by Kate Adams
I held the plate of muffins out towards him. ‘One for the road?’ A look of mock horror appeared on his face and, with wide eyes, he pretended to sprint for the door, stopping briefly to wave before he disappeared.
‘You’ll never see him again,’ was Mark’s response. ‘Wave those things at me and I’ll run for the hills too.’
I couldn’t resist.
After sending Mark on his way, clearing up our coffee mugs and finding precisely no one who wanted me to add chocolate and beetroot muffins to the menu, I wandered off to the events team office so Yeshim could give me the run down on a corporate booking. Nothing hugely exciting: the board members of a local art gallery were holding their annual away day here at Charleton House. It was their chance to discuss profit and loss and future exhibition sponsorship underneath a chandelier that would kill if it fell on them, in a room with a view that would take their breath away. I was providing the refreshments, among them a buffet lunch that included a beetroot salad – I was determined to get beetroot in somewhere.
After a brief conversation, I left Yeshim to it when she got a phone call from a bridezilla from hell who was holding her wedding here in the autumn. As I left the office, I made a mental note to return with cake for the worn-down looking events manager. I sensed that she was going to need it.
Ambling down the private lane, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine and exchanging pleasantries with staff I passed on my way, I spotted a familiar figure walking towards me: Guy Glover. He had the swagger of a man with a lot of confidence who always liked what he saw in the mirror.
‘Morning, Sophie,’ he called out once he’d spotted me. ‘Getting some fresh air?’ He clearly had no idea that I’d witnessed his fight with Kyle. Either that, or he didn’t care.
‘Something like that. What about you? The festival is over, so why are you still here?’
‘I have some paperwork to drop off with Yeshim. I wanted to get everything squared off before we move on to the next event.’
‘Does that mean the police have given you the van back?’
‘No, not yet, and to be honest, I don’t think we’ll use it again. We’ll sell it and invest in a new one. I’ll admit to not being overly sentimental, but I have my limits. I don’t think anyone wants to stand serving coffee where… well, you know what I mean. I’m sure I can find someone who will take it off my hands for a reasonable price. They’re worth a lot of money, and if a buyer isn’t aware of its more recent history, then I’m sure I can get a decent amount for it.’
I’d gone from impressed by an apparent display of feelings to appalled by how quickly he’d turned the conversation to making money out of someone’s ignorance about Ben’s murder. I hadn’t been sure before, but now I knew I didn’t like him, and I decided I wasn’t going to be shy about last night.
‘I saw you at the pub yesterday. You and Kyle didn’t seem to be getting on very well.’
He looked momentarily confused, then realised what I was referring to.
‘You saw that? I didn’t spot you.’
‘You wouldn’t have done. We were driving past and you were a bit preoccupied.’ He wedged his hands firmly in his pockets and looked uncomfortable. ‘Do you and Kyle often argue like that?’
He gave an awkward laugh. ‘It was nothing. We argue all the time. I’ve known Kyle since he was sixteen, so I guess he’s like a brother to me. We have a bit of rough and tumble every now and then; next thing we’re happily having a pint together.’ He was clearly growing in confidence, and when he laughed again, it sounded a lot less awkward. ‘We’ll probably have another argument in a week or two. Hopefully you won’t have to witness it next time, though.’
He smiled as though we were in on a great joke together. I wasn’t falling for it.
‘It must have been pretty serious to cause an actual fight, though. You seemed really mad at him.’
He looked away briefly, and then turned back to face me.
‘It really was nothing, Sophie. You don’t need to give it another moment’s thought. Now, I need to make sure I catch Yeshim, then I have a diary full of appointments.’
Before I had a chance to say anything else, he walked off. ‘Take care, Sophie, see you next year,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he strode away at great speed, making sure our conversation couldn’t continue. While it might be over for him, I knew he was lying, so as far as I was concerned, this was far from over for me.
