Local maximum

Andrea leant on the wooden gatepost and caught her breath.  The street that she and Dax were walking along was actually a hill, and it was steep.  There was a warning cracking sound, and she snatched her arm away and caught her balance again as the top of the gatepost snapped off, a cloud of dust rising as tiny orange splinters of wood cascaded downwards.  The top of the gatepost smashed apart when it hit the stone-flagged street leaving an orange smear across the weathered surface.  She grimaced and rubbed her arm, checking to see if the orange had stained her clothes.

“The whole city is rotten,” said Dax, looking around them.  “We’ve not found anything in here that isn’t either rotted away or rotting away.  This is a tainted place.”

“Well, duh!” said Andrea crossly.  She heaved a huge breath in, but it didn’t do much to get her breath back.  “It’s been abandoned for over four hundred years.  Were you expecting maybe industrious ghosts keeping the city all shiny and tidy?”

“I’ve met ghosts,” said Dax.  His tone was level, matter-of-fact.

“And probably killed them, too,” said Andrea.  “I keep meaning to ask you if there’s any living thing in this world that you haven’t killed, or tried to kill, at some point.”

Dax allowed a thin smile to break his wrinkled face.  “If I find any such thing,” he said, “I’ll be sure to catch it as a trophy to show people.”

Andrea looked up the street towards the top.  The buildings below them were smaller and less impressive; all the big, polished-looking buildings were clustered around the top.

“Well I know how this place defended itself,” she said.  “It just retreated up the hill and then let the attackers wear themselves out trying to get up there.”

“The alleys here are ideal for ambushes,” said Dax, pointing.  Andrea looked at him until he stopped.

“That doesn’t cheer me up,” she said.  “What if this place isn’t as abandoned as we think it is?”

“It’s cursed,” said Dax.  “Though you didn’t exactly make that clear when I hired on, did you?”

“Enough already!  I know what you think of my hiring speech, I’ve been listening to you moan about it for days!”

“It’s still cursed though.”

“Well sort of, but not really.  It was dedicated to the third Lord of the Grey, and when his time passed the City seems to have collapsed as well.  Oddly quickly.  Which is why we’re here, to find out what happened.”

“Because…?”

“Really? It isn’t obvious?”

“Humour me,” said Dax, smiling his thin smile again.

“Fine.  Because we live in the greatest city on the continent, and it is dedicated to the fifth Lord of the Grey.  And because there are suggestions that his power might be starting to wane, so there are a few… very rich people who would like to… not lose their position.  They want to know what happened here and what’s likely to happen in our city.”

Dax sat down.

“Get up!” she said, kicking at him.  He caught her foot and pulled until she fell over and sprawled on the ground next to him.

“I knew about the money,” he said.  “I didn’t know about the Theology.  Who is making these suggestions?”

“Don’t pull me over!”  She sat up and leaned in, glaring into his eyes.  He met her gaze and held it, and several seconds later she pulled back and dropped her head, breaking her glare.

“Who is making these suggestions?  Andrea?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “As in, I actually don’t know.  I know where you can go to hear suggestions like this being made, but you’re risking being in there when they get raided, and they get raided a lot.  The priests definitely don’t like the suggestions –“

“–and we have a religious police force.”  Dax completed the sentence for her.  “Just how little have you told me about what this trip is all about?”

She squirmed.  “Most of it,” she admitted at last.  “Some of it is on the incredible side and I don’t think… I still don’t think you’d believe it.  I’d rather see if some of the less incredible stuff exists first, and then tell you.”

“Less incredible?”

Andrea sighed.  “We need to get moving, ok?  One of the less incredible stories that’s told is what happens when the sun sets.  We need to be indoors, because if that’s true, it’s not going to be safe to be sat out here.”

“Something else.”

Andrea stood up.  “Fine.  There should be a museum of some kind up at the top of this hill, near the palaces and the houses of the Aristocracy.  Somewhere in there is a four hundred year old picture of our current Queen.”

Dax stood up next to her now.  “That would be worth seeing,” he remarked.  “That might convince me some more to listen to you.”

“I’m not telling you everything!”

“We’ll see.  By the way, though I’m sure you slept well last night, were you aware that the buildings of the city all glow in the dark?”

