Tea & Treachery. Vicki Delany

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СКАЧАТЬ soft glow of early twilight.

      “I need you,” I repeated.

      “Good night, Lily.” Edna climbed the steps, her back straight and her head high.

      “Now you’ve done it,” I said to my grandmother. “Be here, in this kitchen, promptly at six thirty tomorrow morning. I cannot cook and wait tables at the same time. How many rooms do we have tonight?”

      “As it’s a Friday, we are full. Sixteen adults and five children.”

      “Twenty-one breakfasts. You’ll have to help.”

      “Really, Lily. I told you when I hired you, I do not wait on tables.”

      “Someone has to.”

      “Even if I wanted to, which I do not, I’m too unsteady on my feet to be carrying trays of hot tea and taking food from the oven.” She attempted to look frail.

      Whether that was true or not, Rose had made her point. She would not back down, not even to do so much as supervise the making of the toast. I turned to Bernie. “Six thirty. On the dot. We start breakfast service at seven.”

      “That’s early. I hope . . . Oh, you mean you want me to help?”

      “That’s right.”

      “I wish I could, but I can’t. Morning’s my best working time. That’s why I moved here, right? To get an early start. Sorry.”

      I took the pie out of the oven. It looked highly unappetizing. “You’re doing a historical novel, right?”

      “Yes. Parts of it, anyway. I’m thinking of weaving the present and the past together. It might have a supernatural aspect, as one woman tries to—”

      “Hold on a sec.” I tore open the bag of premixed salad ingredients and dumped the contents into a bowl. Equally unappetizing. “For a historical novel to have an authentic feel and atmosphere, you need insight into the lives of the common worker of the times. Your characters can’t all be from the upper classes. You need to bring maids, servants, kitchen workers to life. As they would have lived their working lives in a grand old house. Say, one built on Cape Cod Bay in the eighteen sixties. Be here at six thirty on the dot.”

      “I get the point,” Bernie said.

      “Excellent,” Rose said. “I told you not to worry, Lily. As Mrs. Harrison always said at Thornecroft, these things have a way of working themselves out.”

      * * *

      Despite the bad start—and the poor food—dinner was a pleasant affair. Rose chatted gaily about news of family members (every one of whom had told me I was crazy to even consider going into business with her) and told us she was considering taking a cruise over the winter.

      I told them I’d hired a gardener and he’d be starting tomorrow.

      “On a Saturday?” Bernie said.

      “One day blends into another around here. The only difference on the weekends is we’re busier in both the tearoom and the B & B. If he wants to work weekends, that’s fine with me.”

      “I hope you didn’t offer to pay too high a wage, Lily,” Rose said.

      “He’s getting the same as Gerry.”

      “That’s ridiculous. Gerald had been in the employ of this house for many years. Long before I bought it.”

      “Yes, and he treated it like his own private garden, so he didn’t mind that you paid what he probably made back in nineteen seventy-eight, when he started.”

      “He worked here that long?” Bernie said.

      “I’m guessing,” I said. “If we want a young, qualified gardener with seaside experience, at the height of the season, we have to pay accordingly.”

      “What’s for dessert?” Rose asked.

      “You invited us for dinner,” I said. “What did you make?”

      She pushed her nearly empty plate to the side of the table. Robert the Bruce made a flying leap across the room and landed nimbly next to it. He bent his head, and his little pink tongue flicked across the plate, scooping up the last of the beef and gravy.

      “You shouldn’t feed the cat on the table,” Bernie said. “The health inspectors won’t like it.”

      “Do I see any so-called health inspectors in my kitchen? I do not. I shall therefore continue to do what I want in my own house.”

      Robbie lifted his head and threw Bernie a self-satisfied smirk.

      The phone on the wall rang. It was an old-fashioned thing, bright pink with big square buttons and a receiver you shouted into at one end and listened from at the other. As Rose made no move to get up and answer, I did so.

      “Victoria-on-Sea Bed-and-Breakfast. Good evening.”

      “Oh, hi, Lily. It’s Cheryl here. I was calling Rose.”

      “I’ll get her.”

      “Hold on. It might be a better idea to run this past you first.”

      “Who is it?” Rose asked.

      I gave her a wave. “What’s up?”

      “My sister’s daughter Andrea works at the courthouse. She isn’t really suitable for that job, being somewhat of a gossip, but tomorrow it’ll be common news, anyway.”

      “What will be common news tomorrow?”

      “Who is it?” Rose shook her hand at me. “Give me that.”

      “Andrea knows I work at the tearoom,” Cheryl said, “and everyone knows you’re Rose’s granddaughter, and . . .”

      “And . . . ?”

      “Jack Ford has filed papers suing your grandmother for slander. ”

      Chapter 5

      Because I didn’t trust Bernie to remember she was supposed to be working at the B & B this morning or to not make an excuse if she did remember, I sent her a text as soon as I woke up.

      When I came out of the shower, towel-drying my hair and mentally inventorying the contents of the tearoom freezer, she’d replied: I’m up. Now. You owe me. Big-time.

      At five to six, Éclair and I made our daily commute across the yard toward the house. The property is perched on the west side of the long curving peninsula that makes up the Outer Cape section of Cape Cod, overlooking Cape Cod Bay toward the mainland. The sun doesn’t rise over the water, but the morning view is still spectacular when the long rays of light creep slowly across the bay. There was no wind this morning, and the surface of the water was as smooth and shiny as the surface of the glass tray we served breakfast muffins on. By Cape Cod standards, we’re pretty high here, about a hundred and twenty-five feet above sea level, СКАЧАТЬ