Death by Soup Read online

“Please, Grandad. I’m not asking you to go straight through it. Just peek inside. A quick peek, that’s all.”

  Grandad sighed. “Fine.”

  He took a deep breath, then cautiously poked his head inside the wall. “Yuck! I really do hate this!” The back of his behatted head disappeared, followed by his shoulders, arms and most of his back. Only his rear end was sticking out on my side. I fleetingly wished I could give it a little kick, but my foot would have gone straight through.

  “Jayesh?” I heard his muffled voice calling from the other side.

  There was a door nearby, which I flung open. I found myself staring out into the hallway. Aha! So my room had its own door. That was good; it meant I could get out and snoop without having to go through Mum’s room. Looking round, I realised that the wall sounded hollow because it was indeed thinner there than at any other part. It was an alcove, containing a statue of a beautiful woman dressed in a toga. A beautiful woman who now had Grandad’s confused face instead of her own.

  “This feels weird,” he said. “But I look rather good in a dress, don’t you think?”

  Returning to the room, I peered out of the window, trying to get my bearings. The room looked down on to a large walled garden, full of manicured lawns and tinkling fountains. Granny was there, standing in the middle of an oversized garden chessboard, viciously karate-kicking the chess pieces to the ground.

  My bathroom was huge. There, I set eyes on the hugest bathtub I’d ever seen. A real live jacuzzi. I’d never been in a jacuzzi before. Grandad was right. This was exciting! While I was dying to snoop around a bit more, it had been a long day. “Grandad,” I called out. “I’m going to have a jacuzzi.” I turned on the taps and watched them scoosh out water. Grandad didn’t reply. I went back into the room, but he wasn’t there. Had he gone for a walk – or rather, a float? Perhaps he’d gone to find Granny. Or maybe he was still out in the hallway, finding his inner Greek goddess. I peeked through the door’s spy hole, but he wasn’t out there either.

  “Yes! Freedom at last!” I did a lap of honour round the room.

  But when I went back into the bathroom to turn off the taps, I discovered Grandad hadn’t gone for a float after all. He was lying in the bath. My bath.

  “Uch, Grandad!”

  “What was that you were shouting there, boy?” He was fully clothed, complete with his Mackintosh coat, hat and sunglasses. He slouched back, his arms stretched out along the bath rim, just as the bath went into jacuzzi mode.

  “Ahhhhhh!”

  “Hey, that bath was for me,” I protested.

  “Well, it is mine now, son,” he replied with a satisfied smile.

  “That’s not fair, you can’t even enjoy it.” I slumped down on the toilet seat.

  Grandad took off his shades, and a strange wistful look came into his eyes. “You know, I really miss having baths. Baths are brilliant. It really is no fun, this ghost business.”

  “Are you kidding?” I replied, hoping to try and persuade him to get out. “Look at all the cool stuff you get to do. I mean, I know you don’t like walking through walls, but what about frightening people… and moving stuff around?”

  “Jayesh, son, you know fine well I am rubbish at moving stuff around.” He rose up out of the bath, then hovered, looking around the room. He fixed his eyes on a tube of toothpaste that was lying by the sink “Watch this. I’m going to try and lift it up.” He floated over and tried to wrap his hands around it. He concentrated hard. After a moment, his face started turning red – well, a greenish kind of red – and his eyes bulged out of their sockets. But the tube didn’t move. He gritted his teeth and veins burst out of his forehead. Eventually, the tube started to shake violently.

  “You’re getting somewhere,” I cried. “Keep trying!”

  Suddenly, the lid of the tube exploded off and toothpaste squirted all over the bathroom.

  Grandad cheered. “Hey, brilliant! Did you see that? Maybe I am not so bad after all.”

  “Yeah, Grandad, cosmic!” I sighed, knowing I would be the one who had to clean it all up.

  After I’d tidied up Grandad’s show of spectral strength and got washed and changed, I joined up with Mum, who’d been having a much more relaxing time of it in her own room, making angel shapes on top of the bed.

  She shrugged. “Who cares that we never even entered a silly competition? Look at this place!” She took the opportunity to belly-flop on the springy mattress once again, yelping almost as much as she did the first time.