Office Noir

It was raining outside, the wind lashing curtains of water against the windows in a thrashing frenzy, trying to beat a way inside.  I was sat at my desk, illuminated by the harsh glare of the flat-screen monitors, the pallor of my skin rivalled only by the empty whiteness of the spreadsheet in front of me.  Two black numbers floated in a sea of vacant cells, and nothing I could do could make them any better.  Somewhere on the floor above there was the distant sound of a door slamming and then a single, solitary scream like the call of a cormorant, and I knew that the Managing Director had cut short the Executive Committee meeting in his inimitable style once again.

I clicked once on the mouse, closing down the spreadsheet and revealing beneath it the GANTT chart that had lead me to open up the spreadsheet tool.  The little blue lines showing who would do what work and when stretched off to the right in a never-ending regimented march, spilling beyond the deadline and then beyond.  I looked at the figures for the fiftieth time that morning, and finally accepted what had been obvious all along.  I could not deliver this project on time.

I felt the cold chill of a ghost walking across my grave.  There was only one way to present this to the Executive Committee that wouldn’t get me called into the Managing Director’s office to explain myself, and that was circumstance that were clearly beyond my control.  An earthquake and a failed disaster recovery plan might do the trick.  Or burning the office down.  Or….

I crossed myself as I opened the browser and selected the secure browsing mode, aware that the IT department would see it immediately.  After all, why would you go secure unless you had something to hide?  I opened up the Pinterest site and then clicked quickly on fifteen different links, opening them all in new tabs.  Then knowing that they’d be checking them all to see what I was trying to hide, I opened up the standard browser and selected the special site.  The one they only whisper to you on the project management course when they’ve tested your loyalty (don’t ask how) and they’re sure that you’ve got the nerve to go and look at it.  That one.

I entered the name of my lead developer and crossed myself once again.  The little dialogue box opened, with the plain black border and the tiny skull in the bottom right corner.  The single text entry box was waiting, as I knew, for a date.  I entered today’s date, and a time for just after lunch.  As soon as I’d entered the last digit the box closed and the browser promptly caused the computer to crash.

“What were you doing when the computer crashed?” asked the IT tech as he stood next to me, watching the computer power-up again.  He’d appeared without being called.  “Looking at Pinterest,” I said, knowing that they knew that.  He was clearly here to find out if I’d been trying to get to anywhere that they’d not logged yet.

“Boring,” he said dismissively, but his eyes were watching me the whole time.  I was sweating.

“There were pictures of a renaissance fayre on there,” I said.  I’d done my homework too, and I knew that he liked live action role-playing and spanking.  I hadn’t dug deep enough to find out if he combined the two.

“Oh?”  He pretended he wasn’t interested, but his eyes drifted away from me.

“You know, women dressed in gauzy costumes,” I said, hinting that I might have been perving just a little.

“Still boring,” he said, but he walked off before the computer finished booting up, and I knew he was going back to the log files to look for those pictures.  He’d be back when he couldn’t find them, but that was fine.  I didn’t think he’d get back fast enough.

At two thirty-five a man dressed like a ninja walked in through the door, tail-gating behind the lifer-coder who microwaved fish curry in the tiny kitchen every lunchtime purely to annoy the people in the office.  The lifer didn’t challenge him, or even turn round.  The ninja raised a hand and a crossbow appeared in it like he was performing a magic trick.  There was the thunk of the crossbow firing, and my lead developer fell face-forward onto his keyboard, the back of his head a bloody red mess.  I counted to five and started screaming.

“It’s very strange,” said Miss McIntosh, head of the Executive Committee, “but that computer crash of yours… somehow it managed to make it look as though your GANTT chart updated to accommodate the death of your lead developer fifteen minutes before he was killed.”

“I was looking at porn at that time,” I said.

Let the light in

There were wolf-skins on the wall.  Some of them still had heads attached, and one of them was drooling.  As he looked at it, he saw yellow eyes barely filmed over, and they rolled slowly in his direction.  He looked away, discomforted.

