Czytaj książkę: «The Mothers of Quality Street»

Chapter One

The toffees for the window display had been carefully painted with strong poison. Mr Kirkby, the shop owner, didn’t like to spoil good food like this because it was such a shameful waste, but in the early summer heat of that coronation year of 1937 it had been the only way to keep the ants at bay. Besides, the salesman from Mackintosh’s had been very clear when he gave that particular box of toffees to Mr Kirkby, that they were inedible anyway. It was a relief to finally be throwing the casket away because the worry of having poisoned goods on the premises had weighed on his mind. He had warned his staff about them, and he was confident that none of them would forget and help themselves, but it had preyed on his thoughts as often as his wife had nagged him to throw them out.

As Mr Kirkby stood in the hot shop window, dismantling his display, mopping perspiration from his brow and his hands, he took another look at the casket of sweets and thought again how proud he was of his work. He was not as much of an artist as the confectioner at the Mackintosh’s factory who had made the pretty sweets inside the silk-covered box with its golden trim, but he had painted the toffee fingers so delicately with a gloss of liquid cyanide syrup that, in the strong summer light, the difference was barely noticeable.

Mr Kirkby had, in fact, used rat poison. There was no sense going out and buying weak ant poison when he had enough Victorian rat poison in the cellar to kill an army. His wife was always telling him to get rid of the nasty stuff – it worried her having it lying about the place – but Mr Kirkby pointed out in return that you couldn’t get rat poison like that any more; his mother used to put it down in the shop, and once they got rid of it they’d never be able to buy any more. Only the other day there had been a story in the newspapers about how the government were making a new law to restrict the use of it after an accidental poisoning down south somewhere; it was only a matter of time, Mr Kirby told his staff, before they outlawed fly paper and made you surrender your mousetraps.

Kirkby’s Fancy Goods was very close to the Halifax Borough Market and they had always attracted more than their fair share of mice; despite being a very clean, high-class establishment. The laying down of poison was a routine he had inherited from his mother, and her father before her, just as he had inherited the shop. And although it was commonplace, on that occasion Mr Kirkby had been more cautious than usual, gathering all his staff and explaining to them personally that they were not to touch the new window display because he had added poison to the centrepiece to keep off the ants, and that when it was dismantled the casket was to go straight into the rubbish bin.

Mr Kirkby and his wife had invested a lot of money in this window display, but it had been worth it. The coronation of the new king and queen had brought brisk business, with all the neighbourhood coming in to buy bright bunting and party goods for their street parties. Yes, the spring of 1937 had been a boon for Kirkby’s Fancy Goods. The window display had been done up in red crêpe paper and golden curtain cord to look like an enormous royal crown, and lengths of blue satin ribbon with ‘God Save the King’ on them criss-crossed a screen behind it.

Mrs Kirkby had overcrowded the window with examples of every line they stocked that could possibly be connected with street parties, patriotism, or His Majesty the King. Coloured card hats in the shape of coronets; pop-up theatres for kiddies illustrating the inside of the abbey; special coronation editions of magazines; knitting and sewing patterns for items of patriotic apparel; even a bouquet of carnations, artificially coloured to a burst of red, white and blue. Finally, nestled in the bottom right-hand corner on a velvet cushion, was the presentation casket of Mackintosh’s ‘Fancy Bonbons’. They were not one of the shop’s usual lines, but oh, how wonderfully royal they made the window look. They were like a treasure chest or a jewellery box, sparkling in the late May sun.

Mr Kirkby often left open tins of toffees in his window and had never had cause to poison them before, but the sweets in the opened tins were usually safely wrapped in snugly twisted cellophane, or made from artfully painted plaster of Paris. These confections were naked, intricately decorated, and so very, very tempting.

