Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons) Page 16

  He’d outlived the cause of every twisted ridge of scar tissue. He’d watched villages become towns, towns become cities, cities spread and grow and sprawl. He’d seen cart tracks become roads that burrowed across the land, watched humans take to the air and the sea and beyond. He’d watched his own kind and others fade and shrink and even die out, while the humans rose, and rose, and rose.

  Sometimes it exhausted Mortimer to even think about the passage of all those long years, to imagine waking morning after morning, to look out on sunset after sunset, to deal with squabbling dragons, and trade disagreements with dwarfs, and arguments with dryads over wood, over and over and over. Sometimes he couldn’t understand how the old dragon kept going. And sometimes he understood perfectly why Beaufort treasured scones with cream and jam, and the perfect joy of a good cup of tea.

  “Hello, lad,” Beaufort said, not moving from his spot.

  “Ah, hello. Um, have you eaten?”

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  Well, that didn’t sound good. “Have you?” he said, trying not to sound too anxious. Many things came of the High Lord’s thinking, but in Mortimer’s opinion they were mostly chaotic and rather alarming things, such as wearing dog costumes to sneak into the Toot Hansell Christmas market.

  “Yes. Maybe we need to involve everyone more.”

  “Oh. In what, exactly?”

  “Well, I know you have Amelia and now young Gilbert helping with the baubles and so on, but maybe we could get some more dragons interested. Kind of a community effort.”

  Mortimer had visions of Walter glowering as he tried to shape one of the delicate baubles that bloomed into floating flowers when they were lit, and shuddered. “It takes a, um, certain touch.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I see what you mean. I couldn’t do it. Not enough patience.” Beaufort sat up and eyed the younger dragon thoughtfully. “We must consider these things, though, Mortimer. Walter was right when he said that what humans don’t understand, they dislike. Or worse. But dragons are no different.”

  “Um. Yes?”

  “Yes.” Beaufort stretched his wings out. “We’ve kept our friendship with the W.I. far too quiet on our side as well as the human side. It’ll do everyone good to meet the ladies and understand they’re really very lovely people, and not at all likely to want to kill us for our scales, claws or hearts.”

  Mortimer thought it was a surprisingly sensible suggestion, and said so (leaving out the surprising bit).

  “Wonderful. Let’s think about the best way to do it, after all this murder unpleasantness is over. Now, shall we go and see how Alice and Miriam got on with the inspector?” Beaufort was already on his feet, pulling himself skyward with heavy beats of his wings, setting the wildflowers nodding in alarm. Mortimer scrambled to catch up as the old dragon went circling over the lake, low enough to drag his toes in the water and kick up spray that glittered in the fading light.

  “I had another thought, too,” Beaufort called as he banked toward the village.

  “Oh?” Mortimer asked, falling into easy flight next to him and, for once, feeling quite comfortable with the High Lord having thoughts.

  “The vicar used to work with these at-risk youth types. I’m not sure I understand exactly what they’re at risk from, but we should partner them with some of our more bored young dragons. Our lads and lasses could protect them from whatever’s after them, and it’d be a sure cure for boredom. Perfect, eh?”

  Mortimer recovered just before he ploughed into a scrubby bush and winged hurriedly after Beaufort, head swimming with visions of delinquent dragons and small humans with big grudges. Perfect. Perfect like the efficiency of Viking pillaging.

  With the dark pressing down around the village, turning it into a postcard of glowing windows nestled under the stars, they flew all the way to Miriam’s. Against that moonless sky, they could have been bats or night birds, barely seen and rarely imagined, and they landed in her shadowed garden entirely unseen.

  The lights were out downstairs, but one of the upstairs windows was propped open, the room beyond lit with soft warm light.

  “Miriam!” Beaufort called, not at all quietly, and Mortimer shushed him. “What?” Beaufort asked.

  “What if the police are around?”

  “Why would they be around?”

  “Because things were a little weird at the church.”

