Back at the party. . .
The girls and I dance with some single men and a lot of bachelors were quite attracted to Elizabeth who was embarrassed and shy about it, often using me as a shield due to being uncomfortable with the other gender.
Dorothy on the other hand, she made herself known as the "forgotten and lonely wife" to get attention. And due to her attractive features such as black hair and blue eyes in her blue bell dress caught the attention of some possible bachelors or even widows of her age.
Me, well, I wasn't interested. Sure I danced with some men and even flowered back but I never showed more desired for attention than to just have fun. I honestly just stayed because of the food.
Just because my knowledge from my past is vast in gastronomy doesn't mean I can just cook he dishes that I know and receive a good thumbs up about it.
As a peasant who works at a farm, I must act and make food that resembles such lifestyle because if I do something out of the ordinary, people will start looking at me with curious and even strangers eyes.
I can't just expect to receive a gold medal from making spaghetti in a place where the flour is mostly used for baked goods, not food ingredients. I can get in trouble and even be evicted just for doing something that others don't know what it is.
Therefore, if I want to open my bakery and restaurant in the future, I must make sure I am familiar with the food of this world, or this town for the time being at the very least.
As soon as I had free time, I went to slice myself in a room upstairs and started writing everything I noticed and wanted to note about.
"There are things such as salads, steaks, stews, roasted animals, soups, and even some sweet foods such as:
1. Pies and mini pies. These are made of apple, banana, peach, strawberry, meat (pork, beef and lamb), honey and (in rare cases) cherry.
2. Eclairs. A small, soft, log-shaped pastry filled with cream and, while it's typically topped with chocolate icing in my old world, here they use honey, sugar syrup, sugar icing or even plain without any type of icing.
3. Cream puffs.
4. Cherry treats. While it's hard to obtain them during winter, many people from upper status make their versions of reserves to conserve them and used them for sweet. For example: cherry cakes, cherry strips, cherry pies, cherry tarts, cherry shortcakes & cherry jam.
5. Cookies. Most cookies tend to be not the favorites of people unless they have fillings inside due to often being plain and hard.
6. Peanuts and nuts. Most nuts used for desserts tend to be used as decoration or covered in sweetness such as honey, sugar syrup or maybe both depending on the bigger dessert.
7. Pudding. In the old world, the most famous flavour (in my humble opinion) is chocolate. But as far as this place, or at least as this town goes, it does not have chocolate, therefore, they tend to make sugar pudding, milk pudding, and sometimes vanilla and strawberry pudding.
8. Cakes. One of the most famous desserts. The most famous cakes are: shortcake, angel cake, cloud cake, sponge cake, orange cake and pound cake. The most famous fallouts are: strawberry, vanilla, orange, sugar, honey, strawberry and cherry.
9. Macaroons.
10. Candy bars. Most of them come in small square shape sizes and the flavors are: peanut butter, mint, butterscotch, strawberry and cherry only.
I can most definetely, work with this, but it will also mean staying in this town for more time than I thought I would stay. Of course, once I'm gone, I'll be taking everything I can with me.
But before anything else, I have found out that this world does have chocolate due to hearing the Mayor's son complaining about not having any desserts with chocolate. The Mayor, not wanting to deal with his son's bullshit, told his son that chocolate was EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE, so it was difficult to obtain it and almost even impossible to have it on winter.
And even if they were to have their hands on chocolate, the chefs weren't used to using it, so they wouldn't be able to know how to use and on what.
I have prepared small things with chocolate, during my college years I even went to Latin American places where they make the chocolate from scratch.
If I'm able to get my hands on the fruit with the chocolate seed, I could make chocolate and sell it at a high price!! But first, I must wait for winter to be over and let spring come to say hi to us."
I stopped writing and quickly put things away before leaving the room and kept learning about this world's gastronomy.
.
.
.
A few hours later. . .
Elizabeth and I returned Dorothy home and told her we would return her and her son back to her house in the morning.
