Body in the Woods (A Reverend Annabelle Dixon Cozy Mystery Book 3)

by Alison Golden

  “What happened?” Annabelle asked earnestly, on the edge of her seat.

  “About ten years ago, I married Tom Flynn – you know him. Well, when it came to deciding where we would live, it was an easy choice. Tom’s house over on the hill was ten times the size of ours! As I was the eldest, and Harry – my brother – was away working in London, I didn’t want to leave our family home empty.”

  “So you decided to turn it into a tea shop.”

  “And I’ve never looked back.”

  “It’s the best in Cornwall.”

  Katie chuckled. “Thank you, Reverend. Certain people were against the idea from the start, however.”

  “Why?”

  Katie shook her head in confusion. “I still don’t really know. She said it would be ‘noisy,’ that it would ‘ruin the aesthetics of the street,’ that the house had been a home for years, and it would be a tragedy to change it into a business. At first I thought it was just the typical grumbles and resistance to change you hear at any old town hall meeting, but when she began getting lawyers involved, I got very upset indeed. They threw out her claims, of course, but it left a very bitter taste in my mouth – especially when the shop was supposed to bring pleasure, and tourists, to the whole village. Personally I think she’s been a teacher for too long. She thinks she can boss around adults just as easily as she does her pupils!”

  “It is rather strange.”

  “She’s never been the same since her sister disappeared – not that she was so wonderful then, of course.”

  “Do you think her objections to the shop were about clinging to the past? Albeit in an odd way?”

  Katie shrugged.

  “Frankly, Reverend, I think you’d need more Godly forgiveness than I’m capable of to give her the benefit of the doubt to that extent.”

  Annabelle sighed sadly.

  “Can you tell me anything about her sister? About how she disappeared?”

  “Ah, you’re going very far back there, Reverend. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast!”

  “Please try.”

  Katie looked up and squinted as she brought forth memories long forgotten.

  “Well, the one thing I do remember is that Lucy was as sweet as Louisa was sour. She was always smiling, always laughing. Everybody loved her. None of that intensity or aloofness that Louisa has. No, Lucy was an utterly lovely girl. I’m sure that’s why they never got on.”

  “They argued?”

  “No, nothing like that. They just… weren’t like sisters at all. They never did anything together. Partly because Louisa always thought she was better than anyone else. If there was a school dance, you could be sure that Louisa wouldn’t show up, and just as sure that Lucy would be the life of the party. If it was a nice day, you were sure to find Lucy skipping down the street to meet her friends, while Louisa was locked up in her room with nothing but her books. I mean, put it this way, Reverend, you know almost every person in this village, and yet here you are, having to ask me about Louisa Montgomery. What does that say about her as a person?”

  “Hmm,” Annabelle murmured, “I suppose you have a point.”

  “Oh! And she was so disapproving of Lucy having a boyfriend. You’d think she was her mother, rather than her older sister! The crazy thing was that Louisa herself had a boyfriend! If that’s not the definition of hypocrisy then I don’t know what is!”

  “So she was protective of Lucy?”

  “Bah!” Katie said, brushing the idea aside. “If you’re looking for good intentions from Louisa Montgomery, you’ll need to dig very deep. If you ask me, Louisa was jealous of Lucy. Lucy was younger, prettier, more popular, and had the entire world at her feet. Most people would be proud to call Lucy their sister. Louisa was simply proud.”

  Annabelle thought over what Katie was saying as she took a large bite of her cupcake and followed it up with some sips of piping hot tea. She placed the cup down gently and looked once more at the tea shop owner.

  “How did Lucy disappear?”

  Katie looked once again into the distance, her mind diving into the depths of her memories.

  “It was about twenty years ago, now. I believe she had gone out with her boyfriend, and she just vanished. Never came home.”

  “Did they question the boyfriend?”

  “I believe they did,” Katie said, the slowness of her words and the troubled look in her eyes indicating that she was at the limits of what her memory could bring forth, “but they never arrested him. I think he had an alibi, or perhaps there was some confusion over exactly when it happened.”

