Devil's Food (28 page)

By now the nerds were a collective nervous wreck,
quod erat demonstrandum
, which was what was wanted. I could not imagine the depths of idiocy to which they had sunk. And there were still things I didn’t know. I began with a brief summary of the facts.

‘The leaves came in to Australia, entirely illegally and in violation of quarantine, through someone ordering them packed into those very ugly pots in India, right?’

‘Right,’ said Jon.

‘So someone must have either corrupted your outfit or just got into contact with an Indian supplier and arranged it through them. I don’t think you have a lot of corrupt people. I think it was done easily from an internet order.’

‘All right,’ said Daniel.

‘Then the dude who suborned poor Chris just had to arrange the delivery when they got here,’ I said. ‘Simple. Only the Lone Gunmen would give Londo Mollari as an alias. Lesser fans would be using a
Star Trek
alias.
Babylon 5
is for the cognoscenti.’

The nerds exchanged a glance in which some complacency was mixed with the terror. At least someone had noticed that they were sophisticated. I continued my peroration, refreshed with a glass of the red wine.

‘Nerds Inc was in financial trouble. I know, I helped them with their accounts. Not entirely their fault. The collapse of the dotcoms and the rise in home loan insanity has meant that people have less money to spend on elaborate computer systems and games. So they were making reasonable money out of research on the internet. They did the research for a nice gentleman who wanted to make his club as authentically eighteenth century as he could. He paid for his research and they did it — they are good researchers. In the process they hit on a way to make money. They would go to the club in suitable period costumes and sell charms and soap and toffee apples — fairytale things. They had the costumes from all those sci-fi conventions and were used to acting a part. So far so harmless. Except that five dollars for a toffee apple verges on criminal. But someone came on a recipe for a weight loss tea and they thought that all their Christmases had come at once. They were right. It’s a licence to print money. They’re friends with Kylie and Goss. They have heard all about how much one has to be thin. Probably at wearying length,’ I added.

Taz dared to roll his eyes in agreement but Jon glared him back into frightened immobility.

‘Then they closed for two days,’ I said. ‘Even though I knew that they were skint. And today they bought a lot of new games. I squibbed it earlier. I should have known then.’

‘But how did you know they were making the stuff down here?’ asked Mrs Dawson.

‘People kept saying that scent moves around the building, and it does,’ I said. ‘My onion rolls made everyone want a fry-up. Even if you don’t actually register the smell it has an effect — it made Trudi go and buy bullseyes, it made me think of caramel sauce. And I smelt it through the dumb waiter. Therefore it was coming from below. I knew about these old kitchens. Though it took me long enough to put it all together.’

‘You sent a couple of addicts to beat us up,’ said Daniel. ‘That night at Vlad Tepes.’

‘I just thought they’d scare you off,’ stammered Gully.

‘You thought wrong,’ Taz pointed out.

‘So did you,’ snarled Rat. ‘You found that recipe. It was your idea.’

‘You went along with it. You said we should make a really rough package. You said we ought to charge fifty for it.’

‘Shut up,’ suggested Daniel. They shut up.

‘The thing I don’t know is why go to all that trouble? The herbs could have been bought or collected perfectly well here,’ I said. ‘Meroe was puzzled too.’

‘Show her,’ said Gully. Taz reached for his pocket and handed me a folded sheet of paper in a plastic sleeve. I put it down on the table and all heads moved to read it. Except Daniel, who had never looked away from the Lone Gunmen. Under his eye, they did not dare to try an escape.

In increasing horror and wonder, I read a facsimile manuscript. It was written in pale grey on pale grey and had been picked out in biro later. To assist the short-sighted, Meroe read it aloud: ‘The Reverend Doctor Ellis’s Oriental Balsamic Infusion is guaranteed to purge the flesh of grossness and cure bruises strains scalds green wounds and the most obstinate bleeding (which will be with Difficulty believed) without ligature. Even a Brain quit thro’ either Length ways or Breadth ways or an Eye pierced or tendons cut quite asunder this Balsam will agglutinate the Parts and defend them from Corruption.

