by Ruby Loren
The detective shook his head from side to side, looking like a bulldog with a flea in its ear. “It’s no such thing. There are no murders here. We live in a village! Crazy old Jim probably dug that hole himself and forgot where he’d left it.” Walter Miller flipped open his archaic notepad, scribbling something on a page. “It’s a shame, but accidents happen. I’ll inform his next of kin, so keep this under your hat until I have done so.” He shot me a suspicious look. “I’ll know exactly where to come if I even hear a whisper…”
I would have protested that I wasn’t a common gossip, but at that very moment, Deirdre O’Donnell walked up the path and screamed at the sight of Jim Holmes’ body in the hole. The detective raised his gaze to the sky before turning away from me and walking back to the distressed woman. I silently shook my head behind his back. I may not be a chatterbox, but Deirdre O’Donnell certainly was. Walter Miller would have to get his skates on if he wanted to be the one to break the news to Jim’s next of kin.
It was only then that I realised Deirdre’s appearance signalled I was going to be late for work. With the detective otherwise engaged in calming her down, I decided to consider myself dismissed. After all - Walter Miller, Merryfield’s finest, had already wrapped up the case and concluded it wasn’t murder, on the grounds that Jim had been old and with his fair share of eccentricities.
I took one last look at the scene of the crime before I carefully skirted the hole and walked back down the path that led out of the allotments. And I wondered who had wanted Jim Holmes to die.
2
Funeral Flowers
Work dragged on the way it usually did. Although I was glad to be away from my old life in London, which was where my life had so breathtakingly seemed to derail all at once, there were downsides to working in such a rural environment. Namely - nothing ever seemed to happen. I spent most of the day testing solutions and examining the quality of some potash (a potassium salt and common component in commercial fertilisers) under the microscope on autopilot with my mind firmly fixed on Jim Holmes’ fate.
There had been a lot of dirt and debris around the hole. Whoever had dug it had either done so in a hurry, or they’d thought that the heaps of soil would help to conceal the gaping pit until the last possible second. If it were the latter, then I was dealing with a cunning killer.
My brain kept coming back to the blackened leaves of the pumpkin plant. Jim was an expert vegetable grower. I knew there was no way he’d have made some kind of chemical error that would lead to that kind of damage to his prize pumpkin plant. I also would have heard if there was even the slightest sniff of disease on the allotments. With all of us sharing a space, any sign of sickly plants was treated with extreme suspicion, and the growers were expected to err heavily on the side of caution. Anyone who dared to keep a suspiciously unwell-looking plant would be ostracised and treated almost as if they were in quarantine. I’d actually seen one of the allotments penned off with plastic sheeting when one of the other allotment owners had taken it upon themselves to take action when the plant grower had not. That had led to a fiery allotments committee meeting.
All of the evidence present at the site of Jim’s death suggested an attempt at sabotage. If the police weren’t going to bother to investigate properly, I saw no reason why I couldn’t do a little digging of my own… especially as I’d already taken a sample of the dead leaves and the soil surrounding the affected pumpkin, prior to Walter MIller’s arrival. With all of the disturbed earth, I’d surmised that no one would notice… and with the police refusing to even consider that a crime might have been committed, I was surely correct in that assumption.
I raised my head and nodded at my colleague, Darrow, as he signalled that he was off for his lunch break. As soon as he was out of the door I took out my samples and got to work analysing them.
“Weedkiller,” I said the instant the chemical analysis came back. I could also see at a glance that it was one of the most common mixes used. It would be tough to trace this particular solution, and I suspected that the person responsible had known it.
But why was only one pumpkin plant affected in the whole patch? I wondered. And why poison a plant if you intend to kill the gardener?
I shook my head, realising I was close to exhausting my avenues of logical deduction. I didn’t have enough facts in place to get a clear picture of what had occurred at the allotments. All I had was the evidence of plant sabotage, the hole dug in the path, and a memory of Jim claiming he had enemies at the allotments who’d been using dirty tricks to put him out of the running for this year’s vegetable competition. At the time, I’d taken it with a fat grain of salt. More than that, I’d suspected Jim had probably been playing a few tricks of his own.
The soil sample hadn’t yielded anything beyond traces of the same substance. The rest consisted of the same mix of compounds my own allotment’s soil was formed of. The only major difference was a high level of phosphorous in the soil that I suspected was from an organic compound, potentially part of Jim’s secret plant food regime. Everyone at the allotments had known that Jim worked late into the evenings, so that no one would spy on him using his ‘magic plant potion’, as he’d always referred to it. Whatever it had been, it had always resulted in bumper crops of vegetables that had been hard to beat in competition.
I sighed and put the samples away just in time for Darrow’s punctual return. It was back to the daily grind for now. Mulling over murder would have to wait.
