Tea In a Tin Cup Read online

Two days into my stay the owners asked me why I’d booked such a long stay at their place. Most folks were there one night and then move on to somewhere else. They’d never had a guest who stayed so long. I told them about my novel, about wanting to explore the area and talk to the village bobby (which I hadn’t seen yet, but figured I’d eventually run into him).

  There was no village bobby. That was a misconception carried over from those old 1940s movies I watched.

  Panic set in. With no police officer roaming the lanes, how was I to get my information?

  Luck was with me, as it had been when I chose Raikes Farm for my B-&-B. The owner, Alan, just happened to be a water bailiff. A water bailiff is a person who enforces the rules and regulation of a specific stretch of river or a lake. In this case, Alan’s section was on the stretch of the River Dove that flowed past Hartington.

  Since he was the water bailiff, he obviously worked with the Constabulary. He knew police officers.

  I never asked him. He took the initiative and phoned up Silverlands, the police headquarters in Buxton. He made an appointment for me to talk with an officer. He even drove me to Buxton the following day, hung around for that hour, and then drove me back to the B-&-B.

  The officer—an Inspector, as it turned out—answered all my questions and gave me a tour of the station, which included their canteen, the cell area, the interview room, and the communications center. He gave me his name and contact info before we parted. When Alan picked me up, I was floating.

  As happens many times during the writing process, the plot changed slightly in spots and more questions popped up. I exchanged several letters with the Inspector, got my information, and because I’m a stickler for accurate information I duly sent him the finished manuscript to read and edit. Nothing needed correcting.

  I visited my Inspector two years later. My questions had grown more detective-oriented during subsequent books in the series, and he felt he couldn’t answer them very well because he wasn’t a detective. So he introduced me to a detective out of another station. He drove me over to Bakewell, a small market town situated on the River Wye.

  The station—tan brick with a bright blue painted door that matched the color of the blue police light above it—was small and bursting at the seams with filing cabinets, equipment, and officers. We staggered up narrow steps to the first floor (what we in the States would term the second floor, but our first floor is the ground floor in Britain…) and sat in the room that held three desks. This was the office Rob shared with two other detectives.

  We spent an hour talking, and I learned about his daily routine and got my questions answered. He and his recently retired boss, a Detective-Superintendent of the CID, met me later, after work for dinner at an old pub in Monyash, a tiny village south of Buxton. I became great friends with Rob and David. And, as it developed, David answered all my police procedural questions as I wrote my books, and then began reading all my completed manuscripts to catch any errors. We were both sticklers for accuracy.

  And all this from my original luck of choosing Raikes Farm for my bed-and-breakfast stay and thereby meeting Alan, the water bailiff.

  Years later when I returned to the area I, roamed around Buxton, where the police station was situated. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the town.

  I won’t wax lyrical about it—you can read about it online if you’re interested. But I walked around a lot and visited the used the book shop, the Crescent and the Pavilion, the mineral spring, The Slopes, and St. Anne’s Well. I strolled through the gardens and visited the open market. I knew I’d fallen into a good thing and decided to use Buxton, in varying degrees, in the series.

  The book, A Staged Murder, came out in 2004 and I sent an autographed copy to my Inspector. Meeting Rob and David were still in the future at that point.

  During the research that necessarily accompanies every book I write, I discovered that the Old Hall Hotel in Buxton is famous for its Sticky Toffee Pudding, one of my favorite British desserts (sorry, puddings). The original hotel was owned by the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury and his famous wife, Bess of Hardwick. The Earl was one of Mary, Queen of Scots’ jailers during her long imprisonment by Elizabeth I. The current building dates only from 1670.

  This classic British recipe has to be tasted to be believed. Smothered in Toffee Sauce, this heavy cake, fragrant with raisins and brown sugar, spells Autumn very nicely—but you can enjoy it any time of the year. This recipe is from the Royal Oak Hotel in Settle, Yorkshire. Be sure to make the cake a day ahead of serving so the sauce seeps into the cake. This is what makes it sticky and gooey and wonderful!