On the other side of the room was a low square wooden table at which a woman sat cross-legged.  She was watching him with squinted eyes, as though suspicious of what he might do.  He pulled his wrists gently apart, and the rope binding them resisted strongly.  He didn’t bother testing the rope at his ankles, but he did wonder what she thought he might do.  Then he let his head sink down onto his chest as though he were falling asleep, and let his eyelids descend equally slowly over his eyes.  As the room vanished into a pinkish darkness he projected himself outwards in a way that only made sense inside his head, and then looked around him.

In spirit form he was still sat in this cold, earthen room, and there was a woman sat cross-legged across the floor from him.  She appeared cold and still; not active in this realm.  Then a scratching noise to his left made him turn his head, and he saw that the wolf skins here were spirit wolves, and they were prowling about.  They looked hungry.

“Do you guard?” he signed.  There were no sounds in the spirit plane, so no spoken language.  Everything was signed, and there were several varieties of sign language.  He was relieved that the wolves responded to his first attempt; a head ducked, a paw scratching.  We hunt.

So, caught in both realms.  He relaxed, letting himself fall somehow inwards and opened his eyes to the earthen room once more.  The woman was still squinting at him.

“How long are you going to keep me here?” he asked.  His voice was scratchy, and he wondered how long it was since he’d last spoken.  The woman started when he spoke, pushing herself backwards and backing into the table, nearly coming to her feet in her anxiety.  She huddled up against the table, pulling her knees into her chest so that her feet barely poked out from beneath her long, dirty, green skirt, and wrapping her skinny, liver-spotted arms around them.  She made a murmuring sound that he recognised immediately; she’d had her tongue pulled out.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and he wondered immediately that he’d not heard the approach of this newcomer.

“Not long,” said a voice behind him.  It was a woman’s voice he decided, it had a chiming quality about it and a softness that you rarely found in a man.  “Just until I’ve let the light in.”

His stomach tightened into a knot.

“Trepanation?” he asked, though he already knew what the answer would be.  “That’s illegal.”

“I don’t see any enforcers here, do you?”  There was the sound of something soft shuffling across the floor, and a figure dressed in the robes of the Sisters of Eternal Distance crossed his vision.  The woman by the table whimpered again and cringed, as though expecting to be struck.  “If there is no-one to enforce what you believe to be legal, is it really legal?”

“That’s a question for the Sophists,” he said.  “I would like to think that you respect that notion.”

The figure laughed, her voice echoing around the room and seeming to be an entire choir of people.  It took moments for the laughter to die away after she stopped, and he wondered at that.  The room was completely the wrong shape for those kind of acoustics.  He let his eyes close again and pushed outwards.

There was a tall, elegant woman with long blonde hair and eyes like tiny stars looking at him.  The spirit-wolves were sitting at her feet.  She raised her hands, and he saw that she had snakes tattooed along her wrists and forearms, ending with their heads at her elbows.

I’m here too, she signed, and she smiled.  As her lips parted though, there was only darkness behind them.

Oh good, he signed back, tapping his hand back against his wrist-bones to indicate sarcasm.  I was missing you already.

Sit tight, she signed, and the wolves all lifted their heads and looked at him now.  It’s time to let the light in.

Mate's rates

“Can you go and review that new place that’s opened up in the Slaughterhouse district?”  My editor’s words were slightly indistinct as she was eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut while she spoke, spitting little flakes of pink icing into the air like malodorous snow.

“No,” I said, sitting back slightly.  My suit was fresh from the dry cleaner’s, and I had no intention of having it decorated with other’s people’s partially digested food.

“Let me rephrase that,” she said, swallowing first thankfully.  She looked around her desk for her coffee mug, and swigged from it in a way that would have made Caligula proud.  “Go and review the new place in the Slaughterhouse District.”

“No,” I said again, resting a foot across my knee and leaning back in the chair, which creaked like an old park bench after heavy rain.

“Why not?”  The way she rolled her eyes told me that I was in for a hard time; clearly there was some ulterior motive for this order.

“Because it’s owned by Tim,” I said.  “And part-owned by Vincent actually.  And Vincent is the Blonde’s father, and Tim is the guy I got in to cater my last three birthday parties.  I can’t go and review their restaurant because I’ll have no credibility.  Obviously I’ll be writing whatever they’ve told to me, so a good review is just me blowing smoke up their pert, well-formed bottoms, and a bad review is reverse psychology to invite people to go and see the place to find out why I’d slate it like that.  Can’t do it.  Just can’t.  See?”