It was only later that day on my way back home that I thought of another possibility. The weedkiller had undeniably been aimed at Jim’s pumpkin plant, but the hole had been in the middle of a path that a few of us used. Jim, Deirdre, and I walked down the well-worn dirt track to access our individual allotments. Jim had been the one to fall into it, but it could have been any one of us. With Jim being known to stay at the allotment after dark, it was still most likely that it had been intended for him, but it was something to keep in mind. I might have enemies I didn’t even know existed.
I sighed and immediately let that theory go. There was nothing notorious about a chemist scraping out a living analysing fertiliser and soil composition in rural South East England. I was too boring to have enemies.
It was a strangely depressing thought.
I wasn’t sure what made me stop off at the allotments on my way home that evening. Perhaps, deep down, I had more ‘village gossip’ in me than I liked to think. I was the daughter of a pragmatic and efficient woman, but my father, when he’d lived in the village, had been both a pillar of the community and a great contributor to its rumour mill.
I told myself, firmly, that I was only there to check on the progress of some fickle alstroemeria. They had the potential to play a big part in my Harvest Festival bouquet submission (a less coveted prize than the vegetable competition, but one I had my heart set on winning) but they needed to start pulling their weight, or they’d have to go.
I heard the voices before I walked down the path where I’d found Jim that morning. One belonged to Deirdre - although she sounded a lot more agitated than she usually did. The other was a stranger to me.
“What do you mean you don’t know if the old coot owned this bit of land or if he rented it? You have the plot next to him! You must have talked about it,” a young woman, with hair a good shade more orange than mine, was saying.
Deirdre twisted her hands together whilst grey strands escaped from her practical bun. “I’m sorry, Nina, I don’t know. We used to discuss vegetables, not property.”
I walked out into view, hoping to diffuse the situation. “Hi, I’m Diana,” I said, introducing myself to the newcomer. Then I waited for her to introduce herself back.
“This is Nina. Jim’s granddaughter,” Deirdre supplied when the ginger woman remained silent and baleful.
“Not from around here,” I observed, knowing I hadn’t seen her before. Her attitude certainly wouldn’t have done well in Merryfield.
“Oh, that’s right!
All of you villagers are so cosy with each other. You think I don’t know that you’re all colluding behind my back! You just can’t stand an outsider.” She looked venomously from me to Deirdre, daring us to take her on.
I exchanged a look with my elderly allotment friend and noted the minute shrug she gave me. She’d already tried to talk some sense into this woman.
“I was the one who found your grandfather. I’m sorry it happened,” I told her, hoping that extending the olive branch would go in my favour.
She sniffed in a manner that suggested anything but sorrow. “Well, it was always going to happen one of these days, wasn’t it? He was positively ancient.”
I bit my tongue to keep from commenting. Jim had been in his seventies, which was hardly ancient in this day and age.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked, deciding to bite the bullet. I could always say no.
Nina seemed to puff herself up and stand a little taller, trying to gain some height over me. I am not short at five-foot-nine so she had a task ahead of her. “You must know if the old man owned the allotment outright? I know he’d paid off his cottage in town, but the old codger was supposed to have bags of money. That’s what my mum always said.”
I sifted through and found the question in amongst the other chatter. “I’m afraid I have no idea. It’s just as Deirdre said - we only talked about our plants.” It was the truth. I believed that, to some extent, everyone in the allotments wanted to escape from something. Sometimes it was an overbearing partner, sometimes it was simply an escape to some place out in the fresh air where you could grow something of your very own. It was an unspoken rule that no one talked about their non-plant related lives - unless something significant happened. I suspected that Jim Holmes’ death would probably be one such exception.
Nina made a sound of disgust and threw her hands up in the air. “Fine. I guess I’ll wait,” she said and then marched back down the path and out of view.
“What did we say wrong?” I asked Deirdre, just to take the tension out of the air. I’d already guessed the real purpose of Nina’s visit.
“Some people are just selfish, aren’t they?” she replied, shaking her grey head. “I hope he hasn’t left her a dime.”
“I wasn’t aware he had anything much to leave.”
Deirdre removed her glasses, giving them a good polish. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she said, vaguely enough to hint that the matter was a complicated one, and all was not as it seemed.
“Did the police fill the hole in?” I asked, deciding a fresh topic was probably what was needed.
“Yes, dear. They said it was a danger to public health. After Jim’s accident, I’m sure they were right about that.”
I clenched my teeth together for a moment, silently lamenting that Merryfield had been stuck with a duffer like Walter Miller leading their police force. “Did they investigate first?”
Deirdre looked surprised. “Walter said it was an accident. He thinks that Jim dug the hole, forgot about it, and then tumbled into it himself.”
“Then where was the spade?” I pointed out.
My allotment neighbour shook her head. “Heavens! I don’t know. You know Jim always borrowed your spade, as he preferred his trowel for most jobs. I assume yours hasn’t gone missing?” I did some head shaking of my own. I’d already checked. “But you have to trust their judgement in these things, don’t you?”
I wasn’t going to share my thoughts on that.
