Trick or Murder?: A Sophie Sayers Village Mystery (Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries Book 2)

by Debbie Young

  “I don’t think you’re ever too old for sparklers,” I said, as we surreptitiously edged our way towards the bonfire. “I don’t blame Tommy for being upset at being left out. I wish I had one.”

  Hector smiled. “Me too. I always think of sparklers as the warm-up exercise for the proper fireworks. They bring a pleasure out of all proportion to their size, because the experience is bound up with the anticipation of bigger thrills yet to come. They wouldn’t be anywhere near so much fun afterwards.”

  I flinched as one or two children ran perilously close to the flares. “Maybe Mrs Broom should have made the children tie their hair back first, like we used to have to do for science and technology lessons to stop us inadvertently torching ourselves with Bunsen burners.”

  Too late we realised we’d missed our chance. Because the sparklers the vicar had provided were the shortest, cheapest ones, they all died out very quickly, and the children rushed forward to throw the bent bits of steel on the bonfire, making it the focus of everybody’s attention. There was no chance of us raiding it unseen now.

  36 Ignition, Blast Off!

  The vicar emerged from the crowd again and raised his voice. “And now to ignite the conflagration, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls.”

  The crowd surged forward in anticipation, until the vicar held up his hands for silence. I thought for a moment he was going to say grace.

  “Please, everyone, remain on the patio for your own safety, until the bonfire is well and truly ablaze.”

  “So we can all get thoroughly roasted after that,” muttered a cynical voice at my elbow. “You’d think a vicar could choose his words more carefully.”

  “Hello, Dinah. Having fun?” I asked.

  “Hmm, well, I’m enjoying the punch bowl.” The Chair of the Wendlebury Writers raised her glass to me. Her girlfriend – the same lady that I’d seen with her at the Village Show drinking chardonnay from a bottle through a straw – nodded her agreement. I saw from her glass that the colour of the punch had changed since we’d got ours. I raised mine, nearly empty now, in return. I liked this lady, who seemed to be brightening Dinah’s outlook on life a little.

  “Stand well back, children.” Mrs Broom’s voice became uncharacteristically high pitched as the vicar uprooted a flare and held it to the row of books at the base of the bonfire.

  The crowd held its collective breath, waiting for the first flame to catch. “I’m going to have to sneak round to pull one out from the back,” Hector whispered, sidling away from me. “If you need to, create a diversion so no-one sees me. Perhaps pretend to faint.”

  The flare continued to blaze merrily, but summoned only a little puff of opaque dove-grey smoke from the uncooperative books.

  “Must be Fifty Shades of Grey,” said one of the dads in the crowd, and all the adults laughed, plus more of the teenagers than ought to have got the joke.

  “They’re probably too densely packed to go up in flames.” I recognised Trevor’s voice of authority as a responsible builder used to disposing safely of waste. “Not enough oxygen in between the layers. Still, they’ll protect your lawn when the fire does eventually take off, vicar. Keep it cool beneath the ashes. It’ll be nice and green in the morning when you clear them all away again.”

  “You’d do better to start by igniting the guys rather than the books.” This was Stanley. “Their straw stuffing should go up a treat, and the rest of the bonfire will soon catch.”

  The vicar, apparently enjoying the attention of an unusually large congregation, began to work the crowd as if he was playing pantomime, which was surprising, considering he’d just banned the school’s one. Stagily, he feigned coyness.

  “All these beautiful guys? No, I don’t think so. Not after all the time you’ve spent making them, my friends.” He lowered the flare theatrically. “Do you think so?”

  He raised it teasingly towards Joshua’s guy’s flat cap. “Maybe I’ll just give him a bit of a headache, eh?”

  A couple of mums at the front of the crowd covered their young children’s eyes with their hands.

  “Oh dear me, I can’t decide! What shall I do?” The vicar left an empty silence, which of course the crowd was happy to fill. “Burn him! Burn him!”

  I heard Dinah muttering beside me, “Bloody savages.”

  Her girlfriend put one hand on her arm in comfort. “Not really, Dinah. You know they’re all perfectly nice.”

