A Death at Dinner: An amateur sleuth murder mystery (A Mary Blake Mystery Book 2)

by AG Barnett

  “You mean,” Daisy said in a small voice, “you think Thomas was poisoned as well? By the same person?”

  There was something in her tone, something that sounded as though she was realising something.

  “Daisy, do you know why someone would have wanted to hurt both Thomas and Spencer?”

  Daisy’s round, plain face creased with worry, her eyes darting left and right.

  “If there's anything you can think of, no matter how insignificant,” Mary continued.

  “Daisy?” Anna said, looking at her strangely.

  Daisy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Wait here,” she said, before darting away and up the stairs.

  Mary looked at Anna, who watched her go with the look of someone who was barely keeping a hold on reality. She looked ready to crumble. Mary put her arm around her shoulders.

  “I'm sure Spencer's going to be fine, Anna,” she said, giving her a squeeze. “And we're going to get to the bottom of what's going on here.”

  Anna nodded before blowing her nose noisily.

  Mary looked up to see Daisy hurrying down the stairs, in her hand a piece of paper.

  “What is it?” Mary asked as she handed it to her.

  “I...I think it's a blackmail letter,” she said in a small, worried voice.

  Mary opened it and looked at the sheet in front of her. It was printed in a standard font on normal A4 paper and looked like any short note you might find in an office. It read...

  You won't get what you want Spencer, it's pathetic. Sell the hotel now or you'll be sorry.

  “Where did you find this?”

  Daisy looked at the floor and bit her lip.

  “Daisy, you have to tell me, was it in Spencer’s room?”

  She looked up and shook her head. “No, it was in Roderick’s.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “And she just found it in his room?” Pea asked. “What was she doing in there?”

  “Cleaning it,” Mary answered. “One of the cleaning staff they hire in was off sick and so Daisy filled in. She was tidying some papers that he'd left on the side and saw the note.”

  “And she took it?” Dot asked, eyebrows raised.

  “She was going to show it to Spencer, apparently. It had his name on it, she wanted to know if he was OK.”

  “So Roderick was the blackmailer,” Pea said with a sigh. “Spencer was right all along.”

  “The silly old sod should have just been upfront with us from the beginning,” Mary said with feeling.

  She was altogether feeling annoyed about a number of things. Corrigan still seemed to be in a mood with her about not revealing the blackmail angle, even more so now that it appeared to be integral to the murder case. Roderick Sutton had been carted off to the police station for further questioning, and it was looking more and more likely that he would be charged with the murder of Thomas Mosley and the attempted murder of Spencer Harley. She hoped the word “attempted” would stay in the second charge against him. As yet there was no change in Spencer's condition.

  Although she should be happy at these recent developments, something was gnawing at her. They still didn't know how Thomas had been poisoned. How would Roderick have managed to gain access to his food? She had to admit, Roderick had a good motive for murdering Thomas. With him out of the way, the restaurant would be sure to fail and with it, the hotel, thus forcing Spencer's hand to sell. Yet in Mary's mind, it didn't fit with the blackmail. Why send Spencer blackmail letters if he had planned to murder Thomas? All the letters would do was leave a trail straight to him.

  She leaned back in her chair and sipped at her coffee. The three of them were back in the restaurant, which was now empty save for one constable positioned in a chair by the kitchen door. He was reading a small pocket novel and seemed oblivious to them on the other side of the room. After giving their statements, Anna and Daisy had gone home, leaving the place with an almost abandoned air with Spencer in hospital and Roderick at the police station being interrogated.

  “So he poisoned Thomas Mosley so that the restaurant would fail,” Pea said thoughtfully. “He must have been bloody desperate for this deal to go through.”

  “Desperate enough to kill though?” Mary said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t seem that likely the place was going to survive in any case.”

  “Yes,” Pea replied, “it’s a shame he hadn’t known Thomas was leaving beforehand. There was no need for him to do any of it in the end.”