“Oh good Lord,” said my editor.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  Firstly, you’re a critic who writes more about his personal life than he does the food.  So we’ll all enjoy reading you dish the dirt on Tim Vincent and we’ll barely notice when you squeeze in the top three items from the menu and claim that they were divinely inspired and tasted like old cabbage dipped in a turnip broth.”

I frowned and put my foot back on the floor.  “You actually read my last review?” I asked.  “Because that sounds like a quote to me.”

“I read all your work,” she said.  “I sometimes wish I didn’t have to, but I do.  And I occasionally correct your wayward commas, but not too much as the readership like to complain about them.  You generate more letters for the weekly Grammar column than any other writer on the staff.  Technically you’re doing half of that job as well, but I’d as soon not remind of you of that because pay rise time is a year away.”

“Fine,” I said, my cheeks burning red.  “I’ll go and talk to Tim and Vincent and see if I can get a reservation.”

“Why’s it in the Slaughterhouse District anyway?” asked my editor, picking up the last pink doughnut.  I cringed.

“They wanted somewhere that would gentrify slowly,” I said.  “I suggested Grime Road as well, but they like the availability of cheap meat.  They can get it practically still mooing or oinking or clucking from the neighbouring businesses.  It might not be Wagyu beef, but it’s definitely the freshest you’re going to get in this town.”

“…isn’t Grime Road next to the municipal dump?”

“The tip, yes.  I thought you couldn’t get much more low-end than that, though it turned out that there were almost no rubbish-disposal costs when you can just get the porters to throw the waste straight over the chain-link fence.”

She sank her teeth into the doughnut like a shark fastening onto a swimmer’s leg in a B-movie.  A cheap B-movie, though the pink icing did look rather gory as it smeared across her lips and teeth.  “How slowly will the Slaughterhouse District gentrify then?” she asked, sounding genuinely interested.

“Very,” I replied.  “Slaughter’s a good business at the moment.  If market trends continue it’ll be at least thirty years before they start closing down and letting people move in.”

“That’s a very long term prospect then,” said my editor.

“Oh yes,” I said with a smile.

A tour of ship-wreck house

“This is the conservatory,” said the nurse without much pre-amble.  She waved an arm around it.  ‘It was intended for the use of the patients when this place was built, and I think it was used like that for four or five years.  But at some point someone realised that most of our patients either couldn’t be put out on show like this, or shouldn’t be, and we stopped using it for the patients.  There’s a day-room, with skylights rather than windows, that they use, and we use this now for staff meetings and visitors.”

“It must be a pretty short staff meeting,” said Leonard.  They were walking through the room back to the kitchen.

“Is that a joke about my height?”

Leonard looked at her; she was perhaps five foot ten, probably a little taller than a lot of the women he knew.  Why would she think he was making jokes about her height?

“Never mind,” she said, stepping into the kitchen.  It was cool and spacious; the surfaces were stainless steel, as were the cupboard doors and the range.  There were a number of racks along the walls behind the counters, on which were steel pans and bowls.  Implements – spatulas, tongs, spoons, ladles and the like – hung on the racks to be close at hand for the chef working at that station, and as Leonard looked around he recognised a transition from stations that were primarily for preparation, though that were for frying or boiling, and then the pastry section.

“Kitchen” she said, again waving her hand.  “A little big for just me but at its peak the hospice has had fifteen chefs working in here.  That wasn’t for patients though, that was just when the Board of Directors realised that Shipwreck House was useful for internal functions.  I prepare food for the patients.  Breakfast is a buffet affair with hot items cooked to order, and a menu for the rest of the day is provided then for patients to choose from.  Those that have already lost their sense of smell are generally the hardest to cater for.”

“Why not taste?” asked Leonard.

“The door over there is to the walk-in where we store the dry goods,” said the nurse.  “90% of taste is smell.  Patients who lose their sense of smell tend to quickly lose interest in eating.  This way,” she took him through a door he’d not noticed when they came through earlier, “is to the back corridors.  These houses were built at the turn of the 1800s and so have separate corridors for servants and masters.  We’ve made use of that by keeping the masters area for visitors and internal conferencing, while the staff use the servants corridors.  It’s considerably more efficient.”

