THE WINDMILL CAFE_PART ONE_Summer Breeze

by Poppy Blake

  Then an agonizing bolt of electricity shot through her heart – could it have been in the honey? The jar had been sealed when she’d handed it over to Suki, she’d checked, so how had it got there? It was no good, Rosie couldn’t hang onto her emotions any longer and tears trickled down her cheeks. She had to say something.

  ‘Suki, do you think… do you think it could have been the honey I gave you? Remember, you came to the café to ask if I had any honey because you’d run out? Did you use it to make your spray?’

  Suki’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot met Rosie’s, but as usual before she could utter a word, Felix had leapt from his seat and was straight in there.

  ‘I told you this place is a death trap! It’s just as well the doctor’s informed the authorities and the café is going to be shut down! I’m going back to the lodge to make sure no one touches that honey before the inspectors arrive and I’ll insist that they test it right away.’

  Felix stormed out of the café, shoving a recently arrived William roughly out of his way, and the others followed him.

  ‘Hey, guys, what’s going on? Suki?’

  Rosie saw something more than concern for Suki’s wellbeing in William’s eyes, and had her world not been crumbling down around her she would have dissected its meaning further. However, she had much more pressing things on her mind.

  ‘Mia, can you help me to make a “Closed” sign for the front gate?’

  ‘Sure.’

  When they had finished hanging the hand-made sign on the car park fence, Rosie gathered together a basket of things to take upstairs to her flat. She didn’t want to interrupt the investigation once it started, and she certainly had no intention of watching whilst they tore her beloved little café apart. A cauldron of dread churned in her stomach, but she knew that was nothing compared to how Suki must be feeling. The poor girl could have died and there was the added possibility that someone had targeted her! Oh God, she thought, what if the assailant was still lurking around in the holiday site? She dropped her basket and ran to the bathroom.

  ‘Rosie? Are you okay?’ called Mia, her voice tight with anxiety.

  ‘Erm…’

  ‘Look, I want you to come and stay with me. That way the inspectors can do what they want without you having to be there. Why don’t you go upstairs, pack a bag and we’ll leave them to it? No arguments.’

  Rosie peered round the door at her friend and the sympathy on her face nearly sent her into another deluge of tears, but she managed to hang on.

  ‘Mia, I would love to do that, but with Graham out of the country, the café’s my responsibility. I need to stay here.’

  ‘Well, nothing will be happening until tomorrow, so let’s get away for a few hours.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Rosie gave Mia a weak smile of gratitude, slung a few random items into her handbag and locked the café before joining Mia next to her little cream Fiat 500 in the car park. She couldn’t wait to escape. If she stayed, all she would be able to think about would be the inspectors combing through her kitchen, moving everything from its allocated space, testing every nook and cranny – no matter how certain she was that they wouldn’t find a speck of dirt or molecule of germs anywhere, she was still terrified of their impending visit.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ mused Mia as she steered round the narrow roads towards the converted barn she shared with her parents. ‘It could be nothing, but…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, no, nothing…’

  ‘Mia?’

  ‘It’s just Suki told me that she and Nadia went for a walk through the woodland on Sunday morning before the party. Could she have accidentally touched or brushed against the petals of one of these monkshood flowers?’

  ‘It’s not touching that causes illness. It’s ingesting.’

  ‘Well, I know exactly who we should ask about poisonous plants.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Freddie.’

  ‘Why Freddie?’

  ‘Don’t you remember he told you at the garden party that whilst you might be the go-to girl for bridal flowers, he was the man when it came to wild flowers? Why don’t we take a detour over to the outward-bound centre and ask him what he knows? We can talk to Matt about the inspection too. He’ll know how to handle it until Graham gets back. I can’t wait to see Matt’s face when we tell him that his super-sleuthing skills are back in demand. Unlike you, I’m confident the inspectors won’t find anything wrong with that honey you gave Suki – it came from Harrods for God’s sake! No, if you want my opinion, Suki was spot on. Someone put something in her spray. What we need to find out is who.’

