Baking Bad--A Cozy Mystery (With Dragons) Read online

  She got up, stretched, and packed her tablet and notepad into her bag. This was pointless. She’d gone over the notes half a dozen times already, and nothing was helping. Sure, that Gertrude Lawrence woman had links in Manchester to some pretty dodgy characters, but most of it was from decades ago, and nothing that suggested she’d want to off the vicar. Then there was Alice Martin and her disappearing husband. That case was still technically open, which was interesting but probably not relevant. As for the rest of them, well, she wasn’t going to learn any more sitting here staring at the walls, that was for sure. She’d run up to Toot Hansell (even the name was ridiculous) and see if anything new had turned up. Maybe knock on some doors. You never knew what you could rattle loose just by being around.

  Toot Hansell nestled in the folds of the fells, in a valley that seemed to overflow with sunlight, rendering the stone houses bright and the flower-festooned gardens friendly. The waterways that surrounded the village and meandered between the buildings caught the sun with almost painful luminescence, and birds spun across the treetops. There were patches of mist collected in dips here and there in the fields, giving the whole place a fairy-tale edge, and no car was moving on the road but her own. There were a couple of people out walking dogs as she crossed the little bridge over the stream and slipped into the village streets, and they regarded the car with surprised but friendly expressions as she passed. One of them even waved, and DI Adams waved back automatically, then scowled and planted her hand back on the steering wheel. This place was weird.

  She was pleasantly surprised to find that the tall sergeant (Graham Harrison, if she remembered right, and she almost always did) was awake and leaning on the bonnet of his car when she pulled up to the vicarage. She’d half expected him to have gone home at nightfall, or to be having tea with some woodland creatures or something.

  “Morning, Inspector,” he said as she climbed out of her car. It was splattered with mud and smellier things, and she’d managed to bash the wing mirror on a stone wall while trying to squeeze past a tractor. She examined the damage and sighed.

  “Morning, Sergeant. Nice morning.”

  “It is,” he agreed, and took a sip from a large pink thermos mug. There was half a bacon butty lying on a sheet of wax paper on the roof of his car, and her stomach growled. She could never work out how people went through the day on yoghurt and weren’t ravenous all the time.

  “No one relieved you last night, then?” she asked him.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “PC Ben Shaw did ten till four. I kipped at his place.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s nice.”

  He looked amused. “Easier than me driving home then coming back. Or someone else coming out. We manage, Detective Inspector.”

  “I’m sure you do,” she said, reminding herself that she didn’t need to feel like she’d just insulted him. It wasn’t as if it was a professional rota system, was it?

  The sergeant didn’t seem bothered, anyway. He just drank his tea and watched the morning as if it were a spectacle laid on especially for him. DI Adams started to lean against her own car, remembered all the debris splattered across it, and just shoved her hands in her pockets and regarded the church instead.

  It was still early, and the mellow morning light turned the old stone luminous, lit the trees and flowers that interspersed the gravestones, and painted the edges of everything in bright fresh shades. What could have been severe on a winter’s day was gilded and full of a slow, gentle peace, a haven away from a world that was rushing uncontrollably from one distraction to another. It was a place that invited stillness, and DI Adams instinctively reached for her phone, meaning to put it on silent, then realised she was being ridiculous. The world didn’t stop just because you were in some dead-end little village an hour’s drive from anything that even resembled civilisation.

  “All quiet, then?” she asked.

  “Pretty much,” he said, and pointed at the sandwich. “Do you want some? It’s got HP sauce on.”

  DI Adams gave an impatient wave. “What d’you mean, pretty much?”

  He picked up the sandwich and took a bite, chewing carefully and swallowing before he answered. The inspector wondered if he was being deliberately slow, but she had a feeling he just didn’t want to talk with his mouth full. “Well, Mrs Daniels—”

  “Rosemary Daniels?” She flicked through the files in her mind, seeing women sitting across from her at the table in the village hall kitchen, over and over again. Daniels, Rosemary. Tall, blondish, bit of a horsey look to her. Loud laugh. Didn’t stop knitting throughout the questioning.