  Dinah raised her eyebrows dismissively. “It smacks of Lord of the Flies, if you ask me.”

  We all gazed at the fire, transfixed. The vicar continued to wave the torch around the Joshua guy like some kind of medieval torturer, totally in control of his audience.

  Suddenly he lost the upper hand. Not literally – I don’t mean he set fire to himself. But from within the bonfire came a terrible roar, and a familiar figure in a khaki parka rose from the mound of scarecrows at the vicar’s feet.

  Tommy Crowe had patiently concealed himself among the guys while the rest of us were watching the children play with the sparklers. He raised his arms and roared like a cartoon King Kong, eliciting screams from the crowd. Several small children and one or two mums burst into horrified tears. The vicar dropped the flare on his foot and immediately had to stamp hard on it with the other one to extinguish his flaming shoelaces. Then he recovered himself, retrieved his still burning flare and held it up over his head threateningly, as if about to lead Transylvanian villagers to storm Baron Frankenstein’s Castle.

  “Tommy Crowe! Is that your gratitude for all the kindness I’ve shown you this last week?”

  Tommy stepped down from the pyre, dusted himself off and shot the vicar a withering glance. “Can’t you take a joke?”

  He strolled off nonchalantly into the crowd, where he was variously slapped about the head by defensive mums of small children and patted on the back by teenagers and those adults who enjoyed a good fright now and again. Others were laughing and heckling.

  “Trust Tommy Crowe to keep the vicar on his toes.”

  “Serve him right.”

  Dinah’s girlfriend took a more conciliatory approach. “It would have saved a lot of trouble if the vicar had just given the boy a sparkler.”

  I hoped she was going to stick around.

  Eventually the hubbub died down, and the vicar regained his composure. He held the flare aloft once more to command the crowd’s attention.

  “Now, seeing as I’m not having much luck, perhaps someone else would like to do the honours? I don’t see why I should have all the fun. Tommy?”

  Impressed by the speed of what I hoped was the vicar’s forgiveness, I was disappointed when it became clear that Tommy was no longer in earshot. I assumed he had slunk off home, contrite, or been sent home in disgrace by his mother.

  “Anyone care to volunteer?” asked the vicar, and dozens of small hands shot up.

  Mrs Broom gestured to the children to lower them again. “I think we’d better leave this to a grown-up.”

  Then Billy was pushed out into the clearing by several of his drinking pals. “Go on, Bill. You always liked playing with matches!” In that moment, I realised Billy must have been the Tommy Crowe of his generation.

  Billy put up a brief and unconvincing display of resistance before trudging forward, his wellies leaving pudgy footprints on the damp grass. Accepting the vicar’s proffered flare, Billy made a big show of walking around the front of the bonfire a couple of times, searching for the most likely place to start. Neep meanwhile disappeared into the shadows.

  When Billy touched the flare to some of the guys, he succeeded only in shedding light on them rather than setting them on fire. “Too bloody damp, vicar. We’re going to need a bit of help.” He turned to appeal to the crowd. “Anyone got any petrol on them?”

  There was a surge of admonitions at his characteristic recklessness, probably one reason for his reputation since boyhood.

  Billy waved away the crowd’s derision. “Only joking, ain’t I?” He stepped for
ward again, torch held out in front of him. He was well camouflaged by the pile of battered figures in frayed clothes. “Hang on, though, there’s one here that looks a bit too lifelike for my liking.”

  More catcalls from the crowd.

  “Not as funny second time round.”

  “Been there, done that.”

  “Run out of jokes of your own?”

  Just then, Hector emerged from behind the bonfire. He detoured to me, pulled one of my hands behind my back, and pressed what I could feel was a book into it.

  “Keep it hidden,” he hissed.

  Meanwhile Billy had pulled himself up to his full height and plunged the flare back into the ground beside him. “Well, I’m having its shiny shoes first. No point burning ’em.”

  Stanley peeled off from the crowd, directing his torch on to the guy’s feet like a spotlight to give Billy a second opinion on the shoes.

  “You’re right, Bill, they’re too good to burn.”

