The Great Witchy Cake Off: Wonky Inn Book 7 Read online

  Ross frowned. “I have to say this is one unexpectedly tough challenge. So far I’ve been able to establish that magick has been used to eliminate some messages that were sent to Raoul’s phone, but I can’t find where that magick originated, or who was responsible for it or what the messages were.” A few buttons clicked on the keyboard beneath his translucent fingers. The numbers slowed down temporarily and then with another series of clicks, sped up again. “I’ve been in touch with the office.” He presumably meant where he worked with Penelope Quigwell and the other technical wizards. “But don’t worry. I’m intrigued now. We will get to the bottom of it one way or another.” He sat back and huffed.

  “Oh I know you will,” I replied with more confidence than I felt. “Erm…” I needed to ask for another favour. Or two. “Listen, there’s something else.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “This needs to be entirely hush hush.” I lowered my voice and leaned towards him, winking conspiratorially.

  “I’m good at hush hush. I’m a ghost now. We don’t make a lot of noise.”

  I studied Ross’s deadpan face, wondering whether this was his idea of making a joke. “Ha. Ah… Would you be able to track down some information on a member of the production crew? Her name is Bertha Crumb.”

  “Date of birth?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. She’s approximately twenty-four or so, I’d say. Lives in London usually.”

  “Not a huge amount of help. What kind of thing are you looking for?”

  “She works for Witchflix, on The Great Witchy Cake Off. Surely you can cross reference her from that? Her employment records or something? I just want to know who she is, what she’s done in the past, anything slightly suspicious. Links to Janice Tork-Mimosa, that kind of thing.”

  Ross nodded. “That seems simple enough.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  I made a move towards the door. “There was one other thing.”

  “Okay?” Ross raised his eyebrows and I could tell he was amused.

  “It’s probably something and nothing. It’s just I have an odd sensation about somebody, and I’ve learned of late that it’s probably best to listen to these feelings.”

  Ross nodded. “I think I’ve been hanging around enough witches to understand what you’re saying.” He snorted softly. “Now there’s a sentence I never had a chance to say when I was alive.”

  “His name is Crispin Cavendish. He’s—”

  “A relative of Lyle?” Of course Ross knew who Lyle was.

  “His brother apparently.”

  “Do you think he’s something to do with The Mori?”

  I shrugged. “I really don’t know. We never fully understood how deeply Lyle was involved, did we?”

  “The investigations into him are ongoing.” Ross’s tone was mild, but I sensed a hint of steel there too. The Mori were an organisation Wizard Shadowmender and Penelope Quigwell were intent on eliminating forever.

  “It’s not Crispin’s involvement or non-involvement with The Mori that bothers me. Although obviously if he is involved that would be good to know too.”

  “Well what then?”

  I laughed. “It probably sounds silly. It’s a little personal. Millicent and I have a friend in the village named Sally McNab-Martin. She’s recently taken up with this Crispin and I just don’t trust him. I want to protect Sally.”

  “Ah, I see.” Ross scratched his head. “Affairs of the heart seem so important to those who still live, don’t they?”

  “Just to humans? Don’t ghosts continue searching for a soulmate too?” I was thinking of Ned of course.

  “Hmm.” Ross gave that some thought. “I don’t know. You’d have to choose wisely, wouldn’t you? Eternity is a long time to be with the wrong person.”

  “There is that, I suppose.” I smiled at Ross’s pessimism. I guessed if he’d been more upbeat about life in general he would never have thrown himself in front of a train in the first place.

  “I’ll look into it.” Ross leaned over his laptop once more. I could see our conversation was over.

  “Thanks. Let me know if you find anything,” I said. When he didn’t reply I closed the door quietly and left him to it.

  Millicent was waiting for me in the kitchen when I went down. “Are you here again?” I asked.

  “I can’t keep away from your scintillating and sparking personality, that’s what it is, Alf.”

  I grinned, knowing full well that she just wanted to spend more time in Raoul’s company. “Well seeing as you’re here, maybe you could help me out with breakfast,” I said, and set her to tea and coffee dispensing duties, while I carried through endless plates of toast.

