by Ann Granger
He could, however, see the women without too much trouble, just by leaning to one side and peering through the plant’s long, thin leaves. To be honest, it wasn’t Mrs Briggs he wanted to keep an eye on. He wanted a better look at Harriet. Yep! That was the woman in the Range Rover. She was attractive, if a bit stressed-looking. She was pushing her food around her plate as if her appetite was poor. Mrs Briggs leaned forward, obviously urging her to eat. Mrs Briggs’s manner, Tom decided, was part protective and part possessive, like a domineering mother.
At this point, a girl with purple hair and heavily studded earlobes arrived at his table and held out a single sheet of paper on which was the menu for the day.
‘We also got specials,’ she said. ‘And soup is parsnip and apple.’
Tom scanned the menu. Under ‘Mains’ it offered a traditional roast chicken and vegetables, battered cod with chips, and a vegetarian option in pasta form. ‘What are the specials?’ he demanded, unimpressed.
‘Written up on the blackboard over there,’ she said, pointing across the room to the wall just behind the two women diners.
He couldn’t read the faintly chalked message on the blackboard from here, and he wasn’t going to get up and walk over there because Mrs Briggs would see him.
‘Can’t see it from here, I’m afraid,’ he said briskly to the purple-haired attendant. ‘Can you tell me what are they?’
She gave him a look that suggested he was being difficult. ‘Fishcakes or chicken teriyaki,’ she said. ‘Fishcakes are salmon.’
Probably tinned salmon at that. Chicken teriyaki, however, was an unexpected exotic visitor to the menu in winter. Perhaps the chef was trying it out. But Tom wasn’t prepared to gamble on the teriyaki and certainly he wasn’t going to be appeased by an offer of fishcakes. He knew what he wanted.
‘No, thank you, I’d like a steak.’
She had now definitely decided he was being difficult. ‘It’s not on the menu today.’ She indicated the printed sheet again.
Across the room, Harriet had pushed away her plate. She looked drawn and miserable. Tom wondered what she’d chosen to order; he couldn’t see. She didn’t look as if she would have picked the roast today. Perhaps she’d gone for the vegetarian option. Madison had been vegetarian. She had watched him eating steak with an air of tolerance. but she’d liked things like mushroom risotto and cauliflower cheese. Tom had hated cauliflower cheese all his life. His grandmother had made him eat it. Why on earth had he and Madison ever been an item?
‘Perhaps you’d ask,’ he requested the purple-haired damsel.
‘What?’
‘Would you ask them in the kitchen,’ he expanded his request, ‘if they have a steak?’
Briefly, the girl looked as if she would join battle, but there was a resolve in Tom’s voice that stopped her. She marched off, quivering with rage.
Across the room, Mrs Briggs suddenly stood up. Tom experienced a moment of panic. If she wanted to visit the ladies’, those facilities were located outside the dining room, off the main entrance hall. She would need to walk past his table. She would see him. He got out his smartphone and began to study it intently, hoping to escape attention.
But she wasn’t coming this way. She was going over to the specials board. Was she hoping to persuade Harriet to try a different dish, force-feed her with fishcakes?
‘We haven’t seen you here for a while, Dr Palmer!’ declared a male voice above his head.
Tom looked up, startled, to see the middle-aged waiter who had supervised the restaurant for years.
‘You used to come in a lot with your young lady,’ said the waiter.
‘Yes, she’s – she’s gone abroad.’
The waiter looked down with friendly sympathy. ‘Oh, dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Stefanie says you asked for a steak.’
‘No chance, I suppose?’ asked Tom, hope fading.
But the waiter was not a man to pile further woes on the head of a deserted lover. ‘I’ll see if we can find one,’ he said confidentially.
‘Medium rare?’ Tom felt absurdly grateful.
‘Certainly!’ The waiter made a majestic departure, ignoring the waving hand of Tessa Briggs.
‘Hello, Tom, feeling better?’ It was a different male voice. This time when Tom looked up he saw the plump, smiling face of Maurice Melton hovering over him with the enquiring expression it probably wore when Maurice was taking stock of a newly arrived cadaver.
