I stared after him in disbelief, then turned back to David and Georgie. Georgie smiled, a little timid and unsure how to proceed. David simply smirked.
“What complete and utter batpoop,” he said.
I wish I could say that the next few hours passed by without incident.
I really do wish I could say that.
And for part of the time that much would be true. To be fair, the kitchen, while fully fitted, and now deep cleaned, thanks to the Wonky Inn Clean-up Crew, was nonetheless still a little rough and ready. The whole room needed redecorating and tiling ideally, with more modern equipment. However, the ovens, hobs and existing machinery all worked well enough. I noted David twisting his nose up at some of the old gear, and he was particularly dismayed by the lack of a dishwasher.
“I’m having one fitted,” I said. “Industrial standard.”
“What’s been used in the past?” David asked. “I don’t see a space for one.”
I thought back to the army of ghosts who had prepared the feast in the lead up to the Battle of Speckled Wood, and subsequently cleaned up, remarkable effectively. I decided not to mention them. “Elbow grease,” I offered instead.
“Please come through,” I urged them as I stepped into the store rooms. “The cold store and pantry are through here. You can select your ingredients—I’ve bought in lots of fresh local produce because that’s what I intend we’ll be working with at the inn from now on—and then we’ll get right down to business. As I said in my letter, I’d like you to show me your best starter, main and dessert, as well as a plate of hors d'oeuvres, some scones—because that’s the local delicacy and everyone wants those—and either a cake or a tray of small cakes. Your choice.”
I watched as Georgie and David picked through the ingredients I had on display.
“It’s an impressive pantry,” David said, and I nodded, relieved that I finally had someone’s approval for something.
“Thank you. We’ve—I’ve—done my best.”
I left them to their selection. When they re-joined me in the kitchen, I showed them where they would find pots, pans, mixing bowls, crockery, cutlery and anything else they might possibly need. Then I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, sitting on the bench in the corner and keeping my nose in a book, and occasionally massaging my wrenched ankle.
My mind whirled though.
I already knew David probably wasn’t right for the inn. His tendency to sneer had me feeling a little inferior. That would never do in the long run.
Georgie on the other hand had shown that she had an interest in ghosts. Perhaps she would be a better bet, and be able to cope with some of the inn’s odd inhabitants.
I looked up, watching them as they moved around the kitchen. David worked with a confident assurance. Chopping, scraping, measuring and tasting. He had pans boiling on the hob faster than you could shake a stick, and his oven had been warming up since I’d left them to it.
In contrast Georgie had only just turned the oven on and her workspace was a catastrophe. Flour had spilled across the counter, and sugar on the floor. Her feet were sticking to the slate tiles as she moved around. As I watched, she knocked over a jug of milk. I could almost hear Florence spinning in her grave.
I quietly stood and limped into the boiler room to retrieve the dustpan and brush, and mop and bucket. It could just be nerves on Georgie’s part. I should be kind and allow her every opportunity to redeem herself.
“Have you seen the mess?” Gwyn demanded, peering over my shoulder into the kitchen.
I hurriedly shut the door. “Grandmama!” I hissed. “I thought you were going to stay away. I asked you to.”
“I know you did. But this is my inn too, Alfhild. I want to see what’s going on.” She made to go through the door but I held my hands out.
“Please don’t.”
“Seriously Alfhild, are these two the best you could come up with?”
“Look,” I whispered, “Admittedly I didn’t attract the highest grade of chef, but let’s give these two a chance. You never know. They could be just what the inn needs.”
“Nobody needs that level of mess,” Gwyn insisted.
“Poor Georgie. Perhaps she’s one of those creative types who works better in absolute chaos.”
“Perhaps she’s a slob.”
“Grandmama, that’s not nice.”
“Nice won’t run an inn, Alfhild. Someone told me that once.”
That someone would be me. I cursed her for remembering.
A few hours later and the kitchen had filled with a variety of scents.