  Mary sat up straight. “That’s a bloody good point.”

  “I know that look,” Dot said. “What are you thinking?”

  “I think she was saying I’ve had yet another brilliant idea,” Pea said, causing Dot to elbow him in the ribs.

  “What I mean is, imagine you had planned so meticulously to kill someone. You’d looked up how to get your hands on a plant that would do the job, you’d found some ingenious way of getting Thomas to eat it. Then, you have to watch him die in front of you.” She gave a slight shudder at the memory. “After all of that, you find out that he was leaving anyway, and that you didn’t need to do any of it.”

  “Well yes, it must have been a bit of a choker all right,” Pea said. “What’s your point?”

  “When I was speaking to Roderick, he told me he’d only found out that Anna Crosby wasn’t the real talent in the kitchen this morning when Edward Landry the hotel manager told him.”

  “He could have been lying,” Dot said with narrowed eyes.

  Mary shook her head. “You didn’t see him—he wasn’t the slightest bit bothered. He thought it was funny! Called it the hotel’s ‘little secret.’ If he had really just found out, if he’d gone to all that trouble, all that risk, and taken someone’s life when he didn’t need to, he wouldn’t have reacted like that.”

  “So,” Dot said slowly, “just because he was blackmailing Spencer to sell up, it doesn’t mean he killed Thomas?”

  “Not necessarily,” Mary answered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’m just saying that I don’t think we should be going to someone’s house like this when they’ve had a big shock,” Dot said, her stout legs pumping alongside Mary’s as she tried to keep up.

  “Nonsense, she won’t want to be alone at a time like this. She’ll need company,” Mary answered.

  “From friends or family maybe, not from a bunch of strangers!”

  “We’re not strangers anymore, are we? Anyway, all we’re doing is checking she’s OK.”

  “Right,” Dot said dubiously, “of course we are.”

  “Here it is,” Mary said, stopping sharply, sending Pea clattering into the back of Dot who had followed suit. Mary watched as he fussed over her and apologised and Dot shooed him away.

  “You two are like some bad comedy act sometimes, you know,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Quite the double act I’d say,” Pea said, eyebrows waggling as he gave Dot a grin. She rolled her eyes at him and headed up the small path which led through the front garden, Pea in pursuit. Mary frowned at the pair. Something was definitely up between them, but it would have to wait.

  She reached the red front door, paint peeling at its edges as Pea gave a rousing knock. The cottage was a small, but pretty affair. Roses trailed over a small roof which jutted out above the door, acting as a small porch, and its white walls looked thick and old.

  The door opened and Ruth Faulkner appeared, looking around them in confusion.

  “Oh, Ruth, we thought this was Anna’s house?”

  “Oh, it is!” Ruth said, her warm smile returning as she stepped aside. “Come in, come in! I had just popped round to see if Anna was OK,” she said to Mary as the three of them passed her and moved into the house.

  The inside continued the cottage feel of the exterior, with a low-slung beamed ceiling and a brick floor smoothed by time.

  “Straight down the hall,” Ruth called out, so Mary plunged in past small watercolours of various country landscapes until she emerg
ed into a bright, wide and much more modern-looking kitchen than could have been expected. A glass lantern roof hung over a dining table to the left while a sleek and ample kitchen sprawled to the right in what was clearly a significant extension to the older, original building.

  “Oh, hello,” Anna said as she looked up from a raft of papers that were spread on the dining table in front of her.

  “Hi, we just wanted to check you were OK,” Mary lied. In fact, Dot has been right to be suspicious of her motives for coming here.

  She had at first intended to speak to Ruth Faulkner about the recipe book she planned to publish and had snuck behind the reception desk in the empty lobby at the hotel to do so. She had immediately found a sheet of hotel staff contact details pinned to the back of its raised front panel and dialled Ruth's mobile. After it had gone straight to voice mail twice, she had called the landline listed and had reached Ruth's mother, who had told her she had gone to Anna’s house.

