Pure Dead Batty

by Debi Gliori

  Tug, went the thread, and then again, twice: Tug, tug.

  “Flora—you seem miles away. Listen, there is one way, and one way only. Do I really need to spell out how it has to be done?”

  Flora stared at Death in some confusion and then forced her thoughts into order. “No. I understand,” she whispered. “Someone has to bring the stone to your realm.”

  Death nodded, and then slowly raised his eyebrows, indicating that he was waiting for her to finish. In a tone awash with sadness, Flora said, “Someone not like me. Someone … mortal.”

  Death had left shortly afterward, and Flora had lain awake for hours, her eyes fixed on the starry canopy overhead. All night long the thread had kicked and twitched, calling to her, tugging at her, trying to pull her back. But whoever was at the other end lacked the strength to reel her in. Whoever held the thread, it certainly wasn’t Strega-Nonna. As night turned to morning a faint suspicion was beginning to form at the back of Mrs. McLachlan’s mind; a faint suspicion that grew stronger with each passing minute; a faint suspicion coupled now with a feeling of acute dread. For, if her hunch was correct, the person on the other end wasn’t reeling her in, wasn’t providing her with the only means to escape the island. No, Mrs. McLachlan decided, the person on the other end was following the thread toward her; was using it exactly like the trail of breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel; was unwittingly ruining any hope of escape for both herself and Mrs. McLachlan. Flora’s mind shrieked to a standstill. “Herself?” she demanded. Oh, yes, her mind replied. Herself. As in—

  Just then, their shadows cast across the sand by the watery sunlight, Damp and Vesper floated into view.

  Just Desserts

  Drawn by the smell of vanilla, Titus found himself standing in the kitchen before his brain had woken up properly. A vast stainless-steel mixer sat at his accustomed place at the table, gobbets of cake mix dotted between it and the sink. Someone appeared to have made an attempt to wash dishes and then given up halfway through. The door to the garden stood wide open, and judging by the kitchen temperature, had stood open for some time. Apart from the tantalizing smells wafting across from a freshly baked cherry cake cooling on a rack by the range, the room seemed to have been abandoned for some time. Shivering, Titus crossed the kitchen, closed the garden door, and rewarded himself with a thin sliver of cherry cake for his efforts. Instantly his brain booted up. There. That was better. Food was all that was required. Yum, he thought, nibbling a second slice—well, perhaps more of a slab than a slice, he amended, but hey, I no longer have the modest appetite of a boy. Pleased with this thought, Titus paused to admire his reflection in the side of a copper pan hanging over the range.

  Yup. Coming along nicely, he decided, rubbing a hand over his rough chin. Not sure I can cope with Dad’s electric razor, though—it’s way too vicious. Shivering slightly, he comforted himself with a third wedge of cake. He needed to talk to Pandora. In fact he would have done so, followed up on the whole chilling photos-of-demons scenario last night except …

  Except last night he’d been too embarrassed to go anywhere near his sister, hadn’t he? Pandora stumbling across his computer file of beautiful women was as bad as having her barge in on him while he was in the shower. Hmmm. More cake required, he decided, cramming a fourth slice into his mouth. So lost in thought was he that he didn’t realize he had company until Ffup slapped him on the back and burst out laughing as he choked, gagged, and spat a cherry across the kitchen.

  “Don’t do that!” he roared at the unabashed dragon. “You moron—you could’ve killed me.”

  Unimpressed, Ffup rolled her eyes and leaned over to breathe fishy fumes into Titus’s face.

  “And go brush your teeth, why don’t you?” he snapped, then immediately regretted his outburst.

  The dragon gazed at him with a wounded expression. Her golden eyes pooled with tears and her wings drooped dejectedly. “Thought I was supposed to be the beastly one around here,” she mumbled, turning her attention to the fridge and its contents. Clanking sounds came from its interior as she hunted in vain for something edible within. Keen to make amends, Titus carved another slab of cake and held it out to Ffup. She turned round and peered down her nostrils at the peace offering. Locking eyes with Titus and emitting a warning puff of flame, she demanded shrilly, “When will you get it through your fat head? I. Don’t. Do. Carbs. Ever. I want to fit into my size double D wedding gown, remember? Even if I do happen to be ‘with egg.’ ”

  “With egg?” Titus stared at Ffup in some confusion.

