As Daniel returned to the washroom to dress again, Alice and Veronica shared a speaking glance. “Oh my giddy aunt,” Veronica whispered.
“Your giddy A.U.N.T.?” Alice whispered back, confused.
Veronica’s eyebrows gave a suggestive dance. “I’ll bet that man has a golden gun, if you know what I mean.”
“No, it’s metal, with—”
“And balls of steel.”
Alice felt like she had fallen entirely off the roller coaster of this conversation. “Do you refer to some variation of cricket?”
Veronica fanned herself with her apron. “I wonder if he would shoot me if I asked?”
Alice stared with concern at the girl. She was rambling incoherently and expressing suicidal ideation; clearly, A.U.N.T. had overworked her!
At that moment, Daniel returned to the room—alas, covered once again by a shirt. He was, however, affixing the link of one cuff as he walked, and at the sight, Veronica and Alice both gave rapt sighs.
Daniel looked up with impatient confusion. “Are you quite well?”
“Just dreamy, sir,” Veronica said, her eyes unfocused as if she was looking right through the white linen of his shirt.
“Hm. Kindly wake up, Agent V-2, and take us to thiscalamity.”
They left the room. “Besides,” Alice murmured to Veronica as they waited for Daniel to lock the door, “gold is too soft for a gun. It would explode in your hand as soon as you pumped the trigger.”
The maid choked on a laugh. “I didn’t know you had a ribald sense of humor, Agent A.”
Before Alice could explain that she most certainly did not, Daniel glanced irritably at the women, and they fell into a prudent silence.
Veronica led them along the corridor and down the narrow service stairs. Entering the kitchen, they found half a dozen servants at work amongst the benches, sinks, and worktables. Everyone watched furtively, whispering amongst themselves, while Alice and Daniel crossed the room.
“There,” Veronica whispered, pointing to a crumb-covered sideboard as if it were a ghastly murder scene.
An elderly butler in an impeccable black suit turned to skewer them with a casually despotic look as they approached. “What?” he demanded, his gaze flicking over Daniel’s lack of jacket and Alice’s unbound hair. “If you’re the musicians, you’re late.”
“No, sir,” Daniel replied. “We’re on a mission from A.U.N.T.”
“Mr. Cranshaw, this is Agent A!” Veronica said excitedly. “And Agent B! Can you believe it?!”
Cranshaw frowned. “Keep your voice down, girl! Not everyone in this room is an A.U.N.T. operative. Annie over there washing the pots is a spy for the Wicken League of witches. The sous chef is a spy for Mr. Bassingthwaite’s uncle. Daisy the scullery girl is a spy for the real estate institute. And Jen the dairy maid is an innocent dairy maid.”
“Sorry, sir,” Veronica said, abashed.
“Andsomeoneis the enemy of us all,” Cranshaw added, turning his frown to the sideboard.
“What happened?” Alice asked, stepping closer to inspect the mess of cake crumbs. It lay in an almost exact rectangular shape, littered through with raisins, cherries, and those gummy yellow blobs you find too late in a mouthful and are forced to swallow. A rich odor of brandy wafted up.Fruitcake, she thought, wrinkling her nose.
To her amazement, the cake had been entirely flattened. While Alice could not regret its loss from tomorrow’s morning tea table, she was curious about how this might have occurred. As an Englishwoman, she had been subjected to traditional fruitcake every Christmas, and therefore knew the near impossibility of digesting it, let alone crushing it as a whole. Furthermore, the cake had been large, and yet the effect on it entirely uniform. She looked about for an object someone might have dropped on it, but saw nothing except a few crumbs that had made it all the way to the ceiling, and a large cake knife lying on the floor.
“What happened is that we were ruthlessly attacked!” Cranshaw declared, stabbing a finger at the crumbs.
From the corner of her eye Alice saw a brief, weary flicker across Daniel’s otherwise inscrutable expression. “Perhaps someone dislikes fruitcake,” he suggested.
The butler scoffed with all the derision of a man to whom a digestive system is but a fond memory. “To dislike fruitcake is unpatriotic. Besides, this was more than cake; it was a work of art. A perfectly to-scale replica of Starkthorn Castle. You have no idea the amount of effort that goes into such things. I spentan entire weeksupervising it being made. This brutal violence represents a serious threat! Queen Victoria’s life is not the only one in peril.”
“Hm,” Daniel said. Crouching, he withdrew a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and used it to pick up the cake knife. Veronica watched him avidly.
“Are you using the handkerchief so as to not transfer your fingerprints to the knife?” she asked.
