Murder Bites

by Lyra Barnett

  “You ok?” I asked. She nodded, but without looking at me, and quickly headed for the alcohol.

  Through the double doors I found that the young constable had regained some composure and was sat with a notebook and pencil, a picture of efficiency as she sat bolt upright and looked at me sternly.

  The man had shed his jacket and had rolled his shirt sleeves up. It could have been because of the heat in the kitchen from the ovens which had been on all morning, but I suspected it was because he’d watched too many cop movies. Still, I wasn’t complaining, it was quite a tight shirt and I’ll admit I enjoyed seeing his long forearms resting in front of me.

  “Miss…” He looked down at a list in front of him, pretending to scan it even though it only had six names on it, “Twyst is it?”

  “Yes, well done,” I said as I took a seat opposite him. He seemed to decide to ignore my comment and didn’t look up. Instead, he continued to flick through his notes, leaving me to sit and wait. A classic power play, he’d definitely watched too many movies.

  “I’m Detective Marsh, can you take me through what happened this morning Miss Twyst?”

  I ran through everything as best as I could. The truth was, I hadn’t seen anything that would help him. He seemed to be of the same opinion, and let me go soon afterwards. I stood up to move towards the door and hesitated.

  “You’re treating this as suspicious right?”

  “And why would you ask that Miss Twyst? Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

  “Well for starters, I notice that no one has come to take the body away. That means you’ve called for a team to come and look at the forensics, which you would only do if you thought there was foul play. Secondly, you’re here taking everyone’s statements. If you thought she had just had a heart attack, you might have talked to Joan Sithers who was sat with her, but not any of us.”

  He put his pen down and narrowed his eyes at me. It seems I finally had his attention.

  “I’ve been warned about you Miss Twyst.”

  Warned about me? Who on earth would be warning him about me and why? I felt a rush of panic that I was all too familiar. My family’s secrets had been close to being exposed enough times over the years for me to be familiar with the warning signs.

  “Oh really?” I said as casually as possible.

  “I’ve heard you’re not a fan of the police Miss Twyst, which makes me suspicious.”

  “Well that’s the permanent state of a policeman isn’t it? Suspicious, I mean? Anyway, I wouldn’t trust every bit of gossip you hear around here.” I pushed through the swing doors and back into the café before he could say anything else. I walked back to the table where the others were gathered and noticed Betty was missing.

  “Where’s Betty gone Sandra?” I asked, noticing that Sandra, Joan Sithers and the Barter twins were still tucking into the port, and all had glowing cheeks to prove it.

  “She seemed a bit upset, the poor dear, so she’s gone home for a lie down.”

  “Oh, right. Well I’m going to get off as well. I’ll pop back in later.”

  She raised her newly filled glass to me as I left, stepping out into the morning sunshine. I took a lungful of the still cool morning air and squinted at the red sign in the distance. It would have to wait. I had said I would be back for dad’s surprise by ten, and I was already running late.

  3

  PARENTS…

  O ur house sat on top of a small hill which stood towards the back of the town. On a clear day you could see across the few fields that separated the house from the main spread of houses and to the playing fields beyond which edged the dual highstreets.

  Dad being a traditionalist in some ways, has always said he would never live in a house that wasn’t set apart from the main town and on top of some sort of hill. They had apparently searched for some time looking for the perfect place to raise the unborn me until they’d found Harton Manor, which stood in just such a location above Stumpwell. My dad still boasted that the bats which circled the place even in daylight, had moved in just four days after our arrival. He considered this a testament to our good breeding, though he never explained why.

  I have to admit, they chose well. Stumpwell was a charming town nestled in the Oxfordshire countryside and Harton Manor was a ramshackle mess of turreted stone. I loved it. I’d lived here twenty nine years now, and all of them had been happy.

  As I stepped off the footpath which ran along the side of the property and across the damp grass until I reached the main driveway, I looked up at the building which was now bathed in sunshine. It really was beautiful. Its yellow Cotswold stone had been so pitted over the years by the weather that it looked as though it was slowly dissolving. It was pretty much a normal, though large, house but at some point someone had decided to ‘castle’ it up a bit by adding crenulations to the edges of the flat roof and building out turrets which served no real purpose from either side of the main house.

  I ran up the worn steps and opened the creaking door to the hallway (dad had added the creaks a few years ago saying that no front door should open silently.)

  “Mum? Dad?” My voice echoed around the high ceilinged entrance hall, but no reply came. I moved past the wide staircase which ran along one side of the hall, guessing they would be in the basement where my dad indulged in his favourite hobby, which was basically being the old-world vampire he was.

  I opened the door at the back of the staircase and ventured down. I heard my mother singing before I’d taken more than four steps. She had the kind of voice that could curdle milk at forty paces. She was to music, what fish were to the Tour de France. Worse than that, for some reason she loved to sing, which meant that the house was often filled with the ringing sound of her voice murdering some old tune or other.

