by Morgana Best
A Motive for Murder (A Misty Sales Cozy Mystery, Book 1)
Copyright 2014 by Morgana Best.
License Notes.
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Thank you to:
Charles and Fiona Griffin at www.griffindrk.com for telling me the location of the tunnel to the George and Dragon pub.
Paul at www.aquiziam.com for supplying me with an obscure text.
The staff at the Hellfire Caves and West Wycombe Park for being courteous at all times.
"Give me a grain of truth and I will mix it up with a great mass of falsehood, so that no chemist shall ever be able to separate them."
John Wilkes (Member of the Hellfire Club, Member of Parliament, Lord Mayor of London)
"There is not the slightest evidence that members worshipped the Devil."
One of the concluding sentences in a booklet by (the later) Sir Francis Dashwood, "The West Wycombe Caves."
"Whilst Womanhood, in the habit of a Nun,
At Med'nam lies, by backwards Monks undone."
(Charles Churchill on the Hellfire Club)
Why should you study and practice Magick? Because you can't help doing it, and you had better do it well than badly.
(Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears)
“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”
(Ernest Hemingway)
Chapter 1.
I was surprised to get a handwritten letter - I mean, who gets them these days! - and the writer was an aunt I barely remember. When I was a child we visited the relatives back in England, and I only vaguely remember Aunt Beth. She smelled like mothballs, as did her house, dark and full of lace doilies.
"My dearest Misty," the letter began in a scrawl, "I am quite old now, and I fear my advancing age leaves me not long for this world. I am writing to you because I would like you to collect the family history. I have photos and" - what was that scribbled adjective? - "charts, some back to the Doomsday Book. These are too valuable to send to you so I need you to visit me and collect them at your earliest convenience."
I was unable to make out the rest of the handwriting, although there was only one more paragraph. The paper was overpowered by the scent of violets with a hint of naphthalene.
Dear old Aunt Beth is clearly quite mad, I thought. Here I am, on the other side of the world in Australia, and she writes to me as if I can pop across town to pick things up.
I wouldn't have given it another thought or even replied in any hurry. It's not as if she had left an email address.
It's only that, as I was throwing the letter down on the kitchen table in disgust, I saw the return address, "High Wycombe."
"Beware of people who dislike cats."
(Irish proverb)
Chapter 2.
"No, of course we won't pay you to go to England! What do you think our budget is?" My boss narrowed his eyes and glared at me.
I avoided his gaze and looked at the cheap print of sailing ships on the wall behind him. "I only want the air fare - return air fare," I added for good measure just in case he got any ideas. "My accommodation is all paid for. Surely you can get it as a tax deduction?"
He opened his mouth so I pressed on. "My accommodation's already arranged in High Wycombe which is right next to West Wycombe. You could do the whole magazine as a U.K. feature. You've already assigned me to work on the Hellfire Club for the Haunted issue, but I could go there in person and make it a much bigger feature; you could do a whole issue on it."
His face was turning from beet red to a paler pink, which gave me enough encouragement to press on. "West Wycombe is home not just to the Hellfire Club, but to West Wycombe Park, the Dashwood Mausoleum - oh, and nearby there's Medmenham Abbey, and the Green Man of Fingest. I could do a whole bunch of articles for the one feature." I said it all in one breath, and then sat down in the rickety blue chair opposite his desk. I vaguely thought that the budget must be bad if the magazine couldn't afford better chairs than this.
My boss's expression was continuing to improve, and I took him sitting back in his chair tapping his pen as a good sign. Keith was the Managing Editor of the biggest (not that that's saying much - there weren't many) paranormal magazine in Australia.
Straight after my college degree I had landed a job as a journalist on one of Australia's biggest newspapers. Unfortunately, at the same time I had started dating Steve, then a postgraduate Law student. For the entire three years we dated, I had to pay for both of us at restaurants and even at coffee shops. Lending him money was a regular occurrence. When I finally complained, Steve said I was selfish and thinking only of myself.
Last year Steve had landed a position with a prestigious law firm in Australia's capital city, Canberra, and at the same time left me for a younger, thinner version, but managed to turn it all back on me as usual. Within a month I was fired from my newspaper job, which I found highly suspicious and I'm sure Steve had a hand in it. After living on noodles and rice for some time, I finally managed to find a journalism position at the paranormal magazine.
The paranormal seems to follow me around. In the TV show "Rosemary and Thyme," there's a murder every episode. It's not even as if they're law enforcement or anything. One's a plant pathologist and the other one is her gardening assistant. Everywhere they go, there's a murder. I'm like that - not murders, thankfully, but the paranormal. "It could only happen to you," people always say about the strange things that happen to me.
Keith's voice brought me back to the present. "I'll call the accountant and then call you later. Don't get your hopes up."
With a wave of his hand, Keith dismissed me from his office.
The news didn't take long in coming. My ring tone went as soon as I arrived home after work that day.