  “Like she said, never look a gift horse in the mouth.” Grandad floated in behind me.

  “Hmm,” I mused. “But what if the gift horse is carrying a baseball bat behind its back?”

  With that, we headed downstairs for dinner.

  Chapter 5

  The Penne Problem

  Mr and Mrs Shand were standing at the door of the dining room. He was dressed in a tuxedo, she was wearing an evening dress. She surveyed my crumpled jumper and jeans in horror, and her look didn’t improve as she took in the rest of my family. Mum hadn’t changed either, and Granny was still sporting her karate outfit. Mr Shand reluctantly showed us to a table.

  The dining room was busy. The person sitting nearest to our table was a man in his late thirties.

  “Here you are, Mr Starkey,” said the waiter as he placed a bowl of soup on the man’s table. Starkey looked like an accountant or a lawyer. He had that grey look, the look of a man drained of life by decades of boring work. As is turned out, Mr Starkey would be feeling a lot more drained in a few minutes’ time.

  A decrepit old lady was standing at his table, leaning over her walking stick and craning her head towards him. I realised it was the same old woman we’d seen in the reception earlier that day.

  She seemed to be one of those old busybody types. You know, the kind that likes to annoy people by inflicting long, slow conversations on them.

  “Oh, what are you having, Mr Starkey?” she droned.

  “Chicken noodle soup, Mrs Hackenbottom.”

  “The soup, ah, how lovely. I had chicken noodle soup once. I was violently ill.”

  Starkey grimaced. He was trying to be polite, but it was clear he just wanted this woman to go away, and I didn’t blame him.

  We sat down and picked up our menus. Grandad of course didn’t have a menu, or a seat. He was floating behind me, peering over my shoulder.

  “Let me see! Let me see!”

  I snatched the leather-bound menu away from him. “You can’t even eat.”

  “That is a mean thing to say!”

  My heart sank as the old woman turned to our table. Mum’s face was buried in her menu, and I hid behind mine, but it didn’t stop her. She squeezed Mum’s forearm.

  “Just saying hello, dear. I’m Vera Hackenbottom.”

  Mum loved meeting people. Even old, annoying ones. “It’s awful nice of you to say hello, Vera,” she said, beaming.

  “Pff!” said Grandad. “Busybottom, more like!”

  The old lady flashed a set of grey teeth at Granny. “And you too, dear.”

  Granny just glared at her, the way a hungry eagle might glare at a shrew that had the misfortune to pitch up inside its nest.

  Mrs Hackenbottom gestured her cane towards a table at the window, which was set for one. “I’m just over there if you need me.” She tottered away with her walking stick.

  “Ha! Need her? For what?” scoffed Grandad. “Boring people to death?”

  Mum grinned and cocked her head to one side. “Uch, that was nice, wasn’t it? What a nice wee lady.”

  Grandad tried to snatch the menu from me, forgetting once again that he couldn’t snatch anything if his life, or even his death, depended on it.

  “Ach!” he protested. “Tell her not to order penne pasta. I will be sick if she has penne pasta. I HATE penne pasta.”

  “There’s not even penne pasta on the menu,” I said.

  “See, that’s what I was looking for, if you’d just let me,” he huffed
.

  “Oh, do you want penne pasta?” Mum asked.

  I shook my head, firmly enough, I thought.

  “NO!” cried Grandad.

  “I can ask.” Mum turned towards the waiter.

  “I don’t want penne pasta,” I said, starting to get annoyed. Why did every conversation in my family have to go like this?

  “Oh, all your talking about it has put me in the notion.” She waved a finger at the waiter. “Excuse me.”

  The waiter, who was wearing a smart waistcoat, came rushing over. There were beads of sweat on his brow, which was familiar. So was the nest of brown hair, and the mole on his upper lip. We’d seen this man before, just in a different uniform. Mum noticed too, as she waggled her finger at him, quizzically. “Eh… wait, are you not the porter?”

  “That is my brother, Arek,” he replied in a curt Polish accent. “He carries suitcases. I’m Parek, the waiter.”

  “Arek and Parek… Well, that is not confusing at all,” huffed Grandad, still in a mood.