Chapter 10
You might think that a dark room with walls covered in shelves groaning under the weight of thousands of books, dark leather armchairs and dark wood tables all around would be the last place you’d want to spend time on a warm summer’s day, but no matter what was going on outside, I always found the Library Café comfortable and welcoming. In the winter, it was a cosy escape from the worst of the weather; in the summer, it transformed into a cool respite from the sun’s rays. I had yet to find a season in which this wasn’t my favourite of the three cafés.
Today it seemed like the visitors agreed. With the Food Festival packing up and the stallholders moving on, the visitors had returned to the cafés for lunch and their restorative coffee and cake. Staff members also reappeared in their droves for a caffeine-fuelled pick-me-up before meetings; others held their meetings in here with coffee and cake to make it all the more bearable. Visitors would browse the shelves, taking in the selection of books that the Duke had demanded would not merely be decoration, but would reflect the interests and history of the house and generations of the family that had lived here. Art, architecture, gardening, social history, Shakespeare – books of all kinds were there on the walls of the café, sourced from second-hand bookshops throughout Derbyshire, giving visitors a glimpse into the minds of the Fitzwilliam-Scotts. It amazed me that so few books were stolen, but the first time I’d mentioned to the Duke that there were some gaps on the shelves, he’d simply smiled and said he hoped that the books gave their new owners great pleasure.
I had spent the morning helping to keep the shelves of sandwiches stocked, serving iced coffee and clearing tables. It was a day for mucking in and I didn’t mind; it was a nice change from spreadsheets and emails, and anyway, my office was unbearably hot and I’d grab any excuse to stay out of there. I’d just finished advising a couple of American visitors on what I felt were the ‘must see’ parts of the house and was wiping down tables when Kathy Wright came in. She looked tired and distracted, but smiled when she spotted me.
‘Hi, Kathy, lovely to see you. Can I get you a coffee, or is that not the generous offer it sounds?’
She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t say no. My morning cup just doesn’t seem to be enough today.’ Despite the smile that had crossed her face, she still looked tired. Her eyes flitted around the café, unable to settle on me, or anything else for that matter. ‘I’m actually here to drop this off for you while Lucy is up at the events office with Yeshim. We thought you might like some more samples, have a chance to try some of the coffee that we didn’t have on sale at the festival.’
Kathy handed me a cardboard box. I opened it to find six beautifully packaged sample bags with the adorable Signal Box logo printed on every one.
‘What a wonderful surprise, you’ve made my day. Grab a seat and I’ll be back with the coffee.’
After stashing the box of coffee in my office – there was no way I wanted anyone accidentally serving the samples along with our usual stuff – I made two cups of coffee using some of the sample Kathy and Lucy had given me over the weekend and went to sit down with her.
‘Are you all packed up now?’
‘We are. We drove the van straight off last night. It’s so easy to pack up and go; it’s one of the things we love about it.’
We sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment or two while Kathy played with sachets of sugar. I was struggling to find anything to say that wasn’t pure business and this didn’t seem like the time. Kathy must have had enough of that over the weekend.
‘Was it a succe
ss for you?’
‘Hmm, sorry?’ She looked at me blankly
‘The festival, was it a success for you?’
‘Yes. It was the first one at Charleton House we’d been part of and we’ll definitely come again.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear that Ben’s murder hasn’t put you off.’
She picked up another packet of sugar and started folding it in her fingers. I couldn’t stand it anymore and didn’t care that I hardly knew the woman.
‘Look, Kathy, I don’t mean to intrude, but is everything alright? When I first met you on Friday, you seemed really happy to be here, but I haven’t seen you smile once over the weekend. Well, not while I’ve been around, and I’m wondering if I should take it personally or if there’s something wrong I can help with. I hardly know you, but I like you and your sister, and I’d like to do some business with you, so it would be good for us to get off on the right foot and have clear air between us.’
Kathy looked up, surprised. ‘Oh God, no, it’s not you, or the fair, or the house. This whole weekend has been great. I just, well…’ – she glanced around the room – ‘I did something really stupid, and if my sister finds out, I don’t think she’ll react well. We’ve put our hearts and souls into this business, and I don’t want to screw it up, but I think I might have done.’
