Trick or Treat (11 page)

‘Aye, aye, sir!’ said Jason, showing backbone, pluck and grit.

Bread happened. Because it was the end of the week, I sat down to do the accounts, and found that things were bad. Not dire, but not good. If Best Fresh continued to take my custom away for a few months more, I would be barely breaking even. I could, of course, close the shop and tout for some more bread orders from the restaurants. That would mean I’d have to sack Kylie and Goss though, and until their film and TV careers took off, I was their sole source of revenue, apart from their parents. I really didn’t want to disappoint them. Damn.

I was still staring at these uninspiring calculations when Meroe came in and I gladly left the books and escorted her into the alley, where sunlight now fell on the cardboard box. She knelt to open it with the tips of her fingers and then shut it again, very fast.

‘Where was it?’ she asked tersely.

‘On the front door,’ I said. ‘Jason saw it first, and I went and got it before anyone else could see it. It’s a curse, isn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, a very old one,’ she answered, still on her knees. ‘I’ll take it. You didn’t touch it with your naked hands, Corinna?’

‘No, I had gloves on. Why? Is it poisoned? The Mouse Police sneezed at it.’

‘As well they might,’ said Meroe abstractedly.

‘Does this have anything to do with your treasure hunters?’ I asked.

‘Hard to think not,’ she said. ‘But we shall find out soon enough. Bella and I will be busy tonight. Well done, Corinna, it would not have been at all fortunate to leave that object where it was. And brave of you to go near it,’ she added, getting to her feet and picking up the damp cardboard box.

‘Not at all,’ I said, and watched her walk away, very glad to banish my doorstep of that horrible burden.

‘Good riddance,’ said Jason, echoing my thought.

I wondered what Meroe was going to do with the heart and what she would subsequently do to the person who sent it, then decided that I didn’t really want to know, and it was time to open the shop and let my poor starving midshipman run to the galley for his breakfast.

Today I had Goss in a blue miniskirt and matching sort of tied up at the front bodicey thing. In eyelet lace. When I think that Grandma Chapman’s grandma used to make reams of that eyelet lace to trim the unmentionables of the virtuous, I could giggle. Fashion doth make fools of us all. Except, of course, me. In the event that shabby blue tracksuits become fashionable, I may have to resign from the human race. And I should be careful with that sort of comment, because look what happened with Ugg boots . . .

Goss bounced into the shop, clanged the racks apart, slammed the cash float into the register and announced at the top of her voice, ‘I’ve got a part! Me and Kylie both! It’s, like, excellent!’

‘Wonderful,’ I said, much soothed in conscience. ‘When do you start?’

‘Monday,’ she said. ‘But Cherie said she could do the shop for you, Corinna. Some of the time. But isn’t it great?’ she demanded, launching herself at me and hanging around my neck. ‘I’m first shop girl and Kylie’s second shop girl in a new soap called
Visitors
! We’ve got three lines!’

‘Wonderful,’ I said, hugging her thin little body. ‘Each or between you?’

‘Each,’ she replied, giggling.

‘Great.’

She skipped into the bakery to tell Jason.

Daniel came at about eleven, just when the shelves were beginning to look empty. He seemed pale and distracted.

‘Come to dinner tomorrow night?’ he asked. ‘George is cooking. She’s hauled in a whole load of stuff.’

I was about to snap that I was in need of sleep rather than George’s company, that in fact I would rather dine with the prime minister or any other pond dweller than George, when I saw how drained he looked and relented. Whatever George wanted with Daniel, it wasn’t making him a happy camper.

‘All right, tomorrow is fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll be in bed early tonight. I was up late last night.’

‘Trouble?’ he asked, taking my hand.

‘Trouble,’ I agreed. ‘Magical trouble. Meroe is dealing with it,’ I added.

He smiled faintly. There were dark marks under his eyes and his hand had a gash across the back. ‘That ought to make it really sorry that it bothered you,’ he said. ‘Come up to my place about seven?’

‘Seven it is,’ I agreed, and Daniel went away. Damn. I hadn’t asked him why we had gone to see Old Spiro, which I had meant to do as soon as he surfaced.

‘What’s wrong with the dude?’ asked Jason. ‘I used to look like that when—’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No,’ Jason concurred, shaking his head. ‘But he’s not good, is he?’

