Baked to Death

by Dean James

Smiling, I followed Robin back to the encampment to Totsye’s pavilion. It didn’t take long for the group to assemble, and they all watched me and Robin warily.

  Robin waited until Totsye, Adele, Millbank, and Harald had seated themselves, then he launched into his spiel. “I appreciate your cooperation in this, ladies and gentlemen. It will not take long, and no doubt you are all as anxious as I to get this matter settled. To that end, I have enlisted the aid of Professor Kirby-Jones, who will explain everything.” He moved to one side, and I stepped in front of the group.

  “Thank you all,” I said. “As Detective Inspector Chase told you, this won’t take long.” I paused for the effect. “I am here to reveal to you the name of the murderer of Luke de Montfort, late Duke of Wessex.”

  I paused again, and three of the audience leaned forward, their faces alight with curiosity. Totsye did not move.

  “I discovered rather quickly that a number of people had reason to dislike, even despise, Luke de Montfort,” I said. “He was apparently a sharp operator when it came to his business dealings, and he wasn’t above using the rather obvious physical charms of his sister to help him get what he wanted.”

  Adele hissed in outrage.

  “I would beg your pardon, Adele,” I said, “but I have little doubt that you were complicit in your brother’s schemes. It’s a bit late to pretend that Luke used you without your consent”

  Harald Knutson spoke up. “You’ve got that right. That bitch did whatever her brother wanted. I learned that, to my cost. The two of them nearly put me out of business before I realized what they were doing.”

  I nodded. “Yes, they did. Unfortunately you were rather an easy mark, weren’t you?”

  Glaring at me, Harald shrank back in his chair. “Luke and Adele went after you, Your Majesty,” I said, “but that wasn’t enough. They also went after Totsye. You dropped Totsye very quickly when you thought Adele was interested in you, and Luke tried to involve Totsye in one of his disastrous deals.” I smiled. “But Totsye was a bit smarter than you, Your Majesty. She at least managed to get out of the mess with much of her business intact”

  Harald shot a poisonous glance at his former love. She stared straight ahead, acknowledging nothing.

  “Totsye had two reasons to hate Luke and Adele. First, they destroyed her relationship with you, and second, they nearly cost her her whole livelihood. She didn’t forget that, nor did she forgive them. She put on an incredibly convincing act of a woman hopelessly in love, and she even had me believing her. That’s one reason it took me longer than it should have to realize that she was the most likely suspect the whole time.”

  I didn’t say anything more for a moment. I watched Harald and Adele squirm. Millbank had the look of a man who would pay dearly to be anywhere but there.

  “Totsye decided to revenge herself, and she did that by poisoning Luke.”

  I stepped forward and brandished my new ring in front of them. “See what I bought today? I found a jeweler here who sells very interesting rings. Watch.” I demonstrated how the ring opened to reveal the cavity beneath the jewel, and Totsye paled. The others merely looked puzzled.

  I snapped the jewel back into place and moved back a couple of steps. “It took a bit longer than it should have to get to the solution,” I said, “because we thought at first that Luke had been poisoned with foxglove. That was a mistake, but if it had been foxglove, Luke could have been given the poison four to six hours, roughly, before he collapsed in this tent.

  “Everyone knew how much he loved those fig pastries, and it would have been easy to give him a fig pastry laden with foxglove, and that would have been more difficult to prove.”

  “If it wasn’t foxglove, what was it?” Millbank asked, his curiosity overcoming his discomfort.

  “Cyanide,” I said. “Prussic acid, in the form of powder. It acts almost immediately, which meant that Luke had to have ingested it very shortly before he collapsed.”

  I waited. No one spoke.

  “You can all see the implications of that,” I said. “He had to have been poisoned after he arrived here for Totsye’s dinner party. I thought at first that he had been poisoned by a fig pastry, because the poison was in the honey, according to the pathologist. But as you all know, mead is made from honey.”

