Poppy Blake - The Windmill Café

Then an agonizing bolt of electricity shot through her heart – could it have been in the honey? The jar had been sealed when she’d handed it over to Suki, she’d checked, so how had it got there? It was no good, Rosie couldn’t hang onto her emotions any longer and tears trickled down her cheeks. She had to say something.

‘Suki, do you think… do you think it could have been the honey I gave you? Remember, you came to the café to ask if I had any honey because you’d run out? Did you use it to make your spray?’

Suki’s eyes, red-rimmed and bloodshot met Rosie’s, but as usual before she could utter a word, Felix had leapt from his seat and was straight in there.

‘I told you this place is a death trap! It’s just as well the doctor’s informed the authorities and the café is going to be shut down! I’m going back to the lodge to make sure no one touches that honey before the inspectors arrive and I’ll insist that they test it right away.’

Felix stormed out of the café, shoving a recently arrived William roughly out of his way, and the others followed him.

‘Hey, guys, what’s going on? Suki?’

Rosie saw something more than concern for Suki’s wellbeing in William’s eyes, and had her world not been crumbling down around her she would have dissected its meaning further. However, she had much more pressing things on her mind.

‘Mia, can you help me to make a “Closed” sign for the front gate?’

‘Sure.’

When they had finished hanging the hand-made sign on the car park fence, Rosie gathered together a basket of things to take upstairs to her flat. She didn’t want to interrupt the investigation once it started, and she certainly had no intention of watching whilst they tore her beloved little café apart. A cauldron of dread churned in her stomach, but she knew that was nothing compared to how Suki must be feeling. The poor girl could have died and there was the added possibility that someone had targeted her! Oh God, she thought, what if the assailant was still lurking around in the holiday site? She dropped her basket and ran to the bathroom.

‘Rosie? Are you okay?’ called Mia, her voice tight with anxiety.

‘Erm…’

‘Look, I want you to come and stay with me. That way the inspectors can do what they want without you having to be there. Why don’t you go upstairs, pack a bag and we’ll leave them to it? No arguments.’

Rosie peered round the door at her friend and the sympathy on her face nearly sent her into another deluge of tears, but she managed to hang on.

‘Mia, I would love to do that, but with Graham out of the country, the café’s my responsibility. I need to stay here.’

‘Well, nothing will be happening until tomorrow, so let’s get away for a few hours.’

‘Okay.’

Rosie gave Mia a weak smile of gratitude, slung a few random items into her handbag and locked the café before joining Mia next to her little cream Fiat 500 in the car park. She couldn’t wait to escape. If she stayed, all she would be able to think about would be the inspectors combing through her kitchen, moving everything from its allocated space, testing every nook and cranny – no matter how certain she was that they wouldn’t find a speck of dirt or molecule of germs anywhere, she was still terrified of their impending visit.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ mused Mia as she steered round the narrow roads towards the converted barn she shared with her parents. ‘It could be nothing, but…’

‘What?’

‘Well, no, nothing…’

‘Mia?’

‘It’s just Suki told me that she and Nadia went for a walk through the woodland on Sunday morning before the party. Could she have accidentally touched or brushed against the petals of one of these monkshood flowers?’

‘It’s not touching that causes illness. It’s ingesting.’

‘Well, I know exactly who we should ask about poisonous plants.’

‘Who?’

‘Freddie.’

‘Why Freddie?’

‘Don’t you remember he told you at the garden party that whilst you might be the go-to girl for bridal flowers, he was the man when it came to wild flowers? Why don’t we take a detour over to the outward-bound centre and ask him what he knows? We can talk to Matt about the inspection too. He’ll know how to handle it until Graham gets back. I can’t wait to see Matt’s face when we tell him that his super-sleuthing skills are back in demand. Unlike you, I’m confident the inspectors won’t find anything wrong with that honey you gave Suki – it came from Harrods for God’s sake! No, if you want my opinion, Suki was spot on. Someone put something in her spray. What we need to find out is who.’

‘I think you’re right – and it has to be someone who knows Suki uses her spray before every concert not just to help her voice but because it calms her stage nerves. I could be wrong but I reckon that poison was put in her bottle and the poisoner didn’t expect her to use it here in Willerby but when she got back home to Ibiza. And if I’m right, the only people on my list who could have done that are the people in her party, the people she calls her friends. If we want to save the café, then it’s up to us, and Matt, to find out who.’

‘And why!’

‘Yes, and why.’

A surge of optimism sliced through Rosie’s veins. Instead of her previous go-to reaction of running away from the misfortunes life threw at her, she was choosing to take a more positive stance and it felt good to be doing something to salvage the café’s reputation, as well as her own. She was absolutely determined to do everything she could to preserve the reputation of her beloved café by finding out what was going on – and there would be the added benefit of making her father proud.

As they drove to the other side of the village, Rosie rolled down the window of Mia’s little Fiat to marvel at the beauty of its landscaped gardens. All the lawns had been meticulously trimmed, rectangles of green velvet rippling in the breeze like liquid luck, some strewn with the tiny white dots of daisies, some as perfect as bowling greens. In every garden, the herbaceous borders burst with geraniums, hollyhocks and delphinium, vivid with summer bounty. A parade of pansies and petunias, marigolds and alyssum skirted the flower beds, flanked by sturdy rhododendron bushes, magnolias and wooden arches clad in clematis, all in full flower. Birdsong echoed through the tangled branches of the oak and horse chestnut trees to the accompaniment of the languid drone of a solitary lawn mower.

A waft of fragrance floated through the open car window. For Rosie, the sweet aroma of crushed rose petals was the scent of summer more than any other floral bouquet. She wished with all her heart that she could retreat to a shady bench amongst the blooms, with one of her favourite glossy cookery books, and lose herself in another world.

‘It’s really pretty, isn’t it?’ said Mia, sending a smile in Rosie’s direction. ‘Willerby has won best village in the Britain in Bloom competition quite a few times. Hey, Rosie, your flower arrangements at the garden party were amazing, have you ever thought of entering any competitions? You’d get my vote!’

‘Thanks, Mia. Actually, I’ve won quite a few prizes already.’

‘You have? Why’ve you kept that a secret? Is it because Carole might co-opt you onto the church rota?’

Rosie laughed, but the familiar feeling of discomfort started to rotate around her abdomen. Looking back, she knew that entering her floral art into competitions had been the beginning of the end for her and Harry’s relationship. Things had never quite been the same after she had won a prestigious gold medal at a floristry competition for which Harry had spent weeks creating his own submission, sourcing exotic flowers from the far side of the globe and declaring his design to be a shoo-in. Especially as he had spent the days leading up to the judging disparaging every aspect of her arrangement and advising her on how to bring it up to a more professional standard.