Death by Soup

by David MacPhail

  “That boy is a wee bit psychic, if you ask me,” said Grandad. “He can tell it is haunted. Ask him who she was, the woman.”

  “The lady, you say?” As in, not a lady.

  The porter leant even closer, his voice but a whisper. “It was Lord Brightburgh’s wife. The Lady Brightburgh. I am surprised you did not hear about it. It was in the newspapers. She managed the whole estate. Without her it all went kaputt. It was not long afterwards that Lord Brightburgh went bankrupt and had to sell it all. He lost everything, the poor man. They never had any children, so he is the very last in his line.”

  A bell ding in reception made the porter’s ears prick up. “Oh, I have to go.” He rushed inside in a panic.

  “Hmm…” I stared at the ruins. “I wonder.”

  “Lady Brightburgh could be the Grey Lady,” said Grandad. “All I know is, she is fairly keen on showing me something. It could be important. It might have something to do with what’s going on.”

  “We’ll go up there later,” I agreed. But for now I was hungry and needed to eat.

  “Are you sure you want to eat anything from this place?” Grandad asked as he followed me inside. “It might be poisoned.”

  I was so hungry I didn’t even think that would stop me. It was easy to poison soup. A murderer could easily dissolve a substance into liquid. It wasn’t so easy to poison a bacon roll, of which I was planning to eat many. Anyhow, Starkey wasn’t the only person to have the soup, but he was the only one poisoned, which meant that he was targeted specifically. As we passed the reception, I noticed Mr Shand sitting miserably behind the desk being berated by Mrs Shand.

  Funnily enough I’d just been thinking about Shand. The hotel was obviously in trouble, maybe even close to being shut down. Was it possible that he wanted it to close? As for the silver bell, was it possible he faked the break in and stole it himself, hoping for a big insurance payout?

  In the dining room, Mum had found a table. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone.

  Chapter 11

  The Big Cheese

  “Oh, great!” Grandad tutted. “Is there no escaping that old bat!”

  Mrs Hackenbottom sat with Mum at our table, looking as nosy as ever.

  “Morning,” I mumbled, sitting down. I knocked my knee against the table leg, which sent a butter knife clattering off the plate and over the edge. Mrs Hackenbottom jerked her wrist and snatched it before it hit the ground.

  “Good morning,” she said, flipping the knife round, then using it to scoop up a huge pat of butter and smear it on a piece of toast. The fact that she and a number of other diners were stuffing their faces without frothing at the mouth was an encouraging sign. “You know,” she bit off a chunk and waved the rest of the toast at me, “your mother is a lovely woman, but she’s quite distant.”

  I glanced at Mum. Her eyes were closed, and her face was stuck with that vacant grin of hers.

  Mrs Hackenbottom continued. “She hasn’t spoken to me once. I was beginning to think she’d been poisoned too.”

  The mere mention of the p-word was enough to turn a few nervous heads in the room. The horrible grating sound of her voice probably didn’t help.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “She does this every morning. She’s earth-healing.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Aye!” Grandad chipped in. “I sometimes cannot believe my son married this fruitcake.” I glared at Grandad, who held up his hands. “I love her to bits though.”

  I turned back to Mrs Hackenbottom. “It’s a kind of meditating. You picture the world, and then you imagine it slowly healing itself.”

  For once, Mrs Hackenbottom didn’t quite know what to say.

  I took my chance to flag down the waiter, Parek. “Excuse me!”

  Parek seemed flustered, just as flustered as his twin brother had been about five minutes earlier. “Sorry,” he panted, “we’re short-staffed. We’re always short-staffed.”

  “Listen carefully,” I said. “I’ll have seven bacon rolls, please.”

  “Is that all?” he asked, in a sarcastic tone.

  “You’re right. I’ll take eight just to be sure.”

  Grandad chortled. “That is one hungry boy.”

