A Dash Of Pepper

by Sam Short

  Mrs Hamilton was right. Pepper watched with a heavy feeling in her stomach as the dark figure hurried away along the path, giving what appeared to be a backward look over his shoulder as he headed towards the car park. So, Oswald Clementine had pushed Stan, it seemed.

  Pepper moved her attention to the shape of the vicar as he cowered behind a shed, before moving slowly towards the car park. He ducked lower as the shape of Oswald Clementine hurried past him, and Pepper watched as the film director reached the car park, climbed into the blue estate car, and drove away. “So,” she said under her breath. “He pushed Stan.”

  Then, something sparked in her brain, and she stared at the car park. She’d forgotten one crucial element. Until now. Apart from the car which Pepper had watched Stan drive away from the pub in, there were no more cars in the car park, and Father Dominic was still slowly making his way in that direction.

  When Pepper and the other members of the gardening club had watched Mary’s husband sneaking away, a loud car engine had burst into life as he’d vanished from sight. Pepper recalled the cloud of smoke and remembered Winston’s comment about how rough the engine had sounded. “Something’s not right about this,” she said. “We haven’t seen everything yet.”

  “What’s not right?” asked Mrs Hamilton, staring at the screen.

  “I’m not sure yet,” said Pepper. “But I’m certain that another car is about to arrive at the allotments.”

  No more than ten seconds later, Pepper was proved right. The sleek shape of a long car glided into view and edged into the car park, and as it did, Mrs Hamilton tapped her wand on the screen. “That’s Stan’s vintage Rolls Royce. I’d know that shape anywhere. She’s a real beauty. But if Stan was in his shed when this was recorded, who was driving his car? Stan was very careful about his car, I’m surprised that he’d allow somebody else to drive it.”

  Then, Pepper recognised the car, the car which had a role in The Pilot and The Potato Picker. She stared at Mrs Hamilton. “Are you sure that’s Stan’s car?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs Hamilton. “My late husband was in the local vintage car club. Stan liked old cars. He’s had a few over the years. He acquired that old roller last year. He kept it quiet, though. You don’t want to draw attention to the fact that you own a car like that, especially when you store it in a tin garage with hardly any security measures to keep thieves out. It could very easily be stolen.”

  Or scratched by people with a grudge against you, Pepper thought to herself. Could it be? When the Brothers Dim had threatened to scratch Stan’s car, had they been talking about his vintage Rolls Royce, and not the car she’d seen him driving away in as he’d left the Country Bumpkin?

  “Look,” said Mrs Hamilton. “Somebody’s getting out of it.”

  “Yes,” said Pepper, watching as a figure wearing shapeless clothes trudged along the allotment path towards Stan’s shed. “But who is it?”

  “Where’s the vicar?” asked Mrs Hamilton, her eyes darting over the screen.

  “He’s slipped out of view on the right-hand side of the allotments,” said Pepper. “He must have seen the Rolls Royce arrive, and hidden again.”

  Pepper squinted her eyes in an attempt to make out details of the person approaching Stan’s shed, but the film was too pixelated and grainy to offer any clues.

  As the figure neared Stan’s shed and vanished from sight, Mrs Hamilton tapped a nail on the left of the screen. “Look,” she said. “A group of people. And one is pushing a bike.”

  “That’s me,” said Pepper. “And the other members of the Picklebury Garden Lover’s Club.”

  The small group on screen made their way towards the club’s shed while the vicar remained hidden behind a large plant on the other edge of the monitor screen. Whoever it was who had driven the Rolls Royce to the allotments remained out of view at Stan’s shed.

  Pepper watched as she and the others harvested the strawberries she had taken home, and as she watched, she noticed quick movement on the path leading from Stan’s shed.

  “Look, that person is running!” said Mrs Hamilton, as the blurry figure darted along the pathway.

  “Yes,” said Pepper, watching as the figure headed up the pathway.

  As the person hurried along the pathway and approached the car park, the vicar emerged from his hiding place, looked around, and began skulking from shed to shed.

