Trick or Treat (23 page)

‘Corinna,’ she said. ‘Come, sit. Where is Daniel?’

‘On his way,’ I said. ‘I brought wine.’

‘I’ve got the corkscrew,’ said Therese Webb.

I noticed that we had a new tablecloth, a heavy dark damask with a fine white cloth spread over the top. Very Victorian. ‘Matches the surroundings,’ I said as she opened a bottle of red wine and filled glasses. ‘Your work?’

‘I had a length of cloth left over from another project, and it was just the right size for the table,’ she said. ‘And the cotton cloth over the top should preserve it from serious stains. Anyway, it’s just the colour of red wine.’

‘A very canny notion,’ I agreed. I sipped. We sat. Most of us were there. Mrs Pemberthy, Daniel, Mistress Dread, the Hollidays and our cooks were absent and we only had four Pandamuses. I could smell a really enticing aroma. Jon sniffed.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘English food,’ he said, puzzled but pleased. ‘I wonder how Kepler is going to enjoy it. That is definitely steak and kidney I can detect.’

‘So it is, how nice. How enterprising,’ said Mrs Dawson. She had dressed for the dungeon in a batwing gown of bitter chocolate wool so fine that it draped like silk. The dress was

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ornamented with a huge gold brooch from some archaeological dig in Greece.

‘Pegasus,’ the Professor said. ‘And I am not asking who gave it to you—from Golden Mycenae, I’d judge.’

‘It was a gift,’ said Mrs Dawson.

Trudi poured more wine for me and a short shot of gin for herself. Jason and the girls entered, carrying dishes. He was wearing his cook’s whites, and Kylie and Goss were not wearing very much of anything. What they did have on glittered.

‘Fortunately this cellar is very warm,’ murmured Therese.

The feast was laid out. They had made pies and pasties of all varieties. Jason had recently been fascinated by pastry and annoyed that his first attempts had turned out to have the consistency of teak and the taste of cardboard. Clearly he had been perfecting his skills. I surveyed the table: steak and kidney pies, chicken pies, Greek spanakopita, pissaladière, quiche (both Lorraine and cheese), ratatouille pie made with filo pastry, a vegetable pastie especially for Meroe, and a huge green salad. It was a feast. We applauded, the cooks blushed, and we picked up cutlery and watched as the crusts were cut. Steam gushed.

‘We made fillings all day yesterday,’ Kylie told me. ‘Out of Jason’s pie book. Used up every saucepan in our flat and most of Jason’s. It was fun.’

‘And I did the pastry today,’ said Jason. ‘Got a tip from that old book. Kept sticking my hands into iced water. And we get to put the pastry in the fridge to keep it cold. But it’s still a bit iffy. I don’t think I want to be a pastry chef.’

‘No matter, dear boy, these look excellent,’ said the Professor, passing his plate for a piece of Cornish pastie. He tasted and smiled. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘When I was a child we used to go to Cornwall for the holidays and the pasties tasted just like this.’

‘It’s the oldest recipe,’ Jason told him. ‘Just turnip, potato, meat, onion and parsley. The new books put a lot of other stuff in.’

‘This was lunch for a Cornish sailor,’ said the Professor. ‘Or a ploughman or shepherd. He would be cold and miser-able—even in Cornwall it gets cold and miserable—and then he would think, aha, a pastie for lunch, it’s been six hours since breakfast, and a pint of cider to go with it, a feast for a king. He wouldn’t have known any other vegetables except the ones you’ve used. That was good judgment, Jason.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jason. Meroe dissected her ratatouille pie and complimented the girls on the even consistency of the vegetables.

‘You have to cook them in order,’ Kylie said, as pleased as if she had just been awarded a date with the male lead of
The OC
. ‘Jason explained it. They cook at different rates. But I’m having a piece of the fish pie,’ she said, and passed it along.

Lucifer, reduced to a famine-struck shadow, made a sad little meow and Trudi put him on the floor with some of the delectable salmon filling. She tied his leash around her ankle. Lucifer was quite capable of going foraging on his own account and people have this odd prejudice about kittens’ feet in their food.

It was all delicious. The Pandamus family, after a couple of suspicious sniffs, tucked into the spanakopita and the pissaladière, which is a strong tart made with olives and anchovies. I personally had never eaten enough steak and kidney pie in my life. I remedied this. Daniel came in late and was regaled with some of everything.

‘A feast!’ he exclaimed. ‘In whose honour?’