Among them were the smell of burnt cupcakes, overdone pastry and a dauphinois sauce that had been killed by a dozen cloves of garlic.
“Good work,” I said, surveying the damage. Georgie had tried to disguise her cupcakes in a bizarrely-coloured green icing. I could see why she found Perdita so appealing. I plucked one of her hors d'oeuvres from a plate. Supposedly seared scallop in a fruit reduction, unfortunately the scallop had been fried to a crisp, and the fruit had been reduced to a single cherry. I bit into it, and almost broke my tooth on the stone.
By contrast David served up a blue cheese canape, with a swirl of prosciutto decoration, wound round itself to resemble a rose. His starter was simple: kakori kebabs, served with mint chutney on a bed of leaves. He’d picked up the recipe while travelling in Lucknow he told me when I enthused about the blend of spices. Georgie’s plain tomato soup starter, while well cooked, looked positively pedestrian in comparison.
I was about to tuck into David’s main; locally caught red mullet roasted with tarragon and pancetta, when I heard the distinct sound of sobbing.
“Is someone crying?” enquired Georgie. “It sounds like a man.”
Luppitt. I didn’t have time to rush up and find him. Wasn’t Zephaniah there?
“Florence!” I called without thinking, intending to send her upstairs to enquire as to Zephaniah or my father’s whereabouts. She appeared suddenly in front of us, smoke rising from her clothes, her face covered in soot. Georgie shrieked and clutched at David, who stepped back and slipped on a puddle of cherry juice and fell backwards on his rump.
He lay on the floor, staring up at Florence, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
“Oh,” I said. Because what else could I say?
Upstairs, Luppitt’s crying became louder. I grimaced. “Would you go and see if Luppitt is okay?” I asked Florence in a low voice. “Maybe find out where my Dad is.”
“Yes, Miss,” Florence bobbed a curtsey and disappeared.
Georgie cried out again, this time more weakly, and I imagined she was about to go into a swoon. “Was that a ghost?” she asked. “A real live ghost?”
“Not a live one,” I tried to joke. “By necessity, ghosts are dead.”
I held out a hand to help David to his feet, just as my father appeared.
“Sorry, Alf, I seem to have run out of petrol for the lawnmower, and there’s no more in the shed.” He took in the two strangers. “Oh, I’m sorry. Interviews. Yes. You said stay away, didn’t you? I do apologise!” And with that he disappeared.
Georgie backed up against the far wall, looking around with a mixture of disbelief and apprehension.
I hauled David to his feet and he snatched his hand away from mine. “This is preposterous,” he yelped. “Is this a joke? What kind of a show are you putting on here?”
“Oh you’re such a boor, young man!” Gwyn—appearing behind him—was quick to point out his most obvious personality defect in her icy tone. He jumped a mile, shrieking even louder than Georgie had. Upstairs Luppitt was bawling his eyes out.
I admitted defeat, and held my mobile aloft. “Would you both like to share a cab back to the station?” I asked.
Huddled on the kitchen bench, I mournfully plucked at the remains of the mullet. It tasted delicious.
“I’m sorry you guys can’t share this,” I said, but didn’t mean. I wasn’t remotely apologetic. Floren
ce offered a watery smile. At least she had the decency to look regretful. Not so, Gwyn.
“They weren’t the kind that we need here at the inn,” she declared, as opinionated as ever.
I started on David’s strawberry ganache-covered white chocolate cake, digging my fork in and taking great chunks of sponge to chew. Totally unladylike, but boy it felt good. I knew it would annoy Gwyn too, and when she frowned at me, I shrugged like I didn’t care.
“But we’re now chef-less,” I reminded her. “Back to square one. I’ll have to re-run the advert and go through this whole rigmarole again.”
“No, you won’t.” Gwyn sniffed. “You’ve had your turn. Leave it to me. I’ll find exactly the chef we need.”
