The Fete of Death Page 2

  "Ah, that'll be the jam incident."

  "Yes, but this is about cakes and pies."

  "They've got long memories in this village. Quite a lot of our villagers were poisoned that day, including me. No one died, by some miracle, but it was a close call for a few people. The couple who made all that jam moved away the weekend after. No one’s seen or heard from them since. The husband was always trying to start up new business ventures on a shoe-string. None of them ever worked out. But the jam making business was the first one that almost killed their customers. The jam did taste amazing though and they were offering free tasting of each flavour. It was the most popular stall there. They had flavours like banana and coconut and strawberry and marshmallow. Yeah, they certainly tasted amazing, but an hour or so later you ended up at the hospital. It was scary seeing everyone collapse all around you then you start with symptoms yourself."

  "I can imagine."

  "Can I come with you tomorrow? I might still have bad memories about the place, but they've got a fantastic swimming pool in Tarndale. I'll go for a swim and you three can tout your wares. Just don’t poison anyone!" grinned Nancy, her stomach grumbling in anticipation of the muffins.

  "Everyone else thinks it's a bad idea and we shouldn't go, but I've promised to take the twins now and they seem so excited about going. I don't expect they get to leave the village much. I've just bought the ingredients for the pie too," said Tara, walking into the York stone floored white kitchen to unpack the blackberries.

  "Ignore them. They just don't like to see anyone else having a good time or at least they do – as long as they’re around to see it. They don't like the villagers leaving the village, that's a fact."

  Once Nancy had eaten three banana and cream muffins she left, claiming that she wouldn't be able to eat much of her tea that night and Tara began baking the blackberry pies, thinking that village life wasn’t exactly how she had envisioned it. She would have had more privacy in a house slap-bang in the middle of London, where no one even knew their neighbour’s names she thought, ruefully.

  Once the pies were perfectly baked and boasted melt-in-the-mouth golden crusts, she took them out of the oven and left them to cool on the baby blue wire cake rack on the white marble topped kitchen table. On her way up to bed that night, she wondered what could possibly go wrong at a harmless village fete? Nothing – she hoped, but there was an unmistakable ice-cold feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that wouldn’t go away. It niggled constantly at her for attention like a mouse gnawing at a piece of cheese. It had done since Melanie Grinter had said she’d seen ‘death’ in the twin’s tea-leaves.

  Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place though, she told herself, closing her bedroom curtains as a rumble of thunder echoed round her cottage, defiantly.

  Chapter Two

  Tara Trott, had had a restless night. Whenever something was playing on her mind, she suffered from chronic insomnia. It's always made her irritable the day after.

  She pulled blue jeans and a pink check shirt on with bleary eyes. Her eyeballs felt too big for her eye sockets, but she knew strong coffee would shock her system into re-booting soon enough. She had a feeling she should be somewhere that morning...then she remembered - the twins! Her heart kick-started her system without the need for coffee. She uncharacteristically raced around the cottage stubbing her toe and catching her shoulder on door frames as she lurched around trying to find her wellies.

  It was 6:45 am.

  "Why? Why do things go missing when you need them? Where the hell are they?" she ranted. Only the cottage’s creaking beams sympathised with her in her search.

  Someone knocked at the door. Tara groaned irritably as she went to open the door.

  "Nancy, I’m having a bit of a bad morning. I've had no breakfast, no coffee, no sleep and I can't find my wellies either."

  "You're not going to have one of your moods on you all day, are you?" frowned Nancy, knowing Tara all too well.

  "I don't have moods, I just have bad days."

  "If you say so. I'm just glad I'll be at the swimming pool. The twins will have to put up with you all morning. They’ll not be as quick to collar you for a lift somewhere anytime soon once they’ve experienced a full blown Tara Trott tantrum that’s for sure. Is something burning?” sniffed Nancy.

  "The toast!" shrieked Tara and padded off in her stockinged feet to fish it out of the toaster. The bread looked like lumps of smouldering coal and they were the last slices of bread she had in as she’d forgotten to buy a loaf from the village bakery and she’d cancelled her breakfast order for that morning. Professor Rummage’s ranting yesterday had put it completely out of her mind.