  “Nonsense. That man was much more suspicious than Miriam. He positively reeked of wrongdoing.” Beaufort looked back at the window. “Mir-iam!”

  Mortimer was puzzling how to explain to Beaufort that the inspector may not have taken the man’s scent into account when conducting her investigation, when Miriam appeared at the window.

  “Shh!” she hissed, then vanished again.

  The dragons looked at each other, suddenly worried, and a moment later they caught the faint sound of the gate latch opening. Beaufort slipped into the shadows of the apple tree, and Mortimer tried to conceal himself under a large rose bush without losing too many scales to the thorns.

  The light came on in the kitchen and Miriam flung the door wide. “Are you there?” she whispered.

  Mortimer watched the detective inspector come around the corner of the house, walking on the grass next to the path so that her footsteps were silent to anyone but the dragons and the night creatures, who paused their busy snuffling to wait out the threat. She stopped in the shadows, and he saw a frown dimple her face as Miriam, in a large purple top printed with “My Sister Went to Cancun & All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”, and a rather violently green-and-orange sarong, leaned out into the garden and called a little more loudly, “Are you there?”

  The inspector examined the garden, and Mortimer willed himself to be the rose bush as her eyes passed over him. She frowned, pinched the bridge of her nose, looked again, then shook her head.

  Don’t say our names, he willed Miriam. Don’t!

  As if she’d heard him, she straightened up, reached inside, and stepped into the garden holding a saucer of milk with little torn chunks of bread around the edges. “Are you there?” she asked again. “Come on, little pixies, we need our guardians at the moment.” She stood barefoot on the grass looking up at the stars, while Mortimer reflected that she was more likely to attract hedgehogs than pixies with milk, but that hedgehogs were generally more useful and definitely more friendly than pixies, so that was alright. Miriam sighed, set the bowl down among the dandelions under the faded blue bench that sat beneath the kitchen window, and went back inside. A moment later the lock turned, and the light went out.

  The inspector stayed where she was for a little longer, then snorted to herself and went silently back around the house. Mortimer listened to the gate click closed behind her, then scuttled down the path that led to the stream. Beaufort was already ahead of him.

  They didn’t talk on the way to Alice’s house, and this time they checked the front first. There was a very small car parked outside her gate, and they could see a police officer leaning against it, looking tired. They watched him pace the length of her fence a few times, then sit back in the front seat with his legs on the pavement. He opened a packet of biscuits, turned the radio on, and settled himself to pecking at his phone. The dragons ran from their shelter in the woodland next to Alice’s garden, scrambled over her fence, and scooted around the back of the house. They hunkered under the outside table for a moment, waiting, but there was no shout, no sound of footsteps. Just the whisper of the radio. The officer seemed to be listening to an audiobook about how to improve one’s career prospects through positive thinking, which seemed to Mortimer to be the sort of thing Beaufort would be very enthusiastic about.

  When they were sure they hadn’t been noticed, Beaufort whispered to Mortimer, “Just nip up to the window, lad, and see what’s happening, will you?”

  Mortimer looked at the ivy-clad wall and sighed. “Can’t you? What if I mess up the stone? She’ll shout at me.”

  “She won’t shout at you. And, rea
lly, how can you expect a dragon of my age to be climbing houses?”

  Mortimer gave the High Lord a disbelieving look, and Beaufort grinned at him.

  “Well – well, I expect mince pies. And I don’t care if they’re only for Christmas.”

  “Once all this is over, I will personally ask Miriam to make you all the mince pies you can eat.”

  Mortimer gave him a final glare, mollified somewhat by the promise of non-seasonal mince pies, and ran across to the house. He scampered up the side of the little lean-to annex that housed the boot rack and coats and rain hats and carrier bags and other such things, then scaled the wall beyond, hoping he wasn’t causing too much damage. A moment later he lifted his nose level with the windowsill and whispered, “Alice?”

  She put her book down and looked at him over her reading glasses. “Mortimer. Do you often sneak into women’s bedrooms unannounced?”

