CHAPTER ONE
‘This is for you, Aunt Pansy,’ Charlie Bell said under her breath, with a mental nod to the woman who had first opened these tea rooms in sunny Tremevissey all those years ago. Over two decades ago, in fact.
Though it was almost as long since tragedy had struck, leaving the village shocked and her grandmother bereaved.
She waddled outside with her new sign, the words CORNISH TEA ROOMS: GRAND REOPENING TODAY, 10.30AM, chalked across its shiny black surface.
‘And for you too, Grandma Cornish,’ she added, grateful to the woman who had left her this somewhat decaying but still lovely property in her will, bypassing her parents, whose only interest in life appeared to be the posh boarding kennels they ran in Kent. ‘One hour to go before the tea rooms reopen. I hope I do you both proud.’
Thankfully the tea rooms were rather less decaying now she had spent a small fortune on refurbishments and a state-of-the-art fire safety system.
She set the A-board out on the pavement and stepped back to admire it. Then promptly decided to move the sign further out towards the kerb. So passing cars could see it better as they headed for the harbour car park.
‘Goodness, be careful.’ Irene, her head waitress, was watching from the side door of the tea rooms. ‘You look like you’re about to lay an egg.’
Her head waitress and her only waitress, truth be told.
Grey-haired, lethargic, and a bit on the disapproving side, Irene was not the enthusiastic helper Charlie had been hoping for when she first started this mad venture.
She had originally envisaged someone young and full of energy for her head waitress. But it seemed all the students in these parts were either sitting examinations or heading off to backpack around Australia. So it had been Irene she hired, and an even older woman, Joyce, who had been taken into hospital last week with a suspected heart condition.
Leaving her with only Irene to wait tables. And herself, of course.
Still, she comforted herself, applications for summer jobs at the tea rooms were bound to improve as the season hotted up. It was only early May, after all, and although the recent warm weather had brought a few tourists to their remote corner of the Cornish coast, the village was still relatively quiet.
‘You think it’s so easy, you try picking it up,’ Charlie replied, puffing as she found an ideal resting place for the A-board.
‘Such a fuss.’ Irene tried to lift it, then gave up, somewhat red in the face. ‘Grief, woman, what’s it made of? Lead?’
‘Weighs a ton, doesn’t it?’ Charlie bustled her inside. ‘Pretty though.’
She checked her watch for about the twenty-fifth time that morning. There was still an hour to go before the Grand Reopening. She hesitated, then turned over the sign hanging in the glass door from Closed to Open.
Catching Irene’s sideways glance, she shrugged. ‘In case I forget later. There are still about a hundred things left to tick off on my To Do list. Now that’s one less to worry about.’ She propped the door open with a chair. ‘Besides, if we leave this door open, no one will see the Open sign from the street.’
‘But if you leave the door open like that,’ Irene said drily, ‘they won’t need to see the sign. They’ll think we’re already open.’
‘True.’ Charlie blinked. ‘Then I’ll just have to ask anyone who comes in, politely but firmly, to come back later.’
‘Good,’ was Irene’s tart response, who seemed unlikely ever to make Cheeriest Employee of the Week. ‘Because we still have loads to do before we can open.’
‘For instance?’
‘Well, apart from checking all the sauce bottles, and checking the salt and pepper cellars, and filling the cutlery drawers … ’ Irene began to count the jobs off on her knobbly fingers. ‘All the pavement tables and chairs need to go outside, today’s Specials need to be chalked onto the wall board, and Bab’s up to her eyeballs in clotted cream in the kitchen. She’s prepping cream teas for a hundred covers, like you suggested. Someone ought to help her before she drowns in strawberry jam.’
Babs was her chef-cum-baker, who seemed far less experienced than her CV had suggested. Which was yet another thing to worry about, but Charlie was trying to keep a happy face on. At least until after this first week was finished.
‘I’ll do the Specials board,’ Charlie said, rooting about for the mini bucket of coloured chalk pens behind the counter.
‘I can’t do the tables and chairs,’ Irene told her in an injured tone. ‘Not all on my own. Not with my bad back.’
‘Your back, of course.’ Charlie managed a faint smile. Another reason why she had wanted a student. Though it was true that experience ought to count more than ability to move about in a timely fashion, she could really do with someone whole and hale right now. ‘Fine, okay. I’ll do the tables and chairs. You do the board.’
‘Don’t blame me if the writing’s a bit wobbly though,’ Irene warned her, grabbing the mini bucket of chalk pens. She nodded towards the outside sign. ‘Like that one there. I did my best. But I told you, I’m not much of an artist.’
‘That’s not a problem. Just make sure all the spelling is accurate. And the apostrophes. People always notice when the apostrophes are wrong.’
‘Can’t do punctuation, sorry.’ Irene picked up a green chalk pen and glared at it accusingly, as though it was to blame for all her shortcomings. ‘I was rubbish at English at school. Besides, you never said anything about punctuation at the interview.’
