by Morgana Best
I took the opportunity to study her. Wendy had an official, stern manner about her, so I had been surprised when she demonstrated a sense of humour. She was well groomed, about fifty, and seemed pleasant enough.
The last boarder appeared to be waiting for Wendy to say more, but when she didn’t, he spoke. “My name is Adrian Addison. I’m in town working for the Office of Geographic Names.” He spoke with an English accent, not unlike that of Mr Buttons.
I thought I had misheard him. “Excuse me,” I said. “What office did you say?”
He laughed. “I know—most people haven’t heard of it. I work for the Office of Geographic Names.” Adrian was tall and well-dressed, possibly overdressed for a simple breakfast in a country town. He was attractive, although I wouldn’t say handsome. He was covered with masses of freckles, no doubt due to his fair skin. His hair was red, but many shades lighter than Cressida’s fire engine red hair. He reminded me of an older version of Inspector Humphrey Goodman, a former character from one of my favourite TV shows, Death in Paradise.
While I was studying him, a man burst through the door on the other side of the dining room. “I’m here!” he said loudly, scratching his stomach. His clothes were dirty and ragged.
“I can see that, my good man,” Mr Buttons said. “Kindly do not make an unannounced appearance in such an uncouth state whilst others are eating.”
The man ignored Mr Buttons. “Will I start work on the porch now, Cressida?”
“Yes please, Bradley,” Cressida said. “When you’re finished, come inside for lunch.”
I noticed Mr Buttons wringing his hands in distress. Mr Buttons was somewhat of a clean freak, and clearly the man’s dirty clothes were too much for him. Mr Buttons jumped to his feet, deftly pulling off his coat as he did so. He carried it over to the man and thrust it at him. “Put this on!”
The man looked shocked, but did as he asked. Mr Buttons adjusted the coat and fastened the buttons. He stood back to admire his handiwork. “Yes, that will make you far more presentable.” He patted the man on the shoulder.
Mr Buttons stood aside, and I noticed that the boarders had all turned around to see what was happening.
The man looked past Mr Buttons and gasped. His eyes went wide. He clutched his throat and hurried through the door without saying another word.
Chapter 2
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Cressida elbowed me in the ribs. “Did you see his face?” she said in an undertone.
I nodded. “Does he know one of the boarders? He seemed alarmed at the sight of one of them.”
Cressida simply shrugged. Wendy stood up and said she was going to unpack. Adrian leapt to his feet immediately afterwards. They walked out of the room, chatting. I idly wondered if they were really here to have an affair and were simply pretending they didn’t know each other, but I soon dismissed that notion as fanciful. Dennis likewise yawned and stretched and then excused himself.
“The new boarders all seem nice,” Cressida said, once they had left.
“What does Lord Farringdon say about them?” Mr Buttons asked rather waspishly.
Cressida appeared to think he was serious. “I haven’t asked him. You see, Lord Farringdon doesn’t like it when I ask him questions. He is happier simply to volunteer information to me.” She nodded so hard that one of her false eyelashes fell off into her coffee.
I debated whether to mention it to her, but thought the better of it. I sipped my own coffee, after examining it for one of her false eyelashes. I wondered if all small towns were filled with eccentrics.
Cressida was still talking. “Sibyl, have you had one of your premonitions lately?”
I shook my head. “No, but I did have a weird dream last night that woke me up.” I occasionally had dreams that turned out to be true, and some of them were daydreams. I hesitated to call them visions. They made me quite anxious, and I preferred not to have the ability.
“What was it about?” Cressida pressed me.
I shook my head, not wanting to go into the details. “It was just a dream about those detectives coming.”
Mr Buttons cleared his throat. I looked up to see him picking crumbs from the table and forming them into a neat pile on a plate. “Which detectives, precisely? We have had more than our fair share of homicide detectives in this town. I assume they were homicide detectives?”
“Yes, Detective Roberts and Detective Henderson,” I said. “The ones we didn’t particularly like.”
Cressida frowned. “That is a worry.”
Mr Buttons stood up, and clutched the plate to his chest. “I’m going outside to feed these crumbs to the magpies,” he said. “They have formed quite an attachment to me.”
“That’s because you feed them,” Cressida said.
Mr Buttons did not respond, but disappeared through the door.
Cressida shrugged, and turned to me. “How are things between you and Blake?”
I beamed, unable to keep the smile off my face. Blake was my boyfriend, the town’s sergeant. “Really good.” I was about to say more, when I heard a loud bellow. Cressida and I looked at each other, and then ran from the dining room.