  “Oh, puhlease,” she groaned. “With egg, as in ‘with bun in oven.’ In the pudding club? Gravid? Expectantly expecting? Parous? And I’m not talking foreign capitals, either.”

  “You’re pregnant? Again?”

  “Yurrrrgh.” Ffup slapped a paw against her forehead. “Dear boy—I was trying to avoid that word. Such an ugly term for such an exalted state. And yes. Since you mention it. Yes. Again. Have you got a problem with that?”

  Titus was spared the embarrassment of replying by a trio of rings from the doorbell followed immediately by a loud pounding on the front door. As he went to answer the summons, the sound of footsteps approaching from the kitchen garden made him spin round just as Minty ran into the kitchen in a state of alarm. Catching sight of the nanny, Ffup stifled a shriek of terror and bolted for the dungeons via the wine cellar, splashing noisily through the freezer-melt from Strega-Nonna’s slow thaw.

  “Oh, thank God you’re here,” Minty gasped. “I simply didn’t know what to do. I can’t find Damp anywhere.” She clutched Titus’s arm. “There’s a police car parked outside—what’s going on?” Suddenly they both became aware of the sound of raised voices.

  “Do you really have to go around hammering on people’s doors? Officer?” Latch’s voice was clipped and decidedly unfriendly. To the reddening ears of Detective Sergeant Waters, it was the kind of voice that held no promise of a cup of tea in the offing; which was a great pity since the wind-chill factor here on the shores of Lochnagargoyle, coupled with the fact that it was almost time for elevenses, meant that a cup of tea would have been just the thing to make a policeman’s life slightly more bearable.

  Suppressing a shiver, the policeman tried to inch forward into the shelter of StregaSchloss, only to find his way firmly barred by the arm of the Borgias’ officious employee, old whatshisname. Lock? Launch? Snitch? Whatever. Right, DS Waters decided, time to take the gloves off. “I have to caution you, sir,” he began, encouraged by a nod from DCI McIntosh who, along with the witness, was still enjoying the warmth inside the police car. “We are presently in possession of a search warrant and I must inform you that any persons obstructing officers of the law in the course of their enquiries relating to a murder investig—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Latch interrupted, catching sight of the passenger huddled in the rear of the police car. “Marie Bain. I should have known. Like a dog returning to its vomit. You’d better come in, Officer. All of you. No point in standing freezing on the doorstep.” And turning his back on the policeman, the butler stalked away down the corridor, heading for the kitchen.

  “It’s—it’s as if she just vanished into thin air,” Minty wailed, her hands clinging to the cup of tea Titus had placed in front of her. This hospitality had not been extended to the two policemen, nor to Marie Bain, who was walking round the kitchen in the hope of jogging her memory regarding the night of Mrs. McLachlan’s disappearance.

  “Knives, Ms. Bain?” the weasel-faced DCI suggested, ignoring Minty completely and opening a cutlery drawer to rattle its contents with unnecessary vigor. “Just have a wee squint and tell me if you’re aware of any that might be missing.”

  “Knives?” Minty’s voice was strained with the effort of not screaming out loud. “You’re carefully counting the silver while right under your noses a tiny child has gone missing? How can you think of cutlery at a time like this? Who cares what items of silver have gone AWOL—?”

 
Latch crossed the kitchen. Bending over close to her ear and speaking very quietly, he placed a hand on her shoulder and another under her elbow, drawing her gently to her feet. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment,” he said in a manner indicating that this wasn’t a request but a statement of fact, and clasping Minty’s arm, he propelled her out of the kitchen.

  Marie Bain stood in the center of the room, her expression radiating malice and her eyes darting around the kitchen until finally they alighted on the racks of baking cooling by the range. “Ptui,” she spat, prodding Minty’s half-devored cherry cake with an outstretched finger. “Eet ees like falling off ze lurg, zis. I could do zees with my eyes shut.”

  To Titus’s horror, she excavated a fingerful of the warm center of the cake, sniffed it, and with a grimace of disgust, flung it into the sink.