She looked genuinely worried as, for the first time, she looked directly at me.
‘I have no idea why I’m telling you this; I hardly know you.’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘Friday night, a few of us had gone to the pub after we’d finished setting up. The Black Swan, just down the road. Well, Lucy went home early. She wanted to get a good night’s sleep, but I stayed for another drink. I ended up sat with Guy from Silver Bullet. One thing led to another and, well, I spent the night with him. That wouldn’t be a big deal, but he’s the competition and someone that neither Lucy nor I have a lot of respect for professionally. I was an idiot after a couple of drinks too many and Lucy is going to kill me.
‘Of course, it also made it awkward for the rest of the weekend. He attempted to get me alone a couple of times. He seemed to give up fairly quickly and didn’t try anything on, or really say anything, but he had a knowing look in his eye, like he had something he could use against me. He’s a bit of a sleaze.’
She sat back in her chair. I didn’t know why she’d just told me all that, either, but if it helped her, then I was OK with it. I remembered the live interpretation with Samuel Pepys on Sunday morning when Guy had followed Kathy into the room. She’d been trying to avoid him. He, on the other hand, had looked rather amused by it all.
‘You need to talk to your sister. There’s no way she doesn’t know something is bothering you. If I could tell, then she will. You’re never going to be able to move on from this if you don’t talk to her. You’re bound to end up at the same events as Guy for years to come.’
She nodded. ‘I know, I’m being ridiculous. I was just so mad at myself; I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl, and the one time I actually do it, it’s with him. It creeps me out just thinking about it.’ The more she talked, the more emboldened she became. Her voice had stopped sounding so weary and downtrodden, and she was looking me in the eyes again. It seemed that unburdening herself had made a difference.
I decided to dig a bit deeper. ‘Did you see Ben before you went up to Guy’s room?’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘No, he wasn’t at the pub. He said he was going to join us, but I didn’t see him. Guy went up first and I followed a couple of minutes later, we didn’t want to make it obvious. He might have arrived after that and spent time with Kyle or the others.’
My gut told me she was telling the truth. ‘What time did you leave in the morning?’
‘About five. I wanted to get home and make it look like I’d just gone to bed late, be there when Lucy got up, so I crept out like a guilty teenager.’ She shook her head at her own behaviour, then looked directly at me. ‘Why the questions? My messed up love life can’t be of that much interest to you.’
I was about to answer with some vague version of the truth when I saw Lucy walk into the café and scan the room. She smiled and waved as she walked over.
I looked back at Kathy. ‘This is your chance to come clean. I’ll get you both a drink.’
I stood up and said hello to Lucy as she joined us, then made two cups of coffee and plated up a couple of chocolate brownies and took them over to the table.
‘Are you not joining us?’ Lucy enquired as she reached for a brownie.
‘I’ve got a couple of things I need to do, I’ll be back in a bit.’
With that, I left them to their heart to heart and kept myself busy. The visitors were still arriving in a steady flow, and the café hummed to the sound of their chatter as I fetched more cakes to put on display. A small child was running between the tables, so I scanned the room, trying to identify his parents, and noticed two women in the far corner. One had a child on her lap, the other an empty pushchair next to her. They were engrossed in something on a phone, scrolling through photos and laughing, taking no interest at all in where the young boy was.
As I asked the boy what his teddy bear was called, one of the women looked over. I pointed at her and with a big smile encouraged the lad to go back to her, but once he reached her, my smile disappeared and I made sure his mother realised I wasn’t overly pleased. I love kids; I’d just rather not go flying over one when I’m carrying a pile of dishes or a bowl of hot soup.
