was

walked out the door.
* * *
"Marlene, thank you for meeting with me," Megan said, sweetly.
She was sitting in the dining room by the door to the kitchen when the head cook came in. The cook was a slightly overweight, older woman with piggy eyes buried in her flesh.
"What do you want?" the cook asked, brusquely. "I've got work to do."
"I know, I know; it must be terrible slaving over a hot stove all day," Megan said. There were enough cooks on the payroll, if they all existed, to do the work three times over. She doubted that the fat old bitch had been near a stove in a year.
"I work for my keep," the cook snarled. "I don't make it on my back."
"Well, we all do what we can." Megan sighed. "Speaking of doing what we can, I just had a couple of teensy questions. Nothing really."
"Oh?" Marlene said, suddenly wary.
"I was just looking at this item for meat last week," Megan said, her brow furrowing in clear perplexity. "You see, based upon what we've worked out in the individual diets, there should have been seven kilos of beef used in last Friday's meal. And it appears that we paid for ten kilos . . ."
"Well, there's wastage," the cook said, huffily. "I mean, we order it on the bone. Bones, gristle cut out, you ladies have to have everything perfect . . ."
"And I know you make your own noodles, aren't they delicious? But there's another ten kilos of flour listed as used. And, by golly, the servings should have only worked out to five kilos. I'm just so perplexed!"
"You had better get unperplexed, missy," the cook said, nastily. "You have no idea what can end up in your plate."
"Oh, I rather think I do," Megan said. "I rather think I do. And anything . . . untoward would be easy enough for Paul to detect if one of his concubines turned up dead. And he would wonder,