“It sounded like it was coming from out the front,” Cressida said, taking off at a fast pace, with me hard on her heels.
Mr Buttons burst through the door, his face white. “He’s dead!”
“Who’s dead?” I asked him.
He did not respond, but pointed out the door. Cressida and I clutched each other and edged outside the house. There, lying on his back, was Bradley Brown. A thin wire was wrapped around his neck, and a mango was stuffed in his mouth.
“He might not be dead!” Cressida said. “Quick, Sibyl, ring for help!”
I immediately called an ambulance, gave them the directions, and then called Blake. “Blake, there’s a dead man at the boarding house. He’s been strangled, and, um, suffocated,” I stammered. “He looks dead to me, but I called an ambulance just in case. Cressida is giving him mouth-to-mouth.” As I spoke, she looked up at me and shook her head, but continued to administer CPR.
“Murder? Another murder?” Blake said in disbelief. The line went dead. I assumed he was already on his way to the boarding house.
“Who would want to murder a handyman?” Mr Buttons said. “He was rather untidy, but he didn’t have a wife who would want to murder him, or any relatives that he mentioned.”
I couldn’t quite follow the logic of Mr Buttons’ words, so I simply nodded. I could not believe there had been another murder at Little Tatterford. I took Mr Buttons’ arm, and the two of us stood there, lean
ing over Cressida as she worked on the man.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard sirens in the distance. The police station was only five minutes away. Blake’s police vehicle screeched to a halt outside the boarding house gate, as did one of the local fire engines. I was surprised to see it, until I remembered that the local fire fighters were trained as Emergency First Responders. The closest ambulance was in the nearest town of Pharmidale.
The fire fighters beat Blake and Constable Andrews to the body, only just. Cressida stood aside as they examined the body.
“He’s gone,” one of the paramedics said after an interval.
“His mouth was full of that mango there,” Cressida said, pointing to the remains of the mango. “I had to pull it out of his mouth to give him CPR.”
“He was strangled,” the same paramedic said, pointing to the wire around the man’s neck.
Blake put his arm around me. “I’ll take the three of you inside, and then I’ll be back to speak to you two,” he said to the paramedics. “Andrews, stay out here.”
I expected Blake to take us into the living room, but he stopped just inside the door. I figured he didn’t want any stray boarders going outside to the crime scene. “What happened?” Blake said simply. He pulled a notepad and pen from his jacket pocket.
“I was the one who found the body,” Mr Buttons said despondently. “I was coming out to feed crumbs to the magpies, when I saw him there.”
“And Cressida and I heard Mr Buttons yell, so we ran out to see what had happened,” I added. “Cressida at once started CPR.”
Blake patted Cressida on the shoulder. “Good work.”
Cressida pulled a tissue from her pocket and wiped her eyes. “It was too late. I knew that, but I wanted to give it my best shot.”
Blake made notes, and then looked up at us. “This is the new handyman, right? What’s his name?”
“Bradley Brown,” Cressida said simply. “He was a criminal.”
Mr Buttons and I gasped. “A criminal?” Blake said. “Don’t tell me he was the Bradley Brown, Little Tatterford’s most infamous criminal, if you don’t count the bushranger, Thunderbolt.”
Cressida folded her arms over her chest. “Bradley hasn’t been a criminal for years. He was released from prison recently. He was quite honest about it, so I thought I should give him a chance. After all, he had served his time.”
“His time for what, precisely?” Mr Buttons asked through gritted teeth.
Cressida’s eyes shifted from side to side. “Some sort of robbery.” Her tone was defensive.
“Robbery?” Mr Buttons bellowed. “Are you quite out of your mind, my good woman? That is most unseemly! What if he tried to rob one of us?”
Cressida made a snorting sound. “It wasn’t that sort of robbery, Mr Buttons. It was an armed bank robbery. Since this is a boarding house, not a bank, we were perfectly safe.” She smiled widely.
Mr Buttons and I exchanged glances. Blake rubbed his forehead. He let out one long, slow breath, and then asked, “The wire that was around his neck—has anyone seen it before?”
We all shook our heads.
“And the mango? There was a box of mangoes outside. What were they doing out there?”
“Our new French chef, straight from Paris, put them out there,” Cressida explained. “They were frozen, so he put them out there to thaw. Of course, mangoes aren’t in season yet, so he could only get frozen ones.”
“I’d look into this so-called French chef if I were you, Blake,” Mr Buttons said with a look of resolve on his face. “He’s not really French. I find it strange that he turns up here, and then there’s a murder.”
