THE COUNTRY INN MYSTERY an absolutely gripping whodunit full of twists

by Faith Martin

  No. Jenny gave a small shake of her head. It couldn’t have happened that way.

  Which only left natural causes.

  Had the beautiful young girl had a heart attack or a stroke whilst in the water, and simply stopped breathing? Or a vicious cramp or some other paralysing spasm, or something which struck her suddenly and completely, leaving her dead in seconds, giving her no time to cry out for help?

  Jenny, along with everyone else, had heard or read about the sad and frightening stories of how very fit and healthy young people could sometimes just up and die, right out of the blue. Some had been known to run marathons, or teach keep-fit, or do yoga instruction. On the face of it, they seemed the epitome of health and vitality. But, whilst making a cup of tea, or feeding the dog, they fell prey to a blood clot or coronary and were gone in moments, leaving behind stricken relatives or partners to cope with the incomprehensible loss.

  So she knew it could happen.

  Especially if Rachel had been one of those really unlucky people who had, all unknowingly, been suffering from some kind of undiagnosed weak heart or brain tumour. Perhaps the mild shock of the cool water, or the stress of doing her big scene, had served to exacerbate such a medical condition?

  That made sense, in a sad kind of way.

  So why was she so instinctively sure that that wasn’t what had just happened here? Was she really so jaded or cynical that she instantly suspected foul play?

  Feeling a little bit angry with herself, Jenny turned away from her contemplation of the pond, her eyes drifting restlessly around the rapidly diminishing crowd. And sighed slightly. The exodus wasn’t her problem after all, and she certainly had no authority to tell them all that they should stay. And presumably the police would be able to ascertain just who had been here anyway, should it prove necessary. The village wasn’t that big, and most people would be able to vouch for the presence of others. And there would be a list, somewhere, of all the historical society members, for sure. And as for the weekend guests who’d been staying at the inn, Jenny could vouch for them, since of them all only Dr Gilchrist had been absent, choosing, for whatever reason, to miss the highlight of the Regency Extravaganza. But then, he’d already admitted that the theatrics weren’t really his cup of tea.

  And neither of Rachel’s fellow actors from the drama society had been here either, with Vince and Matthew presumably having better things to do. And then she brought herself up short. No, she had to make sure to be accurate now. To think and reason precisely.

  She hadn’t seen them here — but then she hadn’t been looking out for them especially. That didn’t mean to say that they weren’t here. And, what with the villagers and other curious onlookers that they’d attracted on the walk to the pond adding to the number of the audience, there had been quite a crowd. It was perfectly possible that they’d been here amongst them and she hadn’t seen them.

  With a sigh, Jenny reminded herself, yet again, that it couldn’t possibly matter. All of this speculation was just so much semantics. It would only matter who had alibis — and could prove them — if it turned out to be a case of murder.

  And how could it possibly be murder?

  Jenny’s eyes refused to go to the sodden body lying on the grass. Instead her gaze shifted restlessly to those still grouped around her.

  The woman who had bravely given CPR had now given up her ministrations and was sitting back on her heels, looking pale and miserable and defeated and close to tears. Jenny suspected she was probably going into mild shock. It was one thing to do your civic duty and be responsible and all that, and learn how to administer CPR, knowing that the chances had to be pretty good that you’d never be called upon to put it all into practice. But it was quite another thing to have to actually do something like that. And come face to face with a death that you hadn’t been able to prevent. No wonder the poor woman was white-faced and shaky.

  Some little way away from her, sitting blank-eyed and mute on the grass and staring straight out in front of him, Ion Dryfuss looked incapable of moving. It gave Jenny the spine-tingling feeling that Rachel’s death had somehow drained him of all human thought and emotion, leaving him curiously aloof from everything around him.

  Jenny’s eyes rested on him thoughtfully.