  “Yes, that’s her. She came by with tea and a sandwich only about ten minutes ago. You just missed her.”

  A tragedy. Although, the sandwich was still making her stomach growl. Funny how bacon could still do that after fifteen years of vegetarianism. “You know we have reason to believe poison was involved here?”

  “I know,” Graham said comfortably, and took another bite. After more careful chewing and a swallow, he continued, “Considering I wrote down everything that happened while I was on watch, they’d be a bit silly to bring me a poisoned butty.”

  “You wrote it down?”

  He patted his breast pocket. “I quite like pen and paper, Inspector. You can’t delete much on pen and paper. Not without leaving some traces.”

  “You can if someone just steals your notepad.”

  “I’d be very surprised if that happened.”

  Looking at him, DI Adams had to admit that she’d be surprised if that happened, too. The sergeant was not a small man. “And did anything else happen, other than you being supplied with breakfast?”

  He put his sandwich down, wiped his hands on a yellow spotted paper napkin, and pulled his notebook out of his pocket. “As a matter of fact, it did.” He cleared his throat. “Eight-nineteen p.m., Ms Alice Martin brought me a sandwich. Ham and cheese on granary. With pickle.”

  DI Adams found herself wanting to roll her eyes and controlled the urge with difficulty. “You seem very popular with the sandwich-making brigade.”

  He grinned at her, and for a moment he looked like a cheeky schoolboy, even if he was well over six foot, and the wrong side of forty to boot. “I’ll charm anyone for a bacon butty, me.”

  The inspector snorted. “I’m sure you would. Did Ms Martin want anything else? Ask any strange questions?”

  “No.” He shifted against the car as if it was suddenly no longer such a comfortable spot, and looked at his tea rather than at her when he answered. “But something, well, weird happened while she was here.”

  “Weird? Weird how?” The day sharpened around her, the tease of a case a better pick-me-up than any triple-shot coffee.

  “Well, I heard something from the other side of the house. When I went around to check it, there was an upstairs window open.”

  “Was it open when you arrived?”

  He looked uneasy. “I think so.”

  DI Adams took a deep breath. She’d been on scene earlier, too. She couldn’t blame him. She should have noticed it herself. She nodded. “And?”

  “And I sent Ms Martin away, and went through the house. I was checking the attic when I heard, or thought I heard, someone on the stairs.” He hesitated, a flush creeping up under his collar. “So I identified myself, and gave chase, but when I got downstairs there was only Miriam – Ms Ellis – opening the door from the outside.”

  “Ms Ellis? She was with Ms Martin?”

  “No, Ms Martin had already left.”

  DI Adams frowned. “That seems like quite a coincidence, them showing up one after the other.”

  “I suppose.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  She supposed that half the village had been around feeding him, so maybe it wasn’t that far-fetched. “And Ms Ellis couldn’t have been inside?”

  “No. I’d have caught her. And she wasn’t even breathing hard.”

  Ellis, Miriam. The witness. A little below average height. Somewhat round.
Lots of curly, grey-streaked hair. Smelt of incense and that wood all the hippies like. Sandalwood. No, she didn’t look like she’d be able to out-run an officer, especially not one who looked as fit as the sergeant. “She was definitely coming in from outside?”

  “Yes. I was in a rush. I didn’t lock the door.”

  “And no one went past her?”

  “I went straight out. There was no one there.”

  DI Adams sighed and rubbed her forehead, the sharpness of the day fading. “What did she say she wanted?”

  “To see if I needed any tea.”

  “Of course.” They stood in silence for a moment, watching the house, then the inspector said, “You searched the house.”

  “Yes. Straight away.”