‘To purge the flesh of grossness and superfluousness take one wineglass twice a day fasting. Infused in vinegar it clears the head and drives away heaviness.’

She stopped. She stared. So did we all.

‘So you made up the herbs as it says in the recipe,’ I said. ‘Why did you have to buy them from abroad?’

‘Read the rest,’ said Taz. Meroe puzzled out the smaller letters and began to laugh, which was not the reaction I had expected.

‘The best senna is to be obtained from Goa,’ she quoted. ‘Your Bombay datura or thorn apple is the finest …’ She sat down in a gale of merriment which made her hold her sides. We all looked at her. Mrs Dawson put her final apple down on the greaseproof paper and poured the last golden swash of toffee onto the marble confectioner’s slab. I watched her knot and twist the warm toffee into shapes with a skewer. Her hands were so old and so graceful that I could not look away from them. Finally Meroe conquered her mirth and sat up, accepting a glass of wine from a puzzled Jon.

‘Only you idiots would have done such a thing,’ she exclaimed. ‘You could have gone out and picked your ingredients and no one would ever have caught you. Now what in the name of the Goddess are we going to do with you?’

‘Call the police,’ suggested the Professor. ‘Comic or not, they have behaved very badly. What if those leaves contained some dreadful plant disease? You can’t just bring in handfuls of undifferentiated vegetation from somewhere like India and expect it not to harbour a few extras. Fire blight? Citrus canker? Could have wiped out whole orchards with their foolishness.’ He snorted and poured another glass of wine.

‘Not to mention the damage to their customers,’ added Daniel.

‘And to my staff,’ said Jon.

‘They are in big trouble,’ I agreed.

‘And there is the matter of a nice, solid, well thought out curse,’ said Meroe gently. ‘The Goddess is not mocked lightly.’

‘We never meant to upset the Goddess,’ protested Taz. ‘We didn’t mean to … we didn’t mean to do all that stuff.’

‘That you did,’ prompted Daniel.

‘That we did,’ he confessed miserably. ‘But it was all going downhill, the shop, even though we were working real hard, and … well, it happened.’

‘If we call the police your young man Chris will be implicated,’ said Daniel to Jon.

‘And if we call quarantine they will be fined to their utter ruin. We’ll destroy all the remaining herbs in the incinerator,’ I suggested. ‘What about this. They apologise to Trudi for stealing her keys and give her a nice present. They apologise to the Goddess by … what would you like, Meroe?’

‘They can clean and rearrange my stockroom,’ she said placidly, like Belladonna with a mouse securely under her front paw. ‘And in return I will sell them suitable herbs for a refreshing, cleansing tea which no one can abuse.’

‘They will apologise to Jon and Chris by …?’

‘Oh, a suitable little present for the boy, perhaps, but they are not out of the woods with me. I am keeping these photographs, and if you so much as think about approaching one of my staff again, to the police they go, and you too, clear?’

‘Clear,’ said Rat.

‘They can apologise to Daniel for attacking him by… what?’

‘Oh, like this,’ said Daniel, and delivered a stinging cuff behind each nerd ear. They hopped and ouched.

‘They can spend at least five evenings playing games with Kylie and Goss, and paying for their drinks,’ I added. ‘And they can apologise to me by hiring someone to do their own accounts in future. Including the money you made from the Vlad Tepes scam, which I assume you have not declared? Plus instant computer help whenever requested. You can continue charging five dollars for your toffee apples at the Mollyhouse. But no more weight loss tea. All right?’

Taz looked at Rat. Rat looked at Gully. They breathed a collective sigh of relief. ‘Deal,’ they said in unison.

‘Now,’ said Mrs Dawson. ‘Let’s have a toffee apple. For some reason, I have been thinking about toffee apples all week.’

We had another glass of wine. And a toffee apple each. They were very good. When I left the cellar the Lone Gunmen were asking Mrs Dawson to teach them how to make those elegant candy plaits, Trudi was attempting to remove toffee from Lucifer’s front paws, and Jon and Kepler were drinking wine and discussing herbs with Meroe. Daniel and the Professor were discussing the sad opinions of Marcus Aurelius. I liked us all very much.