That reminded me of something. “Blake, we were all having breakfast.” I would have said more, but Blake held up his hand.
“Who is ‘all’? That leads me to my next question. Who is present in the house right now? Who are the boarders?”
“Well, there’s a charming man by the name of Adrian Addison,” Cressida said. “There’s also a woman by the name of Wendy Mason, and another man called Dennis Stanton. They all seem utterly pleasant. We only have three boarders at the moment. I hope they don’t leave now that there’s been a murder.”
“And where are they now?” Blake asked her.
“They all arrived this morning, so they’re all up in their rooms, as far as I know,” Cressida said.
Blake nodded. “All right then, I’ll have to question them.”
I tugged on Blake’s sleeve. “Bradley came into the dining room to ask Cressida if he could start work on the porch, and Mr Buttons gave him his coat.”
Blake turned to Mr Buttons. “Why did you give him your coat? Was he cold?”
“I do not know whether or not he was cold, but one thing I do know is that he was dirty. I gave him my coat to cover up the worst of the filth.”
Blake raised his eyebrows, but simply said to me, “Go on.”
“I noticed that when he looked at the boarders, he seemed to get a fright, and he hurried out of the room.”
“That’s right,” Cressida said. “Sibyl and I spoke about the matter at the time. His reaction was noticeable.”
“And was the French chef in the room at that time?” Blake asked her.
“Yes, he was,” Mr Buttons said.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he was—are you sure, Mr Buttons?”
Mr Buttons looked perplexed. “Actually, I’m not sure. Do you remember, Cressida?”
Cressida shook her head. “No, I can’t remember if he was in the room.”
“All right, you three stay here and don’t let anyone outside. I need to speak with the paramedics and then I’ll be straight back.” He waved his finger at us. “Stay here. I mean it!”
“Oh this is a dreadful state of affairs,” Mr Buttons said when Blake left.
“That’s for sure,” I said with feeling. “It looks like one of the boarders is the murderer, and whoever it is, is staying here.”
“Well, we mustn’t jump to conclusions, Sibyl,” Mr Buttons said. “Bradley was a bank robber, so perhaps it was one of his old gang members who came back to kill him.”
“Don’t forget that he looked startled to see someone in the room,” I reminded him.
Before Mr Buttons could respond, Blake returned. “Constable Andrews called the detectives, and they’re on their way. Right now, Andrews and I have to take statements from all of you, as well as the boarders and the French chef.”
A horrible feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “Detective Roberts and Detective Henderson, right?”
Blake nodded.
Chapter 3
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Cressida wrung her hands. “You don’t think the police will blame Mr Buttons for the murder, do you?”
“I’m sure they won’t,” I said, although I wasn’t sure at all. “I know he found the body, but he had only just gone outside. He didn’t have time to kill anyone.”
Cressida looked unconvinced. “Why do you think those horrible detectives took him down to the police station?”
“That’s normal procedure, Cressida,” I said.
“But they’re going to question us here,” she protested. Lord Farringdon came up and yowled loudly. Cressida bent down to stroke him.
“We didn’t find the body. We’re only witnesses after the fact, if there’s any such thing. Mr Buttons was the one who actually discovered the body. Try not to worry, Cressida.”
She didn’t have a chance to respond, because two surly looking men entered the living room. “Well, if it isn’t Sibyl Potts and Cressida Upthorpe,” Detective Roberts said smugly. “This town has had so many murders, that it’s a wonder anyone is left. Wouldn’t you say so, Henderson?”
Detective Henderson merely nodded. I had always suspected he wasn’t quite as much of a jerk as his partner.
“And it’s also a wonder you have any clients at all, Ms Upthorpe, given that this boarding house has been the scene of several murders,” Roberts continued.
I could feel the anger rising within me. “Have you come here to ask us questions or to make business suggestions, detective?” I said in the mildest tone I could muster.
Robert scowled at me. “All right Ms Potts, tell us what happened, right from the beginning.” He held up both hands, palms outwards. “You will speak to me, and Detective Henderson will take your partner in crime into another room and question her separately.”
Cressida leapt to her feet, startling Lord Farringdon. “I have not committed any crime,” she said in a loud voice.
Detective Roberts ignored her. He took a seat opposite me on a rather hideous Victorian grandmother chair upholstered in a paisley design in bright hues. I knew that chair needed restuffing, so I took no small delight in seeing him shift about uncomfortably.
