Candied Crime
Authors: Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen
Tags: #humour, #flash fiction, #crime fiction, #cosy mystery
Volume
1
Published by Dorte Hummelshoj
Jakobsen at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Dorte Hummelshoj
Jakobsen
My crime
fiction blog:
DJ´s
Krimiblog
Smashwords Edition, License
Notes
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1. The Knitting Club
”
Oh, poor
you! Not again!” Olivia´s low-cut neckline hovers dangerously close
to Mildred´s nose while she flings several lumps of sugar into her
teacup. She makes good use of this opportunity to take a closer
look at the swollen eye.
“
Y
ou really must do something
about it! You´ll have to leave him. Women´s refuge!” Martha´s
knitting needles clink indignantly in close competition with her
busy tongue.
“
But he was
so sorry this time. He promised…” chirps Mildred. She all but loses
the thread of the complicated pattern she has devised. Another nice
and w
arm winter sweater for
Arnold.
“
He promised
… well, they always do, don´t they, Mildred? But when have you
heard about a man who kept his promise?” Olivia is the hostess of
their club today and expertly she
regains
their full attention.
Mildred sips
at the sickly-sweet tea. How kind they all are. And when she
remembers how close she was to giving up the knitting club a few
months ago. Olivia had had a divorce with such a to-do, and
Pauline´s lover had invited her to Malaga for an illicit weekend.
Martha got her breast cancer, and Amy suspected that her husband
pranced around in her clothe
s when she
was away from home.
And in the meantime Mildred had
just knitted her intricate sweaters while she tried to insert a few
words about Arnold´s mushroom excursions.
But then she
had tripped over a basket of mushrooms in the kitchen and broken
her arm.
Somehow the words had just
rolled off her tongue when she told the others that Arnold had hit
her. Now Mildred was looking forward to the knitting club every
Thursday again.
2
. Grammy
During most of fourth form
Martha Gramstrup was our German teacher. Grammy was the thin and
nervy type, a walking skeleton with rattling necklaces and
bracelets. And her four weekly German lessons in fourth form hardly
made things better.
Grammy´s hair had been coloured
red once in a distant past. She was the cardigan type, mousy grey
and crap brown in any odd combination.
“Grammy is the incarnation of
German grammar,” Tommy claimed. Tommy had red freckles and jutting
ears so he had learned early that attack is the best form of
defence.
I am sure Grammy was well
prepared, but more often than not she lost the thread. The boys
would draw talentless caricatures of her on the blackboard, they
sent letters to each other and peeled apples with their pocket
knives right in the middle of her efforts at stuffing an irregular
verb or two into our hormone-ridden brains. We girls were mostly
knitting or doodling; we were far too old to participate in the
boys´ pranks, but we couldn´t be bothered to learn German.
“
Where were
we?” she would ask from her desk while the bracelets whisked around
the thin arms in a panic.
“Wir sollen schrauben wollen,”
Joe suggested helpfully. Stifled titter from pupils who were still
awake.
Her cheeks
turned pink, but usually she didn´t seem to realize that the whole
class was mocking her.
********************
”Martha´s husband is dead!” Lisa
whispered her message as loudly as she dared while she rushed into
the classroom three seconds ahead of Grammy.
“Martha who?” Bewildered, we
stared at her until the penny dropped.
A subdued Grammy, dressed in
black, came in with the worn satchel under her arm. She sat down on
the chair, and in an atmosphere of embarrassing silence we crammed
verbs and vocabulary for once.
“I heard it was heart failure,”
Betty informed us during the break.
“
Small
wonder, he must´ve been in his late forties.” Lisa´s parents used
to play bridge with Grammy and her husband so
she made short thrift with Betty´s know-all
attitude.
For a couple
of days we remembered to be kind to Grammy. Jane left red apples
for her on the desk, and our compassion lasted until the winter
holiday began a week later.
*******************
”Grammy has had a haircut.
Look!”
Yes, indeed. The wisps had
turned into a smart, reddish-brown hairdo.
The
transformation did not take place overnight, but during
t
he spring a new Grammy appeared. She put
on a few kilos and changed her style. One day she appeared in
jeans, and she gave Tommy a regular bollocking for sending a paper
plane through the classroom.
We watched in amazement, not
quite certain how to react to our new German teacher. Unfortunately
the change lasted for three months only; then the police came into
our class and picked her up just when we were conjugating the verb
“sterben”.
3
. Mushrooms and Toadstools
He bought it for an old song in
the cosy little antiquarian bookshop in Whitechapel. A gorgeous old
book about British mushrooms and toadstools. A few of the pages
looked the worse for wear, but it was still a really fine book.
Such a treasure for a few pounds.