  I rubbed my hands and tucked in my napkin. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

  Mrs Hackenbottom stared at me for a moment, chewing on her toast. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We should investigate the other guests.” She nodded at a couple sitting at the table in the corner. Quiet, middle-aged, they looked harmless. “That’s Mr and Mrs Bullard from Basingstoke.” Then she turned and motioned towards a woman sitting on her own reading a birdwatching book, a pair of binoculars propped up beside her on the table. “That lady is called Mrs Neasden, and she’s from Devon. Up here to gaze at herons or something. There’s also a couple from Fife, but they’re leaving.”

  Apart from that, not many other guests remained, except Benedict Ravensbury and Chase Whitton, who weren’t at their table, and the party of German golfers on holiday.

  Grandad scoffed. “I am not staying here listening to her. I am going to sit with someone else.”

  He wandered over to Mrs Neasden’s table and plonked himself down on an empty chair next to her. “Hello!”

  Mrs Neasden didn’t respond, of course. She was halfway through her kippers.

  Ravensbury entered, fidgeting with his cuffs. He combed back a lock of hair from his forehead, then flagged down Parek. “Excuse me, have you seen my friend, Ms Whitton? She isn’t in her room.”

  I eyed their table. The place settings hadn’t been touched. The waiter shrugged and rushed off to the kitchen, while Ravensbury glanced about nervously and then left the dining room.

  I glanced meaningfully over at Grandad.

  “I bet she’s snooping around somewhere,” he said.

  “I bet she is,” I muttered back. And I intended to find out why. I whipped off my napkin and stood up.

  “What’s that?” said Mrs Hackenbottom. “Where are you off to?”

  “HEEAALL THE WORRRLLLLD!” Mum wailed through her vacant grin.

  “The bathroom,” I lied, and nodded Grandad towards the door.

  Outside in the lobby, I watched Ravensbury traipse up the steps towards the bedrooms. I paused there for a second, feeling the prickles on my skin again – there was a definite draught out here, and it was coming from somewhere behind the stairs.

  “What is it, son?” asked Grandad, reading my expression.

  Following my instincts, I slipped down the corridor behind the staircase. There were no bedrooms down here, just a series of doors marked ‘PRIVATE’. One of the doors was slightly ajar. I raised my hand towards the crack, feeling cold air seep out from inside. This was definitely where the draught was coming from.

  I creaked the door open. It was pitch black inside, and dusty smelling. A set of worn stone steps led downwards into blackness.

  Grandad shivered. “I hate cellars. They are spooky.” Which was a bit rich given that he was the spook.

  I yanked a cord that was hanging down and a light came on, a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling. The walls were stark and cold. “After you,” said Grandad, hanging back.

  “Some ghost you are,” I muttered, and gingerly stepped down towards the foot of the stairs.

  At the bottom, it looked as if a set of shelves had toppled over, as there was a pile of debris on the floor: splinters of broken wood and a huge, round, buff-coloured object. I spotted something lying underneath, a shape. And then, with a growing sense of dread, I realised it wasn’t something but someone.

  I then saw a slender wrist hanging limply, an ankle sticking out, and finally some tendrils of curly dark hair and emerald green fabric.

  It was Chase Whitton, her face and upper body hidden underneath the large object on top of her. What was that? It was too round for a cardboard box, and its surface was smoother. Whatever it was, it was large and extremely heavy. It had crushed the poor woman underneath.
r />   “Cheese wheel,” said Grandad. “I used to sell them to restaurants from my cash and carry.”

  “Cheese what?” I asked.

  “A massive wheel of cheese,” he clarified.

  I leant down and pressed my thumb against her wrist. There was no pulse, and her skin was as cold as stone.

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  “I can see that,” replied Grandad.

  I gazed up to see him staring into space just above the body. He was watching something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He turned his gaze on me and then blinked. Now I could see it too.

  Or rather her, Chase Whitton. Well, her ghost, anyway. She couldn’t see us, and all we saw was an imprint of her last moments.

