Murder at Hawthorn Cottage: An absolutely gripping cozy mystery (A Melissa Craig Mystery Book 1)

by Betty Rowlands

  Murder at Hawthorn Cottage

  An absolutely gripping cozy mystery

  Betty Rowlands

  Also by Betty Rowlands

  THE MELISSA CRAIG SERIES

  Murder at Hawthorn Cottage

  Murder in the Morning

  Murder on the Clifftops

  Murder at the Manor Hotel

  Contents

  Author Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Murder in the Morning

  Hear More from Betty

  Also by Betty Rowlands

  A Letter From Betty

  Murder on the Clifftops

  Author Note

  The villages of Upper and Lower Benbury are not to be found on any map of the Cotswolds. They, their inhabitants, and all other characters and establishments mentioned in this book are entirely fictitious.

  One

  Early in March, Melissa Craig parcelled up the manuscript of her latest crime novel and sent it to her agent with a covering letter.

  Dear Joe,

  Don’t expect to hear from me again for a few weeks as I’ll be getting ready to move house. Everything’s a bit fraught at the moment but I’m looking forward more than I can tell you to a peaceful country existence. The cottage is a dream. It’s just outside a village called Upper Benbury, one of a pair wedged into the side of a valley with a brook running along the bottom. Idyllic! I’ve only got one near neighbour — in the adjoining cottage — but I haven’t met her yet. I’m told she’s an artist who winters abroad. She sounds interesting.

  Yours,

  Melissa

  As an afterthought, she added:

  PS There’s a disused shepherd’s hut about a quarter of a mile along the valley. It’s tumbledown, rather smelly and a bit spooky when the wind blows in a certain direction and howls through the holes in the roof. An ideal location for the discovery of a corpse, don’t you think?

  Finding the cottage had been a piece of serendipity, the result of stooping to pick up a fallen glove outside the window of an estate agent in Bristol where she had been doing some research. As she straightened up, her eye fell on a photograph, taken on a bright winter’s morning when snow hid the broken tiles and the shadows were tinted with the blue of the sky. There was a bird-bath on the lawn and a nesting-box nailed to an apple tree. Add a robin and a sentimental message, she remembered thinking, and you have a Christmas card.

  There was no bright sunlight and no snow that grey December afternoon but she had finished her research, had a couple of hours to spare and, on impulse, asked to view the property. It lay at the end of a rough track in which potholes had been crudely repaired with rubble and it slumped against its well-maintained partner like a drunk leaning on a friendly shoulder. The nesting-box had slewed sideways and the many weeds and a few unhappy-looking plants in the garden lay flattened and soggy on the saturated earth. The interior was even more dilapidated — peeling plaster, a smell of damp and only the most basic amenities. But Melissa did not need the assurances of the agent — young, enthusiastic and full of plans for what he called ‘tasteful renovation’ — to realise the possibilities. By the time she returned to London she had taken the first tentative steps to becoming the owner.

  It was a blue and gold April morning when she took possession. Having spent the night in a nearby inn, she arrived at the cottage a good hour before the furniture van was due. Just as well, she reflected, noting the clutch of empty paint tins in the kitchen, the scattering of loose nails over unswept floors and the dusty huddle of discarded packing material in the grate. The builder had promised to send in a cleaner the day before. He had also promised to arrange for a delivery of oil for the central heating boiler. Melissa went outside and rapped the bottom of the oil tank with her knuckles. Its echoing emptiness proclaimed a further broken promise.

  At least the telephone had been installed. She rang the builder to draw his attention to the deficiencies.

  ‘Thought it was the twelfth you were moving in,’ he said cheerfully.

  ‘Today is the twelfth,’ Melissa pointed out.

  ‘What? Oh — so it is. Sorry about that. Want me to send someone up later on?’

  ‘Later on will be too late — my furniture will be here in an hour,’ said Melissa frostily. ‘It’s just as well I brought some cleaning materials with me. Now, what about the oil?’

  ‘What oil?’ He sounded nonplussed, as if expecting to hear that a drilling rig had appeared overnight in the garden.

  ‘The heating oil you were going to have delivered yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, that oil. Hasn’t it come?’

  ‘It has not. When was it ordered?’

  ‘Er — have to ask the girl. She’s not in at the moment. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Don’t bother!’ Melissa slammed down the telephone in a fury. Fortunately she remembered the name of the oil merchant. She reached for the directory, brushed off the layer of gritty dust, checked the number and was about to pick up the receiver when the bell started ringing. The sound echoed in the empty room, making her jump.

  ‘Hello!’ she said, half-expecting to hear the voice of the builder.

  For a moment, no one answered. She could hear faint sounds of movement, as if the hand holding the receiver the other end was shifting its grip.

  ‘Hello!’ she said sharply. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Babs?’ It was a man’s voice, low and urgent. ‘Babs, I must see you!’

  ‘I think you’ve got . . .’ Melissa began but the caller hurried on, ignoring her interruption.