  ‘I think you’re right – and it has to be someone who knows Suki uses her spray before every concert not just to help her voice but because it calms her stage nerves. I could be wrong but I reckon that poison was put in her bottle and the poisoner didn’t expect her to use it here in Willerby but when she got back home to Ibiza. And if I’m right, the only people on my list who could have done that are the people in her party, the people she calls her friends. If we want to save the café, then it’s up to us, and Matt, to find out who.’

  ‘And why!’

  ‘Yes, and why.’

  A surge of optimism sliced through Rosie’s veins. Instead of her previous go-to reaction of running away from the misfortunes life threw at her, she was choosing to take a more positive stance and it felt good to be doing something to salvage the café’s reputation, as well as her own. She was absolutely determined to do everything she could to preserve the reputation of her beloved café by finding out what was going on – and there would be the added benefit of making her father proud.

  Chapter 13

  As they drove to the other side of the village, Rosie rolled down the window of Mia’s little Fiat to marvel at the beauty of its landscaped gardens. All the lawns had been meticulously trimmed, rectangles of green velvet rippling in the breeze like liquid luck, some strewn with the tiny white dots of daisies, some as perfect as bowling greens. In every garden, the herbaceous borders burst with geraniums, hollyhocks and delphinium, vivid with summer bounty. A parade of pansies and petunias, marigolds and alyssum skirted the flower beds, flanked by sturdy rhododendron bushes, magnolias and wooden arches clad in clematis, all in full flower. Birdsong echoed through the tangled branches of the oak and horse chestnut trees to the accompaniment of the languid drone of a solitary lawn mower.

  A waft of fragrance floated through the open car window. For Rosie, the sweet aroma of crushed rose petals was the scent of summer more than any other floral bouquet. She wished with all her heart that she could retreat to a shady bench amongst the blooms, with one of her favourite glossy cookery books, and lose herself in another world.

  ‘It’s really pretty, isn’t it?’ said Mia, sending a smile in Rosie’s direction. ‘Willerby has won best village in the Britain in Bloom competition quite a few times. Hey, Rosie, your flower arrangements at the garden party were amazing, have you ever thought of entering any competitions? You’d get my vote!’

  ‘Thanks, Mia. Actually, I’ve won quite a few prizes already.’

  ‘You have? Why’ve you kept that a secret? Is it because Carole might co-opt you onto the church rota?’

  Rosie laughed, but the familiar feeling of discomfort started to rotate around her abdomen. Looking back, she knew that entering her floral art into competitions had been the beginning of the end for her and Harry’s relationship. Things had never quite been the same after she had won a prestigious gold medal at a floristry competition for which Harry had spent weeks creating his own submission, sourcing exotic flowers from the far side of the globe and declaring his design to be a shoo-in. Especially as he had spent the days leading up to the judging disparaging every aspect of her arrangement and advising her on how to bring it up to a more professional standard.

  ‘Of course not. I’m proud of my achievements, it’s just that… well… Harry was jealous of the accolades so I just got used to not singin
g about them from the rooftops, that’s all.’

  ‘That man has a lot to answer for!’

  ‘True. You know, I’ll never forget the look of complete incredulity on his face the very first time I entered a flower arranging contest and my name was announced as the winner in the “most innovative bridal bouquet” category. We had our first big row on the way home, but from that day onwards, I got a taste for entering my work into competitions.’

  ‘So what kind of things did you win?’ laughed Mia. ‘A lorryload of manure?’

  ‘Not quite, but you’re not too far off. I’ve won a few garden forks, a lawn mower – very useful when you live in a tiny flat in inner London. Oh, and let’s not forget the year’s supply of slug pellets. But my favourite prize was a VIP trip for two to the spa at The Langham for a design I presented in an oversized cocktail glass. Of course, Harry was in a sulk because he didn’t win with his magnolias, and he refused to come with me, so I took my sister, Georgie. When I got back all scrubbed and fragrant, Harry was surprisingly contrite and like a fool I thought it was because he had missed me. I should have known better because it was the following week that I found him with Heidi.’