‘We wouldn’t usually allow spoiled confectionery to leave the factory, but these were a special case. I mean, look at them,’ the Mackintosh salesman had said, ‘they couldn’t just go straight into the bin. I said to my sales manager, I said, “Can’t I let them go to a good home, just this once?” and I told them about the idea I had for making them part of your window display, and he let me bring them round.’ The Mackintosh’s salesman had sighed at the craftsmanship of the handmade bonbons. These were not the regular mass-produced toffees that he was used to dealing with – these were sweets of a premier class.

‘They don’t look spoiled to me, Mr Carstaff,’ Mr Kirkby had said. ‘I’ll certainly take them off your hands – people aren’t as fussy as you think. If I just mark the price down—’

‘Oh no, not this box. People might not be fussy but at Mackintosh’s we’re fussy for them. This one is just for your window. I saved it for you, Mr Kirkby, as you’ve always been so good as to offer me such a lot of window space over the years. It’s a sort of parting gift – my last window for you before I sail for Canada and my promotion – to celebrate the coronation. I’ve got a plan to make you a giant crown from crepe paper, with a ball and sceptre decorated with Quality Street cellophane. This casket will be the centrepiece, but it’s only leaving the factory on the condition that it’s absolutely not for consumption.’

Mr Kirkby admired the casket. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, why aren’t the toffees good enough for sale? I’m not complaining as they’d look lovely in my window, but I just can’t see what’s wrong with them.’

‘Ah, well, our Head Confectioner, Mr Birchwood – that is to say, he was our head confectioner, they’ve let him go since this – he wore cologne on his hands while he was working on this batch. It’s expressly against company regulations and he’s tainted the product with it. Our director said he could taste it in the sweets and he wouldn’t let them go out.’

‘But what about the casket? It’s very fine. Surely you must want to use that and refill it.’

‘Can’t be done, Mr Kirkby. Do you see that emblem?’

‘Why yes, it’s the lion and the unicorn.’

‘It is indeed. I’ll let you in on a secret, Mr Kirkby: we’re expecting a royal visit to Halifax, and these sweets were a sample of what the head confectioner thought to make for the King, that’s why the casket is emblazoned with the royal coat of arms. We couldn’t possibly use it for anyone else so it will appear in your window for the coronation display, but that will be all. Our new confectioner will make another casket for the King.’

‘King George? Here in Halifax? What an honour! And such an honour to have a casket with his coat of arms in my window. It will be a proud day for the town.’

‘That it will, Mr Kirkby. That it will.’

As Mr Kirkby dismantled the coronation window display he was already planning its replacement. Halifax was still gripped by royal fever, and now the secret was out and the town knew they were getting a royal visit Mr Kirkby thought it would be prudent to plan a display which would honour the King and also tell the story of his family business; ‘Kirkby’s Fancy Goods Welcomes His Majesty’ the display would say, and it would be resplendent in royal blue and emerald green. Oh, it would be a delight to construct.

Mr Kirkby had agreed that when he took down all of his coronation decorations he would give them to the local Brown Owl so the Brownies could put them to good use for the King’s visit in July. The shop, however, would have a completely new look. Mr Kirkby had expected Brown Owl to call by that afternoon, but he had not expected half the Brownies to come with her, proffering thank you cards which they had made, and waving pocket money which they wanted to spend in the shop.

‘Archibald!’ Mrs Kirkby put her head of tightly wrapped curlers around the parlour door which opened into the shop and called out to her husband who, truth be told, would have known that she was there by the smell of setting lotion alone. ‘Archibald, the Brownies are on their way!’

‘Yes, dear. I’ve seen them.’ Mr Kirkby sometimes wished his wife would watch their shop with the same enthusiasm she watched the road from their parlour window so that he wouldn’t have to serve eight customers all at once.

‘Have you got rid of that casket from the window yet?’

‘I’m just doing it, dear.’

‘Well, you make sure you put it well out of the way. I don’t know why you insisted on poisoning them anyway. Nasty stuff to have about the place!’ Mrs Kirkby’s thoughts on the subject of her husband’s vigilance against many-legged intruders was cut short when she saw the Brown Owl almost at the door and she ducked away back into the parlour, leaving behind only traces of hair ointment and disapproval.