  ‘Tonight . . . I’ll come to the usual place. Be there, please!’ Halfway through, the voice began to waver. On the final word it cracked altogether.

  ‘Just a minute!’ Melissa raised her own voice in an effort to stem the tide of grief spilling from the instrument. ‘I’m not Babs . . . you have the wrong number . . . hello!’ But the man had hung up.

  The receiver rested in Melissa’s hand, gently purring where a moment ago it had sobbed out a man’s anguish. It was a disturbing start to the day. First a series of blunders by the builder, now a stranger beseeching her to meet him. It troubled her to think that somewhere that evening a distraught lover would wait in vain for his Babs to turn up. If he had stopped to listen, she could at least have spared him that.

  She glanced at her watch. It was nearly nine fifteen and the removal men were supposed to be here by ten. The place was a shambles, unfit to receive furniture. The oil would have to wait.

  It was nearly ten thirty when the van came bumping along the track leading to the cottage. By that time, Melissa had managed to get most of the builder’s rubbish into plastic sacks outside the back door, sweep the floors and wipe the worst of the dust from shelves and window-sills. The immersion heater had provided plenty of hot water and she had brought with her in the car a supply of detergent and teacloths. At least she was ready to wash and put away the unbelie
vable quantity of crockery, glassware and kitchen utensils that would soon have to be disinterred from newspaper-filled tea-chests. She thought with nostalgia of her orderly London flat and wondered what had possessed her to leave it.

  ‘Sorry we’re late — had a job to find it,’ apologised the foreman. He took a quick look round, raising his eyebrows at the sight of the bare boards.

  ‘It would have been nice to get the carpets fitted before I moved in,’ agreed Melissa, reading his thoughts. ‘But the building work was delayed and anyway the shop couldn’t deliver the carpet in time.’

  The foreman scratched his head and grinned. ‘Usual story,’ he commented. He cast an experienced eye around him and added, ‘at least they left it clean.’

  ‘They did nothing of the kind!’ snorted Melissa. ‘You should have seen it an hour ago!’

  The man chuckled. ‘DIY job, eh? Well, let’s get on with it then — if you’ll just tell us where everything’s to go.’

  By three o’clock the van had left. Melissa sank wearily into an armchair in the sitting-room and contemplated the surrounding chaos. There was so much to do, so much of it needing to be done before life could become anything like normal. She remembered the day she first viewed the cottage. She had stood in this room, with its stone fireplace and wooden beams, its low ceilings and its unspoilt view across the valley, imagining herself living there with her own belongings around her. In her enthusiasm, her almost superstitious certainty that she had been meant to find this place, it had been easy to see beyond the crumbling plaster, the festoons of bare wires and the rotting floorboards and window-frames. On her second visit, so much had been done that she was impatient to take possession. She had measured for curtains and planned where she would arrange her furniture. Bookshelves in the alcoves on either side of the chimney, her desk by the window. Deep soft cushions on the window-seats and a standard lamp behind her favourite chair by the fire. Pictures on the walls.

  Now she was faced with the reality. The furniture was arranged, more or less as she had envisaged, but of course it would all have to be pushed around when the carpet fitters came. The books were still in boxes and couldn’t be unpacked until the shelves were fitted. There were no hooks for the pictures and anyway the walls would need another coat of emulsion where the painters had skimped their task. Melissa tried not to think of the stack of unwashed kitchen items littering every available surface, nor the bags and boxes waiting to be unpacked. She felt grubby, longed for a shower but felt unable to face the task of making the bathroom fit to use. And she was hungry, having had nothing since breakfast but a cheese sandwich and countless mugs of watery coffee.

  She was pulled back from the edge of self-pity by a knock at the door. The visitor was a woman of about fifty and even before she introduced herself, Melissa had no doubt who she was. With her bobbed mouse-brown hair held in place by tortoiseshell slides and her shapeless plaid pinafore dress worn over a close-fitting sweater, she was the archetypical ‘arty’ character of an amateur stage production. But she had fine features and a clear, tanned skin, her grey eyes were intelligent and humorous and there was genuine friendliness in her smile.

  ‘Iris Ash,’ said the newcomer, holding out a thin brown hand. ‘Next door,’ she explained with a jerk of the head. ‘Just popped in to say hello. Expect you’re in a pickle.’ Her glance, sliding over Melissa’s shoulder and back, seemed to encompass the entire chaotic interior of the cottage and her mouth formed a sympathetic grimace. ‘Beastly business, moving house.’

  ‘It certainly is!’ Iris’s handclasp was firm, strong, and immensely comforting in its warmth. ‘I’m Melissa Craig, I’m so pleased to meet you. Won’t you come in?’

  Iris shook her head. ‘Not now. Only be in the way. Came to ask if you’d care to have supper with me.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’ Melissa had a steak in the refrigerator but had already been dreading the prospect of preparing her own meal at the end of a hard day. ‘I’d like that, thank you very much.’

  ‘Vegetarian,’ Iris explained. ‘Nuts and beans. Things from the garden. Lots of roughage.’