‘No,’ I had to agree with my apprentice. ‘No, he isn’t.’

And there being nothing else I could do, I sold bread until three, when I closed the shop, loaded the sack for the Soup Run, paid my helpers and bade them have a happy weekend, and carried myself and my cat up to my own apartment, where we needed some lunch and a quiet afternoon reading our detective story.

And that is precisely what we got. I settled down on the sofa with Horatio initially on my lap, and then snuggled in next to my hip, where he likes to be. He does not trust me not to leap up if the phone rings, and this way he is not displaced if I move. I made myself a cup of herbal tea which Meroe had prescribed for stress. It tasted like old, curried grass but seemed to counteract the effects of the coffee I had been drinking. I read, enthralled, of the impossible romance about which Jade Forrester writes so convincingly, and when her Harry got together with his lover, it was both triumphant and utterly likely. In another universe, of course, but that was where I had been for the last four hours. And very nice too. I did not much admire the universe I was coming back to inhabit.

And I was dining alone. I put a block of my own sauce into the microwave to thaw and put on the pot for orecchiette pasta. I was not in the mood to struggle with anything, much less fettucine, by which I have been defeated before.

The bell rang. It was Meroe. She held up a basket.

‘I’ve got half of dinner,’ she told me.

‘And I’ve got the other half,’ I said. ‘Puttanesca, if that suits you.’

‘It does,’ she said.

90

I added another block of frozen sauce to the microwave and threw the pasta into the boiling water. Meroe laid out plates, put her salad leaves into my wooden salad bowl and poured the dressing over it. I know that this dressing is only composed of lemon juice, virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano, because I have watched Meroe make it, but it tastes better than any combination of those ingredients I have managed to produce. I left her to crush garlic for the garlic bread and stirred my pots. I heard a thud and turned to see Meroe enjoying this culinary task. She was crushing garlic with the flat of a knife and her fist, and that garlic knew it had been in a fight.

‘That’s one allium bulb which will never threaten us again,’ I said.

‘I’m full of negative emotions,’ she confessed.

‘Because of Barnabas?’ I asked.

‘Because of Barnabas, and this whole flood of witches into my space. In the old days in Rumania the number of witches in any coven was one and if a witch strayed into another witch’s territory she would be warned off.’

‘Or turned into a frog.’

‘That, too,’ she agreed, slathering garlic and butter into slits cut in a baguette. ‘But here there are a hundred witches, all proclaiming that they are witches, and it...’

‘Makes you nervous?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘And you think they might have something to do with the outbreak of madness in the city.’

‘That’s very astute of you,’ she observed, wrapping the bread in foil and stowing it in the oven. ‘You must have been watching my reactions.’

‘I watch everyone’s reactions,’ I told her.

She dragged back her long black hair and knotted it behind her neck.

‘True. Yes, I did wonder. It’s only been happening since they came to town. All this magic must have some sort of psychic effect.’

‘Yes, but... hang on, the pasta’s done.’

The next few minutes were spent in decanting and lavish
ing the thin, spicy tomato sauce onto the pasta, adding freshly ground pepper and Parmesan cheese and the laying out of the garlic bread and the salad. I know that garlic bread is a fashion which has come and gone, but I don’t give, as Jason would say, a flying. I like garlic bread. So does Meroe. And garlic is good for you. It keeps away colds, although that may work by repelling all other humans who might breathe germs on you.

I poured myself a small glass of chateau collapseau, but Meroe only wanted water. The pasta was perfectly cooked, just beyond al dente. If I want something to bounce back when bitten, I’ll eat erasers.

‘Why do they call it puttanesca?’ Meroe asked, taking a big mouthful and relishing the taste.

‘In the manner of whores? Because the working girls came home to their apartment and made a sauce out of whatever was in the cupboard—olives, anchovies, tomato
passata
doubtless sent from their home village by their doting mothers. Some people put chili in it but I don’t like chili. I cook up a big pot of it now and again and then freeze it in one person serves for when I don’t feel like cooking.’

‘I’m glad you do. I didn’t feel like cooking either.’

I helped myself to a large spoonful of the fairy salad. Marvellous. We kept eating until most of the food was gone and I was nibbling the end of the garlic bread. Meroe was sipping her austere glass of tap water.