  “So she poisoned the mead with poison she had in her ring,” Adele said wonderingly as she turned to stare at Totsye.

  “Yes,” I said. “I was even watching her while she did it, and I didn’t realize, until this afternoon. She got rid of the second, untasted pastry on Luke’s plate when she went to fetch the doctor. Very quick thinking on her part. Tell me, Adele, did you drink out of your cup?”

  Wide-eyed in horror, Adele stared at me. “No, I didn’t Luke collapsed before I had a chance to taste it”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if your mead had been poisoned as well. She would have gotten rid of both of you at once, though that might have been more difficult to carry off.”

  Adele paled to the point that I thought she might faint, and Millbank got out of his chair to come and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him and closed her eyes.

  “Do you have anything to add to this?” I addressed Totsye. “Have I left out anything?” Dull-eyed, she shook her head. “No.”

  Suddenly she began to sob—a deep, wrenching sound. Her right hand clutched convulsively at her throat, and she twisted sideways in her chair.

  As I watched in horrified fascination, she pulled her poison ring from her bosom, opened it, and swallowed the contents.

  By the time Robin realized what she had done, she had slid out of her chair onto the ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Totsye died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. It really was better that way, I supposed. Robin would be able to find enough proof, I had little doubt, to be certain that she really was guilty. The case could be closed, and everyone else could get on with their lives.

  I waited around until I heard the news about Totsye, then left the encampment and walked slowly up the hill to Blitherington Hall. I figured the news would be better coming from me, since Totsye had been an old school chum of Lady Prunella’s.

  Lady P’s reaction was not anything like I expected.

  “I cannot claim to be completely surprised,” she said, after the initial shock. “After all, she was a scholarship girl. It’s not as if she had parents who could afford to send her to our school.” She sniffed. “Her father was a coal miner, and her mother was a barmaid. No breeding whatsoever.”

  Giles and I exchanged glances over her head.

  “Yes, breeding does tell,” I said gravely, forbearing to remind Lady P that her own father had been a greengrocer. Or so someone had once told me.

  Giles winked at me and followed me out of the drawing room after I bade his mother good night. “Care for some company, Simon?” he said once the door was closed behind us. “After all, you have something to tell me, don’t you?”

  “Are you certain you’re feeling up to it, Giles?” I asked, trying not to betray my unease. “After all, you’ve had quite a day.”

  “You’re not going to get out of it that easily, Simon,” he said. “I’ve been patient long enough.”

  “Yes, you have,” I said, capitulating. “Come along, then.”

  “Just let me tell my mother I won’t be home for dinner,” he said, grinning at me before he went back into the drawing room.

  “I hope,” I said softly. “But you just might be.” I wanted to get it over with, and yet I wanted to put it off. I couldn’t bear the thought of his turning away from me in disgust or horror.

  Giles tried to engage me in conversation on the drive through the village, but he found me a dull companion. I was too busy thinking about what to say to pay much attention to his chatter.

  Sensitive to my mood, he stopped talking when we got out of the Jag and watched me a bit apprehensively. I smiled briefly, at
tempting to reassure him, but his expression remained anxious. I retrieved my mail and sorted through it in the hall, nothing more than a delaying tactic, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Shall I get us something to drink, Simon?” Giles said.

  “Whatever you like, Giles,” I responded absently. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  I stared down at one of the envelopes in my hand. It had not arrived through the mail, though it had been in the mailbox. I recognized the bold handwriting. It was a letter from Tris.

  I was hardly aware that Giles had left me. I felt curiously empty as I regarded Tris’s writing. Should I even bother to open I wondered.

  Might as well, I told myself. I tore the envelope open and pulled the letter out.

  “My dear Simon,” I read, “perhaps some day you will forgive me. I realized all too quickly that my campaign to win you back was for nought because I could see you held more fear for what I might do than deep affection for me. If it’s any consolation, I will have a very long time in which to regret what could have been, had I offered you the same affection and loyalty you once gave me.”