What was this place? Waterloo station? How many more casual visitors were going to pass through? And what on earth was old Maurice doing here?
Aloud, Tom heard himself muttering an explanation about the need for solid food and his planned returned to work.
Maurice, as he feared, replied with a request to be allowed to join him. Stefanie appeared and handed the new arrival the same dog-eared menu sheet rejected by Tom. She managed, as she did this, to pass a surly message to Tom.
‘Your steak’s just coming.’
‘Steak, eh?’ boomed Maurice, scanning the menu. ‘Where does it say that?’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Stefanie. ‘This gentleman made a special request. We haven’t got enough steaks in the fridge to put it on the menu. We had a run on them last night. Want me to go back and ask?’ She heaved a sigh.
‘No, no, my dear, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll have the roast.’
His courtesy did not pass unappreciated. Stefanie gave him a dazzling smile, following it with a malicious glance at Tom.
‘Not drinking, Tom?’ Maurice sounded concerned.
‘No, well, I’ve been taking medication for the cold.’
‘Quite, very sensible. A half-bottle of red, then.’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Stefanie graciously, and set off. But it was not Stefanie’s day. She had barely reached the door before a commanding voice echoed across the room.
‘Young woman!’ Mrs Briggs had already been ignored once and was not to be so twice. ‘I have been trying to attract some attention for over five minutes!’
Stefanie trudged back and across to the window table.
‘Interesting body you found in the woods, Tom,’ said Maurice cheerfully, and loudly enough to be heard well beyond the yucca.
Tom repressed the instinct to lean across the table and stuff a napkin in Maurice’s mouth. This was the very last thing he needed. At the moment, Mrs Briggs was taken up with telling Stefanie how poor the service was. But Maurice was not a man to speak quietly and, once Mrs Briggs had finished with Stefanie, it would only need her to catch just one key word. Luckily, the Polish barman had arrived with Maurice’s half-bottle and conversation was diverted.
‘What is this? Ah, a Merlot, very good. Pity you can’t have a glass, Tom.’
The waiter reappeared, bearing Tom’s steak. ‘There you go, Dr Palmer.’
‘I’ve seen many shotgun injuries in my time,’ announced Maurice, having savoured his Merlot.
‘Maurice!’ begged Tom. ‘Not now! There’s . . .’ He tried frantically to indicate the table window without being obvious.
‘Not while you’re eating? Of course! We’ll chat about it over coffee.’
Tom wondered how long he could make the steak last. But Mrs Briggs, having failed to entice Harriet to eat anything more, and told Stefanie in detail what was wrong with the Royal Oak, had asked for the bill. The two women passed by his table on their way out as Maurice’s roast arrived. Neither of the women looked at them. Maurice’s attention was diverted and, when he was ready to speak again, Harriet and her forceful companion had gone.
Tom was free now to enjoy his steak. Except that he had coffee to look forward to, during which Maurice would regale him with tales of shotgun injuries he had known. Tom didn’t want to upset Maurice, who was a nice old boy and a skilled pathologist, so he would have to sit through it all. How did professional detectives, like Jess or Ian Carter, or any others, manage to conduct their enquiries without the world and his wife appearing and putting their oar in?
Stefanie would not have agreed with him. Two new diners had arrived at the entrance to the restaurant and she was explaining to them that the kitchen would be closing in ten minutes. They could, however, get a snack in the bar.
‘But the kitchen isn’t closed yet, you say?’ The voice was female and challenging.
Maurice was deep in fond remembrance of some very interesting (to him) case. Tom’s attention wandered to the doorway and the woman who had spoken. She was tall and ultra slim, dressed in skinny jeans and high, shiny lizard-skin-pattern boots. She also wore a fitted black leather jacket without a collar. Possibly, she thought this was country wear. She had long, tawny-blond hair, and dark glasses perched on top of her head, although the day wasn’t particularly sunny. The fellow with her was tall, beefy, red-faced, ginger-haired and baggy-eyed. The front of his checked shirt bulged over the waistband of his chinos. He put the chap’s age at around the same as his own and hoped, even with his cold, that he didn’t look so out of condition.
