Trick or Treat Part 14

'A pleasant idea,' I said. It was.

'And what are we to do with our comrade here?' he asked.

Poor Vincent Wyatt was still weeping in a broken fashion. Altogether too many people had been crying at me today. I was suddenly, and despicably, sick of the entire human race (with the exception of Daniel) and wanted nothing more to do with any of them-soppy, soggy, lachrymose creatures. My mind, which sometimes seems to hate me, presented me with a picture of Meroe grasping Barnabas's ear in her teeth. All right, not all of them were soppy-some of them were dangerously violent.

'He's mine for the moment,' said Ms Bray sweetly, displacing me on the bench with an adroit wriggle of one hip. 'Then I need to talk to you again.'

'All right. I'll go home,' I told her. 'Catch me there in the roof garden. I'll have to rustle up some food, come and eat it with us. Unless you're afraid I'll poison you.'

'No,' she said. 'That is not one of the things I am afraid of. See you in about an hour, then. Ms Vickery will be delighted to meet the kitty-cats again.'

'Daniel?' I asked as we walked away.

'Ketschele?'

'Kill the next person who wants me to do anything for them.'

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, saluting like Jason in his midshipman role.

Oh, Lord, Jason would be devastated! No shop opening, and what was he to do? Jason had redefined himself as a baker. His previous definition had been heroin addict. This turn of events might set him back-perhaps even cause him to relapse. And he had been doing so well. We had all been doing so well, until that little voice started singing about soul cakes.

I didn't swear, because it occurred to me that Daniel had also put up with quite enough emotion for one day. What we needed was some quiet, some company, and some food.

I was wondering what I could ransack from the nearest 7-Eleven which might make a reasonable repast, and thinking that a few cooked chickens with ginger and honey might meet the bill, as we climbed into Insula and rose towards the garden in the lift. There was a buzz of voices on the roof and my heart sank. I was not in the mood for conversation. I was, in fact, now getting my usual backlash from taking bold action and I just wanted to hide. My head ached. My limbs hurt. And somewhere along the way in the rush of the day's events I had bitten my lip.

But there were all my fellow tenants and there was Daniel and one must bear up, as the Professor says, so I bore up and was richly rewarded. Under the spreading wisteria bower the picnic tables had been set up. Bottles had been opened. Plates were being laid. There was a lovely scent on the air.

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'There you are,' said Kylie. 'Like, we were getting so hungry! Come and sit down. Mrs Dawson said to take this,' she added, pa.s.sing me two white tablets and a gla.s.s of cold water. 'She said you'd have a headache.'

'She was right.' I took the tablets. I sat down on a picnic chair. Kepler, who cannot do anything inelegantly, poured me a gla.s.s of white wine.

'We thought that we needed a conference,' said Professor Monk. 'But we also thought we needed some lunch.'

'So we combined them in the ultimate pot luck feast,' said Jon. 'Amazing selection of almost anything you'd like,' he said. 'Kepler's green curry, my stuffed eggplants, muhall.a.b.i.a, and babaganoush, Jason's stash of experimental m.u.f.fins. We also have cold meat and cheeses from Mrs Dawson, pickles, condiments and napery from Therese Webb and fruit and various salads from Meroe. Kylie and Goss brought the ice cream, of course. Trudi contributed the sausage which Jason is presently cooking. Mistress Dread brought the beer and the Professor brought the wine. The Pandamuses have invited us all to dinner at eight, because their shop will be closed tomorrow to be tested by the police and Yai Yai just made a new batch of beef stifado and moussaka. Come along, dear Corinna,' he said, smiling his beautiful smile which has made people open their wallets all over Australia. 'What would you like to start with?'

'I would like,' I said, really thinking about it, 'a pickled onion. And cheddar cheese. And a piece of that Scottish oatbread. And isn't there anything I can contribute to the feast?'

'You are contributing,' said Jon. 'By existing. Also Daniel has just gone down to your apartment to fetch that cold frittata he made as a surprise for you.'

I looked around. Everyone was eating and drinking. Jason was forking sausages as to the barbecue born. Mrs Dawson, who only drank champagne, gin and occasionally whisky, was sipping from a gla.s.s of golden bubbles. Goss was nibbling at the very edge of a piece of guaranteed free-of-calories lavash loaded with soft fruit cheese. Jon ate ham, Daniel ate green curry, Kepler tasted his first frittata, Mistress Dread dominated the gentleman's relish. I tasted the chicory and onions, a ma.s.sively comforting dish.