  * * *

  Sticky Toffee Pudding

  Cake:

  20 ounces boiling water

  1 cup raisins

  2 tsp baking soda

  2 ½ cups flour

  2 tsp baking powder

  1 stick butter

  1 2/3 cups brown sugar, firmly packed

  2 eggs

  * * *

  Toffee Sauce:

  2 sticks butter

  1 ¼ cups brown sugar, firmly packed

  8 TBSP cream

  * * *

  Preheat oven to 350°F.

  To make cake: soak raisins in boiling water and baking soda for 5 minutes. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder. Cream the butter and brown sugar together and add the eggs. Add the raisin/water/baking soda mixture. Add the flour mixture to this creamy mixture (batter will be runny). Pour the batter into a greased 13x9” baking pan. Bake 45 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool cake in pan. When cool, cut into the required number of serving portions and put into a container large enough so the cake pieces all are on one level. Pour the toffee sauce over the cake slices. Let the cake soak at least 24 hours to become gooey and sticky!

  * * *

  To make toffee sauce: in a thick-bottomed pan, mix together the butter, brown sugar and cream. Simmer for approximately 5 minutes, stirring constantly. You should see just a glimpse of the bottom of the pan when stirring. The sauce will coat the spoon and have a thin toffee appearance. Pour the hot sauce over the cut pieces of cake and let soak for at least 24 hours before serving.

  * * *

  Note: if you serve only a few pieces of cake, leave the rest of the cake in the pan, without the sauce. When needed, reheat the sauce, pour it over the cake, and let soak for 24 hours.

  Chapter 22

  Farther Afield

  Before Janet got married, and I was still summering with her and Anne in their flat in Bolton, we took a few days’ trip to Edinburgh, Scotland. We traveled by train from Manchester.

  The trip was mundane except when we got to Preston, Lancashire. The train stopped in the middle of the countryside—no station, no platform, no buildings. We were there for many minutes when finally three chaps in brown dungarees appeared. They began banging on one of the train wheels or a suspension spring or an axle or axlebox. Something metallic, at any rate. The clanking of metal against metal filled the entire train, I’m sure. It certainly nudged into the passenger car in which we sat. Perhaps twenty minutes later, the clanking stopped. We breathed a sigh of relief. The train continued on its way, although at a rate of speed less than the Manchester-to-Preston leg. Whether it was due to a temporary fix of the wheel or spring or whatever, or whether the train had to allow for another one ahead of us because we were behind schedule, I don’t know. But we limped into Waverly Station an hour or two behind time. Still, we were safe and nothing had happened that mimicked John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps incident.

  We checked into our bed-and-breakfast, then went sightseeing, as we had a few hours before dinner. We started in the Princes Street Gardens, resplendent with its famous floral clock and monument to Sir Walter Scott. It’s a magnificent Victorian Gothic tower—dripping with gargoyles, carved statues, and ornamentation—open in the center and sporting pinnacles on each of its four corner towers.

  There are sixty-eight carved figures on the two-hundred foot tall monumen
t, (characters from Scott’s novels) and several viewing platforms along its height. To get to the view, you have to climb the circular stairs—two hundred eighty eight of them.

  The staircase is very narrow. I don't know if the architect planned it, but it’s a great way to meet people. Those going up meet those coming down in a chest-brushing passing. People ascending keep to the outer wall (thus mimicking the traffic patterns of vehicles). People descending are nearest the inner shaft of the steps. There are mere inches between both parties.

  I felt as though I were a bat plastered against the wall every time someone attempted to pass.

  We ate dinner in a little restaurant on the Royal Mile. Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace stand at opposite ends of the street. It’s a bustling area of shops, historic buildings, and law courts. After our meal, we returned to our B-and-B. I could hardly wait until morning. Wouldn’t breakfast be authentic porridge?

