Cake and Death: Part 2

Once Upon a Time there was this Baker who liked to poison his cakes.

He was a tall quiet man who the colour green almost everyday. He didn’t have many hobbies or many friends. He worked everyday alone in his bakery mostly because he preferred to be on his own and also to avoid hiding secrets from potential employees.

He liked to poison various pastry products and certain cakes and sponges. Not too much that it would kill someone, at least not all the time. Not too little that it had any effect on someone, so that it was obvious that something was wrong. In every 12^th baked product he would pour arsenic either as a filling or icing.

The effect the poison made on someone would only take effect on someone several hours after consuming the food. This made it impossible to pinpoint where the poison came from and the baker was never suspected.

One particularly rainy day the Baker made a batch of cupcakes, each with a fruity filling, Strawberry, banana, peach, raspberry, plum and pear. Each flavour had its own colour coordinating icing, all were bright eye catching colours which made each customer that came in notice them and instantly want to try one.

The twelfth customer on this rainy morning was a woman with red hair and her two children, a boy and a girl. She was a regular customer who always bought a loaf of bread and sometimes a few cinnamon swirls. On this day though, the children noticed the inviting cupcakes and pleaded with their mother to buy some. After to being assured by the Baker that there was fruit inside she agreed to get them one each. The boy ate the pear flavoured cupcake and the girl chose the bright yellow banana one. The woman thanked the Baker and went back outside into the rain.

The Baker went about his business. He started to wonder which cupcake had the poison and hoped that the children hadn’t eaten that particular one. Because even some bakers whose randomly poison their products feel guilty about poisoning children. Then he suddenly remembered which cake had the poison.

Meanwhile, the woman with the red hair was in her kitchen making lunch. The children were in the living room eating their cakes. The boy eating his pear flavoured cake, the girl eating her banana cake.

The next thing that happened, the boy ran into the kitchen looking worried. When his Mother asked what was wrong all he said was “I think she’s sick”.

In the living room, the girl lay on the floor, coughing and spluttering, the half eaten cake in her hand.