After telling a couple of old ladies from Yorkshire which part of the gardens were my favourite as they didn’t have much time and wanted to know where they should head first, I helped a father attempt to convince his teenage daughter that this was one of the coolest buildings in the country and she’d get some amazing photos for social media. (I’m not sure we succeeded.) Next I had to ask a grumpy looking bloke to stop manhandling the sandwiches if he wasn’t going to buy them. When he reluctantly apologised, I accepted his apology with mildly sarcastic grace.
‘It’s OK, I’m used to telling children to stop doing it all the time.’
After a while, I was able to slow down and look over to where Kathy and Lucy were sitting. Lucy had hold of her sister’s hands and was smiling; Kathy looked incredibly relieved. Suddenly they both laughed. It looked as if all had been forgiven, not that I was sure there had been much to forgive. I was relieved that Kathy seemed genuinely not to have seen Ben on Friday night, so if he had seen her going into Guy’s room, she wasn’t aware. For a moment, I wondered if Ben had caught up with Kathy later and threatened to blackmail her. It seemed he was always in need of money, but I couldn’t think when she would have seen him if she had left the pub at 5am, and by 8am he was dead. No, she could be ruled out, I was sure of that.
Once it became clear that Kathy and Lucy’s discussion had become more light-hearted, I made my way over.
‘Mind if I join you?’ A daft question as I’d just turned up with three coffees.
‘Of course not.’ Lucy pulled out a chair for me. I looked across at Kathy, who smiled at me in a way I hadn’t seen since Friday. She looked so much more relaxed.
‘We were just trying to predict what you might want to talk to us about,’ Kathy said with a glint in her eye. I imagined that they already had a pretty good idea.
‘Probably not hard to guess, but why don’t we go back a bit and you tell me more about the company.’
Kathy indicated towards her sister, allowing Lucy to start talking.
‘Well, like we said, our grandfather had a replica signal box at the bottom of his garden. He’d worked on the railways all his life and he loved it. He built the signal box when we were only small, so I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. It had two floors. The ground floor was used as a garden shed, but above that was where we loved to go as kids. He had a model railway set up there – it was incredible. He’d made all the little buildings and landscaped it to look like part of Derbyshire. He’d rec
reated the Edale Valley and some of its stations. It was beautiful. He used to make up stories about the people on the trains and the little figures at the stations.’
Lucy looked across the table at her sister and I noticed that they had exactly the same smiles. As they looked at each other, I guessed they were picturing the same scene and recalling the same memories.
Kathy continued. ‘Our grandmother had died when we were tiny and he was devastated. They were so in love. The model railway was his distraction; he spent most of his time down there. I don’t think he was trying to forget; the opposite, in fact. He was always telling us stories about her. There were pictures of them together on the walls. I’m sure he talked to her when we weren’t there.’
She paused for a moment, then took a deep breath.
‘When he died and left the house to us, Lucy and I decided to move in together. We were both renting small flats in Sheffield and couldn’t afford to buy property. This way we had our own place, could save money and eventually do something we’d always talked about doing.’
Lucy raised her coffee mug to me. ‘It was our dad who got us into coffee. He isn’t hugely knowledgeable about it, but he always started his day with a big mug of coffee. As soon as we were old enough, he taught us how to make it just the way he liked it: a large pot in a French press and a jug of cream. We thought it was a huge honour to be shown how to make it, like we were finally adults.’ She laughed. ‘Of course, it actually meant we could make him coffee whenever he wanted it.’
‘Even take it to him and mum in bed on a weekend.’ Kathy rolled her eyes. ‘Only instead of resenting it, we started to try and make the perfect coffee. After a while, we would take them new things. We bought different kinds of coffee, made it using different methods, and before long we were obsessed.
‘Fast forward fifteen years and we’d moved into our grandfather’s house and saved to buy a coffee roaster of our own. We knew exactly where it would go and what we’d call our company. Lucy kept working for a few months and then went part time, but I quit my job and read everything I could get my hands on. I did a few courses and travelled to Ethiopia, Kenya, India. We don’t make much money at the moment, but Lucy has been able to join me full time now and we’re getting a lot of attention with the van at festivals, so business is picking up.’