  She whisked around, facing the direction the shelves had toppled from. Her eyes widened with shock and fear. “You!” she cried. Then she held her arms up, apparently to protect her face. “No, NOOOO!” She disappeared, only to reappear a second later and repeat the whole scene again.

  “She is nothing but a phantom; like a recording, played over and over,” said Grandad.

  I gazed down at the wreckage on the floor. Someone had deliberately pushed over the shelves and crushed her to death with a massive wheel of cheese. What was it about this place and food? I was just starting to think about who that someone could be when there came a horrible high-pitched scream behind me.

  I whirled round to see Mrs Shand at the top of the stairs. She was trembling so much her beehive was quaking, with bits of hair falling out of place. One hand covered her mouth, the other she raised in the air and pointed, direct and accusing, straight at me, as she cried out:

  “MURDERER!”

  Chapter 12

  The Terrible Twins

  The grandfather clock chimed a quarter to the hour. The Brightburgh Manor library was at the back of the house, looking out onto the gardens, with rows of walnut cabinets lined with old books. DI Fallon glared down at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows. He was sitting high up behind an antique desk. I, meanwhile, was squashed into the tiniest chair imaginable. It looked like a chair for a toddler. I could have sworn he’d chosen it deliberately to make me look ridiculous.

  I held up my hands. “I’m the first to admit, it doesn’t look good.”

  “No, laddie, it doesn’t,” he replied.

  “Maybe you should just tell him everything,” said Grandad, who was floating around near the window.

  But why should I do that? I was already under enough suspicion. It would just make me look like the chief suspect. Fallon was lazy, I could tell. Lazy enough to pin the murders on me? I didn’t want to test him.

  “Look, she was cold when I found her,” I said to Fallon. “She’d been dead for a while, a few hours maybe.” By my reckoning, it must have happened some time after the police left and everyone went to bed, and before the hotel began to wake up.

  “Aye,” he said. “That’s true. But you could have murdered her, then returned to the crime scene later to pretend you found her.”

  “He has got a point,” chirped Grandad. I glowered at him. Wasn’t he supposed to be on my side?

  “I’m sharing a room with my granny,” I insisted. “I couldn’t have left without her noticing.” Which wasn’t actually true, I’d already done it. But coming from the mouth of an eleven year old it sounded believable.

  “Oh no?” One of Fallon’s bushy ginger eyebrows rose. “By the way, we are now treating the death of the man at dinner last night as suspicious too.”

  About time, I thought. They should’ve been treating it as suspicious from the off. The only problem – and it was a pretty humungous one – was that all that suspicion seemed to be pointing in my direction.

  “Look, that was nothing to do with me, apart from the fact I was sitting at the next table,” I said.

  “Exactly!” he declared. “You were sitting right next to him, perfectly positioned. You know, if you are innocent, then you have a knack of showing up at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. And let me tell you,” he leant forward, “I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

  “Tch! Charming!” said Grandad.

  Fallon crooked his head, inspecting my neck. “Here, you don’t wear hooded tops, do you?”

  The truth was that sometimes I did, but I got the feeling that being honest wouldn’t do me any favours, so I lied. “No, never. Wouldn’t be seen dead in one.”

  “Good. Cos let me tell you something, as soon as you start wearing hooded tops it’s a slippery slope. One moment you’re in a shop buying a hoodie, next thing you know, you’re skipping school, loitering in public places, kicking in windows…”

  “What is it with this guy and hooded tops?” asked Grandad.

  “And then,” Fallon continued, “you’re just a short step away from robbing old ladies, and car-jackings, and bank heists, and the very worst crimes imaginable.”

  Grandad puffed out his cheeks. “This guy is absolutely nuts.”

  Fallon leaned back and tapped his pen on the desk. “But, I’ve got nothing solid on you. Not yet anyway. You can go, for now. But remember…” He jabbed two fingers towards his own eyes, then turned them round and jabbed them at me. “I’m watching you, laddie!”

  And he wasn’t wrong. He watched me intensely, glared at me in fact, as I tried, and failed, to dislodge myself from the tiny chair. He kept watching as I gave up and waddled, half-bent, out of the door with the daft toddler chair still lodged on my rear end.

