Murder in the Margins

by Margaret Loudon

  “I’ve ordered another shipment of Charlotte Davenport’s latest,” Mabel said. “I should imagine we’ll sell all our current stock at the fest tomorrow. Nothing like being engaged to a duke to turn your book into a bestseller,” she said dryly.

  “To be fair,” Pen said, “Charlotte was a bestselling writer long before she ever became engaged to Arthur Worthington.” She turned to Figgy. “I met Charlotte at a writers’ conference and thought she was charming.”

  “I’ve met her, too. She did a book signing here,” Figgy said. She turned to Mabel. “Remember? I agree—she was perfectly lovely—so gracious and charming. I can see why Worthington has fallen for her.”

  “Apparently the queen was rather taken with her as well, much to everyone’s surprise.” Mabel crumpled up her napkin and dropped it on her plate. “I understand she gave her blessing to the match quite willingly—not that Worthington needed it, but he respects her opinion.” She smiled, deepening the crinkles around her eyes. “Of course, Worthington is a favorite of hers. The queen always did have a soft spot for bad boys.”

  “Regina hinted that the wedding might not come off,” Penelope said, wetting her finger and picking up the crumbs on her plate. “And India said something about Regina collecting secrets.”

  Mabel looked startled. “I can’t imagine what kind of secret Regina could be privy to, but she’d better not do anything to interfere. Worthington is utterly besotted with Charlotte. He wouldn’t take kindly to it.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Penelope enjoyed the crisp autumn breeze coming in through her partially opened window as she drove down the high street, which was quiet with that hush peculiar to small towns after dark. Lights were on in the Book and the Bottle however, and when the door swung open, a wave of animated voices rushed out.

  Penelope pulled up to the curb in front of the cottage where she was staying, parked the car, and patted herself on the back for having traversed the quarter mile from the Open Book without once wandering across the line onto the other side—the wrong side—of the road.

  The cottage was quintessentially English—covered in ivy and with two rooms up and two down. It was small but Penelope adored its coziness—the enormous open fireplace in the living room, flanked by bookcases, the rough-hewn beams in the low ceiling and the bay window that afforded her a view through the lace curtains of the comings and goings on the high street.

  She felt a sense of calm and ease that loosened her tense shoulders as she opened the front door. A loud meow greeted her and Mrs. Danvers, her tuxedo cat, rushed from the shadows to weave in and out between Penelope’s legs.

  Penelope bent down to scratch her back, and Mrs. Danvers arched luxuriously beneath Penelope’s fingers.

  Penelope turned the light on in the kitchen, plugged in the electric teakettle, and grabbed a mug from the set of sturdy crockery stored in an old wooden dresser against one wall.

  She’d always been a coffee person—setting her coffee maker so that it would begin brewing the minute her alarm went off—but since living in England she’d discovered the calming and restorative benefits of properly brewed tea.

  Mabel had been appalled the first time she’d seen Penelope casually plunking a tea bag in a mug of microwaved hot water and had shown her the correct way to make a good pot of English breakfast or Earl Grey.

  The kitchen was cozy with an ancient Aga belching warmth, a rough farmhouse table, and a row of herbs in terra-cotta pots blooming in front of the window.

  While the water for her tea heated, Penelope went upstairs to get her laptop. She had a small bedroom upstairs, a bathroom and a second room that was barely bigger than a closet and which she used as a sort of study, although more often than not she set up shop in the living room in front of the fire.

  She went back downstairs, Mrs. Danvers by her side, and out to the kitchen. She took the kettle from the counter, poured a bit of hot water into her mug, swirled it around, and dumped it out. Now that her mug was nicely warmed, she filled it with water and dropped in a tea bag to let it steep.

  The girl from the village who came in to clean had laid logs in the fireplace. Penelope lit a match and held it to the pile of kindling. It burst into flame and soon the logs began to catch. She stood for a moment enjoying the warmth.