  ‘Rosie, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.’

  The image of Harry and Heidi together floated across her vision, but the memory was too painful to dwell on and she was grateful when they crunched into the car park of the outward-bound activity centre.

  Matt answered the door of the huge wooden cabin that housed Ultimate Adventures’ reception and office with an apple clenched between his teeth and surprise etched on his face. The tang of fried bacon drifted to Rosie’s nostrils reminding her stomach that in the early morning baking frenzy she had foregone breakfast and lunch.

  ‘Come in. Want a coffee?’

  Perceptive as usual, thought Rosie. A small smile tugged at her lips as she and Mia followed Matt into the tiny kitchen at the back of the lodge.

  ‘So, to what do I owe the honour? Why aren’t you at the café?’

  Whilst Mia explained the reasons for their visit to Matt, Rosie glanced around the room and the desperation to create order that always lurked just beneath the surface was almost overwhelming. The whole room was a maelstrom of chaos. It was probably larger than the kitchen she worked in at the café, but because of the jumble of discarded cartons, packaging and plastic bottles on every available surface, it looked a lot smaller. The only space on the workbenches was an area next to the coffee machine where Matt was preparing their drinks. Every wall held either a noticeboard pinned with numerous flyers, or a whiteboard scrawled with instructions and schedules. If this was what the kitchen looked like, she would hate to see the state of Ultimate Adventures’ office.

  She slid into a chair at the pine table opposite Matt and gave him a smile, but she knew it didn’t meet her eyes. Uncontrolled emotions churned through her body causing her to feel woozy as her mind wandered from the anxiety of the inspectors’ imminent visit to the irresistible urge to start tidying up and scrubbing down the countertops. She surreptitiously pushed her hands under her bottom and started counting backwards from one hundred, matching each number with a long exhalation of breath.

  She knew Matt was watching her discomfort and she had never been more relieved when she heard the crunch of tyres on gravel outside the kitchen window signalling that Freddie had arrived for his shift.

  ‘I think I’ll go and say hi to Freddie.’

  Rosie couldn’t get out of her seat fast enough and almost sprinted to the car park to wait for Freddie to unload the boot of his ancient air-force blue Land Rover and transport a huge box of ropes and crampons into the storage hut next to the reception.

  ‘Hi, Rosie! Didn’t expect to see you down here? Have you come to take a flight on the zip wire?’

  ‘God, no thank you!’

  A shiver flashed up her spine at the thought of climbing up the rickety rope ladder she could see dangling in the trees to her right. She squinted into the canopy of leaves overhead and could just about make out the wooden platform from where Ultimate Adventures’ clients hurtled themselves into oblivion - willingly. She would rather spend an hour in Matt’s kitchen!

  ‘Perhaps something else, then? What about rock-climbing?’ smiled Freddie, his open, friendly face nudging her spirits northwards. He had been through a nightmare over the last couple of days, but his sweet temperament was as upbeat as it had always been.

  Rosie resolved to learn from Freddie’s example so she pushed her shoulders back and inhaled a deep confidence-inducing breath. Maybe now was the time to learn something new? She cast another glance at the zip wire and cringed. She had been so focused on the sky-high obstacle course that she hadn’t realized that Matt and Mia had joined them.

  ‘Mia’s brought me up to speed with her suspicions and I totally agree with her. We’ve got to investigate what’s going on at the windmill’s lodges ourselves. And you’re spot on, Rosie, we need to find out more about Suki’s friends’ backgrounds. However, while I’ve got you here, you might as well check out one of our activities. It’ll take your mind off what’s going on at the café,’ said Matt.

  ‘What’s going on at the café?’ asked Freddie, his eyes suddenly taking on a hunted look.

  Mia quickly filled Freddie in about the results of Suki’s blood tests and the visit of the environmental health inspectors. ‘We were wondering if you could tell us anything about monkshood?’