  I had often wondered whether she had actually had a decent voice when she was alive. Maybe death had robbed her of a beautiful soprano and she just didn’t know it? I’d have to check with my cousin Amanda who was also a zombie and see if she could still sing. I couldn’t ask Mum, it would hurt her feelings.

  “Hello love,” Mum said waving a plate full of biscuits in the shape of bats at me as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I took one obviously.

  “Bats, Mum? Really?”

  “Oh you know your father, he says he’ll only eat real food if it has some sort of vampireyness about it.”

  “It’s vampness, Mum.”

  “Oh, is it? Oh, I’m sorry dear, I’ve never understood all the lingo.” She bustled off to a bench to my right where she began making tea.

  “Fancy a cuppa, dear?”

  “Yes, that would be great,” I mumbled, my mouth full of the bat biscuit I had taken. “Is dad ready to show me this… whatever it is then?”

  “Oh yes. He said to make you a cup of tea and then send you on through. You know how he likes to add a little bit of drama to his family announcements.”

  I stuffed the rest of the biscuit into my mouth and stared at the door which led into what my dad insisted on calling his crypt but was really just a room full of old junk and a workbench. I knew all too well how my dad liked to add a dash of the theatrical to our lives. I remembered with a shudder the time he had announced a family holiday to Romania by buying us all custom made suitcases in the shape of coffins and unveiling them by having us go and dig them up from the garden where he had buried them.

  The problem was, he had this idea that as a vampire he had some sort of duty to live up to the stereotype. The trouble was, when you’re a small, smiling grey haired man with a good natured twinkle in your eye and you liked colourful woollen jumpers, it was hard to pull off.

  “Here you are dear,” my mum said handing me my tea. “Just remember, he’s always got our best interests at heart.” She patted my hand before bustling back to the counter and beginning to tidy away plates which were obviously from the breakfast they had shared down here. This was definitely bad news, if they’d had breakfast down here, dad was working on som
ething big.

  “Off you go then dear, don’t keep him waiting.”

  I took a deep breath and opened the door to Dad’s crypt. As soon as I did so, white curls of smoke poured out, but only at ankle height. The entire floor was covered in a swirl of smoke that was constantly puffing out from a machine in the corner. It had been draped in a black cloth to make it look more fitting. Three coffins sat on raised wooden benches dotted around the space, which with the smoke would have looked quite impressive it hadn’t been for the gym equipment which had been pushed against the back wall to make way for them.

  “Felicity!” my dad said, appearing from behind a huge black candle holder which towered over his small frame. “Well? What do you think?”

  “It’s very, erm, nice?” I ventured. I saw that I had chosen the wrong word almost immediately. His face, full of hopeful anticipation in its expression, twitched slightly.

  “Oh. You didn’t feel like saying ‘Oh no, I’ve entered the lair of a lord of the un-dead’ type of thing?”

  “Oh don’t get me wrong!” I said hurriedly. “It’s definitely got that spooky vibe, right on the nose I’d say. I just meant it’s nice to me, but then it would be wouldn’t it? Because I’m a vampire.”

  He frowned even deeper for a moment, before a large smile crept across his lips.

  “Yes, you have a point there,” he said nodding, “have you noticed there are three coffins? One for each of us? I know it’s not really your mum’s thing, but I thought we could maybe try them out at some point?”

  Oh god, did he really expect me to lay in a coffin next to him and mum? If he had gone this far, he must be about to deliver news he knows I will find bad. My stomach dropped. They’d made their decision about moving.

  “Have you told her yet love?” Mum’s voice rang out around the old stone walls of the basement as she came in with tea for both her and my dad.

  “Er, not yet,” my dad said, his pale face turning slightly flush.

  “It’s ok,” I said, not wanting him to suffer any more, he was never good at disappointing people.

  “You’ve decided to move haven’t you?” I said, trying to keep the dread from my voice. “I mean, you’re not ageing visibly any more, and with the new policeman…”

  My mum looked across at my dad, but he looked down and took a sip of tea without replying.

  “It’s not just him dear,” my mum said, staring at my dad with a look of concern. “You know we haven’t been out for a while now, we can’t really. People would start to ask questions.”

  “You don’t look that young,” I said without thinking.

  “Well, thank you very much!” my mother huffed as she pulled herself up straight. “I’m only forty years dead I’ll have you know.”

  Being a zombie, my mum hadn’t been born into the un-dead world like my father and I. She preferred to measure her age from the day she had died.

  “I know Mum, sorry. I just meant, are you sure people will even notice?”

  My dad now looked up, his voice soft and sad.

  “Felicity, we moved here just before you were born, twenty eight years ago and to the people of the town, we don’t look any older than we did about ten years ago. Of course they will notice, if not now, soon enough.”

  I grasped my mug tightly and sighed.

  “I’m staying you know,” I said it without even realising that I had already made the decision, but I had, and I meant it. My life was here, well, what there was of it, and my friends were here.

  “Well then it’s a good job that we are too,” my dad said grinning.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “We’ve decided not to move dear,” my mother chipped in as she arranged some more biscuits onto a plate, “We’re going to stay here and entertain ourselves around the house, you know I always have plenty to do here.”

