A Deadly Shade of Night by Jayne Fresina

Author:Jayne Fresina [Fresina, Jayne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Twisted E-Publishing

The reluctant new “mistress” of that house had left it some hours ago today on a mission of great importance. She knew this to be the case when, arrested by her reflection in the window of Bespoke Temptations Bakery and Very Proper Tea Room, she saw that she was wearing her fine new bonnet. Not only that but, glancing down, she found her best boots shining up at her. Hateful things! Into these too-tight, tortuous devices she squeezed her corns only for special occasions such as weddings and funerals. But she was not going to church today.

As far as she could recall.

Her mind was, quite suddenly, lost in a fog.

Like that blowfly in her house, she did not know what day this was. Or that it would be her last.

But whatever her errand today, it must, surely, have some connection to the custard tarts, which she carried in a pink box with Bespoke Temptations written elegantly across the lid in gold print.

Those four egg custard tarts had begun to tease her.

You’re a fool, Fanny Boole.

You’ve nobody to blame but yourself.

You always were a stupid woman, but you’ve really done it now.

A goldfish swimming circles around a glass bowl has more intelligence and a greater sense of purpose.

Hot, confused and indignant, she shook the box and hissed at it, “Shut up! Or I’ll finish you off, I will. I can’t think with all that blasted yammering!”

They snickered and whispered.

Hush, or she’ll take us into cust-ardy!

It’s all a trifle absurd.

Very off-pudding!

Good humor has quite desserted her!

The box of chatty cakes— who seemed to think they were a third-rate music hall act— swung on a gold ribbon from her right hand, as she wove an unsteady path along the street, her mind increasingly muddled. Just as her toes throbbed from being crammed into painful boots, her brain was equally sore, stuffed to bulging through her skull, overfilled with peculiar and unusually profound musings.

These old cobblestones had borne witness to so many feet and hooves clattering along, she thought, that hers among them would leave no particular impression. Despite her best boots and the bright ribbons on her new bonnet, who would remember plain Fanny Boole?

A riot of characters had traversed this path in their turn: the merry and the maudlin; the good and the bad; the thoughtful and the thoughtless; the old and the young. Even a few must have been breathing their last, whether they were aware of it or not, and some who passed this way were about to take a life. Some had already done so, perhaps unknowingly, or else with malice aforethought. The world was a place of pitfalls and puddles. Once a person failed to keep order over their life, anything might happen. A wrong turn made, a wrong teacup landed upon, a single unwise choice, and all was changed.

“’Tis Fanny,” she heard herself saying. “Not Frances. Fanny.”

Two cold eyes behind spectacles had glowered down at her and a hand had tightened upon her shoulder. Oh, she shouldn’t have spoken.

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