  The words swam before my eyes, and I blinked to clear them. “But don’t look back, only forward. Trust him, Simon, and don’t worry. He won’t disappoint you.”

  That was all, except for the signature, a bold T.

  I folded the letter and went into my office. I dropped the paper on my desk and stood there, staring at the wall. It would take me a long time to sort out my feelings about Tris and what he had done. Could I ever forgive him? I didn’t know.

  I was surprised and touched by his letter. I hadn’t known Tris ever to express his feelings in that way. It demonstrated generosity of spirit, and while Tris had always been generous with material goods, he had rarely been so in other ways.

  “Simon? Is something wrong?” Giles said, and I turned to see him standing in the doorway. His concern was evident. “Is it bad news?”

  “No, Giles,” I said. “Not bad news.” I accepted the glass of wine he offered me, and I turned him gently in the direction of the sitting room. “Let’s get comfortable and have that talk.”

  I sat on the sofa, and Giles sat at the other end, facing me. He sipped at his wine as he waited for me to speak.

  “You’ve been very patient with me, Giles,” I said, “even though I know it was very difficult for you at times. You wanted something more than I felt I could give you, at least for a while.”

  “But now?” Giles asked.

  “Now I don’t want there to be any more barriers between us,” I said. “I love you, and I can’t imagine my existence without you.”

  He started to speak, but I held up a hand to forestall him.

  “I know you love me,” I said, “and I don’t doubt for a minute the sincerity or the depth of your feelings for me. It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it, Simon?” Giles said, an edge of anger in his tone. “Are you suddenly going to tell me you have a wife and kiddies tucked away somewhere in Texas? Or that you’re not really a man, but a woman in drag? What is it?”

  I laughed. “If only it were that simple. No, Giles, it’s something else entirely.”

  “What, then?”

  I found myself suddenly unable to look into his eyes. Instead I stared down into the wine in my glass. “Do you know what a vampire is, Giles?”

  “Yes, Simon,” he said. “And I know what werewolves and zombies are, too. What is the point of all this?”

  “Because I am a vampire, Giles,” I said, and I forced myself to meet his gaze.

  Instead of the shock I expected, I saw merely curiosity. “I knew there was something different about you, but I could never quite sort out what it was.” He frowned slightly. “You don’t disappear during the daytime, Simon. How can you really be a vampire, if the sun doesn’t affect you?”

  “Because I take a certain medication that enables me to do so,” I said. “I do better if I don’t expose myself to sunlight for very long at a time, but I can tolerate it, as long as I’m well covered.”

  “I see,” Giles said, drawing out the two syllables. “What about blood? Don’t you need that, too?”

  I shook my head. “Those same pills make it possible for me to exist without having to prey upon humans for blood.”

  Giles thought about that for a moment. “I’ve seen you in St. Ethelwold’s, and you don’t seem afraid of crosses. And I’m sure I’ve seen your reflection in a mirror.”

  “Yes,” I said patiently. “Your idea of vampires is like everyone else’s. Formed by old movies. All that nonsense was invented by Hollywood.”

  “I guess this means you can’t change into a bat, and I’ll bet you can’t fly either,” Giles said.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Did you become a vampire by choice?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?” Giles asked.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, a shade too flippantly.

  “That’s not funny, Simon,” Giles said.

  “No, it’s not,” I replied, “and I do apologize. You want to know why I became a vampire. Well, then.” I looked straight into his eyes. “It was a choice, my choice, and something I very much wanted at the time. I don’t really regret it either.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  “Because I was afraid of what could happen if I didn’t,” I said bleakly. “Someone I loved dearly died of AIDS, and I lost a number of friends to it as well. I was terrified of that happening to me.”

  “Were you terribly promiscuous, Simon?” Giles asked gently.