  “Well, he cannot complain, you were glued to your seat throughout,” quipped Grandad.

  “Oh, hilarious.” I shot him a look. It took me about five minutes to prise myself out of the thing. Grandad just laughed the whole time.

  In reception, forensic officers wearing white head-to-toe uniforms were scuttling between the front door, the cellar and the dining room. I joined Mum and Granny, who were both standing around and looking on along with everyone else. I scanned the faces. Anxious guests and staff hanging about in small groups, mumbling their worries to each other.

  Meanwhile, Mr Bullard and his wife were in Shand’s face, shouting, “We’re leaving! We’re leaving this instant!” Their bags were piled at their feet.

  Shand’s jacket was off, hanging on the back of a chair nearby. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves and there were patches of sweat under his arms. He was shuffling nervously, waving them down with his hands. “Please! Please!”

  “No, we won’t stay here a moment longer!” Bullard barked. “People dropping like flies, the food clearly poisoned, burglaries in the middle of the night! Why on earth would we want to stay?”

  “Maybe we should go too?” I said to Mum. No one would blame me for walking away from this, I thought, except perhaps whoever sent the fake Yummy Cola letter. They wanted me here for a reason, I just didn’t know what it was yet.

  “Whit!” croaked Granny, rolling up her sleeves. “This is just gettin’ interesting!”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of leaving,” replied Mum. “These people need my healing energies around the place.”

  The party of German golfers were the only ones who looked like they were having a good time. Judging by the notepads and pens they were scribbling on, they seemed to think they were part of some kind of murder mystery weekend. They were comparing notes and arguing over who they thought the murderer was. Worryingly, three of them were pointing their pens at me. Boy, I thought, I’m going to have to solve this case, and solve it fast!

  “Please!” shouted Shand, coming out from behind the desk and raising his voice so that everyone could hear. “I’m… I’m afraid that the police have told us no one is allowed to leave. You’re free to go about the hotel, and the village, but no further.”

  There was an audible gasp, followed by a hubbub as the crowd all gathered round to gossip.

  The chef appeared. This time he was armed with a garlic press. He prowled around the lobby, waving his finger at people randomly. “The
re’s nothing wrong with my food! Understand?” he kept saying.

  “If I could just taste some,” I said, “I might be able to confirm that. Perhaps a boiled egg or a sausage?” By this point, I was so hungry that no amount of poison in the world would stop me eating something.

  The chef glared at me, his eye twitching. Granny glared back at him, and his garlic press, then bowed respectfully, as if he was a great opponent. I clearly wasn’t going to get that sausage any time soon.

  Parek the waiter came bounding into the hall, panting and wiping sweat from his brow. Shand beckoned him over. “Parek, come here!”

  I took the chance to do a bit more digging and tapped Shand on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but do you perhaps have any enemies at all? Anyone who might want to cause you, or the hotel, some trouble?”

  He glared at me, insulted. “How dare you! Of course I don’t. I’m actually very well liked, ask anyone.”

  “Ha!” Parek shot him a look, one that I could only describe as murderous.

  “Could you please find your brother, Arek,” said Shand to the waiter, tersely. “Mr Bullard’s bags need to go back up to his room.”

  The waiter scowled and gave Shand one final death-like stare before turning and sprinting through the back, loosening his tie as he went.

  I whispered at Grandad, “Did you see that look the waiter gave Shand?”

  “I think we should check him out, and his brother as well. Twins are suspicious.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Quick!” I made to follow the waiter down the corridor behind the kitchens.

  “Hey!” said Grandad, halting to crane his neck back towards reception. “Look at Mrs Hackenbottom. What’s the old bat doing now?”

  I stepped back and carefully poked my head around the wall to see the old lady crawling on all fours behind the reception desk. She didn’t think anyone else could see her, but she didn’t reckon on me. She reached her arm up towards Shand’s jacket, which was hanging over the chair.