  “It’s all very curious.”

  “Oh,” Katie said adamantly, “I remember the impact it had very well. The whole village was stunned. Lucy was a friend to everyone, her loss affected all of us. Some people were angry, some wouldn’t let it go, and most of us were extremely sad. It was a very dark time.”

  “For Louisa, too?”

  “Yeah,” Katie said, “even for her. If she was prickly previously, she was positively reclusive after the incident. You’d get an occasional ‘hello,’ or a simple conversation out of her before her sister disappeared, but when she lost her sister, she gave up on other people completely.”

  “That’s a terrible story,” Annabelle said.

  “Yes, it is,” Katie agreed. “It takes a long time for such wounds to heal.”

  “For some people those kinds of wounds never fully do,” Annabelle replied.

  Katie nodded.

  “Do you remember who Lucy’s boyfriend was?”

  Katie once again peered into the distance, lines of deep concentration forming around her eyes.

  “You know, I really don’t. My memory is fuzzy. I could tell you a dozen names, but I wouldn’t be sure about any of them!” she laughed.

  “That’s alright,” Annabelle said. “Twenty years is a long time. I doubt I could remember much of what I was doing twenty years ago.”

  “It’s like I say, Reverend, you remember the things that change your life.”

  “That’s very true, Katie.”

  “How come you’re so interested in this, Reverend? Has Philippa been regaling you with stories from the past?”

  Annabelle smiled. “No, Philippa’s been rather introspective herself, lately. Actually, I’m surprised you haven’t heard the news yourself, Katie. I’m under strict orders not to tell anyone.”

  “Oh, come now, Reverend! Surely I deserve something in return for my history lesson!”

  Annabelle chuckled.

  “You’ll probably hear it soon anyway. This business with Louisa’s sister is about to become the talk of the town once again.”

  Katie’s face dropped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They found a body in the woods last night.”

  “Lucy’s?!”

  Annabelle shrugged.

  “From what you tell me, Katie, I don’t see who else it could be.”

  CHAPTER 4

  DR. BROWNSON’S FOOTSTEPS echoed ominously around the clean, hard walls of the hospital. There were few people around at this time of the morning, his only interactions being with the receptionist who indicated in which direction he would find the morgue and the cleaner who nodded a perfunctory greeting.

  He walked slowly and steadily, his bearing almost regal. He felt like a man about to meet his fate, a prince about to take the crown, an athlete about to ascend the podium. He distracted himself from his jangling nerves by fidgeting with the bouquet of roses he carried delicately in his clammy palm, and brushing the sides of his grey-brown curls, occasionally checking his reflection in a well-polished window to make sure he hadn’t brushed his hair too much. The large double doors loomed at the end of the corridor like the gates to heaven, and his heart raced ever more quickly as he made his way forward, step by step.

  Robert Brownson was suddenly struck by a thought that seared through him with the power of a lightning bolt: Would Harper Jones still remember him? He stopped in h
is tracks, his mouth open with shock. After a moment to gather his senses, he realized the stupidity of the thought – Harper Jones had been the one who asked for him! He smiled to himself, shook his head, and slowly began walking once again.

  After another few steps he froze again. What would he say? It had been so long. He vividly remembered Harper’s keen gaze, her brevity with words, and her ability to make others feel like they were in the spotlight. When they were younger, he had often struggled to say the right thing to her. Now that they had not spoken for so long, he had even less of an idea of what to say. What if she had not lost that focused, silent intensity, just as he had not lost his bumbling clumsiness when it came to conversation?

  Brownson took out the white handkerchief he had spent over five minutes neatly folding into his pocket, adjusting it to be as precise and as neat as Harper herself, and wiped it across his brow. He was sweating and suddenly felt immensely claustrophobic in the hospital hallway. He caught sight of a water cooler some way down another corridor and hurried toward it. The glug of the water echoed against the walls as he filled paper cup after paper cup and downed them one after the other.