  He thought about it. “First time.”

  “Keep it that way.” They looked at each other, then she gestured at him impatiently. “Well, come in. I’m fairly sure a dragon hanging half out my window may be more noticeable than not.”

  Mortimer wriggled over the sill and found himself sitting on a small but rather comfortable window seat. “This is nice.”

  Alice put her bookmark in, smiled at him, and said, “Yes, I rather think so myself. Now, I don’t want to go down to the kitchen to put the kettle on, as I’d rather Ben Shaw didn’t report to the detective that I was up and about in the middle of the night. But I did bring some biscuits up, just in case.” She took a tin from the bedside table and offered it to him. Mortimer jumped from the seat and took it eagerly, and she said, “I guess you’re looking for an update?”

  “Yes, please,” Mortimer said around a chocolate Hobnob. He knew the women of the W.I. could sometimes be peculiar about packet biscuits, but he never understood it himself. They were rather nice.

  Alice updated him, in quick, precise sentences, and sent him back to Beaufort with the biscuit tin.

  Beaufort examined the biscuits and selected a custard cream. “Violet, then,” he said.

  “Yes.” They had retreated to the edge of the graveyard, made uneasy by the presence of the police but unwilling to go home. There was no watch on the vicarage tonight. DI Adams obviously felt she’d isolated the most likely suspects.

  Beaufort nodded. “I do believe it’s time for some more direct action, Mortimer.”

  The younger dragon sighed. “I’m breaking in again, aren’t I?”

  “Only if you’re willing to.”

  Mortimer thought about Miriam, pretending to feed pixies in her nightclothes, and Alice wielding frying pans as she confronted not-very-legitimate businessmen in her reading room. “Yes,” he said. “As much as I need to.”

  “Well done,” Beaufort said, and stashed the biscuit tin behind the headstone of Gerald Jones, who had died in 1753 and whose final words were “It’s only a graze”.

  “Where are you going?” Mortimer asked, running after Beaufort as he started toward the vicarage.

  Beaufort gave him that charming, yellow-toothed smile. “I’m not letting you have all the fun.”

  Mortimer wasn’t sure whether to feel reassured or alarmed.

  15

  DI Adams

  It was getting light, the stars fading, the sky paling from indigo to a deep and promising blue-grey. Dawn was on the way. Finally. DI Adams stretched and yawned, rolling her neck to work out the cricks. The sun was still nothing more than that gentle lightening of the sky, which meant it probably wasn’t much after 4:30am. Still a good couple of hours before James came to relieve her.

  He’d not been exactly keen when she’d called him and told him to make the drive up from Leeds. DCI Temple had been even less keen when she told him why she needed James up here, and Skipton had made a right bloody fuss over her using even one of their officers. You’d think they’d all forgotten it was actually a murder investigation. DCI Temple had even gone so far as to suggest – not saying anything outright, just to suggest – that perhaps the whole thing was an accident, and that DI Adams had her big city hat on and was looking for trouble where there was nothing there.

  She sighed. But it hadn’t been like there were any other weird or wonderful ingredients in the cake. If there had been other herbs, maybe she could have believed that someone had put the belladonna in by accident, but her most likely suspect in that case would be PC Ben Shaw’s wife. She struck DI Adams as the sort of person who’d make just that sort of mistake, but common knowledge seemed to be that she couldn’t cook well enough to create a cupcake anyone would eat.

  Which left the one woman who’d been snooping around the vicarage and the church, and who had the damn bush growing in her garden. It was hard to believe Ms Ditzy Hippie was the murderer, and the motive of a few disagreements about paganism versus Christianity seemed a bit shaky, but well. Eliminate all other possibilities and all that. Maybe Miriam Ellis had been the one to make the mistake. It didn’t seem that improbable, what with all the midnight wanderings and plates for pixies. But there remained the question of where the other cupcakes had gone, as so far no one else had dropped dead. Not that she was aware of, anyway.

