by Alice Duncan
“Interesting. So you used to have a bright red personality, and now you have a bright yellow personality?”
Harold rolled his eyes. Sam does the same thing a lot. “Something like that.”
“But what are you doing opening the door? Where in the world is Featherstone?”
“For the love of God, don’t just stand there interrogating me!” Harold snapped. “I opened the damned door so you could come inside.” And darned if he didn’t take me by the arm and yank me indoors.
“Goodness sakes! You’re a bit miffy today, aren’t you?”
“I’m a lot miffy today, and goodness has nothing to do with it,” he chuffed, shutting the door behind me. It closed with a sound that will always and forever remind me of money: solidly. No slamming, no crashing, no squeaking, no clinking; just a good, solid, quiet clunk. The sound of money.
“What’s wrong, Harold? You’re not mad at me for some reason, are you?”
“Good God, no!”
“Well, I’m glad, but what the heck’s the matter?” Harold had shoved my sleeve out of whack when he’d pulled me inside, so I smoothed it down again. It wasn’t like Harold to be irrational and irritable, or to manhandle people. He had a temper, as do we all, but I’d never known him to get into a tizzy. Tizziness was his mother’s specialty, not his.
“There was an incident here today,” he said, not clearing up the matter one little bit.
“An incident? What kind of incident? Calm down, Harold, and just tell me about it.”
Wiping his brow with a hastily-grabbed-from-a-pocket handkerchief, Harold sucked in a huge breath. “I’m sorry, Daisy. But Featherstone and the new chauffeur were injured, and your poor aunt’s been busy all morning making tisanes for my idiot mother and cold compresses for poor Featherstone’s bruised knee and O’Hara’s head. Doctor Benjamin just left. He said the knee’s not broken, but it’s definitely strained, and poor Featherstone will have to take it easy for a few days. No butlering for him for a while. At least O’Hara doesn’t have a concussion, according to the doctor.”
“Good Lord!”
“The good Lord has nothing to do with it, either, if there is one, which I doubt, but don’t tell Del I said so.”
“Del already knows,” I told him. It was true. Del Farrington, Harold’s life partner (sort of like Ma and Pa are life partners, if you know what I mean) was a strict Roman Catholic and attended Saint Andrews Catholic Church every Sunday. I’m not sure what the Roman Catholic Church might have to say about Del and Harold being life partners, but I also don’t care. I’ve held a grudge against the Catholic Church ever since Sam told me his parents disapproved of me because I’m not a Catholic. “Now tell me what the heck is going on, Harold Kincaid!”
“Sit here,” Harold said, shoving me onto a magnificent hall bench, the seat of which had been upholstered in a beautiful brocade fabric. I felt almost as if I were desecrating it by putting my hoi-polloi-ish bottom on it. But my bottom was clothed gorgeously—because I’m a crackerjack seamstress—so I don’t suppose I should have even entertained the thought. Besides, the bench wouldn’t care anyway.
Harold sat next to me, sprawling, his legs stretched out, his head tilted back, and his arms dangling. This posture was most unlike him.
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Aunt Vi’s Beef Stew with Dumplings
Stew Ingredients:
5-pound aitchbone (cheap piece of beef for stewing or braising)
4 cups potatoes chopped into one-inch cubes
1 cup turnips chopped into one-inch cubes
1 cup carrots chopped into one-inch pieces
1 small onion, chopped
½ cup flour
Salt
Pepper
Preparation for Stew:
Remove beef from bone and cut into one and one-half-inch cubes. Wipe beef, sprinkle with salt and pepper and dredge with flour.
Cut some of the fat in small pieces and try out (fry) in iron frying pan. Add meat and stir constantly so that the surface is quickly seared. When well browned, put in kettle.
Rinse frying pan with boiling water, making sure to save all the flavorful bits and pieces.
Add remaining fat to meat along with bones sawed in pieces; cover with boiling water and boil five minutes. Then cook at a lower temperature until beef is tender (approximately 3 hours).
Add carrots, turnips and onion along with salt and pepper during the last hour of cooking.
Parboil potatoes for 5 minutes and add to stew 15 minutes before removing kettle from fire.
Remove bones, large pieces of fat, and then skim.
Thicken with 1/4 cup flour, diluted with enough cold water to pour easily.
Pour into deep hot platter and surround with dumplings.
Dumpling Ingredients:
2 cups flour
½ tsp. salt.
4 Tbsps. baking powder
2 tsps. Butter
½ cup milk
Preparation For Dumplings:
Mix and sift dry ingredients. Work in butter with tips of fingers and add milk gradually, using a knife for mixing. Toss on a floured board, pat and roll out to one-half inch thickness. Shape with biscuit cutter first dipped in flour. Place closely together in a buttered steamer, put over kettle of boiling water, cover closely and steam twelve minutes. A perforated tin pie-plate may be used in place of steamer. OR you can put the dumplings on the stew pot, cover for twelve minutes, and then uncover and cook another ten minutes.
* * *
Send a photo of Aunt Vi’s Stew to [email protected] and Aunt Vi just might share her recipe for Scotch Shortbread cookies in return.
Acknowledgments
Many, many thanks to Elizabeth Delisi, Maven of the Mystical Arts, whom I always consult when Daisy needs to read tarot cards for someone. Liz understands tarot. So does Daisy. I…don’t.
I’ll never be able to thank Peter Brandvold sufficiently for giving me Lou Prophet, even if he did wait until Lou was old, weathered and on his last leg. Literally, since his other leg was replaced by a peg.
And for my beta readers: David Bedini, Lynne Welch, Sue Krekeler, Roberta Langman and Gina Gilmore. I don’t think they believe how much they help me, but they do. Truly. A lot.
Also by Alice Duncan
The Daisy Gumm Majesty Mystery Series
Strong Spirits
Fine Spirits
High Spirits
Hungry Spirits
Genteel Spirits
Ancient Spirits
Dark Spirits
Spirits Onstage
Unsettled Spirits
Bruised Spirits
Spirits United
Spirits Unearthed
Shaken Spirits
Scarlet Spirits
Exercised Spirits
The Mercy Allcutt Mystery Series
Lost Among the Angels
Angels Flight
Fallen Angels
Angels of Mercy
Thanksgiving Angels
About the Author
Award-winning author Alice Duncan lives with a herd of wild dachshunds (enriched from time to time with fosterees from New Mexico Dachshund Rescue) in Roswell, New Mexico. She’s not a UFO enthusiast; she’s in Roswell because her mother’s family settled there fifty years before the aliens crashed (and living in Roswell, NM, is cheaper than living in Pasadena, CA, unfortunately). Alice would love to hear from you at [email protected]
www.aliceduncan.net
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