The Chocolate Collection

‘Wait and see. I myself am not entirely without power around here, dabbler in alchemy or not,’ she snapped, so obviously that barb had pierced her armour.

‘Same old Hebe – and what a very angry aura!’ Grumps said admiringly as she drove away after some clashing of the gears. Then he turned back to the matter in hand. ‘The signs are satisfactory, so let us go back indoors, Chloe. I have work to do.’

‘But Hebe Winter, Grumps – won’t she make trouble for you? I mean, she’s very important in Sticklepond, isn’t she? She seems to run the place, according to Poppy. Poppy and Felix are on the Parish Council and they tell me about things.’

‘The museum will be good for the village and, in any case, she has no teeth in this matter. Nor does the vicar, if he should try to interfere. They will have much more to worry them should their Mr Drake turn out to be Mann-Drake.’

‘Is Mann-Drake his real name?’ I asked curiously.

‘He was plain Drake when we were at Oxford, but I believe he later hyphenated it with his mother’s maiden name.’

‘Jake mentioned that he was researching him for you and he didn’t sound like good news.’

‘He was always a nasty piece of work, though his great charm of manner initially fools many people. But do not fear: I know how to protect my own,’ he assured me, and then went off to see if the removal men had finished with his study so that he could reoccupy it.

I went back to the cottage, plugged in my radio, and began sorting out my chocolate-making supplies and stock. All the little drawers and cupboards were really handy for storing moulds, packaging, sacks of couverture like big, richly fragrant chocolate buttons, ribbons and Wishes.

I’d printed out a fresh copy of the Mayan chocolate charm Grumps had given me, with the new part added, and now Blu-Tacked it to the front of one of the cupboards over the Bath. If Grumps and his Spanish friend ever manage to translate the last bit, I might frame the whole thing.

I stacked my entire stock of gold boxes of Chocolate Wishes on the shelves around the shop area, along with the empty boxes for the large chocolate angels with personalised readings inside, which I made to order: it was lovely to have enough room for everything, at last!

All the time I was working, my mind was still running on the conversation between Grumps and Hebe Winter, so when everything was shipshape I got out my Angel oracle cards and shuffled them.

They seemed to indicate major problems to overcome, but that success would be entirely possible.

Felix closed his shop in the afternoon and came to offer any help I needed – he is so sweet! I’d been out for masking tape and paint by then, so I got him to help me finish the pentagram on the museum floor.

I told him about Grumps and Hebe and he said the sparks would probably fly. Already Hebe had called an emergency meeting of the Parish Council tomorrow, now that the cat was out of the bag.

Grumps wandered back in just as we’d almost finished our task and regarded Felix with approval. While we were children Grumps tolerated his presence around the house, just as he had Poppy’s, but now that Felix goes to huge lengths to find the obscure volumes he wants, he has moved up several rungs in Grumps’ estimation.

‘I came to tell Chloe that Zillah has a huge pan of stew ready and Jake has rung to say he will eat at a friend’s house and be back later.’

‘He didn’t ring me!’ I said suspiciously. ‘And which friend? I hope he isn’t going to drink when he has to drive back, and—’

‘There is no need to panic, Chloe. He did try to call you earlier, but there was no reply, so he left a contact number with Zillah. I don’t need the car tonight and he is a sensible boy. You,’ he added to Felix, more in command than invitation, ‘may join the rest of us for dinner. We don’t dress.’

‘Not at all?’ Felix blurted, and then went pink.

‘He means you can come as you are,’ I explained, and he stopped looking aghast, just scared but gratified. He’d often eaten with Jake and me in the flat, of course, but had never before been invited to dine with the whole family.

But if he was expecting some kind of Addams Family frog stew, he must have been very pleased to discover that it was just a solid lamb hotpot with suet dumplings, followed by sultana-stuffed baked apples and custard. In my opinion, the baked apples would have been better for a little grated chocolate in the stuffing; but then, as far as I am concerned, almost anything would.

Chapter Ten: Comparative Evils (#)

I turned the Bath on for the first time the following afternoon, so that the cottage became filled with the lovely, familiar smell of chocolate as it was heated and stirred. I find the soft chugging noise it makes very soothing, too…

Later Poppy, on her way home from the latest Parish Council meeting, sat on the worktop watching me coat the Wishes moulds with chocolate using my large pastry brush, a technique I learned through trial and error. I can get the chocolate shells just the thickness I want this way and, after making so many, it comes automatically to me.

Since she was wearing the breeches, gilet and paddock boots in which she had presumably earlier mucked out several horses, this might not have been the most hygienic idea, but it was a bit late to point this out. Anyway, I was too grateful at having a mole on the Parish Council to quibble at a few germs.