  “What’s the theme for Cake-Off today?” Millicent asked while we wiped down tables afterwards.

  “The Natural World,” Charity called out from behind the bar. She was loading the glasswasher with juice glasses.

  “I can’t see Florence having any trouble with that,” I said.

  “It’s the final tomorrow. I really hope she goes through.” Millicent echoed what we were all thinking.

  “Then it’s back to normal,” Charity said, pushing the button on the washer. A whoosh of water confirmed it was working. She came out from behind the bar, wiping her hands on a towel. “It’ll be a relief, although at the same time it’s always a shame to say goodbye to some of these guests.”

  “Maybe they’ll come back again,” Millicent suggested.

  I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted them back. Not until we’d worked out who had killed Janice, and who had contaminated the flour. But I held my tongue, and hoped against hope that upstairs, Ross’s diligent fingers were unearthing something that would help us.

  The filming had already begun when I crept into the marquee a little later. Millicent had taken up her position, her keen eyes observing Raoul as he moved among the four remaining contestants to quiz them about their bakes. As always, the bakers had started with the signature challenge. Today’s task was to create a loaf of bread in the shape of a hedgehog.

  Florence’s breadmaking skills were second to none. I was more than confident she’d be able to pull this off without any trouble. I noticed that Scampi had started his dough again however, and given how little time there was left, I couldn’t see how he would manage to prove the loaf and bake it before Mindi counted down to the end of the task.

  “What’s going to lift your loaf above the others, Florence?” Faery Kerry was asking my housekeeper and Florence smiled knowingly.

  “I’m using a marmalade glaze,” she said. “It will give the hedgehog a great colour on top.”

  “And what about the prickles?” The contestants were forbidden from sticking anything in the finished loaf.

  “It’s all about perception.” Florence explained and looked straight at the camera. “See here,” she bent over the loaf and directed the camera wizard to follow where she was pointing. “I’ve created quite deep cuts into the dough. Obviously in the final prove, and once the loaf starts to bake, it will lose some of that definition, but not all of it. With the help of the glaze,” Florence made her little bowl of marmalade jam hover in front of the camera, “you’ll get a sense of dark and light, shadow and depth.” With a wiggle of her finger the pastry brush whipped into the deep crevices she had cut on the back of her shaped loaf. “It will be quite obvious that this little munchkin is a spiky hedgehog.” The brush returned to the bowl and was set down gently on the counter. Florence smiled at the camera.

  “Excellent work, Florence,” said Boo. “You’re a natural. Camera—keep rolling. Faery Kerry? Let’s move on to Scampi.”

  “Well, well,” Millicent whispered to me. “Who’d have thought our shy and retiring ghost would be a TV star?”

  “I’m not sure she’s ever been shy and retiring,” I said. “Although she’s certainly always been an astounding baker.”

  “I taught her that trick with the marmalade, you know?” Millicent said, just loud enough that
Raoul who had walked off set for a short break could hear.

  He smiled at Millicent while I regarded my older witch friend with healthy scepticism, unsure whether she was telling porky pies or not.

  Florence’s loaf was every bit as good as she had described. Scampi’s loaf was, as expected, a complete disaster. It hadn’t been proved enough and hadn’t baked enough either. Eloise’s loaf was better, but too salty. That left Florence and Davide. Given that Davide’s loaf didn’t look like a hedgehog at all—more like roadkill in fact—Florence won the round hands down.

  The technical challenge was to prepare twenty-four shortbread biscuits, shaped as flowers. I observed as Florence happily jumped in, measuring flower and sugar and butter, and then mixing icing sugar together with flavourings. She produced two dozen magnificently delicate rose and rhubarb flavoured biscuits, beautifully iced in three shades of pink. The deeper, almost reddy-pink icing added depth to the look, and tiny transparent sugar glass balls decorated the middle of each biscuit, looking for all the world like drops of dew on soft petals.

  “Job done, I think,” I nudged Millicent. “How can she fail to go through after that?”