“Are there any secret passages?” asked Leonard, trying to inject a note of humour into his voice so that she knew he was joking this time.  She paused and looked at him.

“Several, actually,” she said.  “They’re a complete pain, because the kinds of illnesses that our patients come in with do not go well together with hard-to-find areas of the house.  We’ve had two occasions now where someone has gone missing and we’ve had to search the whole building one floor at a time.

“Oh,” said Leonard, and stayed fairly quiet for the rest of the tour.  The servant’s corridors, as the nurse had promised, accessed just about every room of the house and were quick to traverse.  Leonard didn’t see too much of the master’s corridors, but it became obvious from the size of the rooms that it must be a pain to walk round nearly half of the house to get from one room to another instead of just taking the servant’s door and slipping across a hallway.  The house was much larger than he’d expected, and the rooms were generally large and well designed unless they were for the servants, when they were cramped and had little privacy.

The third floor was given over to bedrooms, and though Leonard was not permitted to disturb the current residents the nurse did slide back a panel in one door to show him the gentleman behind it.  The man was dressed in a neat grey suit with a white shirt, cufflinks and tie.  He sat in a straight-backed chair, his hands resting on his knees and his gaze fixed on the door somewhere below the panel.  He appeared not to notice the panel opening, and Leonard eventually realised that he could see an ugly-looking, blistered burn on the man’s hand.

“He lost his sense of touch first,” said the nurse.  “It was how his condition was discovered, which was lucky for him.  The next thing to go was his sight, and if we’d not found him by then I don’t think he would have survived long.”

“You don’t really talk about then as though they’re human,” said Leonard.  The thought had been building throughout the tour, but now it had crystallised in his mind.

“It’s better than way,” said the nurse.  “At some point they very well might not be.”

After the bedrooms she showed him the attic.  This was a long, large room with a sloping ceiling and the roof beams exposed.  There were several benches up there that looked like chemistry experiments were being carried out on them, and a bookcase tucked under the roof beams held hand-written notes in several binders.

“Drs Whitsun and Watts work here intermittently,” said the nurse.  “They’re researching way to help the patients, though it’s necessarily slow-going.  They’ve pretty much having to write the whole field of research themselves.”

“I didn’t know you were trying to cure them,” said Leonard.  He took a binder from the bookcase and opened it.  The notes in there appeared to be written in Latin and didn’t make any sense to him.

“We’re not.”  The nurse took the binder from his hands with gentle but steady force and put it back.  “We’re trying to help them.  We can’t cure them because we’ve no idea what’s actually happened to them to reverse it.  The first thing we want to be able to do is communicate better with them and get an idea of what it’s like where they’ve gone, and how we might get there ourselves.  Without having to lose our senses in the process.”

“Right, said Leonard.  “I should have realised.”

She gave him a sharp look, but he refused to be drawn and so she let it drop.

“That’s the tour,” she said.  “We’ll go back down the conservatory now and I’ll answer any relevant questions that you might have.”

The constant worker

Snow fell from the sky like leaves from the trees; heavy wet flakes that seemed too large, and that splatted onto people, melting in seconds.  The pavement had disappeared in minutes, and the roads were starting to slush up as well, slowing the traffic down and forcing the cars and buses to keep their windscreen wipers on.  Shops and businesses were still lit up and open, though a few offices had started letting their staff go home early.

Jamie paused for a moment, his long grey woollen coat pulled around him, and its felt collar stood up.  The snow still crept down his neck now and then, but mostly he was warm and dry.  He looked up into the blank greyness of the sky, watching the flakes – silhouetted black against the clouds – spin and fall to the earth.  He stepped aside to avoid one that seemed intent on his face, and heard a squeal.  He looked round, and then down; a woman had fallen over and was kicking her high heels at his ankles, her face twisted into a bitter snarl.  His hand, inside the pocket of his coat, squeezed around the grip of his gun, and he started to draw it.  Then he thought better of it, and instead opened up the coat to allow him access to his belt.  He pulled the taser from there and aimed it at her.

