Page 37 of The Golden Spoon
It is as if her body and mind have split in two, and each half is working against the other, paralyzing her. All she can do is stare up at him. His eyes bulge out at her. His jaw gapes open, a dark hole hanging in a silent scream. His body is caught facedown on two of the steel beams crisscrossing the tent. It hangs there limply, contorted in a sickly, unnatural pose, one shoulder twisted up to his ear and the other jerked down as though he’s been thrown off his axis. An ugly black gash near his temple drips a steady trickle of blood onto the table with a sickening splatter. It mingles with the cake and drains off the side of the table into a dark pool on the floor.
Beyond the beams, there’s a dark hole in the tent, a jagged rip in the white canvas where he broke through it. She stands below him as the water pours in through the hole, running off his body and onto the tent floor. One of his arms dangles straight down. His fingers curve as though he is reaching for her, pleading for help. Betsy gulps for air but is unable to breathe. Backing away, she catches the edge of one of the colanders of baking utensils, and it crashes to the ground. It takes several more moments to absorb the shock of what she’s seeing. When she emerges from it, she finds herself gasping for air, looking wildly around the tent.
“No!” she finally pushes out, as her lungs fill and begin to work double time. She breaks into full-throated screams.I should be finding something to help get him down, she thinks. But instead she backs away, stepping through the aisle in the center of the tent, keeping the flashlight trained on him as though he might disappear, or worse. She makes her way back through the baking tables, stumbling as she goes. Each stand mixer, each set of bowls, looks like a monster in her peripheral vison. The wind whips the side of the tent, the rain lands like bullets on the sheeting. She finally reaches the back door. Her flashlight beam is weak, but as she takes one last horrified glance at the front of the tent, she thinks she can see his fingers move.
She runs toward the house in a nightmarish daze. Her shoes stick in the muddy lawn, trying to glue her in place. She pulls her feet free and leaves them there, sunken in the grass. Running barefoot up the steps, her arms splayed out to either side, she screams again up into the foyer. Her voice, competing with the rain and wind, is swallowed up by the house.
Shaking, Betsy digs into her pocket for her phone. She punches in 911 as she stands in the center of the foyer with bare muddy feet, rain dripping off her father’s raincoat and pooling around her on the floor.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?” a staticky voice comes through the phone.
Archie Morris is dead. The idea is nearly impossible to grasp. Just hours ago, Archie was her worst enemy. And then a thought occurs to her. The show. What would happen toBake Weeknow? With Archie gone, would everything go back to the way it was? The producers couldn’t survive this sort of scandal without her. They’d need her now to steer the show. Perhaps this is a gift to her from the universe. She slips the phone back into her pocket and begins again to scream for help.
LOTTIE
In my dream I’m trapped in a maze of hallways, and someone is screaming. With sudden clarity I realize it is my mother who is in distress. I must go to her, help her, but I am lost. I run and run, turning corner after corner looking for a way to get to her, to help. But the hallway is unending, twisting and turning, taking me farther and farther away from her. I am startled awake, blinking into the darkness, my heart hammering in my chest. I hear something. At first, I think it is the wind battering shrilly against the windowpanes, but then the scream breaks free of the storm, becoming jagged and human. It is coming from downstairs in the belly of the house. I’m afraid to move out from under the covers. Afraid to step into the dark. I inch the covers down and gaze up into the room. The windows are black, vibrating with the assault of the rain. The room is dark and menacing, the hulking outlines of furniture barely visible.
There are footsteps out in the hall. The others have woken and are running toward whoever is in distress. I should join them, go find out what is happening, but a part of me is still inside the dream and I’m afraid, too afraid to move.Go, go. Get up!
I force myself to sit and switch on the light. The curtains are drawn, but I can see that it is still pitch-black outside. Now there are murmursfrom the hallway, low and urgent. Heart racing, I grab my bathrobe from the back of the chair and rush out to the hall to join them. I reach the landing at the same time as Stella. She is coming from the other side, the East Wing. I pause, confused. Her hair is wet, and her face is twisted in fear. What was she doing in the East Wing? Below us the floor is streaked with wet footprints. The front door stands open and the rain comes in at an angle, pounding on the flagstone. Hannah and Pradyumna are already there, huddled around Betsy Martin.
“Is everything all right?” I call out.
When they turn to look at me, their faces are united in horror. Stella and I continue down the steps, running to join them. Betsy is bent over, gasping for breath. It’s alarming to see her undone like this.
“What’s going on?” Stella barks. Her voice is low and hoarse.
Betsy points to the open door, where the tent is barely visible through the downpour.
PRADYUMNA
I’ve always wondered what I’d do if I saw a dead body. I assumed that years of playing video games and watching gory movies would have left me somewhat immune to horrors if I were actually faced with them. And in a way they have. Because I don’t react at first when I go out to the tent with the others and look up at his body dangling there.
The four of us stand there stunned, watching as the water rushes off Archie’s mangled corpse and onto the floor of the tent. It is odd to see him like this, so still and silent. I find I’m having to convince myself that it is real. He is a heavy man, and the metal beams holding him bow out, struggling below his weight. It is only a matter of time before one gives way.
Hannah cries out first, a low sob that escapes from her and morphs into a sharp wail. Stella turns away from us and throws up violently in the corner of the tent.
“Oh, dear,” Lottie says. Her hand grips my arm. “What should we do?”
“Probably just wait for the police,” I suggest uselessly.
Stella flinches when I say it. I notice this and the deep gash on Archie’s head, incongruous with the angle of his fall through the canvas tarping. I watch myself react, feeling strangely empty. It’s likeI’ve had my insides scooped out.Typical Pradyumna, I think,making a man’s horrific death all about myself somehow.
Stunned, we’ve shuffled back inside and are gathered in Grafton’s kitchen. It is as if, being bakers, we are drawn to its comforting hearth and stacks of mixing bowls, everything in its place. It feels safer in here, with the solid stone walls holding back the storm. We sit at a long wooden table. Lottie has started a kettle, and it whistles cheerfully on the stovetop, a strangely comforting sign of life in a very dark moment.
“The police should be here soon?” Lottie asks for the second time. I can see she is a doer in a crisis. She is already looking around the kitchen for something else she can busy herself with, a way to help.
“They’ve been called,” Betsy states as though irritated with the question. She is huddled at the far end of the table, away from the rest of us. I find it almost funny that even in a time like this, she feels she must keep herself separate from the contestants.
“Do you think it was an accident?” Hannah asks. Without all the makeup on she looks vulnerable, like a different person.
“I doubt it. Unless he did it to himself,” I say. “But with that shiner on his head, I would expect not.”
I glance around the kitchen, sizing the others up. None of us exactly fit the profile of a murderer. Clearly Lottie is out. She has no motive or any real relationship with Archie. Stella seems a bit off right now, though she has just seen a corpse. But why was her hair wet earlier? Then there is Hannah and her clearly sexual relationship with Archie. Which would hardly make her a killer, would it? It’s hard to ride someone’s coattails when they’re dead, isn’t it?
“There’s no use in speculating,” Betsy snaps. “It’s grotesque.”
I have a flash of memory. The look exchanged between Betsy and Archie after judging today. What was that? I am overcome by weariness and lean my head into my hands.