The murderer fell upon his victim in a balloon of red air and light in which he kicked, screamed, punched and stabbed clumsily, like an angry child. Curiously, the knife did not seem to want to penetrate. He bit and kicked instead, catching a flailing hand and listening to the dry stick sound of bones breaking. Then the cloud of unknowing was gone, and he was empty; he stood a moment looking at the human wreck. He ran and hid, whimpering.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was late before I got to bed and consequently my four am awakening was not pleasant. I have never really loved four am and today was not going to produce even a passing affection for the loathsome hour. Coffee. More coffee. Into the vein, if possible.

Jason looked downcast too. He flared up at me when I asked what was wrong.

‘My nose is all stuffed up,’ he whined. ‘I can’t breathe. My head hurts. And my elbows. And come to think of it my knees and my eyelashes.’

‘You have caught a cold,’ I told him, putting on the kettle for a hot lemon drink. Fortunately Jon had given me a swag of lemons from his mum’s tree. We were self-sufficient in lemons. ‘I feel lousy too. Let’s get the bread on and we’ll just do the minimum today.’

‘This never happened when I was on the gear,’ he mumbled, hauling and pouring with none of his usual elan.

‘No, then all you had to worry about was waking up dead,’ I said tartly. ‘Come on, Jason, tote dat barge, lift dat bale.’

He looked at me as though I was speaking fluent Molvanian. Never heard any gospel tunes, eh, techno boy? Well, he was about to hear some. I opened the lentil flour for some more famine bread and began to sing ‘Old Man River’. It was the sort of singing one expects after a night on that red, which was robust enough to stand a fork in; deep, gravelly, and entirely unlike Paul Robeson.

Oddly enough, Jason got the idea, and we went on to sing some more spirituals. He picked up the tunes very fast and we vamped the words when I couldn’t remember them. They were work songs, after all. And both of us were longing to be able to stop working and take some more aspirin.

‘Deep river,’ I sang. ‘My home is over Jordan —’ pause for breath — ‘deep river, Lord, I want to cross over into camp ground.’

‘By and by, by and by,’ sang Jason, flicking switches on the dough mixers, ‘I’m gonna lay down my heavy load.’

Singing, of all things, was working. In two hours we had laid the foundations of the day’s baking and were refreshing ourselves with hot lemon and honey. I went up to the apartment and got the brandy. We were going to need some extra assistance to get through this particular Tuesday. I felt Jason’s forehead. He was hot and very uncomfortable and I wasn’t going to keep him a moment longer than I had to. His recently grown-out hair was curly and wet with sweat.

‘Do you want to do the muffins or shall I?’ I asked as he drooped onto his baker’s chair to watch the pasta douro oven.

He replied listlessly, ‘No, I’ll do it, have to be blueberry, though, I can’t remember what I was going to do with all them dates.’ This was pitiful indeed. He must have been feeling really awful. I had heard that heroin addicts tended to catch anything going around, due to their depressed immune systems.

‘The dates will wait,’ I told him. He compounded his muffins and cooked them — perfectly good muffins, even if the maker thought he was dying — and then I led him protesting feebly up the stairs to my apartment, where I tucked him up on the sofa under the blue mohair rug. He had my personal box of soft tissues and a lemon drink to hand and I noticed that even in his semiconscious state he had a firm grasp of the TV remote control.

‘Just close your eyes,’ I said.

‘But how are you going to do all that work by yourself?’ he asked.

‘Did it before,’ I said, ‘can do it again. Push Horatio off if he annoys you. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’ I heard the TV go on as I went down stairs.

Drat. I had gotten used to being helped and now I was on my own again and not at my best. No matter, I had indeed done the lot before. All the real bread was now baking, the famine bread was mixed, the pasta douro was about to come out of the oven and I had made a lot of crusty rolls to compensate for no Jason herb bread. I had forgotten to get the herbs the night before and my one attempt at making them with dried herbs hadn’t worked. Edible but not, as Brother Amos would have said, palatable. I mused on Brother Amos for a while as I tried to remember another song. He had been a chef, Father Hungerford had said. How could a chef deliberately ruin good food?