  “Do you have penne pasta?” Mum asked the waiter.

  “Yes, madam,” he replied.

  “Oh, goodie. Penne pasta for me, then.” She closed her menu with a satisfied smile.

  “I’ll have the chicken burger,” I said. “But can I have it fast?” I was starving.

  “Uh!” Grandad grunted. “I LOVE chicken burgers. It really is RUBBISH being a ghost.”

  “And you, madam?” The waiter turned to Granny.

  “Suki yaki,” Granny barked.

  “Pardon?”

  “SUKI YAKI!” she barked even louder, sounding like a sea lion with a bad case of bronchitis.

  “Yes, I heard,” he said politely. “But who or what is suki yaki?”

  Granny rose from her seat, eyeing him venomously, and rolled up her sleeves. All of which meant she was probably about to give him a doing. I defused the situation with a cough.

  “Let me explain the recipe,” I said. “Take a can of sardines…”

  “Right…” He frantically scribbled in his pad.

  “Open it, turn it upside down, dump it into a bowl, then mash it up, and finally – and this is the pièce de résistance – crumble in some cream crackers.”

  “That’s it?” The waiter looked confused. “That’s what she wants to eat?”

  “Yup.”

  Granny claimed that this dish, if you could call it that, was traditional Japanese cuisine, though I’d be surprised if even the cats in Japan would eat it. She started eating it when she took up karate. It was her sensei’s (her karate instructor’s) favourite meal. Having said that, her sensei’s previous job was working in the kitchens at HM Barlinnie prison.

  I turned to Grandad while Granny and Mum finished their order. “Why do you hate penne pasta so much?”

  “I saw a seagull regurgitate some once,” he replied. “And then its chick gobbled it up. It was revolting.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough.” My family is so weird. “But look, she’s ordered it now, you’ve brought this on yourself. You’re the one who mentioned it.”

  Grandad was furious. He tried stomping his feet, but it didn’t really work given that he had no real feet to stomp. “I am not stopping here if she is going to be eating penne pasta.”

  “Off you go then.” I fluttered my fingers at the door. This caught Mum’s attention. She looked at me for a second, before realising that I hadn’t been talking to her. She shook her head and turned back to the waiter. It was a wonder she didn’t think I was mad.

  “I’m sitting with somebody else,” said Grandad. “That man there.” There was an empty seat pulled out at Starkey’s table and he made a point of sitting down on it, even though, as a ghost, he couldn’t really sit. Starkey had his napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt and was quietly eating his chicken noodle soup, completely unaware he was now dining with the deceased.

  Grandad looked over at me and made a face, so I made one back. Unfortunately, this was caught by Mr Shand, who’d come into the dining room to check on his guests. All he saw was me gurning into thin air. Unsurprisingly, he looked horrified, then he shook his head and left.

  “Waiter! Waiter!” Mrs Hackenbottom called insistently from her table by the window, rubbing her arms. “Please ask somebody to close the windows. It’s terribly cold.”

  The waiter sighed, and another drip of sweat appeared on his brow. “Yes, right away.” He rushed off, muttering under his breath.

  “Sorry dear, I’m so frail!” she called after him, cradling her arms.

  Grandad scoffed at me, then turned to Starkey. “Nice hotel, eh?”

  Starkey suddenly started sniffing the air. “Ewww! What’s that funny smell?” Then he screwed up his face. “And what’s that awful taste?”

  “Eh?” Grandad looked affronted. He sniffed his own ghostly armpits. “Well, it is not me.”

  Starkey leapt to his feet. His face turned bright purple and his lips even purpler. His eyes bulged and his hands flew to his throat. For a brief second, I thought he was doing some kind of weird dance routine. Grandad stared at him like he was crazy.

  There was a colossal choke, then Starkey’s mouth started frothing. He slumped back down onto his seat, and his face fell forward into his soup…

  PLOP

  And with that, he was still.

  The whole restaurant stopped. Many, for one hushed, stunned moment, thought it was a practical joke or one of those weird theatre dining experiences. But then gasps of shock went up from the other diners, some of whom tossed their napkins aside and ran to Mr Starkey’s table as they realised he wasn’t moving.