Mr Kirkby quickly scooped up the casket of poisoned sweets from their velvet cushion, snipped off the attractive gold tassel on the top – he had a use for that – and put it on top of the rubbish bag beside the staff door, ready to take out to the bins in the alleyway when he had finished. Now that the casket was safely tucked into the refuse sack the incident was forgotten for him, and that was his first mistake.

Kirkby’s Fancy Goods was suddenly very busy; along with the Brownies and their leader several other customers vied for the attention of the staff. Three old matrons had come in with their list of weekly orders; a harassed-looking mother was searching for a birthday gift for her daughter; and Steven Hunter, the handsome teenaged son of the wealthy Hunter family, had ostensibly come in to supervise his much younger sisters, Gracie and Lara, while they spent their pocket money, but in reality he was just there to make eyes at pretty Marilyn Parkin across the counter when she was supposed to be serving customers.

Mr Kirkby didn’t mind letting Marilyn enjoy the attentions of the Hunter lad; he remembered only too well what it had been like to be young and in love, and rather than call her away to help serve customers, he himself climbed out of the window to deal with the flood of Brownies. They had brought pocket money to buy sweets, which they all wanted to pay for at the same time, and some of them wanted to take the children’s toys down off the shelves to take them apart and investigate them while they waited for their leader to walk them all back to the church hall for their meeting.

In amongst the busy, noisy, happy throng, six-year-old Lara Hunter and her newly adopted sister, Gracie, both a year too young as yet to be Brownies, had seen the gold embossed lid of a casket of sweets glinting in the summer sunlight. The box had slipped from the top of the rubbish sack onto the floor and the little girls hoped they could buy it with their pocket money. They lifted it carefully into the shopping basket they were carrying together, and held out their pocket money, ready to offer it to the harassed shopkeeper behind the counter.

Most of the little girls didn’t know enough maths to work out whether or not they could afford the items they wanted to buy and were calling out ‘Do I have enough for this?’ or ‘Do I have enough for a quarter of Strawberry Creams?’ The shopkeeper was attempting to carry on a conversation with the Brownie leader while also operating the till hurriedly, and he accepted that he might have given away a few free sweets by attempting to run the pocket money through the till without really checking who had paid for what and whether in fact they did have the right money.

‘My wife is that excited about the visit,’ Mr Kirkby told the Brownie Leader. ‘I said we could just leave up the old decorations, but no, she won’t have it. She says if the King passes by our window she wants him to see something fresh – she doesn’t want him thinking that we’ve just kept up our coronation decorations.’

The Brownie Leader, delighted to be getting so much material for her own banners, thought it was too good to be true. ‘But surely she’ll want red, white and blue, the same as before?’

The little Hunter girls squeezed their way through the Brownies, held up their handful of pocket money, and asked, ‘Do we have enough for a pretty box of toffees?’

‘Yes, yes, just a moment, you two, I’ll come and help you choose one.’ Then he returned to his conversation with the Brownie Leader. ‘Not Mrs Kirkby, she’s dressing the shop in emerald green for the Empire, and we’re going to have a window display telling the story of the family business and the town.’

The little Hunter girls, having already chosen their box of confections and not needing any help choosing another, left their pocket money on the side of the counter near the till and wriggled through the throng back to their brother. They were very pleased with the pretty casket because they had been saving up to buy a thank you gift for someone who had been very kind to them both.

Steven Hunter noticed his sisters by his side and did his best to tear his eyes away from the lovely Marylin. ‘Have you two got what you wanted?’ he asked them.

The little girls nodded and followed him out of the shop with their purchase neatly tucked away in their basket. They called out a farewell to Mr Kirkby and he, assuming that they were coming back later when the shop was less busy, waved the little girls away, unaware that in their basket they carried the casket of deadly sweets.