  Then, with a certain amount of reluctance, she fired up her laptop. She still hadn’t solved the dilemma of getting her heroine Annora to go down to the deserted castle cellar.

  Maybe if Annora heard something—something that compelled her to go investigate? Mrs. Danvers jumped up onto the couch and snuggled into the crook of Penelope’s arm. The cat then reached out a velvet paw and tapped the space bar on Penelope’s laptop.

  That was it! Penelope thought. What if Annora heard a cat crying? Surely she would feel compelled to investigate. The kitten might be trapped or injured, and Annora was a girl with a kind heart who would hardly leave a poor helpless animal to fend for itself and possibly even starve to death.

  Penelope began typing furiously, her spirits rising with every stroke of the keys. There was nothing like solving a problem in your work in progress to lift your mood.

  She was nearly finished with the scene when a ping announced a text message on her phone. Penelope stifled a sigh of frustration. She should ignore it and plow on with her work.

  But she couldn’t.

  She pulled her phone from the pocket of her sweater and clicked on the message.

  Hey babe, she read, do you miss me yet? LOL.

  Penelope made a face. It was Miles Smythe, her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Her sister, whose husband was a stockbroker and who lived in an enormous and expensively decorated house in Greenwich, Connecticut, couldn’t understand why Penelope didn’t work harder at her relationship with Miles. After all, in her sister’s words, he was quite the catch.

  Miles was, to be fair, the manager of a highly successful hedge fund, made a salary nearing seven figures, lived in a penthouse apartment in Chelsea, played a mean game of racquetball at the New York Athletic Club, and had season tickets to the Yankees.

  Penelope could see how her sister might think Miles was a more appropriate partner than the circus performer she’d nearly run away with when she was sixteen or the tattoo artist she’d taken up with in college.

  But despite dating Miles for nearly a year now, Penelope remained somewhat ambivalent about his charms. She liked him well enough, but his idea of a good time was a cocktail party in the Hamptons with all the right people and hers was curling up on the sofa with a good book and a carton of Chinese takeout. Her sister insisted that opposites worked well together in a relationship, the one bringing yin to the other’s yang, but Penelope wasn’t so sure.

  She had hoped that this separation would help her to decide one way or the other. Unfortunately it seemed as if absence was not making the heart grow fonder. As a matter of fact, it was more a case of out of sight, out of mind.

  She texted with Miles for several minutes and when he asked how the book was coming, after sending numerous texts telling her about how much money he’d made trading stocks that day, Penelope told him it was coming along fine—that the change of scenery had been just the thing she’d needed.

  When the exchange ended, she wondered why she had lied to Miles. Why hadn’t she told him about her struggles with her manuscript? Because you know he was only asking out of politeness, a little voice inside her head whispered. He really doesn’t care.

  She ought to break it off with him and put him out of his misery. Not that he was miserable—it was more like the thought of him was making her miserable. Her fingers hovered over her cell. She couldn’t do it. Breaking up with someone via text would hardly get Miss Manners’s approval. She’d have to brave him in person.

  She’d do it the next time she saw him. Whenever that would be.

  Penelope went back to her manu
script, but the texts from Miles had ruined her mood. She glanced at the word count at the bottom of the screen and shuddered. At this rate, she’d never make her deadline.

  She was about to shut down her computer when she decided to check her e-mail. There were the usual sales notices from stores she frequented, spam from a strange man in Nigeria claiming to have money for her, and an ad for dentures, which she hoped she would never need.

  She was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a new e-mail popped up. It was from her publisher. She felt her stomach drop. Maybe it was just her editor saying hello?

  Penelope positioned her cursor over the e-mail, closed her eyes, and clicked open. She took a deep breath, counted to ten and opened her eyes.

  The e-mail was, indeed, from her editor. Only she wasn’t asking after her health or asking how was the weather in England.