  Grandad jumped to his feet and held up his hands. “It was not me! It was not me!”

  The first person to reach Starkey was the well-groomed posh man who had laughed at us in reception earlier. He’d been dining in the far corner with his glamorous lady friend, who had changed into an emerald green evening dress for dinner. The man carefully retrieved Starkey’s face from the soup and took his pulse.

  He shared a look with his companion, then slowly shook his head, just as Mr Shand ran into the dining room.

  “I think he’s dead.”

  Chapter 6

  The Deadly Soup

  The lady in the green dress nudged her friend out of the way. “I used to be a nurse.” She snatched a napkin and wiped Starkey’s face clean of the pieces of soupy chicken and bits of noodles, trying to try find a pulse in his neck, but it was no use.

  “Carry Mr Starkey to the office,” whispered a pale-looking Shand to the waiter.

  “Has he really kicked the bucket?” asked Grandad, as the waiter dragged Starkey unceremoniously by the feet out of the dining room. The lady went with him, stopping only to snatch up a green snakeskin diary that was sitting on her table.

  “Well, he doesn’t look too healthy,” I replied.

  Everyone was in shock. A few of the diners rushed out, whimpering into their napkins. Another was trying to explain what was happening to a bunch of German men who were here on a golfing holiday. They didn’t speak a word of English, and I don’t think they understood the explanation, because they were nodding, smiling and clapping their hands. “Ya! YA!” They seemed to think this was all part of some sort of evening entertainment.

  As for Mrs Hackenbottom, she barely looked up from her chicken Balmoral. “You know what I think,” she said in her loud, grating voice. She swirled a mouthful of haggis around, spitting little bits of it out of the side of her mouth as she spoke.

  “What?” I said, still shocked.

  “There’s something wrong with the food. It’s food poisoning.”

  Shand came back in the room. He heard her and bridled, “Oh, please, Mrs Hackenbottom.”

  One of the diners at another table heard her too. He stood up and signalled Shand. “Get our bill please, we’re leaving.”

  “Food poisoning? Yes, us too,” said another couple.

  “Food poisoning!” repeated the old lady, even louder this time.r />
  Shand’s face went from white to red. “PLEASE! Mrs Hackenbottom!” He turned to the other diners, who were starting to crowd round. “Please, everyone, we don’t know what happened to Mr Starkey yet…”

  The other diners seemed to be voting with their feet. The dining room was clearing out.

  “Pff!” said Grandad, staring at Mrs Hackenbottom. “If she thinks there is something wrong with the food, then why is she eating it? Ask her, Jayesh.”

  “Yeah, good point.” I turned to her. “Why are you eating the food, then, if you think it’s poisoned?”

  The old lady grinned at me, scooping up another fork load of chicken, haggis and peas. “Ha! I’m far too old to care, young man.”

  “Ach” She’s just a stirrer.” Grandad shook his head. “A stirry old bat. That’s what she is. She’s enjoying this.”

  We heard a sudden, loud clattering from the kitchen followed by an angry cry.

  “WHATT?!”

  The service door flew open and a large man in chef’s whites and hat appeared, silhouetted against the stark kitchen lights. He had a waxed black moustache, a wild, ferocious glare in his eye and he was brandishing a potato peeler. “Who said ‘food poisoning’? he growled in a foreign accent I couldn’t place. He glared at the diners as they scurried past him, before settling on the smartly dressed man who’d taken Starkey’s pulse. “YOU!”

  The chef gripped the man’s wrist with his mighty fist. “What are YOU doing here?”

  “What do you mean? Get your hand off me!” replied the man, his mane of hair waving about as the chef shook him violently.

  The two of them struggled, before Shand intervened. “Gentlemen, please! What is this about?”

  The chef jabbed his potato peeler at the man. “Don’t you know who he is? He is Benedict Ravensbury, the restaurant critic.”

  “So what if I am?” replied Ravensbury.

  “He gave me a bad review once,” spat the chef. “He said my bündner nusstorte had a soggy bottom. How dare you show your face in my restaurant!”

  Ravensbury swiped his hand. “That was years ago. Anyway, I’m not here on business. My friend Chase and I just came up for a spot of hill walking.”