‘So we’re not too late to order!’ declared this man.
‘It depends what you want!’ returned Stefanie, undaunted.
Tom now found himself in sympathy with her. He also felt a little ashamed because earlier he’d made such a fuss demanding his steak. Poor kid was probably on minimum wage and for this pittance had to put up with a succession of awkward customers: Tom himself, Tessa Briggs, and now this pair.
Maurice had exhausted his stock of anecdotes about shotgun injuries and moved on, for some reason, to cases of possible misdiagnosis.
‘Of course,’ he said, carefully placing his knife and fork on a clean plate, ‘we all of us remember the case of Sidney Fox and the Margate murder. Still a standard example for students, I dare say.’
‘Yes,’ said Tom absently.
‘What is there?’ demanded the ginger-haired bloke, loudly enough to cause even Maurice to pause and glance crossly in his direction.
‘The roast today is chicken,’ said Stefanie. ‘Chef could still do that for you.’
‘Yes,’ said the woman nastily, ‘because it was cooked mid-morning and has been hanging around ever since!’
‘It’s all that’s left, unless you want fishcakes,’ Stefanie told them.
Unsurprisingly, this suggestion didn’t help. ‘Fishcakes!’ the woman yelped.
‘Look here,’ said Ginger Hair. ‘We’ve driven down from London and we have just booked into this hotel. The receptionist told us we were in time to get a meal.’
‘I’m not eating fishcakes or left-over roast, Henry!’ The slim woman turned back to Stephanie. The waitress was now looking the picture of purple-haired suppressed rage. At the end of the day she would probably hand in her notice.
‘Is there anywhere else decent to eat nearby?’ continued the woman.
‘Not at the moment,’ Stefanie told her. ‘Usually, there would be the Fisherman’s Rest at Lower Weston.’ Maliciously, she added: ‘But it got flooded out before Christmas and is still being refurbished.’
‘And that’s it? This is a tourist area. Surely there’s somewhere else?’
‘The Black Horse, down the street, does sandwiches and pizzas.’
‘Oh, come along, Natalie!’ said Henry. ‘I saw a teashop. Perhaps they do something on toast.’
Stefanie watched them depart with the satisfied expression Boudicca might have worn on seeing Romans flee before her chariots. So much had triumph mellowed her that she suddenly wheeled round, swooped on their table and, smiling, announced, ‘I hope you enjoyed your lunch?’
‘Nice little girl, that,’ said Maurice when she’d brought their coffees.
Tom eventually took farewell of Maurice in the hotel car park. Maurice told him how much he’d enjoyed his company. Tom replied in like manner. Maurice drove off in his Jaguar. Tom looked around at the remaining vehicles. The black Range Rover wasn’t there and there was no sign of either of the two women. That wasn’t surprising. There was, however, a gleaming, showroom-new Mercedes. Henry and Natalie, thought Tom.
He put his hands in his pockets and wandered back into the main street. He didn’t particularly want to go home just yet. He began to stroll down the street in the general direction of the church. He paused before a newly opened antiques shop to study its window display of assorted knick-knacks and militaria. Nothing for him there. Oh, here was the teashop. Through the window he could see Henry and Natalie, glumly eating the something on toast. He moved on and came to a building with a placard outside. This, it told him, was the public library. It was run by volunteers and open only on specific days. Today was one of them. Tom, for want of anything else to do, went in.
It was bigger than he’d expected, and busier. A few people were studying the shelves of books. On the far wall a large display was being set up and a group of people were arguing in front of it. The display was of paintings executed by artists of a varying degree of competence. A man in his sixties, distinguished by the lack of hair on top of his head and the abundance of beard beneath his chin, seemed to be in charge of putting the individual pieces up, and then taking them down again. A banner above the display read ‘The Countryside about Us’. Beneath it a smaller notice explained that the display was the work of local artists, members of the Weston St Ambrose Countryside Artists’ club. Among the paintings was one of trees, and something about it looked familiar. Tom went to investigate.
