Amanderella and the Haunted Mill Chapter 8

Chapter 8.

Lunch.

Amanderella pushed the lantern closer to the whiskered face belonging to a small, dusty, slightly offended polecat. It blinked up at her.

“Not a ghost,” she said matter-of-factly. “A polecat. A very dusty one.”

The Preservation Society surged forward as one, a collective wave of woollen coats and high-strung nerves. Amanderella stood framed in the threshold, her lantern casting a long, steady shadow, with Majesty sitting tall at her side like a fuzzy sentinel.

“It is quite safe,” Amanderella announced, her voice cutting through the frantic whispering.

“A polecat!” shrieked Mr Paltry, nearly losing his spectacles as he scrambled behind a heavy timber. “They are notoriously pungent! Worse than spectres, I say. At least a ghost doesn’t ruin the upholstery!”

Lady Honoria, however, performed a magnificent feat of social gymnastics. She smoothed her skirts, tucked her lace handkerchief into her sleeve, and gave a sharp, knowing nod to the room.

“Precisely what I suspected,” she declared, her voice ringing with unearned authority. “I told you, Mr Pottipans, it had a very mustelid quality to the sneeze. I knew it was a polecat all along. One develops an instinct for these things when one manages an estate.”

Beside her, Alimans Tringle-Smythe looked as though someone had snatched a winning lottery ticket from his hand. He was still clutching his velvet-lined butterfly net, his face a picture of deflated ambition.

“But… the Apparitional Field,” he stammered, gesturing vaguely at the soot Majesty had so thoroughly trampled. “The atmospheric resonance! The diagrams I was preparing for the committee! Are you quite sure, Amanderella? It didn’t seem… communicative? In a spiritual sense?”

“It communicated a great deal of annoyance,” Amanderella replied drily, stepping past him to inspect a loose floorboard. “And it has been using the flour chute as a personal gymnasium. The ‘ghostly figure’ was merely a pocket of trapped air disturbed by its movements.”

She paused, looking at the soot-streaked faces of the Society members.

“I suggest we leave the building to the ventilation, and the polecat for the day. It is far more interested in the mice than anything else.”

Amanderella dusted her hands together, as though concluding a perfectly ordinary morning task.

“And now,” she said, “I suggest we all return to the Crooked Lantern. The mill requires nothing more than fresh air, and I believe the landlord mentioned food.”

The effect was immediate. Mr Paltry sagged with relief, clutching his hat as though it had saved his life. Mr Pottipans muttered something about “mustelid mischief” and tried to look brave. Alimans brightened at the mention of lunch, though he still eyed his ruined Apparitional Field with tragic devotion.

Lady Honoria rose to her full, formidable height and declared, “Quite right. A committee cannot function on an empty stomach.”

Majesty gave a proud little huff, as if he had personally arranged the meal. Amanderella carefully put out the lantern before stepping out into the daylight. The Society shuffled after her in a relieved, woollen procession. Behind them, the mill creaked once, as though settling down for a well-earned nap.

“Come along,” she said, her boots tapping briskly on the path. “Lunch awaits, and I should like to eat it before anyone decides the spoon is haunted.”

The Society hurried after her at once.

The Crooked Lantern was already humming with the soft clatter of crockery when Amanderella and the Preservation Society returned. The landlord looked up from polishing a tankard and blinked in mild surprise at the sight of so many soot-streaked faces.

“Stew’s ready,” he said. “And the bread’s just come in from the bakery.”

That was all the encouragement the Society needed. Within minutes they were gathered around the long oak table, bowls steaming before them. Thick slices of fresh bread were passed along, each one spread with generous curls of homemade butter that melted the moment it touched the crust. Wedges of sharp, crumbly local cheese followed, arranged on a wooden board that had seen more meetings than the Society itself.

Mr Paltry took a cautious sip of cider, then sighed as though the mill’s entire history of hauntings had dissolved in the apple-sweet warmth. Lady Honoria dabbed her lips with her lace handkerchief. “A perfectly adequate luncheon,” she declared, which for her was high praise indeed. Majesty, curled beneath Amanderella’s chair, thumped his tail in agreement.

Alimans Tringle-Smythe stared mournfully into his bowl. “I had diagrams,” he murmured. “Very promising diagrams.”

“You may still present them, Mr Tringle-Smythe,” Amanderella said, tearing a piece of bread and dipping it into her stew. “Preferably after lunch, when no one is faint with hunger or flour.”

This seemed to revive him. Mr Pottipans, halfway through a wedge of cheese the size of a doorstop, nodded vigorously. “A good meal steadies the nerves,” he said. “Almost as much as a goose.”

Mr Hobbins raised his cider in solemn agreement. Matilda the goose, waiting patiently by his boots, honked once, as if to bless the proceedings. Amanderella finished her stew, wiped her spoon, and reached for the large, glossy apple set beside her plate. Around her, the Society relaxed into the comfortable murmur of relieved villagers who had survived a crisis and found themselves unexpectedly hungry.

She took a crisp bite. “The mill will be quite peaceful now,” she said. “And so, I hope, will all of you.”

The Society nodded as one, mouths full of bread, cheese, and gratitude. It was, by all accounts, an excellent lunch.