Matcha for Murder

The bunting went up crooked.

I noticed it from the doorway of Honeyleaf, arms full of linen napkins, watching as Josie balanced on the second rung of a stepladder and stretched toward the eave with entirely more confidence than the situation warranted. One end of the yellow-and-white bunting was pinned neatly to the bracket above the window. The other end drifted somewhere near her left elbow, doing nothing useful.

"It's still crooked," I said.

"It's characterful," Josie said, without looking down.

"Crooked isn't a character trait."

"It is for this building." She climbed down, stepped back onto the pavement, and squinted up at her handiwork with her head tilted. "Actually I think it looks better this way. Like the shop is smiling."

I looked at the bunting. I looked at Josie. She was twenty-five, relentlessly cheerful, and had been my front-of-house since I’d opened the doors of Honeyleaf Tea Room two years ago. She was also, I had long since accepted, constitutionally incapable of hanging anything level. The string of paper lanterns inside were slightly skewed. The framed menu board behind the counter leaned a precise three degrees to the left. The wreath I'd asked her to centre on the front door for Christmas had spent the entirety of December listing gently toward the hinge side.

I had stopped noticing most of it.

"Fine," I said. "Leave it."

Josie beamed and picked up her ladder. "Festival bunting always looks better a bit wonky anyway. Too neat and it looks corporate."

She wasn't entirely wrong, which was the most annoying thing about Josie. She had an instinct for the feel of things, for whether a room felt welcoming or stiff, whether a display looked cheerful or cluttered, that I'd come to rely on more than I liked to admit. I was better at the precision. She was better at the warmth. Between the two of us, Honeyleaf usually landed somewhere near right.

I carried the napkins inside and breathed in the familiar smell of the place: old wood and beeswax, the ghost of a thousand steepings, something floral and faintly sweet from Archie's morning bake. It was barely eight o'clock, the Open sign still flipped to Closed, the chairs still stacked on three of the tables while the floors dried. The spring light came through the front windows at a low, golden angle and landed in long strips across the flagstones. In the armchair by the cold fireplace, Bramble was already asleep.

The cat had come with the building when I’d signed the lease two years ago — a large ginger tabby of indeterminate age and very settled opinions — and had since claimed approximately forty percent of Honeyleaf’s interior as his personal domain. He had what the previous tenant had described as ‘arrangements’ with the florist next door and the estate agent across the street, rotating between the three establishments with the dignified independence of a creature who had decided he was nobody’s, and therefore everybody’s. Regulars brought him treats. First-time visitors were assessed, silently and at length, before being judged worthy or found wanting. He had once stared at a man in a fleece gilet for such an extended and unblinking period that the man had eventually apologised for something he hadn’t done and left without finishing his scone.

I set the napkins on the counter and began folding. Archie appeared from the kitchen door, dusting flour from his forearms, and deposited a plate of small pastries beside the till.

"Testing batch," he said. "Matcha and white chocolate. Tell me if the sweetness is wrong."

I picked one up. The pastry was pale gold at the edges, dusted with a faint green powder, still warm. I bit into it and the flavour opened in layers, the slight bitterness of good matcha, the round sweetness of white chocolate, something bright underneath that I couldn't immediately place.

"Yuzu?" I said.

Archie looked satisfied. "Just a little. Too much?"

"No. It's right." I finished the pastry and licked a trace of green powder from my thumb. "These are good, Archie."

"They're for the ceremony display. Something to sit alongside the tasting without competing with it." He picked up one himself and chewed thoughtfully. "I made a plain version too. For the people who think matcha tastes like pond water."

"We won't say that to the guests."

"Obviously." He disappeared back into the kitchen. I heard the oven open, the pleasant clatter of trays.

Archie Gill had been my baker since the beginning. He was forty-nine, quietly precise, and deeply suspicious of trends, but he engaged with them on their own terms before dismissing them, which was more than most people managed. He had spent the past two weeks researching matcha in the same way he approached everything: methodically, without announcement, until he had something worth showing for it. The pastries were the result. They were, I thought, quite wonderful.