  Bonjour,

  Although I suppose it’s already evening there. Checking in to make sure you’re on track to meet your deadline. Marketing has a whole campaign ready to go and it’s epic. Color me excited! How is England, by the way? XOXO Bettina

  Penelope glanced at her word count again and felt her stomach drop even further.

  THREE

  Worthington House, as it was officially called, was actually a castle but in typical English understatement was known by the more diminutive term of house. It was situated on a slight rise above Upper Chumley-on-Stoke and was a proper castle with turrets, towers, lookouts, and all manner of things save an actual moat. The moat had been filled in several centuries earlier and turned into a vast, broad lawn where a huge white tent now stood.

  Penelope sensed the buzz of activity even as she turned into the drive leading to the car park behind Worthington House. The car park had been installed to accommodate the tourists who paid nineteen pounds each (twelve pounds for the disabled) to tour the house’s main floor.

  Today Worthington House was open to all those who had paid their ten pounds to enter the fest grounds. The proceeds would go toward the beautification of Chumley’s high street with items like boxwood wreaths hung from the lampposts at Christmas and baskets dripping with flowers in the spring and summer.

  Penelope managed to squeeze her ancient MINI Cooper in between a behemoth Range Rover and a 1957 Aston Martin with a minimum amount of sweat and a maximum amount of swearing. She eased open her door—the spaces were close—and slid out. She locked the doors and headed toward the fest grounds.

  As the writer in residence at the Open Book, she had been invited to give a talk in the Worthington House great hall on the Castle of Otranto, a literary classic and one of the first and finest Gothic novels. The vast Worthington collection included a signed first edition and would be on display in the Worthington House library during the fest.

  A feeling of unease gnawed at Penelope’s stomach. She hadn’t made much headway on her own novel that morning—a mere five hundred words of which she’d ultimately deleted over two hundred.

  Her talk wasn’t scheduled until just before lunch, and in the meantime, she would be helping out at the Open Book’s stall on the front lawn of Worthington House. Mabel had selected a number of novels to sell at their booth: bestsellers, tried-and-true classics, crime fiction, and of course the latest romance by Charlotte Davenport.

  The sun was bright and Penelope was glad to duck into the shadows under the tent. Volunteers were bustling about with great purpose, setting up tables and bringing in merchandise. The vicar’s wife was putting out the baby items including booties, hats, and receiving blankets that she had spent the winter knitting to sell at the fest.

  Gladys Watkins and her husband had a booth, too. They were selling Gladys’s homemade Cornish pasties. They were always a huge hit and people were known to stand in line for over an hour to buy one.

  Regina ricocheted around the grounds like a ball in a pinball machine. She smiled benignly at the vicar’s wife’s table as if she was bestowing the royal warrant, raised a well-plucked eyebrow in disapproval at poor Gladys who had already managed to soil her apron, and flapped her arms at another vendor whose preparation was lagging in Regina’s estimation.

  Half the tent was taken up with a makeshift tearoom. Figgy had set up tables and chairs, and a line run from the house provided power for her electric teakettles. Several carts—filled with scones, cucumber sandwiches, and fairy cakes on plates festooned with paper doilies—sat at the ready.

  Penelope waved to Figgy, who was wrestling with a large cardboard box of sugar packets.

  She put the cardboard box down on a table and waved back. Penelope began to walk in her direction.

  “Gorgeous weather, isn’t it?” Figgy said. “One year it positively poured cats and dogs—ruined the whole day.”

  “Girls,” Regina called and they both jumped.

  Figgy groaned. “Here comes Regina. She thinks she’s so la-di-da, but she’s merely pretentious.”

  “This is no time for a chin wag,” Regina crowed as she reached them. “The gates will be opening any minute now and everything must be in tip-top shape. We don’t want to disappoint the duke, do we?”

  Penelope and Figgy made exaggerated sad faces. “No,” they murmured in unison.

  Regina glanced around the tearoom and smiled broadly. “You’ve done a lovely job, Figgy. Absolutely lovely. Very elegant.”