  Billy jostled up against him. “I saw ’em first, Stan. If they’re my size, I’m taking ’em off his hands.”

  “Feet,” said Stanley. “You mean feet.”

  Billy bent down, removed the guy’s shoes and held them up to show the crowd like a trophy. If this was going to turn into a low-budget makeover for Billy, it might take some time.

  Stanley swung the torch back on to the unshod guy.

  “Not sure about his socks, though,” he added. “A bit garish for you, Bill.”

  I let out a scream.

  Hector grabbed my arm and hissed in my ear, “It’s OK, Sophie, no need for diversion tactics now. We’ve got the book, and we were right about it.”

  Trembling, I backed away, pointing at the guy’s familiar lime green feet. “I recognise those socks. That’s no guy. It’s the publisher’s rep who was in the bookshop on Thursday. He told me he was on his way to the vicarage, but it looks as if Mr Neep’s murdered him.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Bob stepped forward from the crowd, pushed Stanley and Billy aside and bent down to reach up inside the unshod guy’s trouser leg. I wondered for a moment whether it was a party trick, and he was about to produce the guy’s underpants without removing his trousers. Then he leapt to his feet in surprise, and turned to slap Billy on the lapel with the back of his hand.

  “Sophie’s bloody right, mate. This one is as much flesh and blood as I am.”

  37 The Warm-up Guy

  “No wonder those shoes were a bit whiffy,” said Stanley.

  Bob bent down once more and laid a hand on the bare ankle.

  “Whoever he is, he’s a damn sight colder than he ought to be, but I don’t think he’s quite dead yet.” He tugged on the rep’s legs to wrench the body from beneath the pile of guys and dragged him on to the lawn, where Billy ripped off the plastic mask that had been used to disguise the man’s face. I crept a little closer to scrutinise his features.

  “That’s the rep all right,” I faltered.

  “And this is Septimus Vance,” said Hector, taking the book back from my hands and holding it aloft to display the title to the crowd. “The alter ego of the Reverend Neep, who a few years ago was tried and found innocent of murdering his wife in a bonfire, after the case was thrown out of court due to some procedural errors.” He turned the book round to show the author photo on the back, undeniably Mr Neep. “Though why he’d want to murder a publisher’s rep I have no idea.”

  I stepped forward. “I can prove the rep’s identity too. He’s bound to have business cards in his pocket. Reps always do.” I knelt at the unconscious man’s side, slipped my hand into his jacket pocket, and with a flourish pulled out a black plastic card case. I flipped it open and held it up victoriously. “See?”

  Hector steadied my hand to examine the card case by the light of his torch app. “Actually, I think you’ve just proved that he’s not a rep at all, but a policeman. That’s a police detective’s ID card for one Detective Constable Simon Yardley.” He looked up. “I remember now from the newspaper reports, that was the name of Vance’s brother-in-law. I’m guessing he came here in plain clothes, hot on the trail of Septimus Vance under his new identity, though not quite as hot as Vance had planned him to be.”

  Bob took the card from him to examine it. “Nope, that style of ID card was superseded a few years ago. He won’t have been here on official police business. In any case, a detective would be unlikely to operate alone, and he certainly couldn’t disappear for a couple of days while on a case without someone noticing.”

  “Perhaps he left the force after his breakdown following Vance’s trial,” said Hector. “He was convinced Vance was guilty and must have come to seek private retribution.”

  “Goodness, how horrified he must have been to discover Vance had disguised himself as the Reverend Neep,” I said.

  “I bloody told you Neep weren’t a proper vicar,” said Billy indignantly. “I knows a proper vicar when I sees one!”

  “But why try to pass himself off as one?” I asked.

  Hector looked stumped. “I really don’t know. But let’s worry about that later. First priority is to check that Yardley of the Yard here hasn’t been another murder victim.”

  Stanley marshalled the crowd to tend to the casualty. “OK, folks, clear a space. Let’s get him up to the patio for a bit of first aid while he’s still breathing. Larry, Ron, Trevor, Steve, go and dismantle the rest of the bonfire, would you? We’d better make sure there aren’t any more dead bodies tucked away in there.”