Dorothy, obviously had no desire to find his dead husband in her bed so soon, therefore, she slept with her son like a baby among the puppies who were giving her comfort and warmth.
'Thanks Marianne.' I thanked her. 'Want to go home or do you want to sleep here?' I asked her.
Marianne yawned. 'I was only allowed to stay to guard the place, not to sleep in the place, so it's best if I return home before mom goes ballistic.' She stretched as she sat up from the rocking chair.
'Very well, Elizabeth and I will accompany you.' I told her we went out of the house and went for my other horse and brought Marianne to her home.
The whole mini travel was quite but nice, we made to the door and knocked on it. Marianne's mother opened to us immediately.
'Oh thank the stars! I thought you guys were dead or left with other men!' Marianne's mother exclaimed as soon as she opened the door and saw us.
'Mom!' Marianne warned her mother.
'Yeah yeah sorry.' The mother rolled her eyes and took he daughter inside. 'Thank you for bringing her home.'
'No porblem, and we apologized for being so late.' Elizabeth and I bowed as politely as we could.
'No problem too, night.' The mother closed the door as soon as she said the last word and left us outside.
'Well, back home Eli.' I grabbed her hand and helped her hop on Jam while I rode on Peanut. 'Let's go.' I said barely able to keep and eye open.
As soon as we got home, we took the dresses off, got upstairs, fall on the bed and went to sleep.
It was a LONG day.
Oh wait! I opened my eyes and slipped away to take the second documents from inside the corset, opened them to see them one last time and then opened the furnance in my room as let the papers buen inside the fire. There we go. I smiled to myself as I returned to bed and finally slept in peque.
.
.
.
.
.
The next day. . .
I took Dorothy and her son back to the house and we rode through her neigbourhood.
Many of them asked why she was just coming home and what happened to her since they didn't saw her a lot anymore.
'You see, my husband, for some reason, throwed me out and my son shortly before winter started.' Dorothy teared up. 'That's why I was trying to sell my baskets at the market, so I could bring the money and maybe my husband would let me in again.' She sniffed.
The neighborhood was shocked and enraged. They knew that the married couple had their issues but never this high. And the fact that Dorothy didn't know the reason meant that Hugo was being unfair.
'It was fortunate that Amelia here,' she took my hand and presented me to her side of the town, 'took me in after seeing my baskets and we worked together to make the "Family size baskets" and the "winter baskets."'Dorothy narrated our meeting story. 'Thanks to her I was able to win about 3,200 copper, or maybe a bit more; since the baskets had her food in it, she willingly divided accordingly.'
The neighborhood smiled and everyone started to thank me for saving Dorothy.
'It wasn't much, I also went through dark past with men, so I couldn't just look away from her situation especially since she had a child to take care of.' I said softly and humble.
'But that still doesn't explain why you didn't come back to your house.' An old lady smirked grumbling towards Dorothy.
'Because I didn't let her.' I answered for Dorothy. 'As a woman myself, I know that it's dangerous for a woman to be with a drunk husband. I didn't want her to return to that household.' I turned to see the old hag. 'I mean, would you want to return to a house that looks like that?' I asked her while pointing to Dorothy's home.
Everyone turned to look at each other and not even three seconds they shook their heads in agreement with me.
'That's why I offered Dorothy a place to stay while her husband calmed down and reason. The last thing one would want is to enter you own home and that your husband waiting for you with a bottle of alcohol to hit you with.' I declared holding my head up high. 'Or would you?' I asked the old hag raising an eyebrow while looking at her straight in the eye.
The old hag scowled and turned her eyes away.
'That's what I thought.' I said and then turned to see the house of Dorothy and looked at it confused. 'Say, just to ask, is it normal for you guys to leave the door open like that? I mean, I'm new in town so I don't know.' I shrugged "confused."
Everybody quickly panicked the moment I made that statement. It was clear that it was definetely not normal to leave the door open.
'Hugo?' Dorothy walked to the house calling her husband. 'Hugo?!' She asked more loudly.
Everyone whispered with either worried glances or angry remarks about Hugo.
