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

by AG Barnett

  She heard Corrigan take a deep breath in exasperation.

  “It’s over, Mary, we’ve got the people responsible. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Why have you arrested both of them? Were they working together?”

  Another sigh.

  “It seems that way. It looks like the two of them were in a relationship. Both had reasons to get rid of Thomas Mosley and we’ve got evidence against both of them.”

  Mary frowned. She knew that one of the blackmail letters had been found in Roderick’s room, but she didn’t know of any evidence against Ruth other than circumstantial. Across the street, her eye caught on James Donovan, the barman from the hotel. He was waving down a taxi, which pulled to a sharp stop in front of him. He turned, looking behind him as Daisy White emerged from a doorway and climbed into the back of the car with him.

  “What evidence have you got against Ruth?” Mary asked as her eyes followed the taxi pulling away.

  “We found some of the flowers, the monkshood, back at her house. We think they cooked it up between them, but they’re not admitting it.”

  “How did she explain the flowers being there?”

  “She said she’d never seen them before, that someone must have just dumped them over her garden wall.”

  “Over her garden wall?”

  “We found them lying on her flowerbed. She probably just threw them there to hide them and planned to get rid of them later.”

  Something was itching at the back of Mary’s mind, as though a small insect had crawled into her skull and was now looking for a place to burrow.

  “Did Roderick admit to writing the blackmail letters?” she asked on autopilot.

  “No, says he’d never seen the one that was found in his room before and didn’t have a clue that Spencer Harley was being blackmailed at all. By the way, Spencer appears to be on the mend, they think he’ll come round soon and as soon as he does we should get confirmation that Ruth Faulkner was the one that attacked him.” There was a muffled voice down the line, someone telling Corrigan something. “Sorry, Mary, I need to go. Why don’t you go back home? I’ll let you know what happens. Speak later.” The line went dead.

  Mary walked back to the café in a daze, her mind elsewhere. As she stepped inside to the warm, humid air, she turned and looked at the small picture that was hung by the door.

  “Oh bloody hell,” she muttered as the weight of realisation hit her like a punch to the stomach.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Sandra!” Mary called to the café owner who was buzzing between the tables.

  “Yes, dear?” she said, coming over with a dirty plate in each hand.

  “Do you know who this is in this photo?”

  “Oh, that’s Daisy White and her father, he’s dead now, of course, poor chap. He was always out in Parchester Woods, knew the place like the back of his hand, and of course, he always kept the hotel well-stocked in rabbits!” She laughed and moved back towards the kitchen.

  “Pea! Dot! Get over here!” Mary shouted as she pulled her phone from her pocket and dialled Corrigan. There was no answer. Whatever had pulled him away from their call was still clearly keeping him busy.

  “We need a taxi right now!” she said as she frantically searched for the number of the hospital on her phone.

  “What’s going on?” Dot asked as Pea headed outside to try to flag a taxi down.

  “I think the police have arrested the wrong people. We need to get to the hospital right now.”

  There was a bang on the café door, and through the glass Pea jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a taxi that was idling at the edge of the road.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was forty minutes later when they pulled up outside the hospital. The drive had been a mixture of unanswered phone calls to Corrigan, and Mary explaining to the others her suspicions and why she thought Spencer might well be in danger.

  The three of them ran up the steps and straight to the lifts to the left of the main entrance. They already knew where they were heading. Their call ahead to the hospital had been frustrating. The receptionist wouldn’t give any details about visitors to Spencer Harley and certainly wasn’t willing to get the uniformed officer stationed outside his room on the phone. She did agree to pass on a message to him, but who knew if she had or not? Mary only hoped they weren’t too late.

  The lift finally opened on the right floor and they burst out of it at a run before realising they didn’t know whether to venture down the corridor to their left or right.

  “Which bloody way?!” Pea cried in frustration, his long arms waving in the air hopelessly.

  Before Mary or Dot could reply, a shout sounded from the end of the corridor and a figure dashed across from one side to the other.

  “That was James Donovan!” Dot said as a uniformed police officer appeared in the opening, shouting at Donovan to stop.

  “Come on!” Mary shouted, dashing down the corridor towards the running figures. Her mind was racing with possibilities. What had happened? And more worryingly, what was still to happen? She knew that Spencer’s room still had a uniformed officer on the door, but if that officer was currently chasing James Donovan, that meant Spencer might be alone.

  As she reached the end of the corridor, instead of following the running men to the left, she darted right into a short corridor that ended in another door. On the left were two sets of windows and doors which clearly led into private rooms. She ran to the first window and looked inside. The light in the room was dim, but a figure stood in front of the only bed in the room, obscuring its occupant.

  “No!” Mary heard her voice echo in the corridor without even realising she had shouted. She moved to the door and wrenched it open. The figure was facing her in the gloom, clearly alerted by her shout. It began advancing towards her but hesitated as Mary sensed Pea and Dot move into the doorway alongside her. A small glint of light flashed at the figure’s side.

  “You can’t get past us all,” Mary said, raising her chin defiantly, her fists clenched at her side. She was desperately trying not to think about what that glint of light could have been. Suddenly, she didn’t have to.

