Devil's Food (27 page)

Brother Amos nodded and went back to the vegetable cutters. I was shocked. The idea of making a good soup and then deliberately spoiling it offended the core and root of my own philosophy.

Father Hungerford took me further, and we were out in the open again. More of the brown-robed were stacking crates of bottles.

‘Our spring water,’ he said blandly. I examined the bottle he handed me. It made no claims about being a weight loss product. It was just water in a blue bottle.

‘One allows sunlight to fall through the coloured glass, which affects the water inside,’ he said. ‘On the same principle as homeopathy. Wristbands and this water maintain our acolytes in the right way when they go out in the world.’

‘At five dollars a bottle,’ I said tonelessly.

‘Indeed,’ he said.

‘And how lucky you were to find a spring on your own property,’ I said, maintaining my poker face.

He matched it easily. ‘It did seem like an incidence of divine grace,’ he agreed.

‘And what about your other products?’ I asked. ‘The herbs?’

‘We do not sell any other product,’ he said flatly. ‘Just water. Supplying herbs is a dangerous business. People will misuse even the most innocent of God’s gifts. Now, if you will excuse me, it is time for collations. Brother Timothy will see you out. And I may see your piece before you submit it?’

‘Of course,’ I said. I watched his admirable back move away from me. Brother Timothy was a rangy, elderly welterweight. He hitched up his robe and led me around the castle, through a graveyard of dead cars to the great hall door, where he supplied me with an armload of leaflets and a free bottle of the blue water.

‘Do you like it here?’ I asked him. He produced a dog end and lit it with a wary glance inside.

‘It’s quiet,’ he said. ‘I used to be on the street. Food’s crook but there’s enough of it. I sneak out sometimes for a smoke and a drink. And the singing’s nice,’ he added. He butted out the stub of his cigarette and shut the door on me.

I walked out into Studley Park Road so distracted that I was halfway home before I thought about getting a taxi. My father didn’t even know me. I saw his blank face turned to me over and over in my mind. He didn’t even know me. And the brotherhood didn’t distribute herbs?

When I returned to Insula I could hear banging and swearing from the undercroft. Of course, Monday night. Rubbish collection tomorrow. That was Trudi reasoning with the skips.

Every apartment in Insula has a rubbish chute, and all of them end up in the basement where the old kitchens and wine cellars are. Every day Trudi sorts out the rubbish and puts the non-recyclables in a skip and the recyclables in a council bin. We have several skips in case it has been a big week for rubbish. By the noise it seemed that we had a bumper crop.

I went to the small door which leads out into Flinders Lane and grabbed an ascending skip which Trudi was pushing from behind. Together we hauled it up without much trouble. Then we went back for the other. Trudi leaned on the wall and caught her breath, then delved into the first skip, pulling on a string as though she was fishing and saying very rude Dutch things loudly enough to make any passing Dutch person blush.

And up came Lucifer, his little orange head breaking through the plastic bags, absolutely stinking, smeared to the whiskers with what could have been spoiled smoked trout pate. It was my day for smells, it seemed.

‘Bath for you, bad boy,’ scolded Trudi. ‘Corinna, you give me a hand?’

Together we secured the little door. Trudi found a torn towel and contrived a sling for the besmeared kitten. He was delighted with himself. Trudi wiped him as clean as she could. Then she reached in her pocket.

‘Have one?’ she asked. It was a paper bag of bullseyes from that really good confectionery shop which sells, for instance, several hundred flavours of jelly beans. Peppermint, another strong scent, which might ameliorate rotten fish and garbage, our present ambiance. Yum. I love that clear peppermint burn through the sinuses.

‘Usually I don’t eat lollies,’ said Trudi. ‘But somehow I felt like some. Thanks for the hand. I will take this bad cat up in the goods lift,’ she told me, passing me in the atrium. ‘Not fit for company, him.’

Holding the complacent Lucifer at arm’s length in his twist of towelling, she persuaded the goods lift to start and ascended out of sight.

I had a lot to think about and plodded up the stairs, sucking my bullseye.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Daniel had woken, shaved, dressed and fed the cats. He had laid the table and made a salad and I was suddenly hungry. Oh, yes. No lunch. Beef lasagna was just what I had in mind. I really didn’t know where to start in describing the community of the Discarnates so I settled down to absorbing hot, garlicky, tomatoey and cheesy tastes to rinse the idea of asafoetida stew and spoiled fish pate à la Lucifer out of my mouth. The red wine helped. So did the rocket. Meroe’s, I could tell, sweet and tender, not old and bitter as rocket is when picked for more than twenty-four hours. It reminded me of Florence.