  He breathed deeply, feeling both calmer and cooler.

  For goodness sake, Robert! he thought to himself. You’re a man of over fifty! You can’t be nervous at the prospect of meeting a colleague!

  After preparing himself with these words, however unconvinced of them he really was, he threw the paper cup into the nearby bin, picked up the bouquet once again, stiffened his back, and marched toward the doors marked ‘morgue.’

  As soon as he entered the room, however, whatever romantic scene Dr. Brownson had imagined previously disappeared entirely, as half a dozen people of various ages and sizes, all clothed in white coats, spun their heads and caught sight of him standing there with the bouquet in front of him like a knight preparing to joust.

  Up until now, Brownson had imagined his meeting with Harper as intimate, the two of them greeting in a warm, friendly manner among the scientific paraphernalia they had once spent so much time with. In his daydreams, he had seen them leaning over some wonderful artifact, enthralled by a particular aspect of it as much as by each other’s company, two dedicated scientists indulging their similarly potent passions for enlightened thinking.

  Instead, the morgue was bustling with movement and the clinking of equipment – at least, until he walked in. The people in white coats were all moving around a table at the center of the room, the bones lying upon it anything but wonderful. Dirt, greenery, and pebbles were in the process of being cleaned from them, the messy debris providing a stark contrast to the sterile mortuary. The decomposed figure laid out looked almost terrifying and even at his distracted first glance, Dr. Brownson could tell that this skeleton had a rather sad story to tell.

  “Ah…” he stammered, taken aback by the sheer number of people looking at him, as well as the clinical, deathly atmosphere that befell the room and the shattering of his fantasies. He glanced at the roses in his hand, looking at them as if they had been placed there by someone else, then tossed them aside onto a counter, causing instruments to clang to the floor. Everyone stared at him as the last vibrato tone of a fallen tong preceded complete and utter silence.

  Just as Dr. Brownson was about to make his apologies and scurry out of the hospital, into his car, and back to his home in London, the figure at the head of the table took off her glasses and smiled.

  “Robert!”

  It was Harper. As radiant as ever.Still impossibly beautiful and almost magically youthful. So startling was she that Brownson almost believed her to be somebody else. She looked a full two decades younger than her forty-eight years. The bright sparkle of her green eyes and wide lips which seemed to save all their light for rare, powerful smiles were unmistakable, however.

  Dr. Brownson’s earlier embarrassment disappeared along with his awareness of the rest of the room, as his eyes focused only upon Harper making her way toward him and taking his arm. Suddenly, he felt as if he were an audience in his own mind, unable to believe this was really happening, watching what unfolded as though it was happening to somebody else.

  “Everyone,” Harper called to the rest of the team, “this is Dr. Robert Brownson, the finest forensic anthropologist in England. Robert, this is a small team of people I’ve brought in to help. They’re mostly medical students and assistants who will cater to your every whim. Whatever you wish for, they shall divine.”

  The team nodded respectfully, a few of them uttering courteous ‘hellos,’ though Dr. Brownson’s eyes were fixed upon the transcendent figure next to him.

  “Harper!” he managed to say, as she led him toward the table. “How are you? Why, you look as wonderf—”

  “So as you can see, the bones have been underground long enough that roots have formed between them. I’m no botanist, but it seems to me that an estimate of…”

  Brownson gazed into her face, her words growing ever more incomprehensible and elusive to follow. Try as he might to concentrate upon what she was saying, the sound of her voice captivated him so intensely that he struggled to focus on the meaning of her words. He basked in the music and the rhythm of her exquisite voice, vowels pitched in the most heavenly keys possible, consonants so expertly and delicately uttered. He felt himself carried away on a soft pillow of sound he had almost forgotten.

  “...though in my personal opinion the femur indicates an age of mid to late-teens, what do you think?”

  Brownson’s eyes were closed, but after a few moments he noticed that the beautiful sound of Harper’s voice had disappeared, and he re-opened them.