Drizzle began to fall as I joined the queue outside one of London’s most famous buildings, and I feared an attack of frizzy hair. Progress was slow, and I was tempted to cast a little ‘get-on-with-it’ spell to speed up the process of ticket checking, but decided it might rebound on me in ways I didn’t like. Instead, I craned my neck up to have a look at the towers in front of me. Countless tiny ghost lights shone through the glass of the narrow windows in the White Tower, and I could easily imagine numerous lonely faces, held against their will, gazing down at the river behind me, longing for a freedom they would never again have experienced.
Despite living in and around London for twelve years before inheriting the inn, this was one place I’d never been. Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, otherwise known as the Tower of London, is situated on the north bank of the Thames in London. Actually a complex of several structures rather than a single tower, the buildings are set within defensive walls and surrounded by a moat. The site, so imposing—and positively exuding history from every brick and window—is well known around the world for having served as a prison, but has also been a royal palace. At different times it has housed an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the Royal Mint, and the Crown Jewels alongside its prisoners. I skimmed through the guide book, but for the most part I wasn’t interested in any of that. I had a mission. I needed to find the Baron.
At last I handed my ticket over and waited to gain entrance to the grounds alongside dozens of excitable squabbling children, all clutching clipboards, and obviously on a school trip.
Set free from the queue I wandered onto Tower Green with relief. A mock scaffold had been set up to demonstrate to visitors how the scene might have looked back in the middle ages, when numerous high-ranking members of society had been executed, including Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and poor Lady Jane Grey.
Without really focusing, I spotted translucent lights drifting around the area everywhere. It is difficult for me to explain exactly what and how I do it, but in a nutshell, I simply acknowledge the lights and allow them to manifest themselves into spirits. Once that has happened I can interact with them the way anyone would with another being, but of course I can’t touch them or feel them.
I watched as the lights wove in and out of the people strolling around the grounds, and dancing among the children who chased each other and generally made a nuisance of themselves until their teachers called them to order. Reaching out with my mind and heart, I sensed a great sadness, along with some confusion and pain. I pulled myself back. I didn’t want to empathise with the misery of any more ghosts. It would be a disaster to head back to Whittle Inn with another half dozen in tow. And royal ghosts to boot? Can you imagine how demanding a royal ghost would be?
I’d never cope.
No. I needed to stick to my game plan and simply search out Baron von Saxe Krumpke, assuming he hadn’t already crossed over of course.
The information I’d read in Mr Kephisto’s book had suggested the Baron had been kept in the Darden Tower, later known as the Bloody Tower, and not the infamous White Tower as one might have assumed. The White Tower had been reserved at the time for higher ranking members of the royal hierarchy, and the apartments had been sumptuous and luxurious in comparison to general prison conditions. Of course, the end result would be the same. If you didn’t warrant a royal pardon, it would quite literally be ‘off with your head’ at dawn one morning.
I shuddered, imagining living in one of the apartments, listening to the scaffold being constructed, and knowing what that would mean when the sun rose.
One of the Yeoman guards bid me a cheerful good morning and dispelled my gloom as he allowed me access into the Bloody Tower. I paused in the vestibule to take my bearings. I had no knowledge of exactly where the Baron had been incarcerated, so it would be a matter of moving from room to room. I checked my guidebook for the layout and decided to start in the lower chamber.
The building was old, built after the Norman conquest. Predating my inn by three hundred years or so, there were some similarities. The walls were thick, solid stone and whitewashed. The windows were narrow, the tiny diamond panes that made up each one, mottled, allowing little light in. Even to me, it felt chilly on a damp and overcast English day.
Again, I spotted the little travelling lights I had come to recognise as ghosts. Rather than ignore them I would now have to begin acknowledging each ghost, to get a feel for who they were, so that I could find the right one. This was going to take me some time and I wasn’t alone. Other visitors drifted in and out of the room, reading the information on the display boards and examining the exhibits. There was no sense of urgency among them. They had the whole day to browse. It was different for me. The exhibits I was looking for were of the spirit kind. I needed to take care not to draw too much unwarranted attention to myself.