‘I never got around to looking up Exodus,’ I said idly. ‘There’s quite a lot of Exodus. Can you give me a reference?’

‘Twenty-six, I think,’ she said. ‘Or twenty-eight.’

I got the Bible and leafed through it, holding it at arm’s length and squinting.

‘Twenty-six is about the building of the temple. Goats’ hair curtains, that would have kept out the heat and dust. And linen in purple, scarlet and blue.’

‘The most expensive dyes,’ said Meroe. ‘Blue would have been woad or indigo, both of which had to come from very far away. Purple from conch shells, traded with the Roman empire. And scarlet was probably madder.’

‘Rough on the madder plant,’ I observed.

‘But a very beautiful colour,’ said Meroe. ‘The makers of the temple wanted the best for their god.’

‘So they did. “A veil of blue and purple and scarlet and fine twined linen of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be made”. Sounds like we’d need to ask Therese Webb how to embroider cherubim.’

‘She’d know,’ said Meroe comfortably. ‘And she could probably find us twined linen. And her work is always cunning.’

‘That’s true.’ I scanned further. ‘Aha, here we are. “Thou shalt make a breastplate of judgment with cunning work . . . foursquare shall it be... and thou shalt set in it settings of stones, even four rows of stones: the first row shall be a sardius, a topaz, and a carbuncle: this shall be the first row. And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond. And the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst. And the fourth row a beryl, and an onyx, and a jasper: and they shall be set in gold in their inclosings...and the stones shall be with the names of the children of Israel twelve... and thou shalt make upon the breastplate chains .. . and rings on the two ends . . .” Meroe! That sounds very like that flat jewelled plate that Barnabas had in his hands last night.’

‘Had briefly in his hands,’ she corrected me. ‘Yes, it was an ephod. Part of a high priest’s regalia.’

‘And have you any idea what it was doing in the sea off Williamstown, Victoria, Australia?’

‘Not a lot,’ she said.

‘What?’ I was confused.

‘I mean, I don’t for a moment believe that it was there in the first place.’

‘You suspect Barnabas of the old “the quickness of the hand deceives the eye”?’

‘I do,’ she said. ‘Much as I am loath to accuse a fellow witch of chicanery, I feel that in this case...’

‘Indeed. Anyone that big and jovial almost has to be up to something.’

‘I shall investigate further tonight. Bella is already preparing.’

‘Bella? Your cat? How is she preparing?’ I asked, then wished I hadn’t.

‘She is entering her deepest trance state,’ said Meroe, getting up and picking up her empty basket.

‘You mean she’s asleep?’ I asked. My witch gave me her most inscrutable smile, compared to which the Mona Lisa’s is a broad grin.

‘You could call it that,’ she said. She kissed me on the cheek and left.

I washed the dishes and put them away. I wiped the table. I finished my book and made myself a nice cup of Ovaltine, awarded Horatio a saucer of milk, and put myself to bed early.

It seemed the sensible thing. Whatever Meroe was doing, I wanted to be safely asleep before she did it.

And I slept all night without stirring and didn’t wake up until eight am, scandalously late. And only then because someone was tapping on my door.

I stumbled out to open it. There was a delivery person, with a box to be signed for. I signed. When I brought it inside, it contained a note—‘Corinna, sweet Slug-a-bed, how I adore you!’—and four fresh, hot croissants
au naturel
from the only French bakery left in Melbourne which can make them. Someone loved me...

I went to make coffee and find the cherry jam with a lighter heart than a woman who faced an empty day and a difficult evening engagement should expect. Breakfast was very pleasant. The croissants were so good that I ate two, saving the rest for lunch. Then I did a little housework; greeted, paid, and farewelled my grocery deliveryman, and put away the shopping. The Mouse Police, freed for the day from rodent operative duties, joined Horatio on my balcony for a little day-long snooze with breaks for grooming.

Sweet Slug-a-bed? Wasn’t that one of those cavalier poets? I went to my bookcase to scan my prized collection of secondhand poets. The books were second-hand, not the poets, who were as fresh as the day they were born. Cheeky boys, all of them . . .

I found the reference. Robert Herrick. ‘Corinna’s going a-Maying’:

Get up, get up for shame, the Blooming Morne