  Ion — the man who’d had a holiday romance with Rachel, and had then stubbornly followed her back to her home town, refusing to believe the affair was over. Clearly he’d been intent on trying to win her back, and had been openly unwilling to abide by the unspoken but cardinal rule: that holiday flings stayed at the resort.

  Or was there another reason that he’d followed her back to the Cotswolds?

  Perhaps, in thinking the best of him, Jenny had allowed her romantic nature to get the better of her. Because from what the travelling cook had been able to observe with her own eyes since becoming embroiled with the am-dram players, Rachel Norman had been, to say the least, rather cavalier, if not downright heartless, when it came to her relationships with men.

  She had broken up her fellow actor Matthew Greenslade’s engagement without any obvious signs of regret, or even any real understanding of the devastation she might have caused. And whilst Jenny might secretly think that Matthew’s ex-fiancée had probably had a lucky escape, that wasn’t really the point.

  The point was, if Rachel could be so heartless and off-hand with one lover, she could be the same with another.

  Perhaps her break-up with the Welshman had been similarly traumatic? Jenny could well believe that she might not have been very diplomatic about their break-up. What if Ion had begged her to stay and she’d just laughed in his face? Or had simply told him that a man from the Welsh valleys was hardly the kind of man she was looking for to help her fulfil her ambitions to become a famous actress?

  Perhaps he had come here not for reconciliation but for revenge?

  And thinking of Matthew’s ex-fiancée, Jenny’s mind raced on, perhaps she had been in the crowd, angrily watching Rachel’s performance and becoming more and more aggrieved? Jenny certainly wouldn’t know her from Adam (or Eve), and if she wasn’t a resident of the village then neither, presumably, would anyone else.

  Perhaps she hadn’t taken the poaching of her man sitting down? Perhaps she . . .

  And here, once again, Jenny brought herself to task. For what could the unknown fiancée, or anyone else with a grudge against the actress, have possibly done?

  Waded into the pond, perhaps getting in at the back end behind the concealing curtain of weeping willows, and proceeded to drown Rachel in the few minutes whilst everyone was distracted by Min’s screaming fit of arachnophobia? Hardly! She didn’t care how bizarre Min’s behaviour had been, or how intently everyone’s attention had been focused on her, Jenny didn’t believe that a crowd of thirty or more people could all have overlooked a young woman being drowned not six feet away from their noses.

  It simply wasn’t feasible.

  And Rachel herself would hardly have allowed herself to be dragged under and drowned without screaming her head off or thrashing about like a mad thing.

  Unless she’d been drugged first . . .

  No. Stop it, Jenny told herself firmly. Now she really was wandering off into the realms of fantasy. She’d be concocting conspiracy theories next!

  Rachel had walked from the Spindlewood Inn to the pond without once faltering or showing signs of being drugged or even feeling under the weather. And, what’s more, she had delivered her lines in that wonderful, strong, sexy deep voice of hers without any hesitation or any slurring of her words.

  And whilst Jenny might not be a chemist or medical professional, she couldn’t think of any drug that could be administered and leave a patient clear-headed for a guaranteed amount of time before beginning to act. And one, moreover, that would then reliably render them unconscious or woozy and compliant enough — say twenty minutes later — in order for someone to then be able to drown them without them causing even a minor stir.

  No. It was patent
ly ludicrous. Even so-called date-rape drugs, which left a victim with no clear memory of events the next day, must surely affect them to such an extent that it would be noticeable to others? But Jenny, thinking back over the actress’s performance, could see no evidence that she had been anything other than clear-headed at all times. Besides, how could anyone have predicted the scene caused by Min in which to plan such a thing?

  So. Back to square one. It had to be either an accidental drowning or natural causes, Jenny told herself again. And trying to keep that thought firmly lodged in her mind, she turned away slightly, her eyes nevertheless skimming the edge of the pond. And saw something dark — very dark, lying just in the reeds near to where the actress had gone in.

  In fact, not just dark, but actually black. Not large, but made of material that looked sodden and slightly muddy.