One of the lights seemed bigger, brighter and more persistent than the others. It bobbed around trying to catch my attention, so I allowed him to come forth. He apparated beside me, a larger than life, cheerful chap with a full beard, his head covered by a big squishy hat, so distinctive of the Beefeaters, or Yeoman Warders, and a uniform of dark blue with smart red trimmings similar to the Yeoman who’d let me in. He’d been a guard here at the tower and could have only recently died, that would explain the vibrancy of his light.
“Greetings!” he announced. “Welcome to the Bloody Tower.”
“Thank you,” I said, glancing around me to see if anyone else was watching or listening in, but the only person in the room with me was a young woman wearing earphones and listening to her own music.
“You used to work here?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
“Yes. I served with the Royal Navy, man and boy, and when I retired, I applied to come here. Twenty-five years in the navy, followed by twenty-two here. And I loved every minute of both. There’s nothing I don’t know about the buildings and the people and the items that have inhabited them.”
It had to be my lucky day.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“William Briggs. You can call me Bill. Or Briggsy. It’s a pleasure to meet someone I can talk to.”
I nodded, glancing back at the young woman who was taking an unsuccessful photo of an exhibit in a cabinet, struggling because of the glare bouncing back off the glass. “I suppose you don’t get many people who can see you.”
“More than you would think. Most of them catch a glimpse and then shake it off. Would you like me to give you a guided tour?”
“Kind of. I’m looking for something very specific. Well, actually, someone.”
Bill stroked his beard, listening attentively. “I’m your man.”
“His name was Baron Richard von Saxe-Krumpke. The information I have suggests that he was incarcerated in the Tower of London somewhere, and probably this very tower.”
To my relief Bill Briggsy beamed, his teeth gleaming white through the thick bristle on his chin.
“Is he here?” I asked, delighted. I hadn’t imagined it would be this easy.
“He’s upstairs. Come on, I’ll show you. I don’t think any of our ghosts have ever had any visitors before.
The newly refurbished Upper Chamber of the Bloody Tower had been given over to a display abo
ut the young Edward V and his brother, Richard. Supposedly sent to the Tower for their own safety by their uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester. The young princes subsequently disappeared, after their Uncle had been declared Lord Protector in 1483. He then went on to become King Richard III in Edward’s stead, and the bodies of the two princes were never found. They quickly became known as the Princes in the Tower. It was a sobering exhibition. I examined the ghostly lights carefully but couldn’t sense the two young boys. I wondered what had happened to them.
“They’re not here,” Bill said observing me as I looked around.
“Which is not to say they never were, I suppose.”
“That’s right. Just that they may have crossed over.”
Bill led me to the very back corner of the building, where the light would have been most muted on a day like today, had there not been a full array of carefully angled electric lamps illuminating the display boards. It was difficult to envisage how the room would have looked back in the Baron’s day, but I imagined scuffed old floorboards, and a ceiling stained by soot from the fire, and the tallow burned off by candles. Perhaps there would have been religious symbols on the wall, Protestant at this time of course, facilitating the Baron’s repentance. He would have borne all this at the Queen’s leisure.
Which by all accounts she had had plenty of.
I spotted the Baron’s light before Bill even indicated it, a murky yellow sphere, somewhat sickly looking, perhaps half the size of a soccer ball. Glancing behind me to check we were unobserved, I called the Baron forth.
Richard von Saxe-Krumpke was rather as I’d imagined him. A tall imposing figure, lean with a long thin face, a receding chin and a hooked nose. His pale blue eyes were too close together, giving him the look of a vulture or other vicious bird of prey. I imagined that to poor sensitive Luppitt as a teenage boy, the Baron had been an intimidating figure.
The Ghosts of Wonky Inn: Wonky Inn Book 2 Page 9