  “Would you like some tea?” Ruth said, moving towards the kitchen and clicking the kettle on before they could answer.

  “Yes please,” Mary said as she moved behind Anna and peered over her shoulder.

  “I see you’re working on the cookbook?” she said, spying that each printed page contained an image of some delicious-looking meal or other as well as instructions printed below.

  “Ruth thought it would take my mind off of Spencer for a while,” Anna said feebly.

  “Something positive to focus on until we can go and see him in hospital,” Ruth called cheerfully over the rising noise of the kettle.

  “And you’re helping her with it?” Mary asked Anna.

  “Ruth has very kindly offered to let me co-write it,” Anna said with a sad chuckle that suggested this was more an act of charity than anything.

  “Well,” Mary replied, looking up at Ruth, “I would imagine having the name of a Michelin star chef on the cover would help sales significantly?”

  Ruth paused for a moment before answering, her smile frozen in place. “Of course, it means we both benefit.”

  Mary looked at Dot and Pea, who had sat at the table opposite Anna and shared knowing looks between the three of them.

  “These look very good,” Dot said, taking one of the recipe sheets and squinting at it. “Did you two come up with them all?”

  “They are all dishes we have cooked at the restaurant,” Ruth replied quickly as she rattled a spoon around in a mug. “Of course, they are mostly Thomas’s recipes, but we are going to dedicate the book to him and I think it will be a fitting tribute.” She turned back towards them with a steaming mug of tea in each hand and began to pass them out.

  Mary stopped herself from asking when Ruth had begun writing the book after seeing the sad look in Anne’s eyes. It had almost certainly been before Thomas had died, and so was hardly originally intended as a tribute. Anna, though, looked as if she had enough on her plate without Mary opening her eyes to the manipulation by her friend Ruth. The question Mary wanted to know the answer to was, had Thomas known about the cookbook? And if he had known, when had he found out? Would he really have been OK with his colleague using his own recipes in order to make a book? One without his name on it. The more Mary thought about it, the more likely it seemed that Ruth had been assembling these recipes over time. Now that she was almost finished and looking to get it published, maybe Thomas had found out and threatened her? Maybe she’d decided that his recipes were such a cash cow it was worth killing for?

  “How are you feeling?” Dot said to Anna as they all sat down.

  “Oh, OK,” she answered with a weak smile. “I just wish I could go and see him.”

  “I’m sure they’ll let you in soon,” Pea said, “even if it is with an armed guard!” The chuckle at his own joke faded as he saw the sharp look Dot threw him. “Sorry, bad taste,” he mumbled before sipping at his tea.

  “What about you, Ruth?” Mary asked. “It must have been quite a shock finding him like that?”

  “Oh,” Ruth said with a shudder, “it was awful.”

  “I’m surprised the police let you go so soon.”

  There was a sudden chill in the room.

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Ruth answered. The slight smile was still present on her full lips, but it didn’t reach her hazel eyes, which had turned hard and cold.

  “Well, you discovered the body, I thought they would want to question you for longer.”

  “I gave a detailed statement,” Ruth answered, “but I wasn’t much help. When I realised I’d forgotten my purse, I came in the back way to the kitchen and found him there.” She shrugged.

  “And you didn’t see anyone else?”

  “No, obviously,” she replied in a tetchy tone.

  “It’s just that we know no one came through the kitchen door into the restaurant, so whoever did this to Spencer must have come in the back way.”

  “Mary,” Anna said, her face pale.” You’re surely not suggesting that Ruth had something to do with this, are you?!”

  “I think she might be trying to,” Ruth answered before Mary could respond.

  “I think we all just want to get to the bottom of it,” Pea said with a disarming grin.

  “It sounds to me as though the police think they already have,” Ruth replied.

  “I can’t believe Roderick would do such a thing,” Anna said, shaking her head, her gaze distant.