  The figure rushed back towards the bed as Mary reached out and flicked the light switch on the wall to her left. The bright ceiling lights flickered on to reveal the murderer holding a knife to the throat of Spencer Harley, whose pale face lay unconscious in the bed in front of them.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Just think about this,” Mary said softly, waving for Pea and Dot to retreat to the corridor without taking her eyes off the young woman in front of her. She felt her friend and brother move away behind her and continued speaking. “There’s no way this ends well from here, Daisy. All you can do is make sure that it doesn’t get any worse.”

  Daisy White stared back at her, her round eyes shining, her breathing heavy.

  “Spencer was always so kind to you,” Mary pressed on, “I know you don’t really want to hurt him.”

  “You don’t know anything!” Daisy hissed, her voice raised in pitch through adrenaline. “What did Spencer do for me?! Nothing, that’s what.”

  “He gave you a job, he looked out for you after your father died.”

  “Is that what he told you?!” Daisy laughed. “He wasn’t looking out for me, he was looking out for himself! If he really wanted to help me, he would have just sold the bloody hotel and let me get what was owed to me!”

  “Help me understand,” Mary said calmly as she took a step forward. Daisy tensed and Mary paused again. “Your dad worked at that hotel for years and when it was sold, the Parsons made sure he had a share in the new venture. They didn’t have to do that.”

  Daisy laughed and shook her head. “You’d never understand, you of all people!” She laughed again, but there was no humour to it. Her normally plain, rounded face was twisted in anger. “My dad put his life into that bloody place! And what did he get for it? Forced retirement and a small chunk of share
s that were worthless as the place never made any money! Oh, and then, of course, there’s the best bit: getting me a job at the same place that broke him so that I could suffer the same fate.” She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Do you know what my dad did when he retired?”

  “No,” Mary answered. She had noticed that the police officer had returned outside the window. Through the open shutters of the blinds she could see he was talking into the radio that was clipped to his chest. Dot and Pea were looking at her through one of the open slits and she shook her head at them and nodded towards the policeman. She saw Pea turn away and knew that he had understood. If anyone entered this room right now, Spencer Harley was likely to die.

  “The day he retired, he came home and sat in his armchair and cried. He cried!” Daisy looked at Mary again now, tears of her own filling her wide eyes. “I lost my dad that day,” she continued, her voice breaking. “A part of him, the part of him that made him who he was had died, and it was never coming back.”

  Mary waited a moment, seeing if Daisy was going to continue, but it was clear she was lost in her own memories now, her eyes unfocused and unseeing.

  “And then he died,” Mary said softly. “And you decided that you wanted what you thought your father should have had. You wanted a financial reward for all the years of blood and sweat he put into that hotel.”

  “Yes! Is that too much to ask for?! That someone might think, in-between making their fancy meals in the restaurant, or trying to make that dump a success, that maybe I didn’t want to work there? That maybe I didn’t want to follow my dad’s footsteps and work my whole life only to have nothing at the end of it but an armchair and TV until I die?!”

  “And when you realised Roderick Sutton had had an offer for the hotel, you saw a chance of getting what you deserved?”

  “Yes, is that so wrong? The hotel was never going to make any money, most of the rooms hadn’t even been used for months!”

  “And then Spencer brought Anna Crosby in.”

  “You think she had anything to do with it?!” Daisy laughed again. “She was bloody useless! Anyone with any sense could see that! But then…. Thomas.” She seemed to sag as she stood, her shoulders rounding, her head bowing.

  “Yes, then Thomas,” Mary echoed. “He changed everything, didn’t he? You knew the hotel was failing and that Spencer was going to have to sell sooner or later, but then Anna hired Thomas and everything changed. The restaurant business picked up, and it started to get a reputation. I guess the Michelin star was the final straw? You knew then that the restaurant just might keep the lagging hotel going forever.”

  “I wasn’t going to wait for some reward that would never come like Dad did. I decided to make things happen.” Daisy was defiant now, as though daring Mary to say what she did was wrong, but with the knife still hovering near Spencer’s throat Mary wasn’t about to rile her any further. She needed to say whatever she could to protect Spencer.

  “What happened to your father was very sad, but you can’t punish Spencer for that. He cares for you, Daisy, he told me so himself.”

  Daisy looked down at Spencer lying prone beside her, as though seeing him for the first time.

  “He’s going to get better, Daisy,” Mary continued, moving another step closer, “and when he does, I’m sure he’ll understand. He’ll explain to the police and may not even press charges.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Daisy said, her voice barely audible. “He came into the kitchen and saw me with the monkshood. He didn’t even know what they were. He said they were pretty and tried to touch them, to smell them, and I pulled them away. Then he saw I was wearing rubber gloves. I saw it in his eyes then. He looked so sad. He knew.”

  There was the faint sound of a sigh and Spencer’s head turned slightly towards them. Daisy inhaled sharply and jumped backwards, dropping the knife to the floor with a clatter. Spencer’s eyes flickered and he let out a small groan before his eyes opened fully and focused on Daisy.