  ‘Oh, er, that’s fine,’ said Melissa, trying to sound as if she meant it. She was committed now and there was always cheese and biscuits if she felt hungry later on.

  ‘About six thirty, then.’ Iris turned on her heel and marched back to her own cottage. Her walk was stiff and erect and she swung her arms like a child playing at soldiers.

  ‘Nice,’ said Melissa to herself as she closed the door and set about her tasks with renewed optimism. ‘Eccentric but nice.’

  Two

  By half past five, Melissa had finished the washing-up and put everything away. She unpacked and stowed her groceries, adding yet another empty cardboard carton to the growing pile outside the back door. She hung the cream curtains, sprigged with blue and yellow flowers and chosen to blend with her crockery and the new vinyl floor tiles. She set a pot plant on the window-sill and stood in the doorway for a few moments to admire the effect.

  The window looked out over the long strip of garden at the side of the cottage. The little plot had once been laid out with a lawn, flower-beds and fruit bushes but now it was badly overgrown, mutely begging for someone to care for it. Well, there would be time for that in the weeks to come. A large, fluffy cat was picking its way along a mossy path, ears pricked and tail twitching, while a blackbird piped an alarm from among the tight pink buds on the apple tree. Melissa gave a contented sigh. This was her home. Here, she could put down roots, get everyone off her back and be herself.

  It was time to tackle the bathroom. She decided to treat herself to a good long soak instead of a hasty shower and hummed a tune as she rinsed away the ubiquitous dust before filling the bath and lowering herself with thankfulness into the steaming water.

  A little before half past six she emerged from her front door and stood for a moment looking across the valley, which lay sunning itself in the warm golden light of evening. On the opposite slope, in the path of the slowly advancing shadow of a clump of trees, a flock of sheep nibbled at the grass while their young pranced and played around them. Some children in bright sweaters and gum-boots were prodding with sticks at something in the stream, their high young voices cutting through the clear air.

  A gravelled track ran from the lane as far as the end of Melissa’s garden. It widened out at the end and became a turning space, roughly reinforced with broken bricks and rubble. Beyond was a hawthorn hedge, green with new growth, through which a stile gave access to a path running down to the valley bottom. She strolled up to it and turned back to look at Hawthorn Cottage, indulging for a few moments in the pride of ownership. Not a rented flat belonging to some faceless landlord but her property. Created, like its fellow, from two minuscule labourers’ dwellings, it was the first piece of real-estate that she had ever possessed in her forty-four . . . no, nearly forty-five years.

  Behind the cottages rose a steep, sheltering bank dotted with brambles. There would be blackberries in the autumn, and apples from her garden. She would try her hand at making bramble jelly. No doubt Iris would give her some hints. Birds would move into the nesting-box that she had beguiled the carpenter to repair and refix.

  The sun gleamed on the brass knocker on the newly painted front door and on the windows that still bore the smears and puttied fingermarks left by the glaziers. Another job that the builder had promised — and failed — to take care of. If Aubrey were here they wouldn’t have got away with so much . . . but this wasn’t the time to think about Aubrey.

  ‘Hello!’ called a voice. Iris was leaning over her garden fence and waving a bunch of greenery. ‘Just been cutting a few herbs. Nothing like fresh herbs. Come on in!’ She indicated a white-painted wooden gate and led the way along a gravel path to the rear of the cottage.

  ‘Your back yard’s a lot tidier than mine!’ remarked Melissa, surveying with some envy the trim space enclosed by whitewashed walls. ‘The builders have left an awful lot of r
ubbish for me to get rid of.’

  ‘Make ’em come and clear it away,’ Iris advised.

  Outside the back door was a small lobby of brick and glass where shelves were stacked with scrubbed flowerpots and garden tools. Iris kicked off her muddy shoes and shoved her bony feet into wooden sandals. She still wore the plaid pinafore dress, which was not long enough to conceal the ladder in her tights.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind coming through the kitchen,’ she said.

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Melissa. ‘My kitchen’s the only room I’d care for anyone to see at the moment.’ She turned to close the door and the fluffy-haired cat slid through just in time. ‘Oh, is he yours?’

  ‘That’s my Binkie!’ said Iris in an infantile voice as the cat, purring vigorously, wound itself in a figure of eight round her legs. ‘Who’s a greedy boy then, he’s had his tea!’ The cat regarded her with expressionless yellow eyes, then stalked away and disappeared through a half-open door leading out of the kitchen. Resuming her normal voice and expression, Iris threw her bouquet of herbs into a colander and turned on the tap. ‘Just wash these off before chopping ’em,’ she explained. ‘Drink before we eat?’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Melissa, curious to know what kind of brew she was going to be offered. She scanned the little kitchen with interest and some surprise. She had half-expected a cluttered and slightly old-world interior but it seemed to contain every imaginable modern fitting and piece of equipment, all spanking new. If, as the estate agent had asserted, Iris was an artist, she would seem to be a successful one.