Daniel talked while I ate: ‘The castle belongs to Hungerford himself, not the Discarnates. He bought it a year ago for a couple of million, outright. The neighbours think he’s very odd but they haven’t got a lot of complaints. Even the usual ones — parking, noise. The visitors are as quiet as mice and they never leave cars or litter on the street. Reverend Father buys all his vegetables from an organic grower. I talked to her. She says he pays top dollar for top produce, but he gives her the willies.’

‘Me too,’ I said, with my mouth full.

‘He also buys loads of bottles,’ said Daniel. ‘Blue glass. I asked if there was really a spring on the property but no one could tell me.’

‘I suspect it is tap water,’ I said, managing to swallow. ‘But I don’t know that, it’s just a strong suspicion. What I do know is that the whole set-up is stranger than anything I have ever seen and I really don’t know what to make of it.’

‘Did you find your father?’ he asked, spooning out more lasagna.

‘Yes,’ I said, and burst into tears. Unexpectedly. I waved away Daniel’s concerned embrace and wiped my face on my napkin. ‘He was working in the kitchen and he looked right at me and he didn’t know me. That’s always a shock.’

‘Have some more wine,’ said Daniel.

‘A good notion. Anyway, that lets me out of it. If he doesn’t even know me I can’t see that I owe him anything. So tomorrow I’m going to sic Starshine on him and then he’ll know he’s been in a fight.’

‘Did he look happy?’ asked Daniel.

‘No, just blank,’ I replied. ‘But Reverend Father Hungerford, Daniel dear, there’s another kettle of thingies altogether. I can’t decide if he’s a complete fraud or an authentic fanatic. Complicated by the fact that he is absolutely beautiful.’

Daniel shifted uneasily and ran a hand over his chin. ‘What sort of absolutely beautiful?’ he asked.

‘Vampire chic. Red-lipped mouth in a desert father’s face. Ravaged in a highly aesthetic way. A non-foreshortened El Greco.’

‘Oh,’ he said. I had learned a new thing about Daniel. He did not know how beautiful he was, and he was either envious or jealous. I would know by his next statement. I did hope it wasn’t going to be jealousy. ‘The beautiful have it easier in life,’ he said ruefully. Aha. Envy, and the non-corrosive kind.

‘Oh? Have you found your life helped by people finding you gorgeous, beautiful man?’

‘Me?’ he said, surprised. ‘Corinna, you aren’t saying —’

‘Of course I am,’ I cooed. I don’t usually coo, but sometimes you just have to. There was the most comely man I had ever seen, disclaiming his own beauty. It was so cute. I wiped my lips before I kissed him. He was still looking bemused. ‘And of course you may take it as read that I wouldn’t go near the Rev Father if my foot was in a trap,’ I told him. ‘I am talking aesthetics, not lust. I have never known anyone I wanted more than you. Now let’s get back to the story.’

I told him all I could remember about the Discarnates. The brown-robed tapestry makers, the singers, the horrible stew, the organic produce and the vitamins, the pictures on the wall, the bottles of blue glass containing the spring water. In the process I drank another glass of wine and ate two ripe Josephine pears and a chunk of matured cheddar.

I felt better after I had unloaded my day but that meant I had loaded it onto someone else. Daniel was thinking hard. I left him cutting cheese into ever smaller pieces and feeding them to Horatio, and went down into the bakery to check that Jason had obeyed my instructions about the stock. He had. Two big pots of robust beef stock had settled fit for skimming. I skimmed them, heaved them onto the all-night cooker and added the mounds of chopped vegetables and herbs on which Jason had toiled at double time. The gentle heat of the cooker would simmer my soup just under bubbling all night and tomorrow there would be broth again for the hungry multitudes. I was freshly affronted by the idea of adding a flavour destroyer to a perfectly good pot of stew. Somehow it struck me as wicked. Spoiling good food, I heard Grandma Chapman’s ghost whisper to me. A middle class thing, a deliberate perversion of appetite and hunger, just as depraved as dining on nightingales’ hearts in aspic.

I distributed a pat or two and a few kitty treats to the Mouse Police, who were just waking up after a good day’s nap to start their nightly patrol, when I suddenly thought of bulls-eyes and smelt burned sugar and revelation came over me in a flood of light.