‘I thought Miss Winter had called the emergency session to finally tell us who the new vicar was – I’m dying to know! But it was all about your grandfather instead,’ she said, finishing a quick résumé of what had been said, for my benefit.

‘Felix and I knew what it was about, but I assumed he would have told you.’

‘No, and I don’t see why it couldn’t wait until the regular meeting on Thursday, because none of us felt there was anything urgent about it and anyway, there was nothing we could do to stop your grandfather opening his museum, even if we wanted to!’

She giggled. ‘Poor Mr Merryman said there already was a witchcraft museum up at Winter’s End, and I thought Miss Winter was going to turn him into stone.’

‘He’s quite right though, Poppy. They do have a large display about Alys Blezzard and witchcraft, we saw it when we visited last year, do you remember? So I don’t know why she’s so against Grumps, except they seem to have had some kind of disagreement years ago.’

‘She said he practised the Dark Arts. She’s very keen the vicar meets your grandfather.’

‘Well, it takes one to know one and, honestly, from the way she went on you’d think Grumps was a Satanist!’

‘I expect she sees herself and what she does differently. The Winter womenfolk seem to manage to combine the occult and Christianity quite successfully somehow: you can tell that just by the way Hebe wears a cross and a pentacle round her neck all the time!’

‘Well, Grumps doesn’t do that, but he’s perfectly harmless, and even when he does try some of the dodgier stuff it never works out right, so she’s no need to worry. In fact, it seems that if Grumps hadn’t bought the Old Smithy, someone who really does walk on the dark side would have done!’ And I told her what I knew about Digby Mann-Drake.

‘But of course magic doesn’t really work anyway, even if Grumps is genuinely deluded that it does – and presumably this Mann-Drake is too. Grumps told Miss Winter about him trying to buy the Smithy and then she remembered that it was a Mr Drake that had purchased the title of Lord of the Manor and was also buying Badger’s Bolt.’

‘Oh, I see!’ Poppy exclaimed, enlightened. ‘It might be the same person and that’s what she meant about us perhaps having to deal with a greater evil than your grandfather. She said the Mr Drake who’s bought Badger’s Bolt could turn out to be even more undesirable, though she didn’t say why.’

‘According to Grumps the village is a magical hotspot, being on the junction of two ley lines, so even if he failed to buy the Old Smithy, Mr Mann-Drake might still want to come here. I can’t imagine why he would want to be Lord of the Manor, though!’

‘Perhaps it is a different Mr Drake after all,’ she suggested. ‘Let’s hope so. By the way, Felix and I confessed that we knew you and I told them you made and sold Chocolate Wishes. They couldn’t have any objection to that.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. And where did you say Felix has got to?’

‘He had to go back and open the shop. One of his special clients is coming and anyway, he can’t keep shutting all the time, even if it is off season, or he’ll never make a living.’

‘I think he’ll always do most of his bookselling via the internet, like me with my Chocolate Wishes, even if I let the public into the workshop when the museum is open. Passing trade is just the icing on the gingerbread, but I can have jars of chocolate lollies on the counter for the children, and I thought about making treacle toffee witch’s cat ones, too. Do you remember when I used to make them for Jake and his friends on Hallowe’en and Bonfire Nights?’

‘Yes, that’s a good idea. It’s quiet for passing trade up this end of the High Street, but once the witchcraft museum opens, you’ll probably get a lot more.’

I finished coating the last heart moulds and gave Poppy a couple of ones I’d made earlier that had broken while I was taking them out.

‘Oh, yum,’ she said. ‘You are clever, Chloe, making such lovely chocolate!’

‘Well, you make brilliant Yorkshire puddings, don’t forget, while mine come out like crispy cowpats and I have to cheat and use frozen ones.’

‘But your fruitcake is wonderful too, so you’re multi-talented.’

‘Anyone can make a fruitcake, Poppy. It’s dead easy.’

‘Maybe, but yours tastes extra special.’ She licked the last of the chocolate off her fingers and added, ‘And your chocolate always tastes different too, especially since you started using that spell your grandfather gave you. You do always say it while you’re mixing up the chocolate, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘but only because it was so kind and thoughtful of him to find it for me, not because I think it affects the taste! He gave me a couple more lines recently that he and the friend he corresponds with about it have managed to decipher. He said that might be all of the original and the rest of the document may be a later addition – a sort of added bonus. Not that I really believe any of it is some ancient Mayan charm passed down through the conquistadores, of course.’