  Freddie’s mouth gaped. ‘How could Suki have got something like that in her throat spray? I’m almost certain monkshood, or aconitum napellus, doesn’t even grow in the woodlands around here. I’ve heard of it in other parts of the country but never here. It does have beautiful, deep blue-purple petals that resemble a monk’s hood, hence the name, but it’s also known as Devil’s Helmet because it’s so toxic.’ Freddie ran his palms over his forearms; the copper-coloured hairs had risen into goose bumps. ‘Are you absolutely sure that’s what Dr Bairstow said?’

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  ‘Well, I think that’s put me off suggesting wild flower tours alongside the clay-pigeon shooting.’

  ‘Are there any other poisonous plants scattered around the woodland?’ Rosie asked, keen to delay the moment when Matt handed her a safety helmet and hi-vis vest. ‘There must be a few?’

  ‘Oh, yes, there are several. There are the ones everyone’s familiar with – laburnum, yew, foxgloves, even convallaria majalis, more commonly known as lily-of-the-valley. We have all those in Norfolk. Got to be careful with flowering plants – they’re not just innocuous baubles to brighten up your garden. Rhubarb leaves are toxic and used to make rat poison and don’t forget the daffodils, ubiquitous around here in the spring. The flowers are harmless but the bulbs and stems can cause severe stomach upsets. However, the most common plant that everyone knows is toxic is the Deadly Nightshade – atropa belladonna – the whole plant is lethal.’

  ‘What about other rare species?’

  Rosie knew all about the flowers she used to make wedding bouquets, wreaths and table decorations, but she realized that her knowledge of more toxic plants was not as detailed as Freddie’s. He seemed to be an enthusiast and she tried not to think about what his interest in horticulture might mean as he warmed to his subject.

  ‘There’s been a recent escalation in gardeners growing wild flowers. TV programmes have encouraged people to sow wild flower seeds to encourage bees and wild animals into their gardens, so there’s been a resurgence of plants we had thought were extinct. Now I come to think about it, there was a case a couple of years ago up the coast at Souter Lighthouse where the corncockle – agrostemma githago – was found. Every part of the plant is filled with glycoside githagin and agrostemmic acid, just a brush of the petals can cause severe stomach cramps, vomiting, diarrhoea, dizziness and, in extreme cases, death.’

  Freddie was on a roll as his audience listened in fascination. He reminded Rosie of one of her old chemistry teachers, Mr Jarvis, who was so passionate abou
t his subject that his cheeks used to glow when he regaled them with interesting science-related snippets.

  ‘With modern farming methods and excessive use of chemical pesticides it was thought the corncockle had been wiped out, but it was once very common in the nineteenth century. In the Souter case, the experts thought it was possible that a seed had blown in from a garden where someone had cultivated the plant or, my own personal opinion, that it had lain dormant in the soil until the ground was disturbed.’

  ‘Freddie, I really think it’s a great idea to offer tours of the woodlands around here,’ said Mia, her eyes sparkling with vicarious pride. ‘In fact, why don’t you take me for a stroll around the site now? I’d love to hear more.’

  Rosie watched Mia link her arm through Freddie’s and the pair sauntered off through the trees. She turned to smile at Matt but his eyes were glinting with mischief.

  ‘Okay, Miss Barnes, time to fulfil your promise to give field archery a go. Don’t look so terrified. I know you’re going to love it!’ Matt strode into the storeroom behind the office and came back with an armful of equipment. ‘Here, put this on.’

  Rosie took a flat piece of leather with three elastic fastenings from Matt and turned it over in her hand. She had no idea what to do with it. Not wanting to look like a complete idiot, she watched from beneath her eyelashes as he yanked his own protective arm brace onto the inside of his forearm and then copied him.

  ‘Okay, here’s your quiver. We’ll start with six arrows each, I think.’

  As Matt leaned forward to fasten the quiver securely around her waist, Rosie caught a whiff of his lemony cologne and smiled. Perhaps she was going to enjoy this activity if it meant being in such close contact with Action Man himself, she thought, until Matt produced the bow from its wooden case and her jaw gaped.