  She sighed again. “Alright. I’ll just go in and take a look anyway.” She held her hand out for the keys, then let herself in the rickety little gate and walked to the front door, feeling the warmth of the sun fade as the house swallowed her in shadows.

  She pulled on some disposable gloves as she checked the downstairs rooms, but they were as she remembered from the day before. Old, mismatched furniture and threadbare carpet, the curtains a little sad and ragged. Either the parish didn’t have much money, or the vicar had been particularly unconcerned about his living arrangements. It smelt musty, too, of old meals and mildew, and she shivered despite herself.

  The outdated kitchen was untouched, the same mug and bowl in the draining board, the fridge wheezing to itself in the corner like an exhausted donkey. She checked the lock on the door, and the window latches, but they didn’t seem to have been tampered with. For someone to have climbed in the upstairs window would have taken a seriously good climber or a good-sized ladder, which the sergeant could hardly have missed. She worked her way back to the hall, wondering how long he’d been away from the front door. Long enough for someone to let themselves in? She’d have to see just how accurate his note-taking was.

  The morning light coming through the open front door lit the worn carpet, and the inspector stopped, frowning, then crouched down. From here it looked like – she inched her way forward, running her fingers over the carpet. There were tears in it, slashes so long and fine that they could have been made with a scalpel. She found a pen in her pocket and worked the tip into one, peering at the floor underneath. Yes, scratches on the old wood, like someone had run a Stanley knife over it. But why? She frowned at it for a while, then pulled her phone out and took some photos, making sure to indicate the length of the slashes, and where they were in relation to the stairs and door. They made her think of a cat, sliding down the trunk of a tree.

  She was trying to get the angle right to take one last photo when her knee went in something wet. She gave a gurk sound and shuffled back on her haunches to investigate. There was a broad patch of dampness not far from the hall table, almost invisible against the dull carpet, and on closer examination she found a few flower petals stuck to the wet material. She got up and walked to the door, shaking her trouser leg out.

  “Oi! Did you knock over the vase on the hall table?”

  Graham, who’d been looking at his phone, jumped guiltily. “Um, yes. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “It was over when I went back in to check on the place, after Ms Ellis left. I guess maybe I bumped it on the way down the stairs and just didn’t notice.”

  DI Adams went back inside without answering, and looked from the hall table to the stairs. He must have been careening about like a drunken zebra, then. She jumped up and down on the floorboards a few times, and they creaked obligingly, but the hall table was old and solid, and the flowers barely shivered.

  “Huh,” she said, and took another picture, then made some notes on her phone. And then she went upstairs.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected to find, but none of it made any more sense than the slashes in the hall carpet. There were more scratches on the stairs, and some scuffing on the banisters that looked fresh. After shouting a question to Graham, she went into the spare bedroom and examined the window that he’d found open. Scratches on the sill, not as deep, but again as if a cat, a big one, had clawed its way into the room. She hung out the window, and although the light was still dull on this side of the house, she could see clean, light grey stone where more scratches were cut through the weathered surface of the wall.

  She took more photos, although she wasn’t sure what she was taking photos of. Someone had walked up the side of the house in, what, ice crampons? And then left them on and gone sliding about the hall in them? Even if they had, surely they would have just caught in the carpet, not sliced it so neatly. So someone walked up the wall in ice crampons, skipped down the stairs in them, then slashed the hall floor with a Stanley knife, just for the fun of it?

  She put her fists on her hips, puffing air over her bottom lip. This wasn’t making sense. They couldn’t mean anything, those scratches. On the wall, maybe, but in the hall? She walked into the vicar’s bedroom, tapping her pen off her teeth, and stopped short.

  The bed had been made. She was quite sure of it. She was especially sure she’d have remembered the vicar’s bright blue-and-yellow Minion print pyjamas, which were neatly folded where the pillows had been. Poor guy. Those pyjamas were about the most alive things in the whole damn house.