  This was true. My mum, like many zombies, was easily obsessed by things. Her main vice being cleaning. Despite the house creaking, crumbling and being decidedly squidgy through damp, she ensured that every surface was scrubbed within an inch of its life. Last Wednesday I had seen her clean the hoover for forty-five minutes with a toothbrush.

  “But what about money? My wage at the café won’t cover you forever.”

  “It doesn’t need to dear!” my mother said laughing to herself as she dusted the coffin to my left. “That’s why we thought we might take in one or two guests. They’ll help us with a bit of rent and it will be nice to have some new faces around the place.”

  “Guests? But, what about…” I waved my hand in the direction of the coffins and the smoke machine which was still puffing away sullenly in the corner.

  “Don’t worry Felicity, they are all our kind,” my dad said solemnly. He always referred to the undead as something to be revered, whereas I just saw them as people like anyone else, just with slightly odd dietary requirements. He always managed to make being a member of the un-dead sound like a prestigious club you belonged to, I’d always seen it as more of an annoyance. “You know how people of our kind like to keep in touch, through the council newsletters?”

  The council was the organisation of the undead which apparently helped keep the community in some vague sort of order and made sure that no one suddenly ran off and sucked the blood form half of Dorset or anything. They ran a series of newsletters across the country which usually carried local news amongst the undead.

  “Well we heard of a few people looking for rooms in a suitable house and so we decided to take them in. Three of them at first, but you never know, it could be more if all goes well. We’ve got Karl Bunter to thank really, he really does seem to know everybody.”

  Karl Bunter was a butcher in nearby Cowton, and also a zombie. He knew everyone because he supplied pretty much all of the undead who required such things as a monthly supply of calf brains, bottles of blood and offal (for the werewolves), for miles around.

  I slurped my tea and nodded, unsure of what to say. I had wanted to find a place of my own for a while now, but the whole ‘what the hell am I going to do with my life?’ question had stopped me doing anything. I needed to investigate that red sign, if it was what I thought it was…

  My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out to see Betty’s face on the screen before I answered.

  “Hey, you ok?” I asked, wondering if she had recovered from this morning’s excitement.

  “No! You’ve got to come Flick! I’m at the police station, they think I might have killed Mrs Tranter!”

  “What?! Don’t worry, I’m on my way.” I slapped my tea down on the nearest coffin, splashing it across the dark mahogany.

  “I’ve got to go, Betty needs me,” I called behind me as I headed for the stairs at a run. Over my shoulder I heard my dad’s voice in panic.

  “Get a cloth Marjory! It’s going to stain the wood!”

  4

  POLICE AND POISON

  The police station at the end of Culper Street was not much to write home about; a squat building with tatty white paint. It was at least, mercifully, half obscured from the rest of the residential street by a row of sycamores. Their leaves rustled in the light breeze of what was now a beautiful spring day.

  As I made my way through the automatic doors into the reception, I was greeted by the same young constable who had been the note taker back at the café when I’d given my statement. She was bent over, reading something intently.

  “Hello again, Constable…”

  “Pearson,” she said looking up. “You were at the café this morning,” she said blankly.

  “Ah, and that’s why you are in the right profession Constable Pearson! Good observational skills.”

  Well, it can never hurt to give a bit of flattery right?

  The constable straightened herself up at my praise and stifled a smile.

  “Well, my dad always said I had a nose for things,” she admitted modestly.

  “I’m here to see Betty Haddock.”

  “Oh, friend of the poiso
ner are you?”

  “I think you’re supposed to wait until she’s been proven guilty until you say things like that,” I said, slightly in shock.

  She snorted and stepped out from behind the counter, heading towards the single door which led into the rear of the building.

  “Wait here.”

  She vanished and I was left alone. I wandered over to the counter and looked over it to the desk behind. The sheet Constable Pearson had been looking at was a print out of the Wikipedia page on cyanide. Interesting.

  Muffled voices which were getting louder as they approached from the other side of the door made me step back just before Constable Pearson returned with Detective Marsh in tow.

  “Miss Twyst? You can see Miss Haddock, but you only have ten minutes. Pearson will show you through.” He brushed past me and left through the front door as Constable Pearson waved me through. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt a little annoyed at this brusque treatment.

  After a short walk down a dingy corridor, I was shown into a room where Betty leapt up from her chair and threw her arms around me, while a small neat woman gathered some papers and left the room.

  “Don’t worry Miss Haddock, we’ll have you out of here in no time,” she said before leaving us alone. Her appointed lawyer I presumed.

  “Oh Flick, I’m such an idiot!”

  I knew she was upset, but this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.

  “Don’t be silly, you haven’t done anything wrong!”

  She pulled away from me, her eyes full of tears.

  “I can’t believe I gave him a free muffin!”

  Now I was completely lost.

  “Look, we’ve only got ten minutes. Sit down and tell me what you’re talking about and why the hell you’re in here.”