I finished the napkin folding and moved to the back room to begin the morning's real task.

The ceremonial matcha set lived in its original wooden box, wrapped in cloth the colour of pale sea-glass, on the top shelf of the storage cabinet in Honeyleaf's private room. I had ordered it in January, when the idea of hosting a matcha ceremony during the spring festival was still theoretical, a notion I'd turned over during a quiet Tuesday afternoon, thinking about the season, about what Honeyleaf could offer that the festival's usual programme couldn't.

The set had arrived in February, packed with the kind of care that suggested the maker understood it would be handled with equivalent reverence. I had opened it once, carefully, catalogued each piece against the list, and closed it again to wait.

Now I lifted it down from the shelf and set it on the table.

The chakin cloth, folded into its careful square. The chasen, the bamboo whisk, its tines fine as hair, splayed slightly from their first careful soaking and drying. The chashaku, the slender bamboo scoop, curved at one end like a question mark. The chawan, the bowl, the heart of it, a rough-textured piece in deep indigo glaze with a single irregular break in the colour, a vein of pale grey running through it like a river seen from above.

I lifted the bowl and held it. It fit both hands. It had weight, a satisfying solidity, the kind of object that asked to be used rather than displayed.

I had taught myself the basics of chateau, the Japanese matcha ceremony, over the winter, working from two good books, several hours of careful practice, and one video call with a ceramicist in Edinburgh who had laughed warmly at my pronunciation and then walked me through the whole thing with patient precision. I was not expert. I was careful, and I was genuine, and I thought that would be enough to provide an appropriate frame for the main event: the ceremony hosted by Celeste Morrow.

Celeste Morrow, who had ten thousand words written about her in the Sunday supplements over the past three years. Celeste Morrow, who had made matcha fashionable in the way only a certain kind of person could, not by explaining it, but by inhabiting it, by making it look like the most natural thing in the world to stand in a sun-filled kitchen and whisk green powder into something ceremonial. Her brand, Morrow Matcha, had gone from a well-regarded specialty product to a household name in approximately two years. She had a waiting list for her ceremonies. She had a collaboration with a Michelin-starred restaurant. She had, I was given to understand, opinions.

She had also, when I'd emailed her tentatively in December asking if she might be interested in hosting a ceremony during Maplewick's spring festival as part of Honeyleaf's new programming, replied within four hours. Delighted. Let's talk rates.

The rates had been somewhat more than I'd expected. I had agreed to them anyway.

I settled the bowl back into its cloth, repacked the box, and returned to my notes.

The private room, which regulars called the back room, and which the planning application had called the ancillary hospitality suite, a phrase I'd never used aloud, was Honeyleaf's quietest corner. It seated eight comfortably, twelve at a push, and had originally been used mainly for private bookings and the occasional reading group that appreciated low light and no children. Since last year, it had acquired a different kind of reputation. Some of my regulars mentioned it carefully. A few of the newer visitors looked at it with the sort of curiosity that I found faintly exhausting.

I had made my peace with what had happened. A person had died in my tea room, which was terrible. I had helped to establish the truth of it, which I was glad of. The details had been local news for several months, then quieter, then mostly settled into the kind of story that Maplewick's longer memories would carry for years without it needing to be told again.

I didn't dwell. I had learned, over this past year, that dwelling was a luxury I couldn't afford, not because I was callous, but because Honeyleaf needed me present and the people who depended on it needed me functioning. Grief and unease could be acknowledged and then set aside, like a difficult letter that you file rather than throw away.

What I had learned, more usefully, was to pay attention.

I'd always had a nose for details, the slightly off note in a blend, the guest who was uncomfortable but wouldn't say so, the booking that looked wrong in a way I couldn't immediately articulate. Last year had sharpened that instinct to something finer, and I'd spent the intervening months trying to learn how to trust it without acting on it rashly.

I'd learned to trust my instincts about people. Mostly.

I was still working on the mostly.

"Lila." Josie appeared in the doorway of the back room, looking faintly puzzled. "Have you seen this?"

