Devil's Food (29 page)

The Mouse Police zoomed out into Calico Alley, collected their snack of tuna pieces, zoomed back in as though their tails were on fire and then raced up the steps to my apartment. I heard their paws hitting the treads in perfect unison. Doubtless they had gone to join Jason in his unaccustomed luxury.

I leaned on the door for a moment. It was about seven. My paper came flying in. Then the same security guard came past. The onion roll man.

‘Sorry, no onion rolls today,’ I said.

He grinned a nice white grin in the gloom. ‘Ordinary will do me fine,’ he said.

I handed over a crusty roll and he bit it with pleasure.

‘Where’s your boy?’

‘Got a cold.’

‘Lot of that going around,’ he said. ‘Thanks,’ he added with his little salute, and then he went on and I started sorting the orders.

Megan was late and she, too, was sniffing and dripping and complaining. Today, I could tell, was not going to be a day which even Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm could view optimistically. Then the Discarnates arrived for their famine bread and had to wait because I was running behind and it wasn’t ready. The three of them loomed in the doorway like a visitation of the Inquisition and they made me so nervous that I dropped an egg on the floor and had to grovel at their sandalled feet to clean it up.

Father Hungerford was not with them. That was a mercy. I finally boxed the bread and shoved it at them and they went away, cowled and mysterious and exceptionally irritating, into the darkness.

I began to think that the day wasn’t going to dawn at all. But I had progressed. The deliveries were all done, the shop bread was all in the oven, I could start the clean-up which I was going to do on my own for a change, and the muffins, at least, were very good.

I washed down all my surfaces and dried them. I rinsed out the mixers. I stacked the shop trays. Morning must arrive soon. But it was still dark outside. So I got out the old mop and bucket, took another dose of aspirin with the last of the coffee, and began to clean the floor and sing. ‘Oh, Lord, what a morning,’ I sang. ‘Oh, Lord, what a morning, oh Lord, what a morning, when the stars begin to fall …’

‘We’ll weep for the rocks and mountains, we’ll weep for the rocks and mountains,’ sang a clear elderly soprano at the alley door. Mrs Dawson. I might have known it. We carolled merrily to the end of the verse: ‘When the stars begin to fall.’ Nice and apocalyptic. I was feeling better.

Mrs Dawson laughed aloud. ‘A long time since I sang any spirituals,’ she told me. ‘All alone today, Corinna?’

‘Jason and his cold are upstairs,’ I said. ‘He really is sick.’

‘Poor boy,’ she said briskly. ‘Just give me a loaf and I shall go and make him some breakfast, if that would be of any help to you.’

‘That’s very kind of you …’ I began.

‘Not at all,’ she assured me. ‘I take an interest in that excellent young man. What does he eat?’

‘Everything,’ I said. ‘There’s eggs and bacon and lots of fruit and vegetables. Thank you,’ I said, as she ascended the stairs almost as fast as the Mouse Police, but with a lot more grace. What a woman. I hoped she would remember to give herself some breakfast as well.

I heard Gossamer rattling around outside as I opened the shop door and took down the shutters. Amazingly, she was clad in a very big jumper knitted, apparently, out of pink string. She was wearing adorable little black fingerless gloves as well. She dived into the shop and shivered theatrically.

‘I know. And it’s still dark,’ I agreed. ‘Turn up the heat and then help me with the soup urn.’

‘Where’s Jason?’ she asked, turning up the thermostat and standing under the hot air blower until her pink curls fluffed.

‘Sick,’ I said.

She clutched my sleeve. She actually looked worried. ‘Not … he hasn’t gone back on …?’

‘No, he’s just got a cold,’ I said, touched. ‘I put him on my sofa and Mrs Dawson is making him breakfast.’ Then I remembered I had gossip to impart. ‘Now let me tell you a tale, young woman, and I want to see your hair curling — guess who was responsible for your weight loss tea?’

‘Who?’ she asked, eyes widening.

I told her the whole tale of the Lone Gunmen as we prepared the shop and it took so long that the customers had started to arrive before I reached the end.

‘So they’re going to play games with us and buy us drinks?’ she asked.

‘If you want,’ I said. ‘That was the offer.’

‘That’d be nice,’ she said. ‘They have the latest games.’ Then she giggled. ‘I wonder which one was the witch,’ she said. And I really hadn’t enquired.

When I could leave Goss and Horatio to mind the shop I went back into the bakery and found that Mrs Dawson had carried down a tray on which reposed a fine cooked breakfast: fried eggs, bacon, grilled tomato, toasted sourdough and a whole pot of fresh coffee. She sat down on Jason’s chair to watch me eat it. I obliged. I was now starving.