  She rubbed her eyes and yawned. After the debacle at the church she’d gone back into the village centre, such as it was, to stock up on whatever sort of stale energy drink the dusty shop had on hand, but judging by how she felt now they’d been as out of date as the sandwiches. And there had been another Toot Hansell weirdness. She’d gone into the little bakery with its tiny but surprisingly well-stocked deli section looking for something decent for the stake-out (although it was unlikely to be as decent as the food she’d had delivered to her earlier in the day. But it was best to be safe where elegant murderers were concerned). There had been no one behind the counter, and after waiting for a moment or so she shouted, “Anyone here?” It probably wasn’t the done thing in the village, but there was a decent-looking coffee machine behind the counter, and she was going to have to help herself at this rate.

  A skinny man with very little hair and an immaculate apron peered around the corner of the kitchen door at her, and whispered, “Are they gone?”

  “Are who gone?”

  “The ladies.”

  Oh, God, not the ladies again. “Which ladies?”

  “The W.I.”

  Of course. “Why are you hiding from the W.I.?”

  “They’re making me very nervous.” He came out cautiously, rubbing his hands on his apron.

  DI Adams thought that he wasn’t the only one they had that effect on. “Why are they making you nervous, exactly?”

  “They keep watching me.”

  “Watching you?”

  “Yes – look! There’s one now!” He ducked down behind the counter, and DI Adams turned to watch a large woman with very curly, very dyed hair stroll casually past the plate-glass window, glancing inside with apparent disinterest. She matched the face to a name from the hall. Hart, Carlotta. She turned back and peered over the counter.

  “She’s gone.”

  The man straightened up warily. “Another one’ll go past any minute. You watch.”

  They watched, and after a couple of minutes DI Adams said, “Can you make me a long black coffee while we’re waiting? Three shots, splash of milk?”

  “Well, I suppose. You keep an eye on them, though, alright?”

  “Shall do.” She leaned against the counter, and a moment later Teresa sauntered past, still in her pink Lycra. The inspector decided not to say anything. She’d never get a coffee at this rate.

  The coffee machine growled and spat promisingly, and eventually the man turned around and waved the takeaway cup in the direction of the counter, peering past DI Adams and not looking at what he was doing. She grabbed the cup before he could drop it, and decided that the stale-looking biscuits she’d bought at the shop earlier would have to do. She didn’t fancy asking him to do anything that involved knives.

&nbs
p; “I’ll go talk to them,” she said, pulling out her wallet.

  “Would you? I’d really appreciate it. I’m sure they’re scaring away customers.”

  DI Adams thought that he might be doing that quite well himself, considering he looked like he hadn’t had a decent meal in about six years and kept scuttling about the place in panic, but she just said, “It’s no problem.”

  “Thank you! Thank you so much!” For a moment she was afraid he was going to hug her over the counter, but he just piled a variety of wrapped slices and a banana off a display and pushed them at her. “No charge! No charge at all! Just please, please make them stop!”

  “Um, sure. I’ll do that.” She wondered about asking for a bag, then decided he might have a small breakdown over a demand of that level. So she stacked the food in her arms as well as she could, and walked out of the shop straight into a petite woman in a pretty, multicoloured dress. The woman stumbled backward with a yelp, and DI Adams grabbed her before she could fall, dropping the food and the coffee as she did so.

  “Sorry! Sorry, God – are you okay?”

  The woman looked up at her with wide eyes, then nodded firmly. “Yes, thank you, DI Adams.”

  Kaur, Priya. More bloody W.I. The DI looked at the coffee splashed across the cobbles and sighed. “Are you and the other ladies stalking the baker, by any chance?”

  “Of course not,” Priya said, her eyes even wider. “Why on earth would we do that?”

  “The baker says he keeps seeing you walking past.”

  “Well, a few of us were planning to meet in there. Probably no one wanted to be the first to arrive.” Priya smiled and tapped her nose with a manicured finger. “One mustn’t appear too eager.”