'Em, does anyone know at what time he return?' I asked them.
'Pff! Almost everyone was at either the engagement party at the Great Forks or at home sleeping! If he returned at a certain hour at dawn he probably didn't do much noise for us to know or even care!' The old hag remarked rolling her eyes in annoyance.
They all nodded in agreement with her.
I turned to see Dorothy and walked to her. 'Dorothy?' I called her putting a hand on her shoulder. 'Do you think he's okay?' I asked.
Dorothy looked at me with a blank stare and carried Joseph to my face. 'Take Joseph for a moment.' She gave me her kid while she walked quickly inside.
I did as she asked to do and she quickly ran inside her house calling her husband's name.
'Hugo?!. . . Hugo, are you there?' Dorothy's voice sounded more alarmed. '. . . . HUGOOOOOOO!!!' She shrieked.
Joseph jumped at his mom's scream and started crying.
'Ssh ssh ssh!' I tried to lull the little boy so he would calm down.
Dorothy came out running. 'Medic!! Quickly!' She stumble and fell on her knees. 'H-Hugo's blue!! And frozen!! Quickly, medic!!' She pleaded.
The neighborhood went full on panic mode and went into action.
Some men went running to the soldier's fort while some women took Dorothy and me inside a house in front of Dorothy's home and some other people went to see what did Hugo looked like.
In other words, all hell broke loose.
.
.
.
A few hours later. . .
A Medic and a detective were brought to the place. He made a check up, and as quickly as he could, he came to us to bring his veredict.
The medic was in his late 50s, gray hair in all his head an beard, glasses, and a chubby but good looking body with a sensible face (aka, an expressive person). The detective on the other hand, was dark brown hair, light tanned skin, quite taller than the medic with a formal clothing with bow and tie and icy blue eyes with a indifferent expression.
'Madam Cranland?' The doctor called for Dorothy.
'It's me.' Dorothy standed up quickly.
Some friends of hers quickly tried to calm her and to sat her down but Dorothy remained firm and up from her seat.
'I'm afraid the detective and I uncovered some disturbing things about your husband.' The medic pointed to the detective who came with him.
'It would be better if we discussed this in private.' The detective added.
Dorothy, feeling uneasy, turned to look at me.
'It's okay, I'll keep Joseph with me.' I nodded to her while holding Joseph who was now falling asleep.
Dorothy nodded and went with the men to her friend's dinner table.
It took a few minutes, but then we were hearing the sniffling noise from where we were in the living room, and we all knew the answer about what became of Hugo.
'I don't know about you guys, but I believe it was the cold who called the grim reaper to take him to the other side.' I murmured while still lulling Joseph so he would fall asleep.
They all nodded.
'HUGO WHAT?!' Dorothy exclaimed "outraged" and this time she wailed.
Oh boy, they must have found the divorce documents. I raised my eyebrows in surprised and looked at the ladies. 'Any guesses?' I asked.
'I guess stealing from her.' A lady said.
'I'm guessing cheating on her.' Another lady whispered.
'I'm guessing he wanted to divorcing her.' The old hag murmured with seriousness in her eyes.
*PUM!* We heard someone hit the ground.
'My lady!' The detective exclaimed out loud.
'What happened?!' I asked stating back along with Dorothy's friends and we all looked worried.
The doctor came running to the living room to stop us from coming to the dinner table. 'S-She just fainted a little, em. . .' He briefly turned to look towards the dinning table and then back at us. 'Lady Stratford, is it okay if we could use your bed for Ms. Cranland for a bit?' He asked with nervousness.
Lady Stratford nodded and came to their aid.
The detective came to the living room with Dorothy (who had passed out) in his arms and carried her to where Lady Stratford was guiding her to.
We all turned to look at the doctor who looking at the detective bringing Dorothy upstairs. I got close with Joseph in my arms. 'Is she okay? What happened?!' I asked worried.
The doctor sighed heavily and took off his glasses. 'For privacy reasons, I can only say out loud that you, lady Baker, is the only one who can help lady Cranland come back to her feet for the time being.' The doctor declared.
