing!”

  Walter bared his teeth at the younger dragon. “Watch your tone, cub. Poncey little dragon, with all your fancy artwork.” He spat the last word like it was something rotten he’d bitten into.

  “Hey!” Amelia snapped. “He’s the reason you’ve got a nice warm barbecue to sleep on, rather than nothing but rocks! He even got it for you, you nasty old wyrm!”

  Walter drew himself up to his full height, which would have been impressive if he hadn’t still looked like his skin was four sizes too big for him. “I won’t be spoken to like this! In my day I had respect—”

  “That’s enough, all of you,” Beaufort said. “Walter, thank you for your help. I appreciate your concerns.”

  “He’s a concern,” Amelia mumbled, and Mortimer kicked her. “Ow!”

  “You’re wrong,” Walter said to Beaufort. “Humans don’t change. You’ll see.”

  “Unless you intend to challenge me yourself, Walter, I think that’ll do,” Beaufort said. His voice was mild, but Walter sagged back down to his bent old dragon size.

  “I don’t, no. But you keep up this path, and someone will. Not everyone wants a High Lord who spends all his time mucking about with humans.”

  “I’m entirely aware that we have factions among us who would prefer we went back to the days of night raids and burning villages. However, as long as I’m High Lord, it will indeed be tea parties and baubles. Are we clear?”

  Walter opened his mouth, no doubt to say something horribly unpleasant, and Beaufort snapped his wings wide, the sun lighting the delicate t
racery of veins within them. The slump disappeared from his shoulders, and his neck arched as he glared down at the old dragon, the gold of his spines stark against the rocks.

  “Are we clear?” he repeated, and the words were a rumble deep in his chest, which was darkening to a rich bruised purple colour. Mortimer took a step back and trod on Amelia’s paw. She squeaked and pushed him off. Walter appeared to be trying to think up an appropriate retort, but settled for muttering something about what Beaufort could do with his baubles, and lurched into the air, passing so low over Mortimer and Amelia that he almost knocked them into the lake. By the time they sat up he was already vanishing into the entrance of his own small cavern, the grey of his scales blending into the rocks above.

  Beaufort, already fading back to his usual greens and golds, sat down and scratched his chin. “Well. That went about as well as could be expected, don’t you think?”

  Mortimer came back down to the lake as it got dark. The water had taken on the colours of the sunset sky above it, a delicate pale grey shot through with apricot and gold. There were clouds sneaking around the horizon, hinting at rain to come, but for now the air was cool and clear and full of the sounds of night creatures emerging. He landed among the boulders and padded through the smooth rocks until he found the High Lord, stretched out on his belly on the sun-warmed stone, his gold eyes half-closed and his front paws folded under his chin.

  “Um, sir?” Mortimer said. Sometimes he still didn’t know how to address Beaufort. There were days when the old dragon felt like an over-enthusiastic child, racing from one idea to the next and throwing himself into each with wild abandon and little thought for the consequences. On others … Well, on others he was the High Lord. Older than anyone could exactly say, with a scar on his shoulder from a knight’s lance and claw marks on his belly from a cowardly challenger who had set upon him while he slept. There were more battle scars than the old dragon could remember how he’d come by, so he made up stories to thrill the hatchlings, stories of krakens and trolls and giants.