  Pepper recalled that it had been at that moment that Winston had spotted who, unbeknownst to him, was Mary’s husband, and had pointed him out to the other members of the club.

  Viewing the scene from the direction the camera had filmed it, it was simple to see why the gardening club members had thought the mysterious figure had made his escape in a car. Less than twenty seconds after Father Dominic had crested the hill and made himself unseen by the group of people watching him, the mystery person had climbed into the Rolls Royce, started the engine, and driven away in a cloud of smoke.

  As she watched Father Dominic making his way towards the road, and then out of view of the camera, Pepper nodded. “That’s enough,” she said. “You can stop the film.”

  Clicking the mouse button, Mrs Hamilton looked at Pepper. “If you’re convinced that somebody harmed Stan, who was it? I saw three suspicious people on that recording. It could have been any of them. Perhaps there was already a body in the shed when the last person arrived, and they ran away because they were in shock, not because they’d done something wrong. What do you think?”

  Pepper thought back to what the grapevine had told her. All it had really told her was that somebody had been at Stan’s shed and had pushed him. Unlike the video she’d just watched, though, the plant hadn’t given Pepper a timestamp of the events it had shared with her, neither was Pepper able to forward or rewind through the plant’s memories. Perhaps somebody else had arrived at Stan’s shed after he’d died, but before Mary had found the body.

  She couldn’t ask the grapevine for such detailed information — she could only decipher the basic information it had offered her. Maybe it hadn’t been the mystery person who had killed Stan. Perhaps it had been Oswald Clementine — the video had shown him in a hurry when he’d left Stan’s shed, and if Pepper hadn’t been very much mistaken, he’d admitted that he’d done something awful to Stan when she’d met him outside the police station.

  Something didn’t quite feel right, though. She wasn’t sure that Oswald Clementine was a violent man, despite the way he spoke to his film crew, and despite the fact that he’d boasted about being known as Mad Ossie Clementine in university.

  Of course, it was only a feeling, and Pepper had been wrong before. Maybe she was wrong this time, too. Maybe Oswald Clementine had lost his temper for a reason Pepper was yet to learn, and maybe he had pushed Stan Wilmot.

  She sighed. “I don’t know what to think,” she admitted. “But I know where I have to be.”

  “Where?” asked Mrs Hamilton.

  “Picklebury Airfield,” said Pepper. “I think I’ll find some answers there.”

  Mrs Hamilton ran a finger along the wand in her hand. “And when you’ve found your answers, you’ll help me find my answers?”

  “You have my word,” said Pepper. “I promise.”

  Chapter 31

  The journey downhill from Highridge House was understandably much easier than the journey uphill had been, and less than twenty minutes after freewheeling down the steep slope, Pepper was watching a Spitfire performing loops in the distant blue sky as she cycled the last half-mile to the airfield.

  Situated almost two miles outside town, Picklebury Airfield had rather a grand title for what was essentially a shorter than average grassy runway, and a single control tower painted in red and white checks. The small parking area was brimming with cars, and Pepper guessed from the crowd of people armed with cameras, that word had got around about there being a Spitfire in town.

  A single fire engine stood ready to intervene in the case of an accident, and a police car w
as parked alongside the control tower, with two policemen leaning on the bonnet.

  A few small buildings broke the flatness of the landscape, one of them a small café, the large single pane window looking out towards the runway, and another was built alongside it with a sign above the door which said Museum of Flying.

  Pepper scanned her surroundings, looking for the film crew. She saw the glint of sunlight on a camera lens first, and then the shape of the car which Mrs Hamilton had said had been owned by Stan Wilmot. Parked alongside the runway, it had gathered a small crowd of onlookers who were kept back by a strip of tape which fluttered as lethargically as the windsock which hung almost limp from its pole.

  Peddling her bike towards the Rolls Royce, Pepper’s ears protested as the Spitfire pilot brought the plane back to the ground, the wheels bouncing once or twice on grass as it settled, before slowing to a taxiing pace.