  And suddenly, Jenny realised what it was she was looking at. Walking towards it, but careful not to touch it or disturb it in any way, Jenny crouched down to get a better look.

  Yes. As she’d thought, it was the reticule — the pretty black beaded bag Rachel had been holding on to at the beginning of her big scene. Jenny squinted at it thoughtfully. It seemed to have a rather large hole in it at the bottom, presumably where the stitching had come away from the seams.

  Looking at it, Jenny felt herself frowning.

  But surely . . .

  Just then, everyone heard the sound of sirens, insistent and shockingly loud and definitely getting closer, and Jenny’s wandering thoughts screeched to a halt. Getting up from the edge of the pond and feeling, for some reason, oddly guilty, she turned her head and saw an ambulance making its way towards them down the narrow lane that led to the village green and pond.

  And right behind it, the first of two police cars.

  And here we go again, the travelling cook thought miserably.

  In her various forays as a travelling cook, she’d had the misfortune to be present at a number of murders in the past couple of years, and she was getting all too familiar with police procedure. And how a murder case could turn lives upside down, with the innocent, along with the guilty, sometimes being devastated by the revelations that such a thorough and painstaking investigation could throw up.

  Then there was the uncomfortable way that you gradually became suspicious of everyone around you, wondering if they could possibly be the killer. Along with the uneasy feeling that you were being watched all the time, and the slow, creeping sense of horror as you realised that there was a killer at loose somewhere nearby. And that you might be next!

  All in all, Jenny Starling thought unhappily, I could do without this rigmarole again. Because no matter what her common sense told her, she was still convinced that someone, somehow, had contrived to very cleverly murder Rachel Norman. And as much as she’d like to think that she was just being unreasonably pessimistic, she was already beginning to compose her own testimony in her head.

  But what, really, had she seen or heard that could possibly help the police?

  * * *

  DI Thomas Franklyn yawned slightly as his sergeant, Lucy O’Connor, indicated left and turned off from the main street and down a much narrower lane. Here garden walls festooned with purple flowers crowded either side of them, and swallows, getting ready to fly back to Africa, swooped and called in the clear blue sky.

  ‘Pretty place, sir,’ Lucy commented pleasantly. ‘Though I bet it gets a bit too touristy in the high season.’

  She was an attractive girl who was not looking forward to her thirtieth birthday next year, feeling that the landmark date had, rather unfairly, crept up on her unawares. She had large brown eyes and long blonde hair that she kept off her face in a no-nonsense ponytail. Her mother was constantly nagging at her to quit the force and settle down and produce children.

  Previously she’d always tended to scoff at this, insisting that there would be plenty of time for all that later. But with the dreaded big three-oh birthday coming up, she was becoming more and more aware that ‘later’ might be looming closer than she would like.

  However, since she was currently not even in a steady relationship, her mother would remain disappointed about potential grandchildren for some time to come.

  Besides, right now Lucy had her eyes firmly on an inspector’s position, and working with DI Franklyn could only help her achieve that goal. At forty-two, her superior officer was a good man to work for. Experienced, and with no hidden angst when it came to women in the workplace, he had a good, if rather pedestrian, track record when it came to closing his cases. But even better, he was known to be willing and able to pass on his knowledge and experience to those who wanted to learn.

  Lucy felt herself lucky to be his bagman.

  ‘Not for me, I’m afraid,’ he said now in response to her observation, looking around him. ‘Too twee and unreal for my liking. I feel like I’m walking onto the set of one of those Miss Marple things on telly. All chocolate-box and no reality.’

  Thomas Franklyn had thinning black hair, eyes almost as black, and a neatly trimmed moustache that segued into a goatee beard. Married, divorced, married and divorced again, he now lived alone in a neat block of flats in Cheltenham, which his two grown sons from his first marriage tended to use as a flophouse when not attending university.

  ‘It’s a drowning, right?’ he said now as his sergeant pulled the car to the side of the road, and they sat contemplating the milling scene in front of them.