  The thought was fleeting, and she shook it off, examining the bed carefully, taking photos as she went. The blanket was rucked up, as if a dog had been playing on it. It seemed intact, though, unlike the pillows. She poked one, and it burped feathers into the still air of the bedroom.

  “Huh,” she said again, and poked the other. That one had less holes, but it was definitely leaking. Feathers floated about the room in the dusty air, and she sneezed. Great, that was all she needed. Hay fever kicking in. She stood back, crossed her arms and considered the bed, then crouched down and peered under it. There were a lot of dust bunnies under there, a sock, a couple of pound coins, and a broad swathe of carpet that was cleaner and darker than the rest of it.

  DI Adams sighed, took her jacket off, and wriggled under the bed on her belly, poking into the corners and examining the carpet for more of those scratches. There were some, although not as long or deep. They were more the sort of scratches an animal might make crawling into a burrow. So now she was thinking about rabbits. Rabbits, dogs, and giant cats. Superb. Three months out of London and she was inventing mysterious beasts rather than solving crimes.

  She sighed deeply enough to send a couple of spider webs drifting away from her, and wriggled out backward, her shirt tangling up under her armpits. She sat on the floor for a moment, wondering if she could still get her old job back, then lay on her back and pulled herself under the bed again, using her phone as a torch to examine the underside of the bed base. You never knew. Hair could get snagged, scraps of clothing. Scales.

  She blinked, and reached out to touch it, then recovered herself and took half a dozen photos first. Then she pulled the – well, yes, the scale for want of a better word (although it was as big as her thumbnail, and unless the vicar was storing large game fish under his bed, she couldn’t imagine what it had come from) clear of the bed base, and pushed herself back out into the room. Then she sat there in the morning light washing through the dusty windows with her hair fluffed out in uncooperative directions and a spider web festooning one ear, and examined it.

  The scale was translucent, running with the sorts of blues and greens and golds that you found in opals, and it was so light in her hands she barely felt like she was holding anything at all. It was hard, though. When she ran her finger along the edge there was no give to it. She tried twisting it, gently, but it didn’t flex. She tried to bend it in half, and it stayed resolutely solid. It was beautiful. And utterly, utterly impossible.

  “Huh,” Detective Inspector Adams said to the empty house, and tried not to think of London. Not the good bits, like proper 24-hour shops and decent coffee and food of every sort you wanted to name, but th
e way that things had got weird. Because that was done. That was gone. And this was just, well, this was just, “A scale,” she said firmly, and wondered if the sergeant had any other food in his car.

  8

  Alice

  Alice inspected Miriam’s basket of scones with what she hoped was merely a quizzical expression on her face. She knew that she sometimes tended to look a little severe, and Miriam was nervous enough this morning, as evidenced by the broken mug sitting by the back door and the tea-stained cushion drying in the sun.

  “Wholemeal flour, Miriam?”

  “Um. Spelt. And chickpea flour.”

  “How interesting.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say lovely. The scones looked as if Mortimer had sat on them, and they were very well cooked. She could see where Miriam had scraped the charred bits off the edges.

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam said, sitting down at the garden table with a sigh, and making it rock enthusiastically. Alice rescued her tea before it could slop over. “I should have just done plain scones.”

  “You didn’t have to do anything. This is a strategy meeting, not morning tea.”

  “I don’t think Beaufort would have been very impressed if there weren’t any scones.”

  Alice smiled. It was true that the High Lord was unimpressed with any gathering that didn’t include baked goods. After they’d made their way back to Miriam’s last night, they’d had a cup of tea while they decided what to do, and the dragons had polished off not just the remains of the banana cake but two packets of crumpets that had been in the freezer as well.

  In the end they’d decided that it was late, and that they should wait to look at the tablet. In that particular part of northern England, the sun didn’t set until almost nine at night in springtime, and it had been down long enough for it be almost full dark by the time they made it back to Miriam’s. And while that wasn’t late exactly, it was late enough for a day that had involved dealings with the police and some lightly criminal activity.