  “Daisy,” he cracked quietly.

  Daisy flung herself forward, dropping to her knees as she took his hand and sobbed into his chest.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “You have got some explaining to do,” Dot said as Mary Blake entered the bar of the Rudolph Hotel later that day.

  Mary was exhausted. She had given her statement to Inspector Joe Corrigan what felt like a hundred times, explaining exactly how she had known it was Daisy White who had poisoned Thomas Mosley and attempted to do the same to Spencer Harley. She knew, though, that she wasn’t done yet. Arranged in the bar was another audience who wanted to hear the story. Roderick Sutton and Ruth Faulkner, both now released without charge, were at the bar. Roderick behind it pouring drinks, and Ruth sitting at a barstool on the other side. A few feet away, Anna Crosby, Edward Landry and Dot and Pea sat at a table.

  “OK,” Mary said, slumping into a chair at the table, “but someone better keep the gin and tonics coming.”

  “Not a problem!” Roderick called from behind the bar, “The woman who got Ruth and me out of that bloody police station can have whatever she wants.”

  Ruth picked up the tray from the bar that he had filled and walked it across to the table with Roderick grabbing two chairs for them. Mary took a gin and tonic from the tray and slugged at it thirstily before taking a deep breath and looking around at her audience.

  “I just can’t understand why Daisy would have done something like this,” said Edward Landry, his pinched face and fish lips pursed as though he’d tasted something sour.

  “I think the death of her father affected her more than anyone realised,” Mary answered. “She felt he’d given everything for the hotel and got nothing in return.”

  “He got a percentage of ownership!” Landry spluttered. “Anyone who truly loved the hospitality business would have been honoured at such a gift!”

  “From what Daisy said, I think all he really wanted was a job,” Mary said sadly.

  “Enough of all this,” Pea said, leaning forward, “I want to know how the bloody hell you realised it was her in the first place?!”

  Mary gave a sad smile. “The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realised that I should have seen it earlier. When we first arrived we heard that Daisy owned a stake in the hotel, but we never considered her as one of the people who would benefit from its sale. Everyone was telling us how much she loved the place, and how much it had meant to her father. It never even crossed my mind.” She sighed and took another drink. “There was something else we missed about Daisy’s father.” She turned to Anna. “Do you remember telling me about how Daisy’s father used to provide much of the food for the hotel through hunting and foraging in the woods behind the town?”

  “Yes?” Anna answered, jumping slightly at being addressed, her hand rising to her mouth.

  “I saw a picture in the café of a little girl and her father in the woods. I’d seen it before, but it was only when I saw it right after seeing Daisy across the street this morning that I realised it was her and that she accompanied her father on those trips through the woods.” She looked around at the blank expressions and realised she had to connect the dots for them. “Someone had known that monkshood grew locally, and more importantly, how dangerous it was.”

  “And Daisy had learned this from her father,” Dot finished.

  “Exactly. When she realised the restaurant was going to keep the hotel limping on, she knew she had to do something to stop it. Remember all those things that had gone wrong at the restaurant? The fridge breaking down? The electrical problems? That was all Daisy.”

  “And when none of it worked, she decided to stop Thomas,” Ruth said, shaking her head.

  “Yes. She realised that Thomas was...” She paused, glancing at Anna.

  “Oh, it’s OK,” she said sitting upright, “Thomas was the talent of the restaurant.”

  “When she realised that Thomas was key to the re
staurant’s success,” Mary continued, “she decided to get rid of him. I don’t think it helped that Thomas probably ignored Daisy to a large extent. Am I right?” She looked around at the group.

  “I guess so.” Ruth shrugged. “Daisy is a quiet type, which wasn’t exactly Thomas’s cup of tea.”

  Mary nodded. “I don’t know what made her think of it. Maybe she was just out walking one day, saw the monkshood plant and decided on a whim. However, it happened. What happened next was definitely planned.”

  “But how on earth did she poison him?!” Roderick asked. “We all ate the same food!”

  “We did,” Mary nodded, “I got the police to check everything straight away and they couldn’t find anything. Obviously, they checked the kitchen thoroughly, but none of them thought to check the blue flowers that were standing in a vase on the shelf. To be fair, why would they?”

  “But we know she didn’t just shove the flowers into his face as she did with Spencer,” Pea said, “we were with him most of the evening.”

  “Anna and I were with him all the time,” Ruth said. “He definitely didn’t eat anything that we didn’t, and no one went near him with the flowers.”

  “No,” Mary answered, “because Daisy had put the trap in place days before. Thomas took the poison himself at the table, but it wasn’t in the food.” She paused, unable to resist letting the moment of drama roll out before her. “It was in the sugar he added to his coffee.” There was an audible intake of breath from around the gathered audience.

  “The sugar?” Anna said. “But anyone could have had that!”

  “Not everyone,” Mary corrected her. “On the night of the dinner, all the guests sat at one end of the table and the staff at the other. There was a sugar bowl at each end. Do any of the staff take sugar in their coffee?”