‘I had forgotten how much young men eat,’ she said, a little taken aback. ‘Still, it is feed a cold and starve a fever, I believe.’

‘What did he eat?’

‘Two bowls of muesli, a cooked platter like the one you are eating, another three slices of toast with plum jam and a bottle of Coke. Then he actually thanked me, lay back and smiled, and now he is asleep, sneezing occasionally, with those two scruffy cats reposing, one either side of him. I hadn’t the heart to shoo them out.’

I didn’t tell her that the Mouse Police were notoriously difficult to shoo. I could tell that they were on that sofa for the duration of Jason’s visit. I speared a succulent bit of tomato, cleaned the plate with the last crust and sighed. She got up to take the tray.

‘Mrs Dawson, I do not deserve you,’ I said. ‘But thank you very much.’

‘It was nothing,’ she said. She returned the tray to the apartment and half an hour later — I feared she had also done my washing-up — she left through the shop with her own muffin and loaf, neat and elegant as ever. Having made the world a much nicer place to be in.

Light finally arrived. Not very much of it and not very clean, a dirty brownish gloom, but it was daylight and I appreciated it. Goss offered to enlist Kylie to work for the day and I accepted with pleasure. I was just thinking it was time I went and had my shower and changed out of my baking clothes when who should stalk in but my two least favourite policemen, Kane and Reagan. I knew that getting up on a Tuesday was a mistake.

‘Good morning,’ I greeted them, with as much of a smile as I could manage. ‘Cold morning.’

‘Where were you at six o’clock?’ demanded Reagan, putting out a hand to seize my upper arm. I backed away.

‘I was here,’ I said. ‘All this bread didn’t bake itself.’

‘What about your junkie toy boy?’ asked Kane.

‘Corinna, you want me to call Daniel?’ asked Goss, highly incensed at this imputation. I held up a hand.

‘Why not knock off the insults and tell me what this is all about?’ I asked calmly. ‘Before I start complaining and don’t stop until you are back on traffic duty in East Wallaroo. Yes?’

‘You were out at the Discarnate Brotherhood yesterday,’ said Kane.

‘I was.’

‘And you were shown over the place by the head bloke,’ said Kane.

‘I was.’

‘And someone has attacked him and left him for dead on the street,’ said Kane.

‘God, really? Is he badly hurt?’

‘Hospital said two broken ribs, bruises, shallow cuts. Blade must have turned on the bone. They’ll probably send him home in a couple of days. But it could have been murder.’

‘And you think it might be me?’ I could not follow their reasoning at all.

‘Was anyone with you at six am?’ Reagan persisted.

‘No. I sent Jason upstairs to nurse his cold. Hang on. I gave a crusty roll to a security guard at about six.’

Kane whipped out his notebook. ‘Name?’

‘I don’t know his name. He passes down this lane at about six every morning, or has the last two mornings. Wears that snazzy black and white uniform. Tall man with white teeth.’

‘Anything else about him?’ asked Kane wearily.

‘His grandad used to make onion rolls. Come on, guys, you can’t really imagine I was out on Studley Park Road beating up Father Hungerford when I had all this bread to make.’

‘We’ll check,’ said Reagan ‘We’ll be back,’ said Kane.

‘What is it with those guys?’ demanded Gossamer, putting down the phone as the door swung shut behind the policemen.

‘They’ve got the fixed idea that Daniel is a dangerous criminal, Jason is a druggie, and I’m either their dupe or their accomplice.’

‘Oh,’ said Gossamer, slamming back an intrusive shelf. ‘I see. Idiots.’

That about summed it up for the constabulary. I had not had time to gather my thoughts, so when Kylie came down to add her talents to the selling of bread, I excused myself and went up to check on the patient and have my long delayed shower.

It was a pretty sight which met my eyes when I came in to my own parlour. Jason was fast asleep with Heckle under one elbow and Jekyll curled up close with her nose in his ear. They were all snuggled under the blue blanket. I heard only a faint wheeze from Jason and a faint purr from Heckle. I turned off the TV.

Mrs Dawson had done the washing-up. I would have to think of some way of repaying her. I got my shower, lavishing rose petal soap on my exterior and finding that my hair was now just long enough to make a creditable twist on the crown of my head, thus getting it out of my eyes. I dressed in warm clothes. And for once I really didn’t want any more coffee.