Keith came straight to the point. "The accountant says yes, but Daisy doesn't think it was a good idea. I'm overriding her this time but make sure your stories are really, really good. We'll book your flight for next week if that suits?"
Daisy was the Sub Editor. I couldn't stand her, and neither could my friend Melissa, a fellow journalist at the magazine. Daisy did everything she could to make our lives a misery and filled the boss's ear with tales of our incompetence. Sometimes she was as nice as pie, but she could turn mean in a flash. She was pleasant enough outside the work environment, but turned into a monster once she stepped inside the building.
Daisy constantly commented on what Melissa and I ate, which led to us calling her "Skinny Troll," not to her face, of course.
"Great news! What about a small travel allowance?"
Keith hung up.
Perhaps I could broach that subject later.
When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.
(Percy Bysshe Shelley)
Chapter 3.
The plane ride was hellish. The coffee was good but I hate flying. I always imagine that the bottom of the plane might fall off, or that another plane would hit us. I'd watched the movie Flying High one too many times.
I don't like take off; I hate that feeling of being pushed back in my seat. I'm always relieved when the flight attendants start serving coffee because I figure that means there can't be an emergency that the
passengers don't know about.
I had the window seat. I'm sure whoever booked me the window seat thought that they were being nice, but I'd rather not see how far I am above the ground. The two seats next to me were vacant, so I'd moved across as soon as the seat belt sign went off.
I had tried to fall asleep, but every small bump had woken me up. I felt like a zombie by the time the plane landed.
"G'day!" The cab driver at Heathrow looked so pleased with himself that I didn't have the heart to tell him that Australians actually don't say, "G'day." We don't have kangaroos hopping down our streets either.
I didn't get much of a look at England on the way to Aunt Beth's, as we were on major roads and there was nothing to see except traffic.
I did see some lovely old homes but I also saw rows and rows of houses which looked exactly alike.
The cab driver turned off the main road and I was surprised at just how narrow the streets were. In Australia, you could fit at least one English house in the middle of our roads. Here, in England, cars were parked up on the pavement, and cars on the street had to pull over to let the cab pass.
The cab turned into a few different streets, all with houses that looked the same as each other, and pulled up outside a street where the houses were decidedly older and uncared for.
I paid the cab driver a princely sum with my newly acquired English money and stood outside Aunt Beth's house. All the houses in the street were crammed together in the typical English manner, and Aunt Beth's was apparently half an unremarkable brick building. I think the English call those houses semi-detached.
Small old looking blue car in the driveway, path overgrown by grass, garden overgrown by weeds. Those were my first impressions. A sickly looking, red rose bush struggled to rear its head above the weed level. Only two plants were thriving, and both were in pots next to the front door. The blueberry bush was thriving, as was the rue. I expected that they wouldn't last outside in an English winter.
I dragged my luggage to the front door and lifted my hand to knock. My hand did not reach the door.
The rest I later remember as a haze, but a man ran out of the house and knocked me down, literally bowled me right over. He didn't even say, "Sorry."
I picked myself up and looked around, but he was gone. I would have said he had vanished, but that's a little melodramatic. Great welcome to England, was my first thought.
Vanishing Man had left the door open, and my second thought was that I was afraid that Aunt Beth may have been robbed. I felt dizzy, whether from jet lag or being knocked down, I don't know.
I peered inside. There was a staircase directly ahead and to the right, just like the one Harry Potter used to live under. There appeared to be a kitchen at the end of the corridor from what I could see.
I poked my head inside. "Aunt Beth! Aunt Beth, heelllooooo!"
No answer.
I walked inside, and turned left into the small living room. There was Aunt Beth, slumped in her chair, asleep, or so I thought. I walked over to wake her up, and the smell of garlic nearly knocked me back.
"Aunt Beth."
When she didn't respond, I said it even louder. "Aunt Beth!"
No answer. I shook her shoulder gently and she fell forward. She was dead.
I'm good in an emergency; it's only afterwards that I fall apart. I scanned the room for a phone. An antique drum table and old wooden furniture, some of it antique, flanked the faded, bulky floral chairs.
Books, antique Victorian ruby glass, and porcelain ornaments along with hideous Toby Jugs crammed every available space on furniture tops and shelves.
I didn't see the old green phone sitting in the corner right away, so camouflaged was it against the overpowering, green regency stripe wallpaper. At any rate, I didn't know the number to call. 000 for Australia, 911 for USA - what on earth was the emergency number in the UK?
I looked at the note board hanging on the wall above the phone. There was only one note, and a large one at that. Under the word "Doctor Spence" in capitals was a cell phone number. I picked up the phone and called the number.
The voice promised that Dr. Spence would come immediately. I slumped to the floor, my head in my hands, not wanting to look at Aunt Beth. Instead I stared at a particularly horrible flower on the floral wallpaper and tried to focus my attention. Of all the bad luck, going half way across the world to meet Aunt Beth and she passed away right before I arrive.