Her eyes widened as she realised what he was doing, and her mouth, spoiled by purplish lipstick and wine-stained teeth, formed an O-shape, probably the last syllable of a drawn-out No.  She lifted a black-gloved hand and he noticed the fur edging on its wrist.  Then he pulled the trigger and two tiny silver darts sprang from the gun and punched into the skin of her neck, just below and off to one side of her chin.  For a moment she looked stunned, as though she couldn’t believe that he’d actually pulled the trigger, and then the darts delivered their charge; short-lasting but intense.  She spasmed and her head jerked to one side.  She skidded across the snow-covered pavement like a fish flapping around freshly out of water, and she knocked into several other pedestrians.  Two of them caught their balance, and looked round, but a third, and then a fourth, toppled as well and fell on top of her.

Jamie put the taser back and buttoned his coat back up, and then tied the belt tightly around his waist.  She would no doubt tell everyone about what had happened, and she’d have the little darts as evidence, but they’d do her no good.  When the police checked the serial numbers on the darts the case would be stalled and stopped until she stopped protesting.  Or, if she was stupid enough to protest more anyway, she would get a visit from the re-education department.  The gulags had plenty of room for more dissidents.

He walked on down the Boulevard des Champignons.  The buildings around him were facades over steel and glass.  The original stonework, three hundred years old in some places, had been carefully suspended in place and down adorned thoroughly modern and strong cores, so that it might feel like he was walking through a street from three centuries ago, but in fact the cutting edge of technology was employed behind the blank windows and locked doors.  Even the street name had been deliberately kept so as not to give any clue as to what was going on here.

He stopped at number 168 and rapped on the door.  A small panel slid back, slightly lower than eye height, and he stooped to peer in.  Someone stood next to him might have spotted the blue light that caressed his eyes, but they’d have needed good vision and to know that they were supposed to be watching for it.  There was a moment’s pause and then the door clicked, and he pushed it open.

Beyond the door was a small steel hallway with two turnstiles; one for people entering and one for people departing.  The temperature inside was noticeably warm and Jamie immediately undid his belt and unbuttoned his coat.  He walked through the turnstile, his fingerprints and pulse being read by the gate as he pushed through it, and on the far side approached a glass automatic door.  He had to wait there for a few moments longer while the computer analysed his gait towards it, and then it slid open.

“Good morning,” said a metallic voice.  “You are authorised for the third, fourth and seventh floors.”  He didn’t bother looking round; the speakers were concealed, and he was reasonably certain that the ones used for the voice were randomised every time anyway.

“I tased someone,” he said.

There was another pause while the computer located a human operative and put them on the line.

“Agent?” This voice was male and didn’t sound happy.  ‘You tased someone?  Again?”  Ah, so they’d already accessed his file.

“Yes,” he said.  He considered explaining, and then decided that he wouldn’t unless asked.

“Noted.”  There was a sigh to conclude the word.  “Please remember that your weapon-carrying certification can be reviewed at any time, not just at the designated quarter-year sessions.”

“Thank-you,” said Jamie, comfortably aware that they would never take his weapons-clearance away from him.

“Report to the eighth floor,” said the voice.  “I have a message that the Tailor would like to talk to you.”

Jamie halted then, and only resumed walking a second later.  The Tailor wanted to see him?  Now that was something different.

Mistletoe and Wine

“Christmas time, mistletoe and wine…” warbled the radio.  Lady Agnes allowed herself a small smile as she bustled about the kitchen.  No-one in their right mind would put the mistletoe and wine together, she thought.  Mistletoe’s berries were rather poisonous, and dipping them into wine, which would leach the poison out and into itself, would be murderous.  And she disliked people who accused her of being murderous.  She counted the coffee cups and found that she was still two short.  She sighed, and looked around, wondering which cupboard Hettie usually kept the crockery in.  It was a great shame that she’d had to rush off like that to tend to her sick Aunt in a small cottage in the middle of the countryside, but one had to let the help have the occasional day off or they’d leave and not come back.  She opened the nearest cupboard door and found a sack of flour inside.  That was nice, she supposed, though she wasn’t sure what it might be used for.  Perhaps Hettie used it instead of make-up.  Was that why the theatre folk she knew referred to it always as pancake?

Three more cupboards located a box of tinsel, what looked like a wartime stockpile of napkins, and finally the crockery.  There were two whole shelves of cups, many of them even matching.  Lady Agnes frowned at this, wondering where they’d all come from.  She had three cups of tea a day, and even allowing for Hettie only doing the washing up at the end of the week there were too many cups here.