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‘All of us,’ said the Professor. ‘We needed a treat and Jason, Kylie and Gossamer have amply provided it. Have some of this quiche Lorraine, it’s first rate.’

‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, and picked up the nearest fork.

There were some leftovers, though not many, when the cooks brought in dessert. It was an apple pie of massive proportions, to be eaten with cream. Jason had also made a variety of little biscotti to have with coffee. I was eating very well since my ruin. I wasn’t going to think about that. I was determined to stay in Insula. I would just have to get a job, doing something other than baking. Assuming I didn’t go to jail for murder...

The apple pie had an unusual flavour. Instead of the clove and cinnamon I was expecting, it tasted sweetly but unmistakably of...

‘Roses?’ I asked.

Kylie and Goss giggled. ‘We had to steal a few when Trudi wasn’t looking,’ they confessed. ‘Jason found this old recipe. The Romans—’

‘Cooked apples and roses together,’ said the Professor, delighted. ‘It’s in Apicius! I always wondered what that combination tasted like. Wonderful! I could come round to reconstructive archaeology if it tastes this good.’

‘So, you steal my roses,’ growled Trudi.

Jason flinched. ‘Just a few,’ he said. ‘And it’s a nice pie, isn’t it?’

‘You can steal them any time you like,’ she said, patting him. ‘Just not the tulips.’

‘No one cooks with tulips,’ Jason said, crossing his heart.

Dinner concluded in a general slackening of belts. Mrs Dawson had shown great forethought in wearing that loose dress. I was very impressed by the quality of the food and the fact that Kylie, Goss and Jason had managed to work together without major tantrums.

Therese and I rose to clear away while the cooks were toasted and regaled with wine and biscotti (vanilla Coke, in Jason’s case). We collected the leftovers into plastic containers and scraped plates and stacked them for the sink. When Insula was built, the dishwasher had not been invented. And I quite like washing dishes. We had pooled our resources and bought a set of plain cheap crockery for the cellar so it did not greatly matter if a fumble-fingered servitor dropped a few.

We had stacked, rinsed and washed most of them as the party outside began to wind down and our fellow tenants came to collect their particular scraps. The Professor got the rest of the fish pie, though I suspected that Nox would be the major beneficiary of the filling. Mrs Dawson had apple pie, the Pandamuses the rest of the spanakopita, Meroe her vegetables and the Professor the pastie. I had almost half of a steak and kidney pie, which I was intending to devour cold. Cold steak and kidney pie is a wonderful thing. Jon and Kepler joined us to do the drying and putting away.

‘So, how did you like the English cuisine?’ I asked Kepler.

‘Very interesting,’ he said diplomatically. ‘I liked that anchovy tart.’

‘He still hasn’t got over the revolting concept of sausages,’ confided Jon affectionately.

‘And steak and kidney,’ added Kepler. ‘But they did very well, very well indeed. You can see that it was a lot of work.’

‘Must have taken most of yesterday and today,’ I said. ‘Look out for that carving knife, it’s—’

‘Sharp?’ asked Kepler, closing his fist on the cut on his palm.

‘Stick your hand under that tap, it’s cold,’ I said, pulling him to an empty sink.

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8

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Meroe came in at this point and took over the first aid. She seemed subdued. She had eaten well but hardly spoken during dinner. She grabbed Kepler’s wrist and soused the wound, then wiped it clean with a piece of kitchen paper. Then she gripped it hard between both of her own palms.

Kepler, who had been looking as though he wished he was somewhere else—Laos, perhaps, in a monsoon—said, ‘Wah!’ I had never heard him exclaim in Chinese unless he was actually speaking the language.

‘Does it hurt?’ asked Jon anxiously.

‘Yes,’ said Kepler. ‘No.’

Meroe was pressing his hand hard enough, I would have thought, to flatten it like a paper doll. But there was no pain on Kepler’s smooth, shapely face though he had paled to the colour of old ivory. His expression, in fact, bordered on astonishment.

‘Meroe, what are you doing?’ I finished the washing-up, since there didn’t seem to be any need for my help, and Jon automatically dried and stacked the last of the dishes. The others had gone. Daniel, me, Jon, Kepler, Therese and Meroe were alone together in the scullery. It smelt of wet stone and soap and seemed a strange place to find a miracle.