  I didn’t have a chance to find out. As the judges bent to taste a section of one of Florence’s gorgeous creations, Charity burst into the marquee and grabbed my arm to drag me outside.

  “What’s up?” I asked, as soon as we were clear of the tent.

  “No gas.”

  “No gas?” I repeated. What did she mean?

  “There’s no gas coming into the inn. Monsieur Emietter can’t cook. The central heating isn’t working either. The hot water’s all right because we have the back boiler.”

  “Have you phoned the gas company?”

  Of course she had. Charity was more than capable. “They said there’s nothing their end, so it must be an issue at the inn. They’re sending a team out. They’ll be here within the hour.”

  That was quick, but probably not quick enough to salvage Monsieur Emietter’s dinner plans. A sudden burst of laughter to our left caught my attention. On the edge of the gardens, Rob was hanging over the counter sharing a joke with one of the make-up artists.

  “All is not lost,” I said. “I have a cunning plan. Looks like it’s sausage and mash all round tonight.”

  I spent most of the afternoon dashing between the inn and the marquee. On the one hand I wanted to keep an eye on Florence’s progress and on the other I wanted to get to the bottom of the gas supply problem. Our gas company turned up and ran some checks but couldn’t find anything wrong with any of our appliances. However, the gas wasn’t getting into the inn. Somewhere there had to be a leak. By the process of elimination the workers eventually found it at the bottom of the lane, where my land met the edge of Whittlecombe.

  Fortunately the ovens in the Cake-Off tent were unaffected as they were running from the electric, but that was hardly going to pacify an irate Monsieur Emietter.

  When I enquired about the length of time it would take to fix the problem, I was met with that familiar tradesmen’s trait of sucking in air while raising eyebrows. I pressed on the gas workers the urgency of having gas at the inn both for heating and cooking purposes and they said they would get onto it straight away.

  I didn’t hold out much hope, but that was the state of play.

  Next, I had to check with Rob that he would be able to cater for more of the production crew than he might normally. He happily confirmed he could, and I thought about offering him one of my ghosts to help chop onions etc. but seeing as Rob didn’t really know about the ghosts of Whittle Inn, I decided that might take too much explaining and in any case lead to some difficult questions. However, I did promise that either Charity or myself would come and help him serve after filming had finished for the day.

  It was the least I could do.

  As I finished with Rob I turned back towards the inn and spotted Silvan lounging on a stripy deckchair in front of the main steps. It made for an incongruous sight and I stood for a moment and regarded him with suspicion. He might have been watching the goings-on in the grounds, but his hat was pulled down over his face and he appeared to all intents and purposes to be sleeping.

  I knew him better than that though.

  I headed that way, and when I was close enough, kicked the bottom of his boot.

  “Good afternoon, Alfhild,” he drawled without so much as peeping at me. As I’d anticipated, he knew exactly what was going on everywhere. “You seem to be frightfully busy this afternoon. It’s a wonder you don’t have raised blood pressure.”

  “My blood pressure is fine, thank you. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it.” He lazily pulled his hat away from his face and smiled his laconic smile. “What’s going on?”

  “Absolutely nothing you need to worry about.”

  He yawned and stretched. “That’s good. I wasn’t in the mood for fighting any battles this afternoon.”

  “There are no battles to be fought here.” I looked at him, so totally relaxed, his feet splayed out in front of him. “What are you up to though? It’s not exactly warm enough to be sunbathing.”

  Silvan pointed up at the sky. “See that big yellow thing? That’s the sun. If I lie underneath it, that’s sunbathing surely? It doesn’t matter how warm it is. Apparently the Vitamin D it gives off is good for you no matter what time of year it is.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. Even on holiday in the summer I’d kept covered up. If I absolutely had to go out during the day, I’d lathered myself in Witch Factor 500. “I’m not really a fan of extreme weather.”

  “Being pale suits you, Alfhild, but the sun brings your freckles out, and by all that’s green, that’s pretty cute.”

