Amelia Blewitt & The Lethal Latte

By A. C. Williams

Tansy Cooper was her name. Some girl from down Chapel Street. A young, pretty thing with hair like sunflower petals, and now she’s face down in the best egg-and-cress sandwich in York.

The poor dear.

The high-backed chair beside me screeches on the wooden floor as Pippa takes a seat. Her face is paler than normal, her dusting of freckles popping out like the cinnamon on one of her macarons.

“Auntie,” she whispers, breathless.

I take her wrist. “What is it, my love?”

“She was poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” I squeal and clutch the collar of my good blouse.

Pippa hushes me and glances toward the police officers who’ve filled my darling Bluebell’s with their clumsy, muddy boots and their rustley-wustley crime-scene jumpsuits.

Pippa scoots closer to me. “In her latte.” My niece’s voice trembles. “Oh, Auntie, what are we going to do?”

I scowl. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Auntie.” Pippa gawks at me like I’ve grown another head. “The papers are going to write about this. Everyone will talk.” Pippa’s gray-green eyes fill with tears. “We’ll lose all our customers.”

“Oh, come now, lamb.” I take her cold fingers and bundle them in my warm hands. “Don’t be silly. We didn’t poison that poor girl.”

Tired boots thump up the stairs from the basement dining area, muffled slightly by the thick carpet, and a tall, grizzled man with a striking shock of silver hair emerges. He’s wearing a rumpled dark suit and a loosened tie.

He pins me across the room with a fierce brown-eyed stare and marches toward us with a measured gait and a scowl that says I won’t enjoy this conversation.

Pippa’s spot-on as usual. The police think we’ve poisoned that poor child.

Ridiculous!

This gentleman might be handsome enough to be in the pictures, but apparently he’s not got two brain cells to rub together.

“Amelia Blewitt?” The silver fox stops at our table and pulls out a wallet from inside his coat, flashing his badge. “DI Kavan Callaghan, North Yorkshire Police.”

Oh, this is no Englishman. “Well, you’re from the North, but not of England,” I mutter and pick up my teacup, sipping it with a sniff. “Belfast, I presume.”

Those warm brown eyes narrow. “You’re the owner of this shop?”

“Yes.” I nestle my teacup into its matching saucer. “Named after my mother, Bluebell Birtwistle.”

“Right.” Callaghan pulls out a notepad and scribbles something down. “And did you know Tansy Cooper?”

“Not at all.”

“Did you notice her come in?”

“We had more than one hundred customers in today.” I fold my hands on the white tablecloth. “I simply can’t keep track of all of them.”

Callaghan sinks into the chair across from me. “Listen. Amelia, is it?”

“That’s Miss Blewitt to you.”

Callaghan rolls his eyes. “Tansy Cooper ordered a latte from your coffee bar, and ten minutes later, she died. You want to tell me how that happened?”

“How do you know it was our latte?”

Callaghan scowls. “She was drinking it here, and it’s in one of your cups.” Callaghan points a finger in his notebook. “Someone at your bar poisoned that girl, and I’m going to find out who.”

“Well, it’ll be no one I hired.”

“And you know that how?”

Pippa shivers, and I heave a sigh. My niece should trust her old auntie more.

I meet the inspector’s gaze. “Have you got the latte?”

“It’s been taken for processing.”

“What about a photograph?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“I can tell you who poured it.”

Callaghan snorts. “By looking? You’re off your nut.”

“Show me a picture, Inspector.” I push my cup and saucer to the side. “I’ll teach you something about lattes.”

Callaghan sneers and leans back in his chair. He barks an order at the SOCOs milling about near the patisserie counter. In a flash, a bright-eyed lad with a smartphone rustles toward us.

“Guv, the lass took a pic on her Instagram.” The young officer shows his phone to the inspector.

“Course she did.” Callaghan glares at the screen before he shows it to me. “Here, Miss Blewitt. Your latte.”

On the screen is a work of art. A large cafe latte. The rich brownish-black crema of the coffee. The luscious foamed milk, artfully shaped into the likeness of a flower.

I hold up the phone. “Oh, isn’t that lovely.”

“For five quid, it’d better be.”

Brute.

“Latte pouring is an art.” I hand the phone back to the young officer. “Every artist has a signature. That latte may have been poured here, but it was by no one who works here.”

Turning in my seat, I point to the wall behind us where dozens of framed photographs display my own brand of latte pouring. “Use those photographs for comparison. The flower in the lethal latte looks nothing like the ones poured by me—or by any of the girls I train.”

Callaghan is staring at me again. “But?”

“But what?”

“Sounds like there’s a but in that statement, Miss Blewitt.” Callaghan smiles. “I presume you’re going to tell us you know who poured it.”

A brute, indeed, but a perceptive one.

“I do.” I lift my teacup. “There’s a girl down at Magnolia who pours flowers like that. She’s taken lunch here several weeks in a row. I supposed she was either spying on us or that she simply preferred our tuna mayo to her employer’s. I suggest you speak to her.”

“Magnolia. The shop across from the Shambles?”

“The very same.”

Callaghan pushes his chair back and stands. “Perhaps I’ll do that. Thank you for your time, Miss Blewitt.”

He turns and ambles out the front door onto the darkening streets of York.

“I say, Auntie.” Pippa sags in the chair beside me. “Extraordinary.”

“Extraordinary?”

“Indeed.” Pippa salutes me with a crystal glass of water. “To coffee that solves murders.”

“I’ll drink to that.” I sip my tea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A. C. Williams is an author and entrepreneur who loves cats, country living, and all things Japanese. She’d rather be barefoot, and if she isn’t her socks will never match. A proud Hufflepuff, she takes her coffee with cream, her pizza with pineapple, and her stories with spaceships. Follow her travel adventures with Hermes the Frog on social media.

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