  As she neared the vintage car, she spotted Brian and Jessica. Both were dressed in their film costumes, although in the place of the peaked pilot’s cap which had been a part of his costume the last time she’d seen him, Brian was wearing a leather flying hat instead, complete with goggles which sat atop his head.

  Jessica, dressed in the drab clothes of a World War Two land girl, leaned against the old Rolls Royce, a blank look on her face as Oswald Clementine stood before her, moving his hands in a way which suggested he was explaining how he expected the next scene to unfold.

  Pepper brought her bike to a stop and climbed off, lowering it gently to the ground, making sure none of her groceries toppled from the basket. She pushed her way through the small crowd of people, approaching Oswald from behind as he pointed towards the Spitfire with one hand and the car with the other.

  As Pepper approached the length of tape separating onlookers from the film crew, Jessica noticed her and nodded in her direction, encouraging Oswald to turn around. His face dropped, and he looked away quickly as if disappointed to see her. Even from twenty metres away, Pepper had seen that Oswald looked stressed. Was his stress a result of knowing he was responsible for Stan’s death, she wondered, or was it a result of making a film, which Pepper imagined would be a rich source of anxiety.

  Before she could reach him to ask about his stress levels, a thick arm blocked her path as she attempted to duck beneath the tape. “You can’t go any further, love,” said a man dressed in a security guard’s uniform. “This is a film set, sweetheart.”

  Pepper scowled at the man whose smooth head had been turned lobster red by the sun. “It’s urgent,” she said. “I’d like to speak with the director, please.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, darling,” replied the man, whose obsession with pet names was beginning to rub Pepper up the wrong way.

  She narrowed her eyes and pointed at Oswald’s back. “Run over there, tubby,” she said. “And tell him that Miss Grinder would like a word with him. Tell him I know he saw me coming and looked the other way, and then tell him it’s urgent that I speak with him.”

  The security guard frowned, his small eyes sinking further into his face. “Don’t call me that!” he said. “That’s not very nice.”

  “Oh,” said Pepper. “It’s just that you called me love, sweetheart, and darling. I thought we were exchanging pet names for one another.”

  “I wasn’t rude,” said the security guard. “The names I called you were nice.”

  “What if I don’t like those names?” asked Pepper. “Then it’s rude, isn’t it, short-stuff?”

  The guard’s face changed hue, matching his head almost perfectly. “Right!” he said, raising his voice. “That’s enough of your insults! I’m neither tubby or short, and I won’t stand here while you insult me. I’d like you to leave, please! Now!”

  “Oh,” said Pepper. “You’d like me to leave, would you, four eyes?”

  The security guard adjusted his glasses, and pushed himself upward on the balls of his feet, attempting to award himself some extra height. He pointed in the direction that Pepper had come from. “Get lost!” he yelled. “Go on, get out of here! On yer bike!”

  Noticing that the crowd of onlookers had stopped admiring the Rolls Royce, and had turned their attention to her and the security guard, Pepper looked at the grass. “People are watching,” she whispered. “There’s no need to shout! Don’t draw attention to us.”

  The security guard took a deep breath. “Turn yourself around, pick up your daft bike, and cycle your punk hair and hippy jacket back the way you came from. Then I won’t have any need to shout, will I?”

  “It’s not punk hair!” snapped Pepper. She gazed at the guard’s head. “At least I have hair. Your head resembles a single sunburned bollock.”

  “That’s it!” yelled the guard. “This was supposed to be an easy gig. Just keep people off the runway and away from the film crew, they said. It will be a nice day out, they said. The pay won’t be great, but you’ll get to see a Spitfire, they said. It’s turning out to be worse than a Saturday night shift. That film director likes the sound of his own voice, and I get less abuse from drunk nightclub customers at two o’clock in the morning, than I do from you!”

  “What’s going on here, Gary?” came Oswald’s voice. “Can we have some peace and quiet, please? I’m trying to direct my actors.”

  “It’s this woman!” replied Gary. “She’s very rude!”