'Huh?' I raised my eyebrows "confused."
The doctor took me to the dining table while briefly turning his head to look at the ladies who are still waiting. 'Once Lady Cranland has regained consciousness, then you can ask her, for now, I'm only allowed to personally inform Lady Baker about this.' He informed them.
The ladies nodded and sat back down.
The doctor and sat up across each other with me having a sleeping Joseph in his arms.
'What's happening doctor?' I asked once again
'Well, from what Cranland has told us, his husband has been cheating on her with prostitutes and wasting their resources on alcohol. Or so she thought.' The doctor started to explain. 'From what my inspection of the body has found, it seemed that after he was throwned out of the party last night, somehow he got his hands on strong doses of alcohol and spend the night with another woman. I'm sure of this last part in particular because we found a red lipstick residue on his cheeck that was still noticeable.' He explained his conclusions. 'After that, we can safely say that he died after walking in the cold wind, leaving the door open due to his heels y drunkenness and passed out on his bed without closing the window, which only helped to speed up his death.' The doctor concluded putting his glasses back on while wearing a bit of skepticism in his eyes,
I'm sure he's wondering about why was Cranland naked, but because I'm a lady, he probable isn't sure what her to bring it up to me or not. I sighed heavily. 'That's. . . One painless yet gruesome death.' I commented while marking a "horrified" face.
The doctor agreed. 'The detective noted that the was a big pouch under the bed and we took a look at it. . . It seems that Hugo Cranland was making money to divorce his wife to be able to keep sleeping with prostitutes and other women.' He concluded looking at the table.
I gasped "horrified." I must ask the right question, if I ask the "wrong" question, it can raise suspicion. I thought to myself as to what to ask. 'T-Then, what would happen to Dorothy?' I asked.
'Well, since the law often prefers to help men over woman, lady Cranland would have suffered even greater if she hadn't become a widow before then.' The doctor declared looking at me again. 'But since he died before he could even "demand" the divorce, lady Cranland became a widow and Mr. Cranland now will probably suffer his misdeeds in the afterlife.' He shrugged.
I nodded understanding. 'But what is going to happen to Dorothy now?' I asked him.
'Well, since the divorce did not happened and did not have a will prepared, Lady Cranland will automatically receive everything plus her husband's pension from his job at the mines.' The doctor answered. 'She and her son will be able to live a good life from now on.' He declared. 'At least, if they manage the money well enough unlike her husband.' He clarified.
I nodded in agreement but still looked worried. 'What about her house? She probably can not live there. Especially after seeing her husband's dead body her bed.' I noted recalling the last part still worried.
'That will be for the court to decide, but since you have taken care of her for a while now, we hope you can take care of her a few more weeks while the courts transfers everything to Lady Cranland.' The doctor explained.
I nodded. 'Of course.' I accepted.
The doctor nodded appreciating it as he sat up.
'Say, doctor.' I sat up too a bit nervous. 'You see, I slept with a man yesterday at the party and. . .' I turned away my stare. 'I was too drunk to even remember his face.' I blushed of "embarrassment."
The doctor looked at me pitifully. 'I see, well, we can arrange a meeting so I can inspect whether you are or not. How does that sound?' He asked.
I nodded in agreement. 'Can it be tomorrow or the day after?' I asked.
'Actually, you see, when it's been barely a few days after that, the signs are invisible, therefore I suggest you make an arrangement for about two or three weeks after yesterday.' The doctor suggested. 'That way I will be able to conclude better whether you are indeed that or not.' He explained.
I nodded understanding. 'In that case, how about the Monday two weeks from now?' I asked.
'That would be good.' The doctor agree and he shook hands with me. 'For now, I shall aid Mrs. Cranland, you stay here because the detective will want to ask you a few questions.' He informed while leaving.
I sighed heavily. It's going to be hard to deal with the detective, but at least I know how to act so he probably won't see through me. Hopefully. I turned to see Joseph and pet his head. It's going to be hard for little baby to not have a father or father figure in his life, but it would have been twice as hard to have a horrible cheating deadbeat father like Hugo. I sighed to myself once more.