  "Just get some coffee down you, forget the toast. There'll be no end of misery if you're late picking the twins up. I bet they’re sat on their doorstep now in matching bonnets, with their cake boxes on their knees, sobbing into their embroidered hankies," smiled Nancy.

  "I'm not going anywhere without having any toast. Have a look for my wellies will you? I can’t find them anywhere."

  "You threw them out a few weeks ago, remember? You said they had a hole in them and you were fed up of wrapping your feet in carrier bags.”

  Tara grimaced.

  "I'll just have to wear trainers then and hope the field isn't too muddy."

  The one thing Tara hated buying was footwear. Her shoes had to be on their uppers before she’d drag herself into a shoe shop to buy a new pair. She hated new shoes and how they were so uncomfortable till they were worn in and then, in no time, they were worn out.

  "Fields are always muddy."

  It was 7:30 am when Tara and Nancy finally pulled up outside the twin’s house but the twins were nowhere to be seen. Nancy knocked on the cottage’s blue wooden door, but there was no answer. She shrugged her shoulders at Tara who was sat in the car. After another ten minutes of waiting, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, Tara got out and knocked on the door herself as hard as she could without breaking anything.

  One of the twins came running.

  "We've had a disastrous time of it! We’ve just had to bake a fresh batch. They're just about ready to come out now. Five more minutes and we'll be ready to leave. They can cool in the car," said Sally, flour on the tip of her nose and cake batter splattered all down her floral apron. There was a strange smell coming from the direction of the twin’s kitchen and it didn’t smell much like freshly baked cakes to Tara.

  "I could have had several coffees by now," said Tara, through the side of her mouth, jingling her car keys.

  "You could, but that doesn't mean you should," said Nancy, who was forever saying that Tara’s quick temper was fuelled by coffee but Tara argued back that it was usually when she hadn’t had enough coffee that her temper frayed.

  Tara wrinkled her nose at the strange, pungent smell coming from the twin's kitchen. Their herb infusion certainly didn't smell like the best choice to enhance anything, never mind muffins. She hoped they knew what they were doing. She doubted they would win a prize in the cake contest if the muffins tasted as bad as they smelled.

  "Ready!" shouted Molly, running for the front door clutching a pretty baby blue floral cake box in one hand and flapping her other over the red-hot cakes, followed by Sally who locked the cottage’s door. They carefully loaded the cake box of muffins alongside Tara's pie in the boot and finally, at 8 am, set off for Tarndale.

  Nancy and the twins kept giving Tara the wrong directions. The twins seemed to have developed problems telling their left from their right and they had very hazy memories of where they needed to turn off too, so they ended up going in circles for the best part of half an hour. Tara was starting to think the twins were doing it on purpose to fray her nerves even more than the morning had done already. The Sat-Nav didn't fare much better.

  "If I hear it say 'You've reached your destination' again, when quite clearly we haven't, I'll rip it out and drown it in the nearest river!" snorted Tara, her brewing irritability reachin
g 10 on a score of 1 to 10.

  "Pull over and ask that man walking his dog," said Nancy, trying to distract Tara from blowing a gasket before they’d even reached the fete.

  The man, smoking a pipe and wearing a flat cap, tweed jacket and brown cord trousers, was dragging a reluctant, obese Westie along. The man snarled at Tara when she asked him abruptly for directions to Tarndale’s fete.

  Tara scribbled the directions down in the notebook she always kept in the dashboard for just such a situation as he snapped each direction out to her and off they went - on another wild goose chase.

  "Are you sure he said to turn left at the church?" asked Nancy.

  "I wrote it all down! He quite clearly said ‘Turn right at the Church, go over the bridge and then turn left’, but it's obvious he was trying to be as unhelpful as possible!" said Tara, who’d run out of patience miles ago.

  "There's the fete in that field there, on the left."