There was only one thing missing from this consolation feast, and I tried not to mind terribly as I bit into my pickled onion. There was no Earthly Delights bread.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

It was such a pleasant lunch and as it drew to an end, it was time for a council of war. I shared with the meeting all I knew or had conjectured about LSD and soul cakes, and Kylie faltered: 'That song, we did hear it about. A bit. Like we said.'

'Yes, you would have if anyone did,' said Jon, as quietly as if he was charming a bird onto his hand. 'You and Goss go to some of the clubs, you live in the city.'

'We never bought any,' said Goss hastily. After an encounter with weight-loss herbs on which they had ma.s.sively overdosed themselves, both girls were sticking rigidly to a traditional central nervous system depressant called a Mojito. 'Anyway, we never really saw the dealer. If he was a dealer. We just heard the little song.'

'Was it always the same voice?'

'Huh?'

'A high voice or a low voice?' persisted Jon. 'A man or a woman?'

'The same,' said Kylie, chewing a fingernail. 'Yes, the same all the time. A very nice voice. A boy.'

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'More like Robbie than Justin,' said Goss helpfully. 'Always seemed to be round a corner.' 'Which clubs?' Daniel was being very careful not to startle our little birds this time.

'Around,' Kylie shrugged. 'Not the rough ones. The groovy ones, where you need good clothes and the door b.i.t.c.h knows how much your shoes cost. You know?'

'I know,' affirmed Daniel. 'No one wearing a dress from Maison de Target is going to get past the guardian.'

'Whatever,' agreed Kylie. 'Thanks for lunch,' she added, and they drifted off to rehea.r.s.e their lines again. All three of them.

Our little gathering was, at this point, supplemented by Ms Bray and her co-ey, who had managed to trip over Lucifer's lead and was evidently enraptured. Lucifer, for his part, felt it his duty to personally taste test every single one of her nice silver b.u.t.tons. She was delighted when he ran out of b.u.t.tons, scaled her uniform, and perched on her shoulder, patting at her earring with one meditative paw as (being Lucifer) he plotted ambush on the remains of the feast. I could see the little ratbag calculating: one leap across to get onto the back of the bench, another spring onto Jon's lap, then I could land smack in the middle of that large platter of smoked salmon and cream cheese crackers, which have hardly been touched.

The policewoman, who was not without trained forensic instincts, grasped his lead and suppressed him. For the moment.

'Now,' said Ms Bray, who having been given a chair, a platter of mixed delicacies and a gla.s.s of Meroe's lavender and apple punch-and a little time to absorb some nourish-ment-was looking more cheerful. 'I need to know all the things that you didn't tell Jonesy and his mate.'

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'And the reason we should tell you is . . .?' asked Jon.

'Because I can sneak them into my report, which is incomplete, so no one will know that there was a suspicious delay. His report will have been made by now and you left things out. I know you did.'

'How?' asked Jason.

'Because people always do, especially innocent people,' she told us, perfectly sure of herself. And, as it happens, she was correct. We all looked at one another. Meroe began to speak. Calmly she told Ms Bray about the gathering of witches, the recipe for soul cake, the suspicions she held of Barnabas and his use of ordeal poisons to reveal treasure. She followed this up with a full disclosure of names, addresses and phone numbers, all of which Ms Vickery wrote down when Lucifer allowed her the use of her biro. To her credit, Ms Bray did not laugh, though she blinked a couple of times.

'What's the significance of the soul cake, anyway?' she asked.

'It's a social ceremony,' said Meroe. 'People would go from farm to farm in the old country in autumn, singing, accepting a spiced cake and a drink of wine, and conferring luck on the people within. It was probably a fertility ritual. Almost all of the old ones are.'

'Right,' said Ms Bray.

'But the song,' said Mrs Dawson, 'is a compound of several English wa.s.sail songs. Same procession, same visit, but beer or cider instead of wine. My point being that the version we are hearing is from England and would be known to people like folk singers and choristers, not to the general public.'

'Not witches?' asked our police person.

'No, that is not the song we sing,' said Meroe, and did not elaborate.

'All righty then,' said Ms Bray, getting up reluctantly. 'Come along, Constable, detach your puddy-tat and we shall be going, with many thanks. It will take hours to type all this up.'

'What happened to poor old Vincent Wyatt?' I asked.