  It wasn’t. The proprietor served us the typical British full breakfast of fried egg, toast, broiled tomato half, bacon, slice of ham, and baked beans. All very tasty, but I’d wanted a bowl of cooked oatmeal. Porridge. Stirred with a spurtle, perhaps. (A spurtle is a traditional cooking utensil, a fancy ‘stick’, used to stir porridge, soup, and pasta. They vary in length from approximately nine to fourteen inches. A stylized thistle is the traditional design element on top of the spurtle, but sometimes the tops are carved in fancy horizontal lines or even a simplified etched thistle design. It’s really what makes each spurtle unique.) I liked them so much I began to collect them. To date I have eleven, spurtles of black walnut, Scottish elm, Canadian maple, British beech and oak, and U.S. black cherry. The porridge didn’t have to be cooked on a cast iron stove or over a dry heather fire. I just wanted a bowl of creamy porridge. In my dreams.

  My disappointment was tantamount to my disappointment when we took a trip to Ireland and I got off the Liverpool to Dublin ferry. The entire voyage I was excited at the prospect of hearing authentic Irish folk music in a folk club or pub. The first music I heard on disembarking was Hawaiian music over a speaker system at the wharf.

  Years later, in 1996, I traveled to New Zealand. I wanted to visit the country where my favorite author, Ngaio Marsh, had lived. I wanted to see her house. I did see it, and I saw it as the first ever visitor to the house-museum. It was slated to open to the public exactly one week after my visit. The entire day was perfect. Colin MacLaughlan, one of the curators, spent the day with me, showing me places in Christchurch where Ngaio had been: the theater named after her, the church she’d attended, the art museum where some of her paintings hung… At her house, I had tea at her dining room table, eating from her china service. I insisted on washing the dishes afterwards. Even that was a thrill, standing in her kitchen, at the sink, where she had stood hundreds of times, washing and drying her dishes…

  The house visit came at the end of my two-week tour of New Zealand. I usually don’t do bus tours, but the country was new to me. I figured the bus driver would have good commentary during the trip and I’d learn more about the country listening to him than I would driving about on my own.

  We started in Auckland, the country’s largest city, and drove to the northern-most point of the North Island. We saw Cape Reinga, where the Maoris believe the spirits of their dead enter the underworld. We visited a Maori craft school and saw artisans carving jade and whale bone. We saw Wellington and the thermal boiling mud pits of Rotorua. We walked through the Waipoua Forest and saw the world’s oldest and largest known Kauri trees, growing for two thousand years, since the Bronze-age. Then we took a ship to the South Island. We visited Queenstown, sort of a Colorado/Old US West-feel spot. We went on a Jeep ride on a mountain-hugging road, so dangerous that no car insurance could be bought for any vehicle traveling along the road. We took a steamship ride inside the Milford Sound, a territory so dense that parts of it have never been explored even to this day. We stayed overnight at the Mount Cook Village, which gave us a sense of New Zealand in the ‘gold rush/pioneer’ days. We saw Mount Cook, walked on the glacier and walked through the semi tropical forest.

  We had the option to spend a day and sleep-over on a sheep ranch, and I quickly signed up. The owners took me on a small trip around the ranch and I watched their dogs cut sheep from the herd and corral them into pens, ready to be shorn.

  Of course we had lamb for dinner. I’d never had it before, and it was wonderful. Lamb there is considered common, like Americans consider chicken. It’s no big thing to serve lamb. If you want to impress a dinner guest in New Zealand, you serve them chicken because it’s expensive meat. I’m glad the sheep ranch owners cooked lamb—they must’ve known I wanted to experience the foods of the country.

  Like porridge in Scotland.

  That night at the sheep station was pitch black. The ranch sat in the countryside, no streetlamps, no lights around the buildings. I walked outside around ten o’clock and gazed at the sky. I don’t know why. I couldn’t make out any familiar constellations like the dippers. The heavens were a hodgepodge of stars of white and blue and green and yellow specks. It was beautiful but frightening, for I had no sense of direction as I would’ve back home, gazing from my back yard at the few constellations I knew. At the ranch I also felt the first tingles of fear, the fright to be outside at night. I didn’t know if it was my personality or something left in my genes when humans were the same as any other prey. There could be eyes watching from the depths of the forest. It was a good fear because it kept us wary and safe. But in New Zealand, alone outside without a sense of direction and not knowing where anything was around me, it was an unpleasant sense.