  "I'm beginning to think Melanie's bad feeling was right. I think we should have stayed away. It’s not exactly been a relaxing journey down so far, has it?" snapped Tara.

  "We’ve all got here in one piece and miraculously, so has the Sat-Nav, but it was touch and go for a while," grinned Nancy.

  Tara glared at Nancy over her feeble attempt at a joke.

  Tara drove over Tarndale’s ancient stone bridge and couldn't help but feel the village did have a grim atmosphere about it as she drove slowly past the locals making their way to the fete down the tree lined lane. They all seemed to have the same vacant expression, staring in through the car windows at them. Tara was beginning to understand what Melanie had meant by saying she felt she had 'fleas in her bones' because she’d started to feel the same skin crawling feeling the closer they got to the fete.

  On the other side of the stone bridge, they saw a bored looking brownie, chewing gum and twirling it around her finger. At the side of her was a sign saying 'Stop here for directions to the car park'. Tara pulled up alongside the brownie, who didn't look up at them and put the window down.

  "Can you tell me where to park please? We’re here for the fete," said Tara, grinning a totally caffeine-free grin.

  The brownie pointed to the furthest corner of the field.

  "That's the car park? The car in front of us just went up that lane, there." said Tara, wondering if somehow she’d dreamt it.

  The brownie didn't look up. She was concentrating on scraping gum off her thumb.

  "They didn't want the car park."

  "Ah. I see."

  Tara drove reluctantly across the bumpy, muddy field. Everyone inside her car was thrown around in their seats as she wrestled with the steering wheel as the car slid down the field on the slick mud.

  "Where's everyone else then, if this is the car park?" asked Nancy, bracing her legs against the foot-well of the car and gripping onto her seat for dear life.

  "Maybe we're the first ones here?" suggested Tara, thinking longingly about the wellies she'd thrown out. They would have been far better than trainers, even with a hole in them.

  "Or maybe we’re the only ones mad enough from a different village to turn up? We'll win the contests for sure if it’s just going to be the residents of Tarndale entering. I didn’t see any of the people we’ve seen so far carrying any cake boxes," said Molly, her voice sounding like she was sliding down a flight of stairs at speed, on her bottom.

  Finally, after gaining several bruises and breaking a nail on her un-cooperative steering wheel, Tara managed to park the car at the very bottom of the field as instructed. The tracks she'd made sliding her way there had scarred the already sparse grass deeply which made her feel quite guilty for single-handedly destroying a portion of England’s green and pleasant land.

  They all climbed out, gingerly, negotiating the swamp-like muddy pocket Tara had parked in. The twins held onto each other tightly, trying to stay upright. Tara had the unenviable job of going round to the boot to get the cake boxes out and she lost one of her trainers in the process.

  "You know, I'm really glad I'm going swimming. At least I'll be able to get cleaned up," said Nancy, looking down at her mud splattered leggings and wellies.

  “Bit too cold for swimming, they don’t heat those pools like they should do, you know. We’d get a chill,” said Molly. “I can’t understand it, it looked like it was going to be a nice day back in Nithercott. It looks like the weather’s turning now.”

  Tara pushed the boxes onto the roof whilst she retrieved her mud-logged trainer and slid her soggy stockinged foot back into it with a slurping noise.

  A grey-haired man wearing a red padded check shirt, stained, ripped blue denim jeans and chunky green wellies was heading in their direction and he looked far from happy about them being there.

  "Have you not got any common sense woman? What are you playing at, driving about like a maniac? Look at the state of my field!" he raged, his face an unhealthy shade of red.

  "It's not my fault it's muddy!" retorted Tara, who was a match for any bellowing man and especially when she’d had no coffee.

  "What possessed you to park here? In the farthest, muddiest corner of the field? Surely you could see no one else was stupid enough to try it?" he fumed, his nostrils flaring.

  "A brownie told us to park here."

  "A brownie? Well you can just go and un-park yourself! It's bad enough with the Council riding rough-shod over my field without stupid female tourists trying to wreck it as well!"

  "We're here for the cake competition," wailed Sally, who didn’t like shouting men, as it reminded her of their father.