  Bob slipped Simon Yardley’s card into his own pocket. “And I think I’d better take Mr Neep into custody for questioning in connection with the attempted murder of Mr Yardley here.”

  But Septimus Vance was nowhere to be seen.

  38 Not Much Cop

  Soon all the other guys lay in neat rows across the lawn, making it look like a makeshift battlefield morgue. It took a while for a team of volunteers to confirm that none of them had ever had a pulse.

  The crowd parted like the Red Sea to allow Stanley and his team to carry DC Yardley to the patio, where they lay him down on a picnic table bathed in security lights. Many of the villagers, fearing the worst, retreated indoors, parents with their arms around sobbing children.

  “These naughty men have spoiled our bonfire!” wailed one small boy. I was glad that the true reason for the destruction of the bonfire had passed him by.

  Holding tightly on to Hector’s hand, I crept forward towards the inert figure. As we got close enough to see, I clapped my hand over my mouth too late to mute a loud gasp of horror. He looked in a very bad way, a shadow of the man I’d met in the shop.

  Billy looked at me over his shoulder.

  “Go on, girlie, let it rip. That might bring him back from the dead. Got any smelling salts on you?”

  “When was the last time women carried smelling salts in their handbags?” asked Dinah, who had followed close behind me. “Smelling salts, my foot!”

  Billy was unperturbed. “Well, if you’ve got smelly feet, take your shoes off and walk this way. That might do the job just as well.”

  Dinah’s girlfriend sweetly came to her defence. “She really hasn’t, you know.”

  Bob returned after a circuit of the garden, unable to find Vance, and radioed for police reinforcements before going off again to continue his search. Meanwhile, Carol phoned the village doctor, who was spending the evening at home. He didn’t care for fireworks, having seen too many times the injuries they’d caused. On arrival at the vicarage, the doctor quickly checked the detective’s vital signs, found a faint pulse in his neck, and called an ambulance. Then he called me over for more information.

  “So, what do you know about our friend here, Sophie?”

  “Nothing at all. Even what I thought I knew was wrong. I assumed he was a publisher’s rep when he called into the shop asking about a local author I’d never heard of. No wonder he didn’t seem much cop at his job. When he left the shop, he told me he was meeting a friend at the vi
carage.”

  Hector came to join us, waving the book he’d retrieved from the bonfire. “This won’t tell you about Detective Constable Yardley, doctor, but it will tell you more about who he was looking for.”

  He held up the back cover to show a photo of an airbrushed younger Mr Neep with jet black hair and a toothbrush moustache. “This is Septimus Vance, who tried to palm me off with a box full of his abysmal autobiographies a few years ago, in the bookshop I worked in before Hector’s House. He is an arrogant and unpleasant man, and it looks like he tried to disguise Simon Yardley as a guy and dispose of his body in the bonfire.”

  Carol was fanning her face with a paper plate. She must have realised she’d had a lucky escape.

  Hector gazed at the photo on the book again. “Vance looked very different back then, but even so, I’m kicking myself for not recognising him. Perhaps I could have prevented all this unpleasantness. I’m sorry.”

  Billy quickly came to Hector’s defence. “It’s not your fault, young Hector. I blame the bloody Bishop. Why would the diocese send us a suspected murderer to tend to its flock? And if you’re going to pretend to be someone else, why pick a daft name like Neep? I mean, if I were going to change my name, I’d make it something rugged like De Niro. Or I could be Billy Depp.”

  The doctor, meanwhile, continued to monitor DC Yardley’s vital signs. He held open his patient’s eyelids in turn, peering into them with a small medical torch.

  “I think he’s been heavily dosed with some kind of sedative or relaxant for a day or two, which accounts for why Neep’s been able to keep him here since Sophie saw him in Hector’s House. I’m guessing Neep slipped him a spiked drink not long after you met him, Sophie, before hiding his body under the bonfire.”

  It seemed a convoluted way to go about killing someone.

  “But if he wanted the man dead, why didn’t he just give him a bigger dose?” I asked the doctor.