Devil's Food Read Online Free PDF Page A

heat from the building, as in a Roman hypocaust. The builder may have been a tad eccentric, but he built very solidly. Thus the temple is a splendid place to sit and drink a well earned gin and tonic whatever the weather outside.
    I sipped my drink and closed my eyes. It had been an awful day but, for me, it was now over. The shop was shut, the day’s trading safely banked by Goss and the doors secured. The Mouse Police were on patrol, or more likely reposing on their flour sacks until night came and the vermin crept out from their holes. Horatio perched on the arm of my marble chair, watching the wind tear at the branches of Trudi’s linden tree. He likes winter. He loves warmth; any sort, he is not fussy, from air blowers to the full blown actual flames in a fireplace. To this he sits so close that last year he melted his whiskers on one side and had to allow a metre’s clearance on the left until they grew again. I like winter too. People buy more bread than in summer, because somehow they instinctively know they need more food to keep warm. It is not pleasant to make bread when it is hot outside, because the bakery air conditioners can only do so much, and the temperature only goes down from ‘inferno’ to ‘possible to survive’. Winter is the season for baking.
    Trudi cradled her last bulb in her hand, whispered to it, socketed it gently into the ground, covered it and tamped it down. Then she stood, stretched her back, and led Lucifer into the temple, pausing to wipe his paws with a duster as she scraped her own boots. Lucifer was attached to a harness, but seemed to have adapted to it. He clawed his way onto Trudi’s shoulder and sat there as smugly as if he had just eaten the parrot.
    ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Warm in here!’ I passed her the bottle. Trudi doesn’t like foreign materials in her gin. She took a strengthening gulp.
    ‘How does your garden grow?’ I asked.
    ‘Good, good. Settled down, snuggled,’ she said. ‘Now until spring nothing much, which is good, my bones get old. Then we fight the snails for the tulips. I win,’ she said.
    I believed her. She was perfectly capable of sitting up all night and shooting the invading snails with a BB gun. What had happened to BB guns? They were probably prohibited weapons too, I thought sourly. Those two cops had not improved my day.
    ‘Horatio enjoys this weather,’ I said idly.
    ‘He likes the heat. Maybe he remembers Africa. Luce, he likes any weather, eh, Luce?’ Lucifer flicked an ear and ran his hard little head under Trudi’s chin. ‘We go and fix the plumbing in Arachne next,’ she promised him. Lucifer gave a brief purr. As long as it was dangerous and preferably wet, he would love it.
    ‘What’s wrong with it?’
    ‘She was dyeing in the bath,’ Trudi explained.
    ‘What?’ I was startled.
    ‘Dyeing. Cloth. Too much fluff. Clogged the drain.’
    ‘Oh, right, dyeing. I see. What do you make of Ms Webb, Trudi?’
    ‘What Meroe said. I can’t remember the word. She’s a nice woman, kind. Likes to make things for people. Likes to teach. But she trips, drops things, breaks things. She hits table corners with her hip. If a plate is next to the edge, it falls. Meroe said …’ ‘She’s a klutz,’ said a dark brown voice. My very own Daniel, putting in a word. Trudi nodded briskly.
    ‘Klutz, that was it. So many words. Come on, Luce, we go find the unclogger,’ said Trudi. She smiled at Daniel and departed, Lucifer clinging tight to her shoulder with his ears forward.
    ‘Have a drink,’ I said, emerging from a comforting embrace. Daniel smelt of spices and his own scent, infinitely dear and infinitely comforting. ‘I will a tale unfold which will make Horatio’s whiskers spit sparks. But first, how are you?’
    ‘Fine. Underslept. But I got the thief and the girl who was accused has been exonerated. It was a manager, I might have known. Unreliable, the middle class in middle age.’
    ‘Thank you very much,’ I said,