  “Too soft,” she decided. “Ees not cooked prrroperly, zat. I show you how eet ees done, moi. Last year, before I go on my vacances, I make ze perrrfect Christmas cake for zees un-grrrateful people. Of course, zey not eat my cake. Zey preferrr to eat Meesis Macacklong’s Dundee cake instead. So mine languish in ze cupboard.…” Her voice now came from the pantry, accompanied by thumps and clunks as she hunted through the canning jars and cake tins piled high on the shelves.

  “Could we stick to the point, Miss, er … Ban?” DS Waters tried and failed to catch the eye of his colleague, who was examining his fingernails with every evidence of utter fascination.

  “Here eet ees,” Marie Bain pronounced, emerging once more clutching a small rusting cake tin that she prised apart, dumping its contents onto the table in front of Titus. Like a macabre version of pass-the-parcel, the object she’d decanted from the cake tin was wrapped in several stained layers of tinfoil; underneath lay drifts of greaseproof paper which had not only failed to live up to their name, but also neglected to ward off bacterial and fungal invasions of the cake itself. This, once fully unwrapped, revealed itself to be a sunken green disk of spectacular unwholesomeness. It emitted a reek of rotting fruit, which Marie Bain inhaled ecstatically before lurching toward the knife drawer to rake through its contents.

  “At last,” muttered DCI McIntosh, distracted from the examination of his manicure by the prospect of progress on the knife-as-murder-weapon front.

  However, Marie Bain was not to be thwarted by anything as trivial as evidence-gathering. She spun back to the table, her eyes aglitter, an eerie smile hovering across her lips and a vast chopping knife clutched in both her trembling hands. Titus sprang back from the table just in time, as Marie Bain brought the knife thudding down into her antique cake.

  As DS Waters was later to confirm, at this stage the cake was giving every indication that the correct thing to do now was to transfer it straight from the table into the compost bucket. A brownish-green ooze leaked out from the site of the knife wound, and the detective was sure that he saw a bubble appear on the surface of the cake—some vapor or gas trapped deep within. Slowly the cake slumped toward its center, as if Marie Bain had delivered it a death blow. With a stubbornness that was ultimately to prove fatal, the cook stabbed her cake once more and thus succeeded in cutting herself a sliver studded with what looked like sections of tar-stained eyeballs.

  “Eees golden cherrries,” she explained, disappointed that there appeared to be no takers for this culinary delight. Like a determined salesperson, she began to extol the virtues of her cake, pausing only to pick mold off its sunken surface before cramming gobbets of it into her mouth. “Ahhh … ees délicieux, zis. And so mature, non? All ze best things in zis worrrld are mature, are zey not?”

  To DCI McIntosh’s acute consternation, Marie Bain sidled in his direction, batted her eyelashes, and leered at him. Poking a final morsel between her lips, she spun in a little circle before catching her heel in a crack between the flagstones. She stumbled, coughed, and clutched at the DCI for support. Gagging and choking, she flung her arms around the policeman’s neck, gazing beseechingly up into his face as she tried and failed to draw air past the golden cherry lodged tightly in her throat. Each attempt only drew the little sphere deeper, until it was wedged so tightly in her airway that only an emergency tracheotomy could possibly have saved her life. Repeated and increasingly desperate endeavors by DCI McIntosh to perform the Heimlich maneuver resulted only in the postmortem discovery that he’d managed to break two of Marie Bain’s ribs in his efforts to stop her suffocating.

  Throughout it all, Titus sat statue-still, frozen with horror and oblivious to the twin tracks of tears that rolled down his ashen face. After what felt like several lifetimes, DCI McIntosh lowered Marie Bain’s lifeless body to the floor and stood up. The policeman was holding his hands out as if uncertain what to do next; his mouth opening and closing, words spilling forth, words that refused to form the syllables and phrases of police procedure. Only then did Titus stand up and walk shakily round to where Marie Bain lay on the stone floor. Taking a deep breath, he rushed across the kitchen and was violently sick out of the back door.