The detective came almost right on time and sat across the dining table to see me straight to the face. 'Lady Baker.' He nodded to me.
'Detective.' I nodded to him as a hi.
'I'm Detective Holmes, Lady Baker.' The detective corrected. 'I'm from the capital but came here to visit a friend of mine but got caught here from the winter. As you can see, you can feel yourselves lucky as to have me here.' He hooded his face up high like he was the king himself.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked in annoyance. So he's that full of himself, huh? Let's see how good he is. I dared and went back to my sorrowful face. 'I see. I don't really know how good I feel with a man full of himself in front of me, but as long as you can do your job properly then I can only say thank you.' I shrugged.
The man's eye twitched.
As for me, I swear I could hear some giggles from the living room. The girls are probably eavesdropping and laughing due to my comment hitting the man's ego.
'Let's go to business shall we?' He suggested.
'Ver well.' I nodded in agreement.
.
.
.
An hour after. . .
He first asked about my background. With that part, I went with full honesty.
Detective Holmes the went to ask me my first impression of Dorothy, How and why I decided to help her. I went with honesty in that as well while excluding some parts like suggesting to kill him.
He then asked what I was doing the whole night at the party. Fortunately, I have talked about this with Elizabeth, Marianne and Dorothy to make a connected story about what happened during the party.
'Well, when we first came to the party, we wanted to start with the food to then talk with others and chat, but then Dorothy's husband went on with the scandal.' I started to explain my "version" of events while rolling my eyes at the last part of the sentence. 'He first calmed down thanks to the soldiers and leaved us alone for a while, but then he got heavily drunk and started to cause trouble again and he was throwned out of the ball room. I don't know what happened to him afterwards and we just enjoyed ouserlves for the rest of the night.' I went to look up and saw him writing something in the notebook.
'Understood. Ms. Cranland told me that at one point, you took some wine out of the ball room and went with your new roommate, Elizabeth Isabella Dawson to drink as you both went to the check the place out while drinking. Is that true?' He asked.
I nodded. 'Yes. We went to the bathroom, and then, I felt pretty drunk so I decided to sleep in a random bedroom that was open; I don't remember the room number to be honest. Elizabeth told me she was going to go check on Dorothy first and check on me afterwards. I agree and fell asleep on the bed.' I went on with my version. 'Then I woke up and saw that Elizabeth hadn't come back, or if she did, she went back to the party since I was probable still asleep so I decided to go back to the party on my own.' I took a deep breath and sighed. 'But I was still drinking the last bit of alcohol that I stole therefore, I got lost, met a man who got under. . . My skirt, and we quickly got em. . .' I blushed. '"Handsy" with each other.' I turned away while scratching my nape embarrassed.
The detective raised and eyebrow but soon the other eyebrow was raised and his face went from "Handsy? Wait— Oh! That type of "handsy." He gulped and then looked away. 'I-I see. Do you remember his face?' He asked going back to professionalism.
I shook my head negatively while sighing heavily. 'I was to drunk to remember.' I shrugged it off. 'But I remember feeling good and my next memory is fully awake, in the Great Forks backyard in the cold and Elizabeth and Dorothy calling me from the distance.' I sighed once more. 'I looked up and down through my body to see if I hurted myself, but nothing was broken, although I did had some "love bites" from whoever took my virginity last night and a pouch full of coins.' I looked away once again sounding a bit annoyed.
'Auch.' Detective Holmes commented. 'I'm sorry for that.'
I smiled it's okay. 'At least I woke before I got hypothermia or something worse. Which that can be due to barely being outside for a few seconds or maybe minutes.' I "deduced" for myself.
Holmes nodded in agreement. 'That's probably true.' He kept writing in his notebook.