  “You’d be surprised what people will do for money,” Mary answered, her eyes locked onto Ruth’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I’m sorry madam, you’re not allowed down here, Inspector Corrigan’s orders.”

  Mary glared at the young constable who had barred her way but turned back towards the road.

  “Oh well,” Pea said as she reached him and turned again to look back down the alleyway, “I’m sure the police will have done a thorough search of it all, so there won’t be any clues still lying around down there.”

  “I wasn’t looking for clues,” Mary answered distractedly, “I just wanted to see if there were any hiding places.”

  The alley in front of them was nothing more than a gap that ran between two buildings, one of them being the hotel. The door to the kitchen was on the right-hand side, and the officious constable was standing before it as a silent sentry. Across from the door was a large wheelie bin, but nothing else seemed to be in the space from what they could see.

  “What are you thinking?” Pea asked, looking at her with a furrowed brow.

  “If no one passed us in the restaurant, whoever pushed those flowers into Spencer’s mouth to poison him must have come through here.”

  “And how did Spencer get in?”

  Mary’s gaze jerked towards him sharply. “Bloody hell, Pea, good point. Spencer didn’t pass us either, so he must have come through the back door with whoever attacked him.”

  “So we know he knew them, whoever it was.”

  “Well, we knew that anyway. Whoever murdered Thomas and attacked Spencer is definitely someone at the hotel. Only one of them could have brought the flowers in and left them in the kitchen ready to be used.”

  “Surely this is all just pointing to Roderick?” Pea shrugged.

  “Or to Ruth,” Mary answered.

  “I just can’t believe she could have done it,” Pea said, shaking his head.

  “That’s because she’s young and beautiful,” Mary replied in a mocking tone. “I think your sense of justice gets a little wobbly around those things. Think about using your brain instead of your other parts. Ruth was writing a cookbook using Thomas’s recipes. If they were as good as everyone says they were, then that book could have been a success. Especially with Anna Crosby’s name on it as a Michelin starred chef.”

  “So you think that Thomas found out about the book and threatened to put a stop to it?” Pea mused.

  “Exactly,” Mary confirmed, “and then Ruth decided she didn't want to miss out on the payday and so got rid of him.”

  �
��But what about Spencer? She wouldn't have any reason to attack him?”

  “He must have found out it was her somehow.” Mary shrugged. “When he confronted her, she panicked and stuffed the flowers into his mouth. She had used them to poison Thomas and they were still in the kitchen, so she must have just grabbed them in panic.” She looked up at Dot who was pacing up and down on the pavement, her phone clutched to her ear. “Let's hope Dot’s publishing contact can find out more about that book, that's what will give us a motive.”

  After leaving Anna Crosby’s house, Dot had revealed that she had an old school friend who worked in the publishing industry, and might well be able to find out more about the kind of deal Ruth Faulkner had secured for her cookbook.

  “I wonder what happened to the flowers?” Pea said quietly.

  Mary turned to him. “The flowers?”

  “Well, I didn't see them in the kitchen when we found Spencer, so where did they go?”

  “The killer must have got rid of them somehow,” Mary answered.

  “But you think Ruth is the killer and she was the one who found him,” Pea countered. “She didn't have the flowers on her, so where were they?”

  Mary looked at the ground and kicked away a stone with her dark leather boots. Pea was right. Whoever had attacked Spencer had done so in a panic. It had been a rash and desperate move that couldn't possibly have been pre-planned. So once they'd committed the act, what then? Ruth Faulkner had screamed as though she had just come across Spencer, but that could have been some added theatrics to cover her own involvement. But the flowers, what had she done with the flowers?

  “How long do you think it was before Ruth left us in the restaurant and then we heard her scream?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes, I'd say?”

  “Then she must have attacked him not long after she first left us. She must have met him in the kitchen and he accused her of murdering Thomas and she panicked and used the flowers. Then she must have run out into this alley and got rid of the flowers somehow.”