  “No, I never have been,” I said, “but I wanted to cut out the risk. AIDS can’t kill a vampire.”

  “So it’s that simple.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I suppose I can understand that,” Giles said. He was taking this all a lot more calmly than I had had any reason to hope.

  He set his wine glass down on the coffee table. “How does being a vampire affect your abilities to, er, well, you know.” He turned a bit pink.

  “Not in the least,” I said. “Everything works just as it should.”

  “I see,” he said, his face even pinker. “Well, then.”

  “Well, what?” I said softly. “Does this change how you feel about me, Giles, now that you know the truth?”

  He remained silent just long enough that I was preparing myself for the worst, but finally he spoke. “Simon, have you ever seen the movie Some Like It Hot?”

  Puzzled, I nodded. “Yes, many times.”

  “Do you remember the last line of the movie, Simon? What Joe E. Brown says to Jack Lemmon, when Jack tells him he’s really a man?”

  “Yes,” I said, then I quoted, “ ’Nobody’s perfect’ .”

  “Exactly,” Giles said, smiling at me.

  He stood up from the couch and held out his hand. I took it and I stood up beside him.

  He moved away, and I watched him anxiously. He stopped in the hallway and turned around. Slowly he beckoned for me to follow him.

  He turned and began to walk up the stairs.

  In that moment, I felt like a vampire from the old days. I could have flown.

  AFTERWORD

  For those readers interested in finding out more about medieval food, I have included a bibliography of resources, both print and electronic. In addition I offer recipes for two of the dishes Totsye Titchmarsh intended to serve at the fatal dinner in Baked to Death.

  MEDIEVAL RECIPES

  Lamb Stew

  (From Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Buder. Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modem Cooks, 2nd ed. [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996], recipe 79.)

  Ingredients

  1½ -2 lbs stewing lamb

  2 medium onions, minced

  1 tbsp minced parsley

  1 tsp each fresh thyme, rosemary, savory or ½ tsp dried

  ½ tsp each ground ginger, coriander

  salt to taste


  1½ -2 cups chicken broth

  1 cup white wine

  1 egg

  juice of ½ lemon (or 1 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar)

  optional: pinch saffron

  Cut lamb into pieces 2-inches square and put in an enameled, pyrex, or nonstick cooking pot. Add onions, herbs, and spices; cover with wine and broth. Simmer for 45 minutes, covered. Beat egg with lemon juice or vinegar; pour a little of the hot (but not boiling) sauce into this mixture, stirring, then add this to the contents of the pot, off the heat Stir over very low heat to thicken, taking care not to let it boil after the egg is added.

  Fried fig Pastries (serves six)

  (From Maggie Black, The Medieval Cookbook [New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992, reprinted 1999], pp. 66-67.)

  Ingredients

  450 g/1 lb dried figs, soaked, drained and minced (reserve the soaking liquid)

  “Powder fort” mixture made with ½ tsp each ground ginger and cloves

  pinch of black pepper

  ½ tsp dried saffron strands moistened with fig-soaking liquid

  ½ tsp salt

  1 egg, separated, and 1 egg white

  6-7 sheets filo or strudel pastry

  Oil for frying

  About 225 ml/8 fl oz/1 cup warmed clear honey (optional)

  In a food processor combine the minced figs, spices and saffron, salt, and egg yolk.

  Beat the egg white until liquid. Lightly brush the top sheet of pastry with egg white. Mark the short side of the pastry sheet at 7.5-cm/3-inch intervals. Then cut the sheet into strips 7.5-cm/3- inches wide. Put a dab of fig mixture on the end of one sheet and roll the strip up like a mini-Swiss roll. Pinch the ends to seal in the fig mixture.

  Repeat this process until you have used all the fig mixture; remember to brush every pastry sheet with egg white before cutting it into strips.

  Fry the rolls, a few at a time, in deep or shallow oil, as you prefer. Serve them with warmed honey spooned over if you like a very sweet sauce.