As she added them to the tray and wondered which of the many white plugged-in boxes was the fridge, she had a sudden recollection of the tea-parties that her mother used to host.  There would be tiny sandwiches cut into finger widths and carefully spread with just enough paste to remind the tastebuds of what they were missing out on, petit fours that were really only petit threes, an acre of cucumber garnish and a blanket of parsley, and then all the cups.  They would be set out on trolleys next to the tea urns, in which a box of teabags would be stewing, and then people would be invited it to partake of the bounty.  Ah, so that was where the cups had come from.  Left over from entertaining the hoi polloi.

Finding the fridge took another three attempts, and then she wondered at the number of cartons of milk that she found there all with different colour tops.  Disregarding anything that had a picture on the outside that wasn’t a cow she went with green top and hoped that it was actually some form of milk and not egg-white or reconstituted anything.  Then she carried the tray to the sitting room.

“Please excuse the delay,” she said brightly, setting the tray down on an occasional table near the four chairs that clustered around a tiny coffee table set with an empty cake stand.  “Hettie’s relation is apparently very sick and she’d rushed off urgently to tend to her.”

“Oh, quite,” said the Vicar, sitting back down again.  He’d bounded to his feet when Lady Agnes came into the room, though his politeness hadn’t extended to taking the tray from her.  “What relation, pray?”

“Toboggan,” said Lady Agnes firmly.  She hadn’t listened to a word Hettie had said beyond hearing that she wanted a couple of days off.

“Ah, uh, really?” said the Vicar.  He went to the tray and lifted the teapot.  “Shall I be mother?”

“Yes,” said Lady Agnes economically.  The Vicar poured, not quite staunching his wince when he saw how orange the stream of tea was.  He poured a generous cup for Lady Agnes, and mixed his own with two-thirds of a cup of milk.  Even then, when he sipped it, he felt briefly as though he might be a builder or other manual labourer.  Then he felt bad for succumbing to stereotyping and promised himself that he’d say three Hail Mary’s when he returned home.

“Is she perhaps Scottish?” he asked.  “Only I was under the impression that a toboggan was actually an item of transport.  For use in the snow.”  His voice, gentle and refined, sounded a little like an educated horse might.

“She’s common,” said Lady Agnes.  “I didn’t get involved after that.  My mother always used to say that the help were the help, and if you needed to help them then they weren’t doing their job properly.”

“Ah yes,” said the Vicar.  He sat back in his chair, his china cup caught in the steeple of his fingers and seemed to be deep in thought.  “Your mother.  You know that that’s why I’m here, of course?”

“No,” said Lady Agnes.  “She is dead, Vicar.  You’re rather too late to have caught her at home.”

“Heheh,” said the Vicar politely.  “No, Lady Agnes, I was referring to the fact that the police wish to exhume her body.  Again.”

“Let them,” said Lady Agnes, waving her hand.  The Vicar frowned, not sure if she’d flipped in the bird in that gesture.  “Mother was buried clean, and there’s been three diggings up so far.  If she’s really hiding anything down there the police don’t seem able to find it.”

“Well,” said the Vicar.  “I’d really rather not have the graveyard disturbed like this all the time.  Have you considered having your mother’s remains cremated?  These problems might go away then.”

“Looks suspicious,” said Lady Agnes.  “If it were up to me Vicar, I’d have her left in a body bag in their freezers so that they can violate her bones whenever they feel like it.”

“Have you suggested that to them?”

“Yes.  They looked outraged and started talking for a an hour.”

“What did they say?”

“I didn’t listen.”

The Vicar fell silent.  After a few minutes he looked at Lady Agnes.

“What did you mean, she was buried clean?” he asked.  Lady Agnes grinned.

“Don’t ask questions you wouldn’t like the answers to, Vicar,” she said.

After the Vicar had left, muttering imprecations under his breath, Lady Agnes took the cups down the kitchen and wondered if she had a dishwasher.  The radio was still playing, and the song she’d heard earlier came on again.

“…children sing in Christian rhyme…” it warbled.  Lady Agnes snorted.  Christian rhyme might well have its place, but when you needed things done cleanly you needed far older languages than that….