Back home in his study he let
his hands slide down glossy plates in four-colour print and was
fascinated by this new world of all the various fungi in their
natural habitats. He read about gill and boletes mushrooms. He
learned about mycelium, spawn, spores and fruiting bodies. The
foreign words appealed to him. Like the former owner he dwelled on
certain pages and learned the detailed descriptions by heart.
Sometimes he even ventured into
the woods accompanied by his book. Tricholoma pardinum,
Chlorophyllum molybdites, Inocybe erubescens and Amanita
phalloides. Those marvellous names nearly made him drool.
Now and then
his wife would interrupt his absorbing studies. “Arnold, dinner is
on the table.” “Arnold, your tea is getting cold.” But most of the
time Mildred left him to his book. He even considered buying a
camera so he could immortalize particularly beautiful specimen from
his perambulations.
He went out to put on his
galoshes; the wood could be damp and chilly even on a sunny
afternoon. Mildred stood in the doorway with her shopping list.
“Arnold, I thought perhaps we should try a mushroom stew
tonight.”
That was when he threw his book
out.
4
. The Princess on the Pea
Finally! I raise my crystal
glass and nod to my parents-in-law. Neither too little nor too
much.
Frederick gives me an
encouraging squeeze behind the veil. We have only had the first
course so I´d better keep my cool. I sip at a glass of water.
Some cousin raises his glass,
and I drink with all the buffoons again. Broad smiles from almost
everyone.
As I didn´t bring any parents,
my in-law gets up to give the obligatory speech. That doesn´t worry
me, he is of the old school and would never crap in his own nest.
Well-known platitudes you can just smile at. He and I will get
along; at least he appreciates my good points.
The
second
course is brought in. A few tufts
of some green stuff sprinkled on a strip of fish and a morsel of
toast which could not satisfy a sparrow. I presume that is how you
recognize haute cuisine and tell my stomach to stop
rumbling.
Now it is
Frederick´s turn. On the whole I loathe speeches, but I have been
looking forward to this one. Frederick is so besotted that he
wouldn´t notice if I ate my pudding with a shoe. He towers above me
while he sends me a radiant smile. He rustles a sheet of handmade
paper while he clears his throat; despite his age and experience he
is slightly nervous. How sweet!
“
Your
Majesty...” a servant approaches my mother-in-law with a cordless
phone in his hand. She sends him a look that could pierce an
iceberg. He stutters, but holds his own. At length she motions
Frederick to sit down, her eyes promising that someone will have to
pay for this breach of etiquette.
She fires a couple of fiery
questions into the mouthpiece. “Oh, is that so?”
My goodness, now she pricks up
her ears. What´s up?
She steps over to me and hands
me the phone while her lips curl in the sweetest smile.
“
I have some
Australian here who would love to speak to you. He says he is your
husband.”
5
. A Nightly Burger
”Are you a burger?”
My head
nearly hit the roof beams. A little boy in pyjamas, holding a
threadbare, one-eyed teddy in his arms, materialized right behind
me. Where on earth did he come from? And why hadn´t I heard
him?
“Am I a what?”
“
A burger! I
thought p´raps you were burgering the house. Then I would have to
wake up my daddy, wouldn´t I, and he would be so cross!”
“Course I´m not a burglar. I´m …
Well, I am working here.”
“Doing what?” He cocked his head
and scrutinized me from head to foot while searching for something
up his nose. Multitasking I think they call it.
“
Eh, that´s
not so easy to explain.” I fiddled with the silverware in front of
me and picked a few promising items which I put into my bag. If
only that boy had had a proper mother she would surely see to it
that he went to bed at night and stayed there!
Apparently he didn´t know when
his company was unwanted. He climbed onto a chair so he could stick
his nose into whatever was going on in the top drawer of his
parents´ antique bureau. “What are you going to do with those?”
“
Oh, won´t
you just shut up?” I clenched my hand around a large
soupspoon.
”Why?” He didn´t look the least
offended, just genuinely curious.
”Oh, because … well, because
you´ll wake up your daddy, and he will be cross, won´t he?” A
brilliant answer if I may say so. As you have probably guessed,
children are not my thing. What did one do with them? Should I tie
and gag him, or could I bump him on the head? Run off? Give up the
whole blasted business for tonight?
He was quiet
for a few moments, then he began a whispered conference with his
teddy. “Teddy says he thinks you´re a teorist.”
“
Of course
I´m not a terrorist, silly. What on earth makes you say that?” A
drop of nervous sweat trickled all the way down my
spine.
“Teddy says! Teddy says
terrarists wear gloves and those tight things over their heads.” He
held Teddy up in front of him as if trying to hide behind the ugly
creature.
“
Oh come off
it. Where´s my bomb if I´m a terrorist?” I was quite impressed by
my own resourcefulness in a tight spot. Perhaps I could still worm
my way out of this fix.
********************