  When the bus tour circled around to Christchurch, I left. This was the city of the Ngaio Marsh house and my personal visit to it.

  I stayed a few more days in Christchurch, soaking in Ngaio’s city. I had lunch at a riverside restaurant and, wanting to savor more local dishes, bought two afghans. No, it’s not what you think. I didn’t eat a crocheted coverlet. Afghans are cookies. Cornflakes is the main ingredient. Don’t let that put you off. They are really good!

  Afghans – 15 cookies

  Cookies:

  1 ¼ cups flour

  ¼ cup cocoa powder

  14 tbsp butter, softened

  ½ cup sugar

  2 cups cornflakes

  * * *

  Icing:

  2 cups confectioner’s sugar

  2 tbsp cocoa powder

  ¼ tsp butter, melted

  ¼ tsp vanilla extract

  2 tbsp boiling water

  walnut halves for garnish, if desired

  Preheat oven to 375°F.

  To make the cookies: mix flour and cocoa powder in a bowl and set aside. Beat butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add flour mixture in small batches until dough forms. Fold in cornflakes.

  Drop 2 tbsp of dough per cookie onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Gently flatten cookies with the back of the spoon.

  Bake until set, about 15 minutes. Let cookies cool completely.

  Icing: Mix confectioners’ sugar and cocoa in a bowl. Stir in butter, vanilla, and water until smooth. Drizzle icing over cookies and, if desired, garnish with a walnut atop each one.

  Roast Leg of Lamb

  Leg of lamb

  Chopped garlic

  Rosemary leaves

  Salt

  Ground pepper

  Olive oil OR 8 oz red wine and 2/3 cup of beef stock

  * * *

  Start with the leg of lamb at refrigerated temperature. Sear the meat for 15 minutes in pre-heated 450°F oven, then adjust roasting temperature to 325°F for remaining cooking time.

  Rub the meat with chopped garlic and rosemary leaves, salt, and pepper. Then coat it all with olive oil or a mixture of the red wine and beef stock. Loosely mold a sheet of aluminum foil over the meat to prevent burning. Roast at 325°F according to how you like it—see chart below.

  * * *

  What to do with the leftover leg bone after the
lamb is eaten? Why not make soup from it?

  * * *

  Lamb-Bone Soup

  Leftover lamb bone

  2 tbsp butter

  1 large onion, chopped

  5 cups canned tomatoes in puree

  6 cups water

  1 tbsp packaged dry bread crumbs

  Salt

  Ground pepper

  * * *

  Remove any fat from the bone. In a large saucepan, melt the butter. Add the onions and cook until translucent and limp. Add the bone, tomatoes, water and breadcrumbs.

  Bring to a boil, and cover pot. Simmer for 5 hours.

  Remove the bone and let the soup cool before placing it in the refrigerator. When soup is cold, remove any fat floating on top of the soup. Before serving, reheat soup, and add salt and pepper to taste.

  Chapter 23

  Reliving the Past

  In the 1860s, New Zealand experienced a gold rush, similar to those in California and Australia. New Zealand’s stampede occurred in the Central Otago region, at the southeastern end of the country’s South Island.

  The gold attracted a huge and hasty inpouring of miners, and those supplying them or wanting to get rich from them. Miners’ tents polka dotted the rocky area, as the diggers remained close to their claims and the Tuapeka River. Towns sprang up seemingly overnight.

  One of these settlements was Arrowtown, which nudges up to the Arrow River, twenty miles from Queenstown. Unlike miners’ fleeting shantytowns, Arrowtown became a permanent place of houses, shops, and hotels. White painted, wooden churches sported bright hued roofs, many in red with green ornamentation, reminiscent of the bold colors the Maori use in their wooden buildings. In looks, the town resembles the American west.