An Invitation to Murder: An amateur sleuth murder mystery (A Mary Blake Mystery Book 1)

by AG Barnett

  “He was definitely looking for something,” she answered. “Which I thought was a bit odd as it’s not a reference book or anything, it’s a story.”

  “Did he say anything to you while he was here? Anything at all about the book?”

  “Actually, he did ask me something quite odd. He wanted to know how a pair of glasses could mean a particular page in a book. Very strange.”

  “I take it you couldn’t think of anything?”

  “Well, I said that a number eight on its side looks a bit like a pair of glasses, that’s all I could think of.” The young woman shrugged. “Look,” she said, planting her hands on her hips, “What is all this about?”

  Mary ignored her and instead flicked to page eight of the book, Dot and Pea peering over her shoulders. There in the margin were two words, written in her mother’s hand.

  Sookie’s grave, like the fool

  “Ha ha!” Pea shouted, jumping backwards and clapping his hands together.

  Mary slapped the book shut.

  “Did this James ask you anything about Sookie’s grave?” she asked the librarian.

  “What? The one in the churchyard? No, he didn’t mention it. Why?”

  “You are a credit to the library service!” She beamed at the young woman as she handed her back the book. “If this works out, I’ll buy you the mother of all rounds at the local pub tonight!”

  She turned and headed for the door with Dot and Pea trailing after her.

  “What on earth is going on?!” Dot said once they reached the crisp air outside.

  “That reporter’s got it wrong!” Pea laughed. “He must have!”

  “Probably thinks it’s some family member or pet that died and he’s gone back to Blancham to find out.” Mary smiled. “It’s funny, I couldn’t remember this place for the life of me, but I remember Sookie’s grave.”

  “Will one of you please tell me what’s going on here!” Dot moaned, hurrying to keep up with the long stride of the two Blake children who were moving across one of the small bridges which crisscrossed the river towards a churchyard set back from the road a short distance away.

  “You’ll see,” Mary said, not slowing her pace.

  They arrived at the churchyard and moved along its flagstone path until they reached a small gravel path which jutted out to the right. Mary and Pea followed it without hesitating. It led through the churchyard towards the back wall where a large grave loomed. It was a tall cross, the top of which had been fashioned into the large head of a cat that grinned widely. Below it across the arms of the cross was the word, Sookie. At its base were a few bunches of flowers and even a child’s drawing of a black cat.

  “Sookie was the town cat a couple of hundred years ago,” Mary said to Dot as they stopped. “There are all sorts of myths and legends about the animal, that she was a witch’s cat, or that she was a woman cursed to be a cat by a witch, all sorts. No one really knows why she was so loved, but they built her this big gravestone and buried her along with the humans of the town. It’s become a bit of a tourist attraction now and people think that if you leave her some flowers or a drawing it’s lucky.” She gestured at the offerings which lay at the foot of the grave.

  “But that reporter wouldn’t have known about it?” Dot asked.

  “Not likely, it’s not very well publicised. It’s more of a local thing, but we came here so much we knew about it and came all the time. It’s just a good thing he didn’t ask that woman at the library and assumed it was something to do with us back at Blancham.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Pea, “I seem to remember that Dad paid for renovations on this place one year. Paid for the path to it and for the gravestone to be cleaned up and so on. Maybe they had something added then? I can’t see anything though,” he said, looking around the area.

  “What did the note in the book say, though?” Mary said as she moved across to the old stone wall that ran along the edge of the graveyard. “Like the fool, it said. Just like the first clue was hidden in stone after being described as under a fool’s bottom…” She bent down and examined the wall, studying the large stones that ran along its base. Her fingers found the edges of one that seemed different to the others, the gap around it being larger and deeper than the surrounding ones. She dug her fingers in and slowly wiggled the stone left and right until it came out of the wall, the accumulated mulch of the years tumbling from it as she did so. She reached into the hole and pulled out a square wooden box, rising as she dusted it off.