  "Cake competition's that way! Look at the state of you all. You’re not exactly dressed for the weather or the mud, are you? No common sense or dress sense either by the looks of things. Women drivers - they don't realise they’re in a fix - and when they finally do, they dig their heels in and get themselves into even deeper trouble, then a man has to come and dig them out. Don't try fluttering your eyelashes at me ladies, I'm no knight in shining armour!"

  "You can say that again. You're obviously the village bully!" snapped Tara as she slid and squelched her way back into the car, watched by the furious man. Nancy and the twins took the cake boxes off the roof and stood well back, which was a good idea as Tara was well and truly stuck. No amount of wheel spinning was going to get her out. She put her head in her hands and waited for the inevitable ‘I told you so’ rant off the man.

  The man tapped on her window. Tara pressed the button on the window and it slid down halfway.

  "Told you, didn’t I? I'll have to get the tractor out now! As if I've not got enough to deal with, today of all days!"

  "It’s lucky you've got a tractor, Mr...?"

  "Salter. Simon Salter. I rent this field off the Council - well for now I do. Who knows how long for now though? Everyone’s obsessed with building houses on every spare scrap of land there is. One day even the parks will go, mark my words. One day every park will be a Council estate, I’m telling you."

  "I hope not, I quite like parks. If you need me when you’re getting the car out, I'll be over in the cake tent. My name's Tara Trott."

  Simon Salter grunted and trudged his way back across the field muttering about women drivers, to where six horses were happily munching hay piled up into mini haystacks on the ground for them.

  "The villagers aren't exactly a welcoming lot, are they? But at least he's got a tractor. No sense in worrying about the car for now. Let's just get these cakes and pie entered before they turn into mud pies. And I've got to find some coffee before I explode," said Tara, embarrassed and annoyed in equal measure.

  "He must be the ‘dark and sinister presence’," said Molly, watching Simon Salter stomp off in his wellies.

  Tara's blood ran cold.

  Chapter Three

  The fete itself, was a subdued arena of glaring, unfriendly faces. Tara felt as though they had intruded on someone's wake, rather than a village fete.

  There were a couple of large marquee
s dotted over the field. One was the ever popular beer tent, there was a needlework tent, a pet show tent and the cakes and pies tent. Apart from the tents, there were a handful of stalls manned by miserable, cold looking people wearing bum bags and woolly hats and mittens, selling odd bits and pieces that no one would ever find a use for. Tara guessed they'd been sat there from the crack of dawn. There was a catering van which had a distinct lack of customers and a faded Punch and Judy tent with tatty puppets, not doing a very good job of entertaining the few children that were at the fete. A man was trying the ‘test of strength’, complaining it wasn’t working and the ice cream van was the only place apart from the beer tent that actually seemed to be selling anything.

  There was also a dog fly ball display on, but none of the dogs seemed particularly interested in running after the balls for some reason, so their handlers had to step in and take the dogs’ place, pretending it was part of the show, whilst the dogs looked on, passively.

  Inside the cake tent, most of the entries were already on the tables, waiting for the judges to taste them and decide on a winner. Tara didn't envy them - some of the cakes looked inedible.

  They set their own cakes and pies out and scanned the tent for a sneaky peek at their rival’s efforts. Everyone else it seemed, was looking at them. Perhaps it was because Tara looked like she was wearing knee-high 'Ugg' boots when in fact, it was mud, which was maddeningly itchy as it dried on her legs.

  Nancy wished them good luck then skipped off in search of Tarndale’s swimming pool. Tara couldn't swim, but at that moment, she envied Nancy. Anywhere was better than the cake tent with its suffocating and strangely threatening atmosphere. Tara told herself it was the lack of caffeine making her over sensitive. That, and Melanie Grinter’s warning. All of those elements had left her with a strange queasy feeling in her stomach.

  A terrible wailing sound outside the tent made everyone milling around inside, flinch. There were musical notes but they were drowned out completely by the un-coordinated, sporadic shrieks of the singer.