‘Well, so long as it’s spelt correctly – ’
‘Can’t spell too good neither.’ But when Charlie reached reluctantly for the bucket, Irene clutched it to her chest. ‘I’ll do my best though. Rather Specials than tables and chairs, thank you very much.’
And with that, Irene scurried away to fill out the Specials board.
Charlie stared after her in mild annoyance, then picked up one of the round metal tables and carried it outside. That woman could move surprisingly fast for someone with chronic back pain, she thought suspiciously. In fact, though she disliked thinking the worst about anyone, there only ever seemed to be something wrong with Irene’s back when called upon to do a job she didn’t like.
‘You ought to be stricter with that one,’ Mrs Petals said from the door of the art gallery next door, making her jump.
Charlie set the metal table down with a distinct crack and turned to look at her neighbour. ‘Sorry?’
Mrs Petals was in her early fifties, with a huge white-blonde knot of hair that sat like a spiders’ nest on the back of her head. She was tall and spindly, with a deep voice that made people look twice, and always wore the same long, brownish-grey cardigan, whatever the weather, over a range of checked pinafore dresses or corduroy slacks.
Her voice deepened even further now. ‘You’re the boss, not Irene. You need to make sure she knows that. She’ll be running rings round you within a week if you let her get away with picking and choosing jobs like that.’
Blimey. The woman must have ears like a bat, Charlie thought.
‘Thanks for the tip,’ Charlie said sharply, feeling a little foolish now. Why couldn’t Mrs Petals mind her own business?
But Mrs Petals was not wrong, she had to admit it. Charlie was the boss, not Irene. The problem was, she was not used to being the boss, and both Babs and Irene knew it and were cheerfully taking advantage of her inexperience.
It had to stop.
This was her first day of trading, and already Irene was refusing to take her orders, and Babs had an odd way of pretending to be deaf when told to do something in a different way to the one she was used to.
If she couldn’t command the respect of her staff today, of all days, at the Grand Reopening of her aunt’s tea rooms, then she probably never would.
But how to achieve authority?
She simply wasn’t a shouter, or a strict boss. Yet she couldn’t see any other way to get them in line.
The phone rang in the art gallery, and Mrs Petals scuttled back inside. ‘Good luck with the reopening, Charlie,’ she called over her shoulder, then the door to the art gallery shut with a jangling sound of bells.
Charlie rolled up her sleeves, then got on with shifting the other metal tables and matching chairs outside onto the small pavement area designated for outdoor eating. It was hard work, and she was soon panting and perspiring, a little concerned she would not get the job done before opening time.
But at least the weather was clearing up. By the time she lumbered out with the last few chairs, the clouds that had been obscuring the sun all morning finally rolled away, and the Cornish resort of Tremevissey lay bathed in May sunshine.
‘What a gorgeous day it’s turning out to be,’ she said cheerily to the old lady hobbling past the tea rooms on a stick, a local eccentric called Mrs Trevellyan. Nobody knew quite how old she was, but her age was rumoured to be heading towards one hundred. Certainly she had outlived everyone in the village, people said, and most of the inhabitants of the Cornish coast too. ‘A lovely day to reopen Pansy’s tea rooms. Don’t you agree, Mrs Trevellyan?’
But Mrs Trevellyan did not smile in return.
‘Come to no good, all this,’ she replied instead, in a gnarled old Cornish accent, and spat on the pavement right beside the plastic bowl set out for thirsty dogs. ‘See if it don’t.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘No good, that’s what I say.’
‘Oh-kay,’ Charlie said slowly, somewhat mystified. ‘Sorry, Mrs Trevellyan, I’m not sure I understand. What will come to no good?’
‘All this. All this here.’ The old woman lifted a stick and waved it violently at the tea rooms before slamming it back onto the pavement with an angry gesture. ‘There’s a curse on this place.’
‘No, there really isn’t,’ Charlie replied, a little cross, and had to suppress a lively desire to throttle the old bird. It would be a shame to murder this ancient woman when she was just shy of her century. But all the same, she had heard this talk of a curse before. Quite a few people in the village seemed to subscribe to it. And it was nothing but superstitious nonsense. ‘There’s no curse on the tea rooms. Never was, never will be.’
‘Ain’t so.’
‘And why’s that?’ Charlie asked, then muttered under her breath, ‘As though I need to ask.’
It was what had made her aunt Pansy so famous in Tremevissey. Or infamous, rather. Her tragic death. And all the usual speculation that surrounded a possible suicide.
The old lady harrumphed. ‘Who knows for sure what happened that night?’
‘I thought my aunt Pansy drowned.’
‘Exactly!’
Charlie wrinkled her brow. ‘Huh?’
‘And why was that, eh?’ Mrs Trevellyan tapped the side of her nose with an air of deep and mysterious significance. ‘A woman who learned to swim as a tiny babbie, a-drowning in the ocean? A woman who’d lived by the sea all her born days?’ She nodded. ‘Ever asked yourself that, dearie?’
‘Erm, not particularly.’