  “Bloody hell,” Pea said, his voice hoarse. “You don’t think it’s really the egg, do you?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Mary said, lifting the metal clasp which hung over one side of the lid. She lifted it back to reveal a velvet-lined cushion, set into the middle of which was a small, silver egg encrusted with diamonds.

  The three of them stared at it in silence for what seemed like hours.

  “I think I’m going to need to break that daytime drinking rule again, Dot,” Mary said quietly.

  “Me bloody too,” Dot replied. “Me bloody too.”

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  Read on to see the first chapter of the next in series!

  More from A.G. Barnett

  Brock & Poole Mysteries

  An Occupied Grave

  A Staged Death

  When The Party Died

  Murder in a Watched Room

  The Mary Blake Mysteries

  An Invitation to Murder

  A Death at Dinner

  Lightning Strikes Twice

  A Death at Dinner

  Mary, Dot, and Pea were slumped on the wooden bench in the echoing corridor as they stared off into space with unseeing eyes. Mary’s throat felt dry. If she could have spoken a word, she would have asked in a firm voice for a gin and tonic. Instead, she unfolded the small sheet of paper the auctioneer’s assistant had handed her and stared at the number. There were a lot of zeros.

  They had been ushered into a corridor at the back of the auction room, away from the baying press who had been stalking them since the discovery that had led them here.

  “Did that just really happen?” Pea said from her right.

  “It did,” Dot replied from her left.

  “Bloody hell,” Pea added.

  “That about sums it up.” Mary nodded, finally finding her voice.

  There was another period of silence until Mary stood up and rammed the piece of paper into the inside pocket of her tan leather jacket. “Right, I think it’s high time we all went to the nearest pub to drink gin and tonic until all of this makes some sense.”

  There were dazed murmurs of agreement as the others rose from their seats and the three of them moved along the corridor towards the discreet rear entrance that an employee of the auction house had assured them would provide an escape from the press pack.

  “Mary! Mary Blake!”

  She turned to see a round, tubby man waddling down the corridor towards them.

  “Mary, how do you feel about the record sale of the Fabergé egg you recently discovered?”

  Mary frowned at him, wondering how the reporter had evaded security to find his way back here.

  “Do you know?” she said, folding her arms. “I have absolutely no idea, but I’m sure I’ll work it out in time.”

  The man stopped, frowning in confusion, as a security guard appeared behind him at a run and steered him back towards the public area with a firm clasp of his arm. Mary turned away and pushed open the doors before stepping into the bright sunlight.

  “They will not leave you alone after this you know,” Pea said, sighing as he followed her out and they headed down the road.

  “Oh, they’ll get bored, eventually. Now I’m not on TV, I’m nowhere near as much of a pull for them. This will do,” she said, pointing down the street to a ramshackle pub.

  Inside, the light was appropriately g
loomy for a central London pub that had probably been serving pints to the city’s citizens for hundreds of years. Mary and Dot took up residence at a well-worn and sticky table in the corner while Pea gathered them all gin and tonics at the bar.

  “Well at least this means you’ve got the money to keep me employed,” Dot said as she pulled a tissue and wiped the portion of the table in front of her.

  “Quite the opposite,” Mary said with a glint in her eye. “I need not work at all anymore, a personal assistant seems rather pointless, don’t you think?”

  “I think we both know that you don’t pay me to help you professionally, you need me to make sure you can get through any twenty-four-hour period without descending into chaos.”

  “Point well made, if a little harshly,” Mary answered as Pea arrived and placed their drinks before them. He sat heavily onto a battered wooden chair and sighed, his cheeks were flushed as red as his hair from the excitement and adrenaline of the auction, he looked tired.