  Two patrol vehicles were parked either side of the lane, all but blocking it to passing traffic — not that there seemed to be a lot of that. Off to one side, a small group of people were clustered around a spot on the grass. Beyond them, a pleasant village pond, complete with reeds, weeping willows, pink-flowering bindweed and other assorted wildflowers, presented a suitably bucolic scene.

  At least there weren’t any ducks quacking about to get under his feet.

  Lucy, looking around her at the bright summer’s day, thought she understood what her boss meant about it all looking too picture-perfect. There were even butterflies and dragonflies darting around, looking as if they were waiting for a BBC wildlife documentary team to appear and start filming them.

  ‘Well, best get on with it then,’ the DI said a shade wearily, opening the passenger-side door and stepping out into the mellow afternoon.

  It had been his sheer bad luck to be on call this Sunday. Even worse bad luck to be landed with a ‘suspicious death’ call. Not that he was expecting this death to be all that suspicious. Any unexplained death was noted down that way in the paperwork until it could be investigated and reclassified. And contrary to what all the crime shows on telly would have you believe, along with all those hundreds and hundreds of crime novels that filled the bookshops nowadays, by far and away most suspicious deaths turned out to be either natural causes or accidental. With a smattering of suicides thrown in for good measure.

  Thankfully, murder was still a relatively rare occurrence, and Thomas had only ever worked on two cases of murder in his entire career. Which, in his opinion, was a fact to be grateful for. Give him the usual diet of burglaries, fraud, robbery, drunken affray and people trafficking any day.

  If he’d wanted to specialise in murder he’d have joined the Met. Or asked for a transfer to any of the other major cities. But having been born and bred within sight of Cheltenham racecourse, he’d been quite content to stay in the Cotswolds.

  Now, as he approached the little group in front of the absurdly placid and pretty pond, he noticed the bent head of Dr Martin Pryce, and some of his previous sangfroid evaporated.

  There were several medical officers the police service used in the course of their callouts, but of them all Pryce was by far the most senior and experienced man. He’d worked in various hospitals and institutes of forensic pathology in his career, and was widely published in this sphere. What’s more, in his time he’d even testified as an expert witness in quite a few high-profile murder cases, where independent expert testimony h
ad been required, either by the defence or the prosecution.

  It was only because the medico had left London a few years ago to semi-retire to a more rural and pretty spot that they had been able to engage his services at all. In his late forties, with a short cap of iron-grey curly hair, he had bright blue eyes and a rather sardonic sense of humour.

  And it had probably been him who’d asked for an SIO of some rank to be called out. Which meant he wasn't happy about something.

  Now the medical man looked up as he watched them approach, his eyes going first — and appreciatively — to Lucy, before sliding across to Franklyn. Quickly, the DI hid a smile and firmly resisted the impulse to smirk.

  He’d heard it bandied about on the grapevine that the doctor had an eye for the ladies — which was something that his long-suffering wife (according to the same grapevine) had long since learned to put up with. And now he rather thought that the grapevine had it right — for once.

  ‘DI . . . Franklyn, isn’t it?’ Dr Pryce said curtly, rising to his feet. Not a particularly tall man, he nevertheless moved with an energy that seemed irrepressible, making him appear somehow bigger. ‘And this is . . . ?’ he fished shamelessly, holding out his hand and smiling, his penetrating blue eyes fixed firmly on Thomas’s sergeant.

  Franklyn was a little irritated to note that Lucy was blushing slightly, and was clearly not averse to being the centre of the doctor’s attention.

  ‘Sergeant O’Connor. I take it this is an accidental drowning?’ he said tersely, for the first time paying proper attention to the corpse at his feet. And the first thing that surprised him, taking him utterly aback, was the fact that she was wearing a long black dress. And was that a veil over her face? What the hell? He blinked, then realised that she was just a follower of gothic fashion. Obviously their victim had been one of those women who liked to go about looking like they belonged in a horror film.