Because when Meroe released Kepler’s hand, the cut was closed. Of course, the pressure might have done it, but I did not believe this for a moment. I am something of an expert on culinary injuries and that had been a deep cut across the soft part of the palm. Usually it would take a week to heal, and only then if you kept it out of water. And Sister Mary always said the thing about miracles is, they are miraculous. Inexplic
able. And happen in ordinary places, like the kitchen of an apartment house. In front of at least one sceptical witness.

‘Nice work,’ commented Daniel.

‘How did it feel?’ asked Jon.

‘Like being stung by insects,’ said Kepler, flexing his hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and bowed deeply, hands to forehead. Meroe returned the bow.

‘At least I can still do some things,’ said Meroe, pleased. ‘You have an interesting hand,’ she said to Kepler. ‘You have the line which says that you will fall in love with only one person in your life.’

‘Already have,’ replied Kepler. He collected Jon and they went upstairs.

‘Well, that was a most agreeable evening,’ said Therese, who seemed shaken. ‘And I believe that I might have an early night.’

‘And if you can spare a few minutes, Meroe?’ I asked her. ‘I want to talk about—’

‘Barnabas,’ she anticipated. ‘All right. I’ll just go up to Leucothea for a while.’

‘If you’re too tired,’ said Daniel gently, ‘it can wait. I imagine that healing people is fairly exhausting.’

‘Actually I am a little drained,’ she admitted.

‘Tomorrow will do fine,’ I told her.

Then Daniel and I were alone in the scullery. It was still a very ordinary little chamber, with the salad bowls wiped clean and the scent of past and gone meals lingering on the still air.

‘Well,’ he said.

‘Well,’ I agreed.

We went up to Hebe, drank a little cognac, and went to bed.

At four in the morning I woke. The alarm hadn’t gone off! I was late! Reason returned. Then I tried to go back to sleep and couldn’t. My eyes kept springing open. What was worrying me? I got up properly and closed the bedroom door on the sleeping Daniel.

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The Mouse Police, who were used to being fed at this hour, welcomed me without their usual pile of deceased rodentia, but I fed them anyway, along with Horatio, who even abandoned his mohair rug for kitty dins. I made myself a cup of hot chocolate. No effect. I was just wondering whether to take a sleeping pill, which would mean that I would sleep half the day, when I realised what it was.

That flour. That sack of rye flour mix which had been conveyed to my bakery by mistake. It had smelt funny. And I had sent it back to Best Fresh and retrieved my own pure organic rye. I had sent it on, even though I knew that there was something wrong with it. How could Eddie, a gormless unskilled worker, distinguish between good flour and bad flour? That idiot who worked nights in Best Fresh could barely distinguish between his arse and his elbow. The boss would have known, but it would have been in the mixer before he arrived. It was all my fault. That boy who thought he was a bird, that girl with the missing feet, they were all my fault. And I had even gloated that Best Fresh would have a ruined batch of bread. I had laughed. I couldn’t stand the thought.

I couldn’t sit here, either. I couldn’t bear staying in the safe quiet with such emotions burning a hole in my mind and heart. I sneaked into my bedroom and found my clothes, shoved them on and crept out into the atrium and thence into the street. Where was I to go with a load of guilt on me like Mount Atlas? I wavered. Never a wise thing to do in the predawn hours in a big city.

Someone grabbed me by the arm. I turned on him so fast that he stumbled. I was in the mood to beat something to a pulp and a chance woman-groper would do just fine. I wouldn’t even mind if he beat me to a pulp. I deserved it.

I nearly fell over, pulling my punch, and I did hit him a tidy clip over the ear. He didn’t even wince. It was Jason.

‘Corinna, I’ve remembered about that sack of rye flour,’ he said. His eyes were pools of dread and horror. I knew just how he felt.

I sat down on the steps and pulled him down with me. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘First thing today we tell the cops. But this isn’t down to you, Jason. You just did as I said. You’re my apprentice. It’s my fault.’

‘I thought it was funny,’ he whispered.

‘So did I.’

‘But I could have argued with you. I could have dumped the stuff in the alley. It’s my fault too,’ he insisted.

We sat still, looking at the street. A small, bitter wind blew into my face. It was getting on for dawn. Jason shivered. He was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His feet were bare. He must have done as I did, dragged on some clothes and run out into the open as though he could flee his guilt. But guilt runs faster than any human ever could.

‘No point in dividing the blame,’ I said at length. ‘Not much point in sitting here grieving, either. Can I come up to your flat? I don’t want to wake Daniel.’