She was holding a sheet of paper. I crossed the room and took it.

It was a vendor application, the standard form I'd put together for the small courtyard market I was running alongside the tea room this weekend, part of the festival's larger programme. A handful of local artisans, a couple of food producers, one woman who made extraordinary flavoured honeys and had a waiting list for her jars. The form asked for trading name, contact details, goods to be sold, and any equipment or space requirements.

This one was filled in by hand, in a small, careful script. Green Leaf Provisions. Artisan matcha and ceremonial tea products. Contact details: a mobile number, no address, no email. Under equipment requirements: only one trestle table. No power required.

I looked at the paper. "When did this come in?"

"I don't know," Josie said. "I found it under the till. I thought maybe you'd put it there, but you look like you haven't seen it before."

"I haven't."

"Could someone have pushed it through the letterbox?"

"Maybe." I read it again. The handwriting was tidy. The information was minimal but complete. "Did you invite anyone else to the courtyard market that I don't know about?"

"No. You approved everyone on the list." Josie leaned in to look at it over my shoulder. "Matcha products, though. That's a bit of a coincidence, with the ceremony."

"It is," I said.

I wasn't sure it was a coincidence at all, though I couldn't have explained why I thought so. The timing was precise, the festival began tomorrow, which left very little room to verify this vendor, contact them, confirm they met my standards for the courtyard. I had a policy about that: everyone in my courtyard was someone I'd vetted. It was a small rule, easily overlooked, but it mattered to me.

I set the application on the desk.

"I'll try the number this afternoon," I said. "In the meantime, don't allocate them a space. If I can't reach them by this evening, they don't get a table."

Josie nodded and disappeared back to the front of house. I looked at the application for a moment longer, the neat, careful script, the mobile number, the deliberate minimalism of it, and then I set it aside and went back to my preparations.

There was too much to do today for puzzles.

The festival proper began tomorrow, but the setup was today's work. By noon, the square outside Honeyleaf had transformed from its usual quiet self, cobbled, tree-lined, a fountain that worked approximately seven months of the year, into something that required navigating carefully. Bunting appeared on the lamp posts. White-painted market stalls rose along the south side. The mobile van from the florist on Church Street was parked in the corner of the square selling cut tulips and potted herbs, and the smell drifted through Honeyleaf's open front door and blended with the baking in a way that was quite remarkably pleasant.

Bea Worthington arrived at eleven, as she did most days, in her usual plum coat, and ordered her usual pot of English Breakfast with a slice of whatever Archie had cooling. She was sixty-eight, a retired schoolteacher with the carrying laugh and uncompromising opinions of a woman who had spent thirty-five years in a classroom and seen no reason to soften since, and she knew more about Maplewick than anyone currently living, including, probably, some people who didn’t think they were being observed. She settled into the fireplace chair with the contentment of someone taking up a post, and watched the square fill up with the frank pleasure of a person who enjoys spectacle.

"Is it true there's going to be a celebrity?" she asked, after a few minutes of companionable watching.

"There's going to be a visiting blender hosting a matcha ceremony," I said carefully.

"That's what I said." Bea picked up her English Breakfast. "Celeste Morrow. I looked her up. She's got rather marvellous cheekbones."

"I haven't really noticed."

"I always notice cheekbones." Bea sipped her tea. "Fern is very excited. She's already asked if she can come to the ceremony."

"Fern's on the list."

"She'll be pleased." Bea watched a man carry a folding table across the square with the peculiar confidence of someone who has never considered whether they're in the right place. "It'll be good for you, you know. The exposure. After last year."

"Last year is last year," I said.

"Of course it is," Bea agreed, with the tone of someone filing a point rather than conceding it. "All I mean is, people are watching Honeyleaf now. They know what it is. An event like this puts the right kind of story in front of it."

I thought about that. It was true, and I knew it was true, which was part of why I'd booked Celeste and her premium rates and her opinions. Honeyleaf had come through a difficult year not just intact but, I thought, more itself than before, clearer about what it was and what it was for. This festival weekend was, if I was being honest, a kind of statement of intent.