I ran up the steps, calling for Daniel. He jumped, scattering cheese, which Horatio was happy to harvest for him. Then I grabbed the phone and started calling.

By the time half an hour had passed I had assembled what, in a Western film, would have been called a posse. I had Meroe. I had Jon and Kepler, with his digital camera. I had the Professor and Mrs Dawson, who had just come back from dinner at the Thai restaurant. I had Trudi with Lucifer on her shoulder and her keys at her belt. Lucifer was unusually subdued. One bath, it seemed, had not been enough to remove the scent of old fish, and he had not only endured two but had been blow-dried. He looked fluffy and a little light-headed as he clung to Trudi’s shoulder-mounted kitten rest, an old leather glove thrust through the strap of her overall. I had Daniel. What else could I possibly need? I was going to be very embarrassed if I was wrong. But I could handle that.

‘Very well, m’dear,’ said the Professor genially. ‘We’re at your disposal. What are we going to do?’

‘Clear up one mystery,’ I said. ‘I hope. My mistake was in thinking that all these strange happenings were connected to each other. No reason why they should be. Not everything is connected. What we have are two mysteries: the mystery of the herbs and the Mollyhouse, and the mystery of the Discarnate Brotherhood and my missing father, and they don’t have anything to do with each other.’

‘All right,’ said Jon slowly. ‘With you so far.’

‘The one which is the most dangerous to the general populace has to be the herbs,’ I said. ‘So we’ll go and solve that one now, and then we can decide what to do about the other one later.’

‘All right,’ said Mrs Dawson, smiling. ‘Lead on.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Daniel.

‘Down,’ I told him, and led the way to the goods lift. Here Daniel left us. Trudi operated the machinery and the rest of the posse sank, like Don Juan, into the depths.

When the door hissed open I waved everyone out. Kepler raised his camera. The air was thick with the smell of burned sugar. Two figures were working at the old gas stove, relic of Insula’s serviced apartment days. One turned, an apple speared on a bamboo skewer, and I saw a mouth gape in the gloom.

Then it dropped the apple and fled.

There was a flash as the camera went off repeatedly. There was a scrabbling noise. Then Trudi found the overhead lights, everyone stopped moving, and I heard a door clang. Daniel, who had doubled around to the back door, came in leading Rat by his tail of hair.

‘Hello, Londo,’ I said.

Jon removed Taz from under the sink and Mrs Dawson escorted Gully out of the cupboard into which he had wedged himself. They came quietly. The jig was comprehensively up. The Lone Gunmen were sprung.

We lined them up against the rubbish chutes and glared at them as Kepler took photographs of the baskets of leaves, the beige paper packets, the pot of boiling toffee, the skewered apples, the flasks of cheap essential oils and the hobby-shop soap moulds and unscented bath fizz.

‘You idiots,’ I started.

Taz held up a hand. ‘But —’

‘Don’t but me, son,’ said Daniel roughly. ‘You poisoned Kylie and Gossamer. You put two others in intensive care. When Meroe finishes laying a curse on you I’m booked for making you eat your way through your stock, leaf by leaf.’

‘That would be amusing,’ commented Mrs Dawson. She moved to the boiling toffee and began to dip apples.

‘You corrupted that boy Chris,’ said Jon in a cold, distant tone. ‘You might have ruined his life and you certainly ruined his character.’

‘Er …’ said Rat. Daniel pulled his hair. I had never seen him so angry.

‘We get chairs,’ said Trudi to me. She was keeping well away from the stove. ‘We all sit down. I get drinks. Then we decide what to do. First,’ she confronted the Lone Gunmen, ‘you give me those keys. You must have stolen my keys and copied them. Give me.’

Gully took out a bunch of keys and detached three with trembling hands. He broke two fingernails doing it. Trudi checked them against the ones hanging from her chain. Then she nodded briskly and I followed her to a recess, where we unearthed a lot of wooden chairs. A bit of a dust and they were fine. We brought them in and everyone took a seat, except the Lone Gunmen and Mrs Dawson, who was still dipping apples.

‘Sorry, dear, I really can’t let them all go to waste,’ she told me, and I understood at once that she really couldn’t. Besides, she dipped a very smooth apple.

Trudi went into the wine cellar, down two little steps, and came out with several bottles, which she opened with her clasp knife. There was a tray of tasting glasses and we rinsed them. The wine was a good robust red which someone must have forgotten about. It was twenty years old and in its prime, tasting a little of blood and a little of flint; a big, striding red, very suitable for judgment.