  “Just when you’ve decided she’s absolutely odious,” Figgy said as Regina walked away, “she says something nice and makes you think maybe she isn’t so bad after all.” She looked after Regina. “She once bought a silk scarf for Violet, the vicar’s wife. Violet was chuffed to bits to have something so nice. She usually buys her clothes at Oxfam or jumble sales.”

  Penelope watched as Regina grabbed the arm of a man walking by. She seemed to be giving him what for. He had a hangdog expression that made Penelope feel quite sorry for him.

  “Uh-oh,” she said, pointing to the man. “Looks like someone has gotten Regina’s dander up.” The man had a bristly mustache that made Penelope think of a British army officer from colonial days.

  “Poor thing,” Figgy said. “That’s Gordon Bosworth, Regina’s husband. Regina leads him around by the nose. I don’t know why he puts up with it.”

  “It does look like she’s got him by the short hairs,” Penelope said as she watched Regina shake her finger in front of her husband’s face.

  “Regina desperately wants him to be something he’s not. He’s made pots of money with his company—something to do with supplying uniforms for factory workers—but that’s not good enough for her. She imagines herself married to someone who works in the city or is a barrister and a member of the Inns of Court. She feels she’s been quite ill used that she can’t call herself Lady Bosworth.”

  Penelope watched as Regina dragged her husband away. She turned to Figgy.

  “Will Worthington be here?”

  “I’m sure he’ll make an appearance at some point. With Charlotte on his arm, no doubt. That should really thrill the crowd. They ought to put him behind a curtain and charge fifty pence a peek.”

  Penelope laughed and glanced toward the gates to Worthington House. She cocked her head in that direction. “Looks like the hordes are about to be let in. We’d better man our positions.”

  “Yes,” Figgy said. “Brace yourself for the assault.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Penelope spent the morning helping Mabel at the Open Book’s stall. It had been busy and they’d completely sold out of The Fire in My Bosom.

  Penelope glanced at her watch. “It’s almost time for my talk.”

  “You go on, then,” Mabel said, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I’ll manage just fine.”

  Penelope felt like a fish swimming upstream as she made her way through the crowd, which seemed to be flowing in the direction of the tearoom, anxious for a cup of tea
and a bite to eat.

  She headed toward the house and around to the side where visitors had been directed to enter for their tours. India was at the door, waiting to take her turn as a guide.

  “Ready for your talk, are you?” she said as she led Penelope into the great hall.

  Penelope’s jaw dropped in awe. The room was enormous and quite forbidding.

  Colorful heraldic banners hung from poles along the walls and on ropes from the vaulted ceiling. Logs were laid in an open fireplace large enough to accommodate an ox, and Penelope imagined a fire would be most welcome even during the summer. A chill emanated from the black-and-white flagstone floor and a draft leaked into the room from around the wavy glass in the high arched windows.

  The heels of India’s pumps tapped briskly against the floor as she shepherded Penelope through the great hall, down a corridor lined with dark oil portraits of past Worthington family members, and into the library.

  It was another forbiddingly large room lined with bookcases that reached nearly to the ceiling. A stone fireplace was against the far wall and stiff-looking upholstered chairs were scattered about. A dark oil painting of a bloody battle and a man skewering an enemy soldier with a sword hung over the fireplace.

  Penelope looked around and shuddered. “It’s hard to imagine curling up in your pajamas with a good book or tuning in to the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars in this room.”

  India gave a polite laugh. “Worthington’s living quarters are far more comfortable and far more modern. I heard he used Ben Pentreath who did Apartment 1A in Kensington Palace for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Although I should imagine that Miss Davenport will want to put her own stamp on things when she officially becomes the Duchess of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke.”

  Folding chairs were arranged in neat rows, and in the center of the room was a glass case on a stand. Penelope peered into the lit interior where the Worthington copy of The Castle of Otranto was reverently displayed on a ruby-red velvet cloth.