  Pepper smiled at Oswald. “I know you saw me,” she said. “You saw me, and then turned the other way.”

  Marching towards Pepper, Oswald waved a hand at Gary. “Let her through. Just let her through.”

  Gary blew out a frustrated breath and narrowed his eyes at Pepper. “Go on then, sweetheart,” he said. “You heard the man.”

  “Thank you, titch,” said Pepper, through a smile.

  The security guard muttered something under his breath as Pepper brushed past him, but she ignored him, focusing on Oswald, who approached her with a tired expression on his face. “What is it?” he asked. “I thought I made it quite obvious in town when I climbed into my car, slammed the door, and sped away, that I was annoyed with you.”

  “I have some questions,” said Pepper. “About something I’ve seen on a film that has just come to light. A very interesting film. A film you’re in, Oswald.”

  Oswald’s face whitened, and he put a hand on Pepper’s shoulder, casting furtive glances left and right as he guided her away from the crowd.

  When he’d put enough distance between the two of them and any ears that may have been listening, he brought Pepper to a halt and spoke in an urgent hiss. “Forget about that film! I don’t know how you’ve seen it, but name your price for keeping quiet about it! I was young and naive. I needed the money, too, I suppose! What will it take to buy your silence, Pepper Grinder?”

  “You couldn’t buy my silence for any amount of money,” said Pepper. “But I’m not sure we’re talking about the same film.”

  “Okay,” ventured Oswald, looking left and right. “What film are you talking about, Pepper? Did it involve Oompa Loompas?”

  Pepper took a step backwards. “No, it didn’t. It was a film recorded by a CCTV camera which captured a little of Picklebury allotments. A film which recorded you in the allotment gardens at around the same time that Stan died.”

  Oswald blew out a breath and nodded, wiping a hand across his forehead. “Thank goodness for that,” he said.

  “What film were you talking about?” asked Pepper. “A Wizard of Oz remake?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Oswald. “It was a long time ago. People change. I’ve changed! Now, what’s this allotment film you’re talking about and why have you come asking me about it?”

  “The film shows you approaching Stan Wilmot’s shed, which is out of view of the camera,” said Pepper, watching Oswald’s face for clues. “And then it shows you hurrying away. Is there any reason why you were in such a rush to leave? Had something happened? Something between you and Stan? Something that might have turned a little…
violent?”

  Oswald smiled. “It’s nothing to do with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a film to direct! Why are you so interested in Stan Wilmot’s death, anyway? The man had an accident!”

  “That’s not what I think,” said Pepper. “And I’ve seen film evidence of three people in the vicinity of Stan’s shed when he died, and you’re one of them. The vicar is another, and I’m not sure who the third is yet.”

  “I couldn’t care less about a film you have of me in an allotment!” snapped Oswald. “If you think somebody is involved in what happened to Stan, talk to the other people in the film. Maybe they’ll care, because I certainly don’t care about some CCTV footage!”

  “No,” said Pepper. “But you do seem very concerned about that other film. I have a way of being able to make people believe what I say, Mr Clementine, and although I have no idea of what’s on that film which concerns you so much, I could easily make people believe that I do. Imagine a scandal like that hanging over your head if The Pilot and The Potato Picker becomes popular? People would want to hear what I had to say about a famous film director. And it could all be forgotten about if you answer a few simple questions that I have. You have my word. Answer my questions, and whatever happened between you and the Oompa Loompas will remain a secret. What happens in Oz, stays in Oz.”

  Oswald pressed his lips together and stared at Pepper. He remained silent for a few seconds and then sighed. “I’m not sure why you think you have the right to be asking me questions about Stan Wilmot,” he said. “But I’ll tell you, like I told Sergeant Saxon when she told me that Stan had stolen my lights. Yes, I was there. I was there to confront Stan about his theft of my property. I knew it had been him all along. It had to have been! He was the only person it could have been! He stole them while myself and the film crew were invited for tea and cake by that weird little group of strange people in the community centre.”