  The three of them seemed to have been at the centre of a whirlwind since they had discovered a Fabergé egg thought to have been lost for over a hundred years. Mary and Pea’s grandfather had been entrusted the egg by a Russian man whose identity was unknown, their parents had later hidden it in the wall of a village graveyard. Now, brought back into the world from its hiding place by Mary, her brother Pea and her friend Dot, it had been identified as the Alexander III commemorative Fabergé egg, thought lost in the tumultuous fall of the Romanov’s as Russia’s ruling family. It had sold for twenty-one million dollars, and now they had to decide what they would do with it, and the rest of their lives.

  “So what about you big brother?” Mary said, turning to him. “You don’t have to worry about keeping the estate above water at least, but what next for it?”

  “I don’t want to run it at all anymore.”

  Mary blinked in surprise. “The estate?”

  Pea looked up at her. “Of course, the estate! I’m finally free of it!”

  “But I thought you enjoyed it?!”

  “Oh, really Mary,” Dot said with a tut and shake of her head. “For someone who professes to be such a people person, you do miss what’s right under your nose sometimes.”

  Mary’s gaze switched between her friend and her brother in confusion, causing Dot to roll her eyes.

  “Mary,” Pea said leaning forward, “I never wanted to run the estate, it was always dad’s thing, not mine.”

  “Then why on earth did you do it?!”

  Pea laughed. “Oh come on! You know it would have broken dad if I hadn’t taken it on. It was all he ever wanted. He wanted the family to stay at Blancham forever, and that would only happen if we could somehow make the estate self-sustaining.”

  “And now you have the money…” Mary said, thinking the implications of this through.

  “… I can hire a full-time estate manager,” Pea continued, “and finally do something I want to do.”

  As he spoke, his eyes glazed over, his voice trailing off.

  “So what’s that going to be?” Dot asked.

  “I have absolutely no idea,” he said in a hollow voice.

  “Well, that makes two of us,” Mary said, lifting her glass to clink against his.

  “Three actually,” Dot said, raising hers.

  “Do you know?” Mary said after a moment of silence, “There’s a saying that I think is appropriate right about now.” They both looked up at her expectantly. “They say that money can’t buy you happiness, but I’d like to test the theory.”

  The others laughed and suddenly the tension of the morning cleared as though a storm had released an oppressive humidity.

  Mary’s phone buzzed in her jeans’ pocket. She pulled it out and glanced at the number calling, unrecognised.

  “Hello?” she said, placing the device to her ear.

  “Mary? It’s Spencer, Spencer Harley.”

  Her brow wrinkled as she tried to place the name. “Spencer Harley?” she said, looking at Pea carefully to gauge his reaction.

  “Spencer from that holiday in France?” Pea said in a whisper, “With mum and dad?”

  “Yes,” Spencer continued, “I know it’s been a while, but I wondered if I could invite you down to my neck of the woods for the weekend?”

  “Oh, right,” Mary said, unsure of what to say.

  “There’s a restaurant down here that’s having an anniversary bash and thought you might want to join us?”

  “Right, well that sounds nice, but…”

  “I’ve seen you in the papers recently and I think it would be of some interest to you…”

  Mary paused. She had been in the papers recently. Being credited with catching the murderer of a young actress who was your arch-rival, tended to do that. Especially when soon after you discover a missing treasure of the art world.

  “Could you just hold on a moment?” she said before covering the mouthpiece.

  “It’s Spencer Harley, he wants me to go to some restaurant bash this weekend, something to do with me being in the paper.”

  “Say yes,” Dot said immediately. They both turned to her. “We’ve all just being saying that we need to figure out what we do next,” she said, “maybe we don’t need to figure it out, maybe we just need to go with the flow and see where it takes us. Ask if we can all come, I could do with a nice meal.”

  Mary’s mouth fell open at this unusually carefree attitude of her oldest friend, but she didn’t have time to be suspicious, Spencer was still on the phone.

  “Yes Spencer, that would be lovely,” she answered, eyeing Dot carefully. “Would it be ok if my brother and friend came along as well?”

  “Of course! The more the merrier! Let me give you the details.”