Soon even being in the same room as a body started to make me quite uneasy, so I sat on the front doorstep to wait for the doctor. Thankfully he arrived fairly soon after. However, he arrived at the precise moment that I noticed something spilling from under the doormat. It looked like red brick dust; or was it simply dirt? The place was hardly spotless, so it could just be dirt. The potted plants, blueberry and rue, suddenly made sense. Both are protective plants, as I learned when I had written an article on Hoodoo the previous year. Blueberry, if planted near the front door, will keep away unwelcome guests. I'd have to investigate more closely.
The doctor barely looked at me and mumbled a hasty hello as he pushed past me. I showed him straight into the living room. He bent over Aunt Beth briefly and then stood up. "Garlic." The comment appeared to be addressed to himself.
I nodded. "Yes, the smell of garlic is actually quite overpowering. What does that mean?"
The doctor looked at me for the first time. "Nothing. Your Aunt was fond of natural therapies, that's all."
Then I remembered that, back in Australia, just before a friend of mine got divorced, her husband was sweeping the upper deck and fell off the deck backwards and broke both his ankles. The police came and questioned her at length. I figured that the English police would surely attend a death. "Are the police coming?"
"Police?" The doctor shook his head. "No, the police don't come unless it's a suspicious death."
I was taken aback. The rules were certainty different in England. "But I told you that a man ran out of her house right when I arrived and found her, err, like this. Could it be murder?"
The doctor looked at me like I was crazy. "Murder? Who would want to murder your aunt? This is natural causes. My dear, I know this is a shock, but your aunt was elderly, and with a chronic and serious heart condition." He walked over to me and patted me on the shoulder in a condescending way.
I was a bit annoyed that he didn't take me seriously. "What about the man who ran out and knocked me over? Perhaps he was robbing her!"
The doctor shook his head, more strongly this time. "Your aunt has been deceased since yesterday." His tone approached the arrogant. "Someone who arrived at the house today couldn't have had anything to do with what happened to your aunt. Have you looked around to see if anything has been taken?"
For a moment I felt like a complete idiot, but then I realized that I wouldn't have a clue if anything had been taken. "I don't know if anything has been taken; I just got here. Literally." My tone was quite tense. "What happens now; do I have to fill out a report? Do I need to file a report with the police at least? I've just arrived in the country!"
Doctor Spence abandoned his oh-so-superior attitude for a moment and looked almost kindly. "Misty, isn't it? Misty, I know this is a shock." He patted me on the shoulder again. "There is no coroner's inquest as the cause of death is known. I do the necessary paperwork; the police are not called. You will simply need to contact relatives to inform them. Now try to describe the man to me. Over the years I've met some of your aunt's neighbors. He may have called on her and had a fright when he found her deceased."
I tried to remember through the fog of the rapidly descending jet lag mixed with shock and stress. "He was, um, tall, moderately well built, not like a gym junkie or anything, err, not young, not old - I suppose around my age, but I only saw him for a second or two."
"What color was his hair?"
I wondered why the doctor cared so much about the description of the man. I didn't buy his story that it could have been one of the neighbors. But wh
y would the doctor lie? I thought about it for a second. I supposed that a neighbor might have called in and had a terrible shock to see Aunt Beth like that, and run out. "Medium brown to light brown I think. I only caught a glimpse of him."
"Are you sure it wasn't dark brown to black hair?" The doctor's tone sounded stronger, even urgent.
I did feel something wasn't quite right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Women's intuition. "Yes, I'm sure he didn't have dark hair. Why, does it sound like someone you know?"
The doctor considered for a moment before answering. "No, but your aunt had been donating many items lately. Did she ever mention having any antique dealers come around?"
I shook my head. "No, she only told me to come and get her stuff, historical stuff about the family."
"Have you received any of her historical items yet?"
I looked up and saw the doctor looking at me with deep concentration. I felt quite uneasy under his gaze. "No, I was to collect it all on this visit."
"She didn't send anything to you in Australia?" Still the urgent tone.
I didn't answer at once, because it was at that point that I noticed an oil lamp behind the doctor. Why did Aunt Beth have an oil lamp? It wasn't simply a decoration; it had been used, and recently too. Couldn't she pay the electricity bills? Or... No, surely she couldn't have been into spells? I turned my attention back to the doctor and tried to remember his question.
When I shook my head, he asked another question. "When was the last time you spoke to her?"
I again hesitated before answering. "I called her at Mascot. Oh, that's the main airport in Sydney, just before I boarded. She said she wanted to pass me her legacy."
The doctor gasped, and then coughed. He sat down and made a gurgling, wheezing sound in his throat.
"Are you okay?" I was wondering if I'd have to call another doctor to him.
The doctor stood up and thumped his chest two or three times. "Yes, just a tickle in my throat. Is that all she said?"