‘I’ll tell you, then. Because of a man, dearie.’ Mrs Trevellyan shook her head in disapproval and then hobbled on down the street, adding darkly, ‘It’s always a man. Always.’
‘Well, we’re all ladies here,’ Charlie called after the old woman. But there was no reply. She grinned and ducked back inside the shop to find Babs setting out a tray of rather misshapen-looking baked goodies on the serving counter. ‘Babs,’ she said, confused, ‘what are you doing? I thought you were prepping the cream teas? Why have you put all those brownies there?’
‘Erm … ’ Biting her lip in sudden consternation, Babs scratched her hair net with a creamy finger and then backed into a postcard spinner, knocking it over. ‘Oops.’
Charlie righted the postcard spinner, which had lost one third of its contents. She swallowed the swear word on her lips, as she knew Babs was uncomfortable with anything stronger than, ‘Damn,’ being a strict Methodist, and started collecting up postcards of Tremevissey, its idyllic harbour and quay looking a damn sight sunnier in the pictures than it was today.
‘Sorry, did I startle you?’ She stuffed the postcards randomly back into the spinner, promising herself to sort them out properly later. Probably at midnight, at this rate. ‘Seriously, why have you brought the brownies out already?’
‘I thought a teensy sample as they come in might encourage customers to buy some brownies to go with their teas and coffees.’ Babs ummed and ahhed, rearranging the brownies on the tray. ‘They be very tasty.’
‘I’m sure they are very tasty,’ Charlie said impatiently. ‘But if we give the cakes out for free, Babs, why would anyone want to pay good money to buy more?’
‘Ah, yes, erm … ’
She studied the brownies, frowning. ‘I must say, they look a bit … unusual.’
‘Yes,’ Babs agreed. ‘My fault.’
‘Oh?’
‘I sat on some of them.’
‘You sat on the brownies?’
‘Well, I’d run out of space to cool cakes on the table, see? So I started putting the baking wires on the chairs. Only I forgot and sat down.’
Charlie bit back a laugh. It really wasn’t funny. And Babs wasn’t smiling. ‘Okay, never mind. Better take these brownies back into the kitchen, and keep prepping the cream teas. Yes?’
Babs, in her forties and comfortably plump, chewed on a pink-varnished fingernail, then nodded. Probably still enjoying the taste of that Cornish clotted cream.
‘And wash your hands!’ Charlie said, remonstrating with the woman. ‘Remember the Health and Safety talk I gave you.’
‘Right you are.’ But heading back into the kitchen with her tray of brownies, Babs turned in confusion and added, ‘I done prepped a hundred cream teas, just like you said. But what if we don’t get a hundred orders for cream teas? What if we get, say, fifty orders? And fifty left over?’
‘Then I guess we’ll have to eat the other fifty cream teas ourselves.’
Babs looked horrified. ‘I’m on a diet.’
‘I was joking. They’ll last until tomorrow, at least. If we keep them in the fridge, covered with cling film.’ She paused. ‘You are covering each cream tea plate in cling film like we discussed?’
Looking back at her dubiously, Babs nodded. ‘Yes, I done that.’ She hesitated. ‘Mostly.’
Mostly?
Charlie opened her mouth to query that, but Babs had already vanished, bearing away the misshapen brownies. She glanced at her watch and sucked in a breath. Fifteen minutes to go before opening.
Suddenly exhausted, she pulled out a chair and sat down to think what else needed doing.
Her brain refused to work, sadly.
But her feet seemed quite happy to have a rest, so she stayed where she was and closed her eyes. Ah, peace …
The brief respite did not last long, however.
A few minutes later, she opened her eyes again as Irene emerged from the back of the tea rooms with a broom and a cross expression.
Charlie dragged herself back to her feet. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Some bloody bird has only got in and done its business all over the conservatory, that’s what.’
‘Oh no. Have you let it out again?’
Her heart hurt at the thought of some small, defenceless bird flapping wildly about the glass walls of the conservatory, desperate for a way out.
‘Long gone.’ Irene pursed her lips, looking at her accusingly. ‘Somebody left the riverside terrace door ajar overnight.’
‘Oops.’ That “somebody” was probably her, Charlie thought with a guilty start. She only hoped the bird hadn’t got hurt. ‘Poor thing.’
‘I cleaned up its doings. Had to change five red checked tablecloths though. That’s nearly all your spares gone.’
‘Right.’
‘I put the soiled ones in the laundry bag. For collection Monday.’
‘Thank you.’
Irene shook her head. ‘And us not even open yet.’
‘I know, it’s a nuisance. Thank you for doing that so promptly.’ Charlie nodded towards the broom. ‘Better put that away now and wash your hands. Time to open.’
‘Isn’t there going to be a ribbon?’
‘A what?’
‘If it’s so grand, this reopening of yours, shouldn’t there be a ribbon across the front door?’ Irene looked at her expectantly, arms folded across the broom. ‘And a celebrity to cut it? Or a parish councillor, at least?’
Charlie stared back at her, speechless.