‘We have to change them around, Sally,’ declared the bearded fellow. He wore a baggy pullover and baggy cord trousers to match, and he spoke in a booming voice. The sight and sound of him annoyed Tom. He had been taught chemistry at school by someone very similar.
‘I liked mine where it was!’ argued a small young woman with curling dark hair sticking out beneath a woollen hat.
‘Well, Sally, yours is not the only work to be displayed here, you know, and you have to consider other people!’ pronounced the bearded one.
‘I have considered them, all of them!’ retorted the small woman. ‘I’ve moved my pictures twice to please people. I’m not moving them again!’
That’s it! Tom cheered her on silently. Stand up for yourself.
‘You’re being difficult, you know,’ Beardie reproved her. Even Tom could have told him that he was throwing extra coals on the fire.
‘No, I’m not, Gordon, you are!’ She stood only as high as the middle of the bearded man’s chest and the effect was like a Jack Russell terrier holding its ground before a German shepherd. Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkled with the light of battle and the woollen hat had slipped backwards, revealing more dark curls. Tom was instantly smitten.
He inched closer under the excuse of looking at the pictures more closely, and got a surprise. It caused him to exclaim aloud, ‘These trees are in Crooked Man Woods!’
Sally and the bearded man, Gordon, looked at him.
‘Sorry,’ Tom apologised. ‘I was in those woods just the other day and I’m sure that’s where that clump of trees in the picture is.’
‘Yes, that’s right!’ said the small young woman, beaming at him.
‘Excuse me, but we are rather busy!’ Gordon squashed any budding discussion. ‘I hope, when we have our display in place, you’ll come back and look at all the exhibited work!’
That, Tom decided, was a way of telling him to push off. It was like being told to make do with fishcakes.
‘Oh, I won’t get in your way!’ he declared with what he hoped was a disarming smile. ‘I don’t come to this village often and I might not see the finished exhibition. Don’t mind if I take an unobtrusive peek, do you? I’ll stand well back.’
The small girl, Sally, was trying not to grin. Fortunately, before this became a three-way argument, someone called out, ‘Gordon!’ The bearded man said stiffly, ‘Excuse me a moment!’ and moved off.
‘He’s all right really,’ said Sally, sotto voce.<
br />
‘Is he? I’ll take your word for it.’ Tom nodded at the board. ‘I did recognise that clump of trees. You’re talented.’
‘Mm.’ She appeared to assess the compliment as she might have sized up a potential subject. ‘I couldn’t really get it right, you know.’ She was pointing at the painting. ‘Are you an artist?’
‘No, nothing like that, I’m afraid. I’m a walker. That’s how I know the woods and the general countryside around.’
She seemed suddenly lost in thought, and not pleasant thoughts. Her brow furrowed. ‘They found a body in the woods very recently. Some poor man had shot himself.’
‘I know,’ Tom said. ‘I found him. He didn’t shoot himself. Someone else did that!’
Not surprisingly, she looked shocked. ‘I hadn’t heard that. How awful.’ That furrowed brow was back. ‘Then you and I were both in the woods that morning.’
‘You were there!’ Tom gasped.
‘Yes, I paint trees, mostly. They’re always fascinating – to me, anyway. I use my smartphone to snap anything that takes my eye. After I get home I work it up first as a sketch and then, if I’m satisfied, in paint. I know it’s more traditional to go out with a sketchbook. Gordon does that quite a lot. I’ve just got into the habit of using my phone.’
‘Sounds fair enough to me. Did you see or hear anything while you were there? Anything suspicious?’
‘Well, I . . .’ She appeared to make up her mind. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got a Thermos in my bag, in the kitchen. I need a break from this lot, anyway.’
The kitchen was a cramped nook just off the main room. There was no door between the two and the sound of argument from the display drifted in. If libraries were supposed to be quiet places, this one certainly wasn’t. On a rickety table were piled assorted mugs and cups, some of which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the antiques shop down the road. There was also a carton of UHT milk, half a packet of sugar and an opened pack of digestive biscuits. Sally dragged a bag from beneath the table and extracted a Thermos flask.