The sofa was occupied, so I lay myself down on my freshly made bed and shut my eyes. And I dreamed a sharp, vivid dream. I saw the beautiful Father Hungerford come out of the castle on a filthy morning when the darkness had an assassin in it: I saw him struck down and beaten and stabbed by someone so beside themselves that they could not insert a knife between bones. Then for some reason I saw him sitting in his office, talking about the failure of earthly love, with the Madonna on the wall behind his head. Savonarola face, Madonna’s milkmaid face. Fanatic’s face, saint’s face. Over and over again they alternated. My subconscious was trying to get something through to my terminally addled mind, but I couldn’t see the connection.

And then someone was kissing me awake. It was Daniel. I dragged him down into my arms and kissed him back.

‘We seem to have Jason,’ he pointed out.

‘So we do,’ I groaned. ‘He’s got a cold. I’m letting him sleep up here until he gets better. I can’t send the poor boy back to a backpackers’ when he’s sick. Oh, and we’ve had a visit from the police. Someone has beaten Father Hungerford to a pulp. I hope you’ve got an alibi for six this morning.’

‘As it happens, I have,’ he said, laughing. ‘I was in a police station. Best alibi there is, apart from being dead or in prison.’

‘I’ve sent them off to find my onion roll man,’ I told him sleepily. ‘I need to get back to the shop,’ I added with vast reluctance.

Daniel demurred. ‘No, I dropped in, Kylie and Gossamer are managing beautifully. Supervised, I might add, by Horatio. I suggest that you remove those shoes and have a little nap with me, because I can’t keep my eyes open any longer and I’m very cold.’

So he was. I took off some of my recently donned clothes and tucked us under the doona until he thawed. Then he fell asleep, and so did I.

I woke at three and arose. Daniel rolled over into the hollow left by my body and curled up like a cat. I reclothed myself and set about finding out what had happened to Earthly Delights. Jason was sitting up on the couch, reaching for the remote control and coughing like a Wilfred Owen poem about the Great War. I called Kylie’s mobile phone. If I wasn’t there to confiscate it, there was no way it would have left her person. She, of course, answered at once.

Kylie reported that it was all fixed, Goss had even done the banking, and they were off to talk to the Lone Gunmen about playing games. I went down and shut up shop, thanked and paid my assistants, and wondered what I was going to give Jason for lunch. The shop had sold out of soup, though there was a new pot ready for the morrow. On reflection I went to Del Pandamus’s Cafe Delicious and bought a lot of miscellaneous food left over from lunch. With this and a bag of bread I climbed again to Hebe and found that the natives were restless.

Daniel had dressed and was carrying on an irritated phone conversation while trying to remove Jekyll from the sofa. Jekyll was not cooperating. She liked the sofa and she was staying. She had dug in all available claws and was daring Daniel to try something.

‘Lunch?’ I said to Jason.

He turned a fevered face to me. ‘Not hungry,’ he croaked.

I put the bag on the table and flicked up Jekyll’s front claws, freeing the boy’s legs. Jekyll surrendered and moved aside.

‘Put your shoes on,’ I said. ‘We’re going to the doctor.’

Now I was close I could hear a gasping wheeze as poor Jason laboured for breath. This wasn’t just a cold. He must have caught bronchitis or — horrible thought — that viral pneumonia which the street kids had. Jason did not fight. He rose and followed me to the door, stopping twice to recover his breath.

Daniel finished his phone call and caught us. ‘I’ll take him,’ he said. ‘And I’ll pick up some of his clothes and stuff. He can’t go back to that hotel in this state.’

‘I’m all right,’ said Jason, then coughed like a consumptive for five minutes.

‘Yeah,’ said Daniel. ‘You’re a picture of health. Come on.’

They left. I wondered how I could make Jason comfortable on the couch. Just as I was thinking this, Meroe and Mrs Dawson came to the door. Meroe had a jug of some infusion and a basket of various comforts.

‘How’s Jason?’ she asked.

‘Sicker. Bronchitis, I hope, not pneumonia. Daniel’s taken him to the doctor. I’m just wondering how I can fit him in. If I give him my bed …’

‘I have a solution,’ said Mrs Dawson. ‘I still have permission to use the empty flat, Pluto. It has all the things he will need, it’s warm, and we can pop in and make sure he’s all right during the day. Meroe will make him tisanes and infusions and Dion and I will feed him. Then you can take over at night. Oh, and while Jason’s sick, I know Cherie Holliday would like to help in your bakery. After finding each other again she and her father are now needing to separate a little. She’s getting a little restless now that he is so much better. There is a limit to the number of excursions one can take, you know. She’s been to the zoo so often she tells me she’s on first name terms with the meerkats.’