'After my friends found me, I decided to give Dorothy the pouch. I can make ends meet and pay rent by myself with Elizabeth since I have my own farm and thought that Dorothy needed that the most since she was with a kind and an abusive husband.' I "admitted." 'Afterwards, we went back to the party, we met a couple of guys and drank a bit more, but I decided to leave the alcohol alone after a while since I needed to get us back home.' I explained.
Holmes nodded at my explanation as he kept writing.
'That's when I decided to bring Dorothy with me since she would probably face horrible backlash from her husband as soon as she entered that house, so I took a different route, brought Eli and Dory to my house, then gave a ride to a girl who took care of my home while the three of us went to the party and we went to sleep.' I finished telling my "version" of events. 'That's all I remember.'
Holmes went into thought about the end of my story. 'I must conclude that before leaving the party you had to leave the farm and little Joseph to someone, am I right?' He asked.
I nodded. 'Yes. Her name is Marriane Robinson, she's a friend of mine and a neighbour, since she's been working for some time at my farm, I offered to pay her extra to care for my farm and Joseph since, 1) she's barely 16, therefore she still can't come to this type of parties; 2) She gets along with Joseph and Dorothy, so no problem there; and 3) she's working to get a proper dowry for husband since her mother can't afford to completely do so.' I explained in detail.
Holmes nodded once more and closed his notebook. 'Thank you very much, my lady. I hope you take care of lady Cranland until she moves somewhere on her own. If you hear or see anyone that had to do with everything that happened, please let me know.' He sat up and extended his hand.
'Yes sir, thank you.' I shook his hand firmly and we waved each other goodbye.
I did everything I could. I sighed heavily. Now I can only wait for the results to come in the newspaper. I thought to myself as I hugged little Joseph tightly.
.
.
.
A few days later. . .
The newspaper sent the news about Hugo's death and the conclusions drawn about it.
As soon as I got to the Miscellaneous store to deliver more farm goods and got about 2,300 copper out of them, I bought a newspaper and read it.
"Hugo Cranland was a man in his late early thrities married to Dorothy Cranland and had a son with her called Joseph Cranland. Hugo had died in his sleep with the door and window open and no chimney fire due to being highly alcoholized and fell asleep in his only to never wake up again at around 6 a.m. on Monday of this week."
As I finished the first paragraph, I noted a small detail. They kept the detail of him being naked in his bedroom. That's interesting. I thought about it for a few moments before going back to reading. Maybe because of beliefs or valúes about how much information is legal to share? I wondered.
"It is believed that after being throwed out of the Great Forks due to causing a wreck twice during the engagement ball, he wandered the the place until he slept with a woman, payed her with all his pouch and left the Great Forks and somehow returned home intact. Unfortunately, due to his drunk state of mind, he forgot to close the door and the window and passed out on his bed and never woke up again.
His wife, Dorothy Cranland, has claimed that the berating she received at the ball was not the first time he has done that and she was used to him being an alcoholic and abusive husband. She also confided that it was also not the first time he had cheated on her and went on to spend money on protitutes and on alcohol.
She had declared that she nor her son would have survived the winter, much less her husband if it wasn't for the newest arrival in town, Amelia Cora Baker, who has been renting a property to Lord and Landlord Daniel Claystone after having left her hometown due to family issues she decided to omite due to privacy.
Lady Baker claimed though, that she went through abuse as well from her stepfamily and neglect from her mother, saying and quoting; "Back then, I saw myself trying to make money to leave my mother's new family who had done nothing but leave me for a mere slave in their household. I could not see myself leaving another woman to suffer the same date or worse as I did, especially when she had a child to take care of."
Thanks to Detective Holmes investigation and Doctor Watson's autopsy, it has been concluded that Hugo Cranland has died of both hiportemia and alcohol poisoning in his sleep by two a.m. aproximetely on Monday of November XX of XXXX."
I sighed because it was official. I was not even suspected of the culprit, and got away from murder.
I smiled to myself as I went to buy basket material for Dorothy who will need to make more money.
Despite her husband's saving and pension, it's best if she makes as much money as possible to be able to buy her own home and even better, move to a place where she can send her son to a better school.
This nightmare is officially over.