'They took him off to the hospital for a check-up,' said Ms Bray. 'Reckon he might have had a brainstorm of some sort. He's got a place to live all right. He'll probably be back to see what they're doing to his shop tomorrow. You did nice work at that hostage scene, you know, Ms Chapman. It could have gone pear-shaped real fast.'

I a.s.sented. By pure luck I had managed to do the right thing. Constable Vickery detached Lucifer, paw by paw, and handed him to Trudi. Ms Bray surveyed us all and then gave a brisk nod.

She didn't exactly say 'Mind how you go' but she conveyed that impression. I ate a thoughtful salmon cracker or two after they had gone. They were very tasty. Trudi, rewarding Lucifer for not leaping, took one apart and gave him the filling.

'Hey,' said Jason, who had been told that Earthly Delights would not be opening in the morning and had just understood what that meant to him, 'What am I going to do?'

'You aren't sacked or anything,' I told him. 'You can take a day off, like the rest of us.'

'I don't want to take a day off,' he muttered.

'Hey, me neither,' I said feelingly. 'But we're all in this together, Jason. Don't you get any silly ideas about leaving.'

'No,' he protested. 'Course not! I just meant, you know, I've got used to working. I wake up every day at four, I make bread, that's what I do, that's what I am.'

'As well as our Jason,' Jon told him. 'There're a number of things you could be doing tomorrow. I suspect we all have tasks which could be expedited with a little paid help.'

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Jason, who had been looking sullen when he thought himself volunteered, brightened up at the mention of payment.

'He can hold the lights for my photographer,' said Mistress Dread. She was in her daytime tweeds and properly known as Pat. She gave Jason an evil grin. 'New catalogue for the leather underwear.'

'Ten an hour for weeding,' offered Trudi.

'Twelve for erecting my insoluble flat-pack bookcase,' said Mrs Dawson.

'And mine,' said the Professor, who was always short of book s.p.a.ce.

'Or you can do a little light cooking for Jon and me,' offered Kepler. 'I have always wanted to learn how to make a cake.'

'Deal,' said Jason to Kepler. Jason was always going to view cooking as far superior to any other activity.

We gathered up the remains of the feast and went severally to our own apartments. I looked in on Mrs Pemberthy. She seemed much recovered, complained for ten solid minutes without drawing breath, and Traddles nipped at me. So that was all right. I was so tired I could barely drag one foot after the other.

'Bath,' said Daniel, and I ran one lush with violet foam and sank into it while he read more Winnie the Pooh and my nerves, which had been sticking out on wiry protuberances and short-circuiting, sank back into my body and began to a.s.sume their proper function. I patted myself dry and dressed in a nightgown, and the last I saw of Daniel, he was placing a cat on my bed and telling me that he would be back as soon as he could.

Then he was gone, Horatio was purring, and I plunged so deeply asleep that I might have been drowned and dead.

I woke at four, slapped the alarm, started to get up, remembered that I didn't have to, breathed a prayer of thankfulness and snuggled down again. 'O Sleep it is a blessed thing beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given, she sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, which slid into my soul...' Poor Coleridge spent his whole life chasing sleep, which is how he became an opium addict. He knew about its healing powers.

When I woke again at about ten o'clock I felt fine. Until I realised that even at this very moment the SOCO were looking for traces of an LSD trade in my bakery. Still, I was sure they wouldn't find any there.

I let the Mouse Police onto the balcony, where I had set their litter tray. Horatio woke and yawned elaborately. Daniel wasn't back. Moreover, there were croissants in the freezer and the coffee was soon on and I decided to allow myself a slow, comfortable breakfast in the company of the charming animals and the latest Jade Forrester. To get a paper I would have to go all the way down to the atrium, a.s.suming that's where the paper boy might have left mine, and I didn't feel that any news would be good enough to be worth the walk.

Cats snuffled and crunched their way through bowls of kitty dins. I heated my croissant and b.u.t.tered it without haste. Jade built her plot. The sun sneaked in through the blinds, so that I raised them and revealed a coolish dry late morning. I had missed last night's dinner and I didn't care, though the food would have been excellent. This was not going to be a morning to do anything but pa.s.s the time as pleasantly as possible.

At least I was comfortable when the terrible news came. It was announced quite coolly by a man in a white coat, who called me down to my bakery at about noon. The paper clad 163.

persons were still pottering around, and the bakery looked a little dishevelled. But it was nothing a good morning's cleaning couldn't cope with.

'I'm Nicholas Timoleon,' he told me, pushing back his gla.s.ses. 'I'm afraid that I have some bad news for you, Ms Chapman.'