“Do you know who Jim thought was sabotaging his vegetables? I noticed that his best pumpkin had some dead leaves on it.” I didn’t want to mention weedkiller immediately.
Deirdre looked more alarmed than when I’d hinted that I thought Jim’s death needed investigating. “You don’t think it’s a disease, do you?”
I shook my head, certain of the cause behind the plant’s demise.
Deirdre looked relieved. Although I didn’t talk about much more than plants with the majority of allotment owners and leasers, Deirdre was well-acquainted with my mother and knew what I did for a living. Since I’d been growing flowers, she’d gained a respect for my ability to figure out what was ailing a plant based on chemical indicators.
“Well, at least that’s something,” she said. “I’m not sure that I paid too much attention to whom Jim may have accused of trifling with him. You know how he was…”
I nodded. “I suppose I’ll have to ask around,” I mused, privately thinking that part of my ‘asking around’ would involve trying to garner a look into the many sheds that resided on the allotments. Perhaps I could discover whose contained weedkiller.
“You might want to start with Byron Keller. He and Jim have been feuding on and off for years.” Deirdre fixed me with a sharp look through her spectacles. “You don’t really think this is anything more than an accident, do you?”
“People care a lot about that competition.”
Deirdre inclined her head. “They do, but I would hope that no one would go that far. I’d be far more inclined to suspect another motive… if it was murder, that is.” For a moment she looked dreamy. I was reminded of the stack of mystery novels that lived in the shed on her allotment. Deirdre was a diehard Agatha Christie fan. “I’d be looking at whoever is set to inherit it all. Someone who might have got tired of waiting.” She arched her eyebrows at me.
“That may be something to think about,” I replied, noncommittal. Unfortunately, the motive, and whether or not it was even murder, was beyond me. Just because I hadn’t liked Jim’s granddaughter didn’t mean she was a killer. She could just be an odious person with no ill-intent beyond self-interest, now that her relative had passed on. To me, she’d seemed more like a vulture than a snake, but if there were facts that suggested otherwise, I’d revise my opinion.
However, I did have irrefutable evidence of foul play, and during my conversation with Deirdre I’d made up my mind. I was going to the police.
“That’s nuts. It’s the nuttiest thing I’ve heard.”
I frowned whilst Walter Miller chortled to himself. So much for the police being impartial judges of evidence! I shot a hopeful look in the direction of Walter Miller’s only colleague, Daniel Herald, with whom I’d never particularly had much to do, beyond the usual village ‘good mornings’.
He looked away.
I was on my own.
“What is your explanation for the hole suddenly appearing in the path? No one on the allotments has any right to be digging there, unless it was dug for a nefarious reason,” I tried again, exasperated by the lack of open-mindedness to the possibility of murder. I’d just shared my evidence of the presence of weedkiller on Jim’s allotment and had requested that they investigate anyone who might be storing weedkiller on the allotments. If this really was about the village veg competition, then I doubted we were dealing with a master criminal. These acts had probably been committed by someone who Jim had angered, only for them to lash out with fatal consequences.
“Most of the allotments crowd are old. One of them probably forgot where they were and dug the hole, just because. Your fancy analysis just tells me that ol’ Jim must have got his plant food and plant killer in a muddle.” Walter Miller sat back in his chair and then plonked his feet up on his desk.
I realised I was being dismissed.
With a not so subtle sigh, I turned on my heel and walked out of the police station. Why was I even getting involved in any of this? Jim had been a good mentor to me at the beginning. I’d liked him, in spite of his rather obvious flaws. I supposed I just didn’t like the thought of someone getting away with murder and benefitting from their ill-gotten gains - not when there was actual evidence that foul play had taken place. Someone should at least look into it.
“Diana! Diana!”
I turned around to find out who was calling my name. Freya Wirral, the Merryfield chapel’s verger, exited the police station and trotted along the lane after me. “I couldn’t help but overhear,” she said, puffing a lit
tle when she arrived by my side.
“It was a pretty loud conversation,” I replied with a friendly smile. I was hoping to make up for the fact that I hadn’t even noticed the presence of the small, mousey woman when I’d been inside the station. Perhaps I should be worried about my observational skills, but I could remember times from my younger years spent at Sunday morning services when Freya forever seemed to be getting accidentally sat on, or having doors shut in her face. People simply didn’t notice her.
“I just wanted to tell you that I think you’re right. I was talking to Deirdre about it and she thinks so, too. We all know Jim rubbed people up the wrong way sometimes. I think he must have gone too far. Someone snapped and murdered him.” Her eyes grew large behind her oversized glasses, making her look like a small owl.
I silently took her words with a pinch of salt, knowing full-well that both she and Deirdre were part of the Merryfield Murder Mystery Fans’ book club. I had no doubt that Jim Holmes’ untimely death had been the hot topic at last night’s meeting.
“That Walter Miller doesn’t have a clue about how seriously we villagers take the Harvest Festival competition. But then, he wouldn’t know, being an outsider…” she continued.