  A Made Man

  Luciano lay on his bunk in the darkness before dawn, struggling to expunge the memory of the previous day’s events. Try as he might, he could not erase the vision of the prisoner in the dinner line who’d been fatally gagged with a spoon. As this unfortunate man had lain there, drowning in his own blood, all hell had broken loose. Voices had roared orders over the P.A. system; what had seemed like hundreds of prison guards had descended on the dining hall, their truncheons raised, their boots lashing out—and for a short while, in the noise and pandemonium, Luciano had been convinced that he was next in line to be murdered. Jostled and shoved in a mass of sweating prisoners, herded along a corridor, bawled at by purple-faced brutes, and pressure-hosed into the showers for the second time in an hour, Luciano felt himself turn numb and mute with fear. Naked and shivering, he stood in line to be strip-searched and nearly kissed his captors out of sheer gratitude when he was finally reissued gray prison clothes three sizes too large.

  After what seemed like an age he had been frog-marched to a cell and instructed to lie down on the topmost of one of the two bunk beds. Lights went out at ten o’clock, and in the pale glow of the moon shining in through his barred window, Luciano saw the lumpen shadows of his cell-mates moving down below. It proved to be impossible not to overhear their muttered conversation, but mercifully ninety percent of this was beyond understanding, mainly because it was conducted in the broadest of Glaswegian accents. Luciano tried to sleep, to stop up his ears against the voices, to count sheep, to walk round the perimeter of StregaSchloss in his imagination, and finally to compose a letter to his beloved wife inside his head—all to no avail.

  From below came the scratch of a match being struck, a hiss, and then the unmistakable smell of burning tobacco. Luciano’s eyes sprang open. Honestly—this was insufferable. His head pounded, his heartbeat raced, and he sat upright, on the point of demanding that the smoker extinguish his cigarette immediately, when he caught sight of who it was smiling up at him, a little burning ember dangling from his lips.

  I’m going to die, he decided as his bunk shuddered and tipped to one side. Big Brian’s head appeared beside Luciano’s pillow, an expression of glee just visible in the moonlight.

  “It’s the wee man,” Malky observed from the bunk opposite, reclining like a shrunken emperor. He released a trickle of smoke from both nostrils and curled his lips upward, thus exposing his pointy teeth to maximum effect. “You didnae even say thanks for shutting up yon pesky wee clipe, eh no? After a’ they hours youse spent, Big Brian, sharpening yon spoon youse nicked frae the kitchens.” Malky tutted, took a deep drag from his cigarette, and shrugged. “Here’s tae us,” he intoned cheerily, producing a plastic water bottle from under his pillow. “Wha’s like us?” he demanded, tilting the bottle to one side and holding it up to the light before adding, “Gie few and they’re a’ deid.” Taking a healthy swig, he stood up and passed the bottle to Big Brian as he came across to join in the fun at Luciano’s
bedside.

  “Aye, Wee Man. You’re a bit of a joker, eh no?” he demanded, his breath rank with the smell of some close cousin to paint stripper. “Youse really had us gawn there wi’ all yer talk aboot furrin diseases. Fir a wee while, Big Brian here thought he wis dee’n.” Beside him, Big Brian swilled a large mouthful from the bottle, gargled repulsively, swallowed and then let rip with a belch that made the bars on the window rattle. “Hing oan, Big Brian,” Malky commanded, snatching the bottle back and, to Luciano’s stunned amazement, passing it up to him. “Leave a wee swally for ma friend here, eh? Aye. See we didnae ken youse were a made man, eh no?” Malky’s smile was ingratiating, his entire body language radiating submission to a bigger threat than himself. “See, no one telt me that youse were that well-connected. ’F I’d kent, ah’d’ve no gied you a hard time back in they cells under the High Court, eh no?”

  “Er, no. I mean, yes. I mean, aye,” Luciano managed to bleat, his mind racing ahead of his vocal cords. What on earth? And, more important, what was he supposed to do with this bottle of raw alcohol? The answer to both questions was immediate.

  “G’wan, Don Borgia. Tek a wee dram. Let’s have a wee drink and pit the past behint us. No harm done, eh no?”

  Don Borgia? Don Lucifer di S’Embowelli Borgia? Luciano’s eyes watered. Aghast as he was to be mistaken for his vile half brother, he wasn’t suicidally minded enough to point out to Malky the error of his ways.

  At least, not yet.

  Fixing what he fervently hoped was an inscrutable expression on his face, Luciano tipped his head back, took a deep pull on the bottle, and by sheer willpower forced himself to swallow without choking.