'What? Someone has been dealing LSD from my bakery?' I was aghast.

'No,' he said. 'That would count as the good news. The Ma.s.s Spec. and other tests are back. What we have, Ms Chapman, is a biological contamination emergency, and here are the notices which quarantine your shop. If you have any personal possessions you would like to remove, I can allow that if you do it right now. Otherwise I must ask for your keys.'

'Oh, my G.o.d.' I almost sank down onto the step, but I needed to stay alert. Personal possessions? Yes, the laptop, the sheaf of bills I had been working on, a book or two and the recipe collections from which Jason had been learning to read. I gathered them into my arms.

'What do you suspect?' I asked. I heard my voice tremble.

'Ergot,' he told me, and conducted me onto the stairs. I heard the door close behind me with a curiously final click. I was shut out of Earthly Delights.

I couldn't think of one sensible thing to say or do when I got back into my own apartment, so I went out onto the balcony and smoked a Gauloise. That occupied some time. Then I went in again, turned on the computer and searched for information on ergot. Some of it I already knew, because it is a flour contaminant. Rye, particularly, though it also affects barley. A wet spring, a cool summer, and voila! Through the soft grains comes the red-purple fungal body called Claviceps purpurea. I was told that the indoleamine called ergotamine could be made to yield lysergic acid. Effects of ergotism: mania, paralysis, nausea, gangrene-oh, that poor man with his missing hands! The girl with her feet! Had I done this?

I was horrified to my soul but I kept reading, since lack of knowledge is not comforting either. Dancing manias, St Anthony's Fire, things which I thought belonged to the Middle Ages, when whole towns went mad. But in 1951 one sack of contaminated flour sent the whole of Pont-Saint-Esprit out on a dreadful, irreparable trip. They had a name for the toxic dough which had poisoned, maddened, killed them. They called it pain maudit. Evil bread. I wept. I had been baking evil bread. I wept myself out and sniffled and had another Gauloise.

And then the cats drifted up to me as I sat there. The Mouse Police sprawled at my feet. Horatio occupied my lap. And we all looked out into the lane where the quarantine van disgorged more people and a stream of technicians began to leave my bakery, carrying sacks and bags and boxes, clothes and pieces of flooring, the vacuum bag, the rubbish bin, and even the broom.

Some undefined time later, Daniel came in and stood beside me in silence for a moment. Then he put out a hand. It felt strong and warm. 'Come on,' he said. 'Out of this. Everyone you're responsible for is taken care of. The girls have gone to their rehearsal and Jason is with Jon and Kepler making something called a wonder cake. And, Corinna, you are coming with me,' he said, raising me to my feet. He provided me with clothes and watched as I inserted myself into jeans, boots and jumper and picked up my backpack.

Then we were out of Insula, where I had been so happy, and Timbo was opening the door of his big blue car. He gave 165.

me a hug. When hugged by Timbo, you know you've been in a fight. He smelt sweetly of petrol and Darrell Lea Rocky Road, his favourite fruit.

'Willi,' Daniel ordered. 'You know the place.'

And then we were driving down Footscray Road towards the sea. Perhaps Daniel was going to allow me to just throw myself into it. But although my life was ruined and my career destroyed, I leaned on him and noticed that it was a nice day to be outside. The air was cool and the trees were all in blossom. Ornamental cherries in pink and lemon trees in cream and apple trees in white decorated the gardens of Footscray and then Seddon and Yarraville and Newport as we progressed.

Timbo was driving in a stately fashion, as though he was in charge of a hea.r.s.e. He wasn't even snacking as he drove, though the bag of chocolates was open on the seat beside him, as always. One day, he would reach some critical limit and they would have to disa.s.semble the car to get Timbo out. In fact, since he liked driving so much, it might be easier just to provide some plumbing and an air supply and leave him inside his metal sh.e.l.l, like a large, friendly mud crab.

'Wonder cake?' I murmured, grasping at something Daniel had said.

'Yes, Jason is teaching it to Kepler. What is wonder cake?' asked Daniel.

'It's our charming neighbour Mary Phillipou's recipe. I grabbed it from her when she was teaching it to Mrs Pandamus for one of those huge family gatherings. Amazingly tolerant cake, you can put berries or dried fruit or chocolate chips into it and it always rises. She also has a boiled chocolate cake which can be a.s.sembled in the time between the doorbell ringing and the unexpected relatives dropping in (with their ten a.s.sorted children) for tea.'