  “Robert?” Harper repeated, the anthropologist’s silence catching the attention of several team members who shot surprised glances at Harper.

  “Ah… Yes… Sorry.”

  Harper looked at Dr. Brownson with a furrow in her brow.

  “Let me see,” he said, buying himself time to gather his senses by peering at the bones in front of him.

  Harper leaned down and spoke into his ear.

  “Are you quite alright, Robert? Do you need some rest before we start? You’ve been driving all night.”

  “No, no, I shall be fine. Your smile has infused me with an energy no amount of sleep could replicate,” he whispered.

  Harper looked at Brownson and squinted suspiciously. The group that had by now all gathered around the body shuffled awkwardly before observing the anthropologist keenly as he resumed probing and poking absently at the skeleton.

  “So what do you think, Dr. Brownson?” one of the assistants piped up.

  “Do you remember,” Dr. Brownson ignored his inquisitor, and began to speak again to Harper, his mind far too captivated by his thoughts to concentrate upon his work, “when we took a trip to Brighton Beach? We went in the water, but you were so concerned about your hair that you would only go up to your waist!”

  Brownson laughed heartily, causing a few more members to cast confused expressions toward him.

  “Um…” Harper said, clearing her throat. “Yes. I was just wondering, however, what age you would place the body based on the—”

  “Of course, of course,” Dr. Brownson said, turning his head once more to the collection of bones. He prodded a little more but when everyone had turned their attention once again to the skeleton on the table, Dr. Brownson leaned in toward Harper again, a warm smile upon his face.

  “I must say,” he whispered, as his hands continued to work a particularly tough particle of dirt away from one of the bones, “you don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you. It’s simply remarkable.”

  Harper smiled neatly, though there was a certain amount of tension around her jaw. She looked straight at him and indicated with her eyes for him to focus on the bones. “Thank you. That’s nice of you to say. You look very well yourself, Robert.”

  Dr. Brownson smiled warmly and cast his eyes around the table at the assistants who returned his inexplicable grin politely. He continu
ed to work on the bones, grasping at a nearby brush in order to get a better look at a cavity.

  “Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not, when I against my self with thee partake?” he said.

  “Ah… Dr. Brownson.”

  “Do I not think on thee when I forgot, am of my self, all-tyrant, for thy sake?”

  “Doctor…”

  “That was one of your favorite sonnets, do you remember?” Dr. Brownson said, with glee, all attempts at discretion now discarded. “I would read you a different one each time we parted. That particular one was when—”

  Dr. Brownson felt firm fingers grip his forearm and pull him toward the morgue entrance. Harper wrenched the door open and yanked the doctor outside with an ease that suggested remarkable strength for such a slight woman.

  He looked around him, as if stunned to find himself outside, before settling his eyes once again on Harper and smiling as if he realized her intentions.

  “What is the matter with you? This is neither the time nor the place, Robert,” said Harper, her voice firm and resolute.

  “You’re right,” replied Dr. Brownson, standing upright. “I’m sorry. I just got carried away.”

  “I have a team in there, hadn’t you noticed?” continued Harper. “They expected an experienced forensic anthropologist…not a Shakespeare-quoting, sonnet-serenading poet!”

  Dr. Brownson nodded apologetically. “You’re right. I’m being terribly unprofessional. It’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, and it’s stirring so many pleasant memories!”

  Harper sighed.

  “Let’s get back in there and do our work,” Dr. Brownson said, wearing a pleased smile, “and as soon as we’re done, I would be honored if you would join me for dinner, I mean, breakfast. We’ll catch up – we’ve got decades to get through after all!”

  Dr. Brownson chuckled and stepped toward the door, but a strong grip pulled him back once again. When his eyes met Harper’s, his face dropped.

  “Robert…”

  “Don’t look so shocked! I know it’s been a long time, but just looking at you I can see you’ve not changed very much at all. As for me, well, I’m pretty much the same man you knew at Oxford! I daresay it’ll be just as if you never left!”