Free Tea with Jam and Dread by Tamar Myers Page B

Gabe said, giving Sebastian and Celia stern looks as well, ‘I am going to give you back your torches – only we call them
flashlights
here in the States – and we shall all return to the scene of the crime. Oops, bad choice of words. We’ll go to where this young man says that Perry disappeared.’
    ‘His name is
Peregrine
,’ Sebastian said, and practically without hissing too. Believe me, there is no man quite as virile as an Englishman.
    ‘Shouldn’t you call the constable, so that he can organize a search party?’ Aubrey said.
    That’s when Agnes came to life and began to wring her plump, although perhaps not tender, little hands. ‘Unfortunately, the search party would be Magdalena’s bailiwick.’
    ‘Et tu, Brutus?’ I said. ‘Why “unfortunately”?’
    Quite fortunately, the Babester stepped in again. ‘Hernia is a small village, mostly populated by Mennonites and surrounded by Amish farmers. Both sects are extremely peaceful and law-abiding. For instance, in their religion it is forbidden to take a human life, even in self-defence. It is also a rather poor community, and whereas it once had a two-person police force, it is currently down to just one person, whom Magdalena pays out of her own pocket. Incidentally, Magdalena is the mayor, for which she receives no salary, and she is also the captain of the all-volunteer Hernia Search and Rescue Squad – again, without compensation. If it wasn’t for my wife’s largesse, this community would be without most of its vital services. As for what Agnes might mean by her remark, I have absolutely no idea.’
    ‘Yeah?’ Sebastian sneered. ‘Is that so? Well, I remember reading about several murders happening right here at this very inn. They were written up in that brochure Mother received in the post.’
    At that dear Aubrey came around the table and lightly touched my shoulder in what I was to later learn was the English equivalent of a full-body embrace. In all honesty, had the Good Lord created me with other proclivities, and had Aubrey
actually
embraced me – well, who knows just how many sins that kettle of fish might have contained.
    After all, just because God made you a certain way, that doesn’t mean that you get to act that way.
Au contraire
: clearly the Almighty wishes homosexuals to suffer, or else he wouldn’t punish them by all His prohibitions against what He calls ‘abdominal’ behaviour. Someday when I get to Heaven I shall ask the Dear Lord why he bothered to create these painful hurdles for these dear folks to begin with. After all, it isn’t
their
fault that they were born with these urges.
    My word, there are times when I do digress! ‘Yes,’ sweet Aubrey said, ‘it is true. On the internet there are numerous articles about the murders that have taken place here. Frankly, that is the reason why I chose your charming inn, Magdalena.’
    ‘You don’t say!’ I said.
    ‘Ah, but I do say. It was Chambers – she’s my secretary – who discovered your advert in the back of the beauty magazine. Frankly, it wasn’t the Amish angle, or the little bit of history that you Americans have that attracted us, but the uncanny number of murders that have happened under the watch of one woman. Magdalena, your life really is stranger than fiction.’
    Well, that got my knickers in a knot – pardon my French. I slowly and quite obviously brushed my shoulder where Aubrey’s shapely fingertips had momentarily rested.
    ‘You would think it even stranger, dear,’ I said, ‘if you could have read my mind a minute ago.’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Never mind. But since you have brought the matter up, most of these murders were solved by yours truly, and were it not for them I would not be the wealthy woman that I am today.’
    ‘Wealthy and generous,’ my loyal husband said. ‘She single-handedly supports all the public services in the village. She even brings in a doctor once a week to hold a clinic in the jail.’
    ‘Saint