  His amused laugh floated across the gardens and I lay my hand on his shoulder. “Shush,” I growled at him. “They’re filming. They don’t like a lot of noise outside.”

  “I’m sure they can’t hear me.”

  I shook my head at him in exasperation and moved away. I’d leave him to his own amusement.

  “Are you going inside?” he called after me, “Only I’d love a drink.”

  “What did your last slave die of?” I muttered, not gracing him with a response, but after quickly discussing the evening’s dinner arrangements with Charity, I made my way into the kitchen. Gwyn had a large copper of boiling water on the go, so I made a pot of tea and returned to Silvan with a large mug.

  “I was thinking more of a glass of whisky to be honest,” he replied in lieu of thanks.

  I held my hand out to take the mug back from him and sighed. “Give me the tea,” I said. “I’ll have it if you don’t want it. You know where the bar is, after all. Or if you’re feeling that lazy, just give Zephaniah or Ned a shout.”

  “Old Ned has bigger fish to fry, I think.” Silvan’s eyes glinted in amusement.

  “What do you know?” I asked. How could Silvan know more about what was going on with Ned than I did?

  Silvan merely laughed. “I couldn’t possibly betray a confidence.”

  A confidence? Had Ned seriously taken Silvan into his confidence? Why not me? Weren’t we friends? I pouted. When I tried to take the mug of tea away from Silvan he waved me away.

  “No, it’s mine now. You made it for me, and I would never look such a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Oh fine,” I huffed. “I’m going back down to the marquee to see how Florence is getting on. When you’ve finished ‘sunbathing’ or whatever it is you’re doing out here, if you could return the mug to the kitchen, I would be most grateful.”

  “I’m a guest here, don’t you know?” Silvan reminded me. “You’re actually supposed to be waiting on me hand and foot.”

  “Hell will freeze over before that happens,” I retorted, ignoring the mirth I saw in his eyes. “Which reminds me, I can’t serve you dinner tonight either because there won’t be any. You’ll need to go into Whittlecombe I’m afraid.”

  “Ah yes, your
little gas problem.” So he did know. Nothing escaped Silvan.

  “Exactly. Sorry to inconvenience you,” I told him, and then quickly walked away. He slunk back down into his deckchair and replaced his hat over his eyes, but for some reason I could still feel those eyes burning into the back of my head as I went.

  Florence had called her showstopper, ‘Forest Fayre’.

  “Ingenious,” announced Raoul.

  “Incredibly pretty,” trilled Faery Kerry.

  The camera wizard slowly panned around the cake and then fell back allowing me a chance to get a better look. Mindi began the voiceover. “Florence has crafted a tree stump from a chocolate cake with caramel crème and a chocolate mocha flavoured glaze. She’s covered the stump in tiny marzipan flowers, and three dozen tiny creatures. Twelve chocolate orange flavoured squirrels with an orange and Cointreau flavoured icing, twelve vanilla flavoured badgers with a slight aniseed flavoured icing, and twelve carrot cake foxes with toffee-apple flavoured icing. In addition, we see more of her now infamous sugar work taking the form of butterflies and ladybirds.”

  “Keep rolling,” Boo called out from behind his digital display. “We’ll do that again in the editing, Mindi. It’s fine for now.”

  “You’re sure?” Mindi asked.

  “Yes, yes.” Boo said. “Okay judges. Are we ready?”

  Superlatives filled the tent as Faery Kerry and Raoul Scurrysnood, both notoriously honest in their judging, lent their taste buds to the critiquing process. Every nibble seemed to heap ever more praise on my housekeeper, and I realised with a start that this programme was set to make Florence a baking superstar. Even if she didn’t win the competition outright, nobody who tuned in to this episode would ever forget her Forest Fayre and the teeny animals that lived on a fallen tree trunk.

  I sniffed and dashed away a tear.

  “Are you crying?” Millicent, standing beside me, asked.

  “Oh shush,” I said. “I’ve got something in my eye.” But really my heart had swollen with pride. My Florence, performing so magnificently. She had moved me to tears with her gracious brilliance.