Best Murder in Show (Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries Book 1)

by Debbie Young

  “What I don’t understand is how anyone could have known in advance which authors we would play, so that they could prepare the right labels. But everyone knows we all keep our costumes a secret till Show Day. I don’t get it.”

  So now the pranks were my fault too. I tried to remember whom I’d told – Hector, obviously, but that didn’t seem unreasonable considering he was towing our float.

  Then I thought of Carol.

  Oh God, Carol! Another thought struck me, too terrible to speak of. Carol was the Players’ wardrobe mistress. Had she designed Linda’s costume to suffocate her? I was relieved to remember that I’d seen Linda striding about in it for twenty minutes before she got on the float, posing for photographs and startling old ladies in the crowd. She couldn’t have done that without being able to breathe.

  But with access to everyone’s prescription medicines in the shop, Carol might easily have slipped Linda a drugged drink designed to kill her in costumed sight. She’d even stitched Linda into her dress to keep her trapped while it did its work.

  Could Carol’s jealousy of Linda’s relationship with Rex have led her to murder?

  23 A New Light

  Half an hour later, I stepped back out onto the Recreation Ground, awash with tea and on a sugar rush from being fed too many biscuits. Hector was slowly driving across the car park, towing our float. I flagged him down and ran round to the driver’s side, where he’d wound down the window because of the heat.

  “Is it safe to go back to the arena now?” I asked him.

  “They’ve carted Linda’s body off in the ambulance, if that’s what you mean,” he said, reading me like a book. Well, he is a bookseller. “But I tell you what—” he gestured to me to move in closer “—I just heard one of the St John Ambulance men in the arena saying he thought she had severe heat rash, so maybe the costume was the cause. Though why Catherine Howard didn’t have the same problem is a mystery. Their costumes were almost identical. But keep that to yourself. We don’t want to upset anyone with speculation till the post-mortem result comes through. There’s enough gossip in this village without starting up more. For now, let’s enjoy the Show.”

  He looked at his watch, breaking his Homeric spell for a moment.

  “I’ll be back when I’ve parked the Land Rover behind the shop. Go and cheer yourself up by having a good look round the exhibition tent. It’ll be spectacular, I promise you. I’ll come and find you later.”

  And with that he put his car into gear and pulled away, the trailer rattling behind him as he turned onto the High Street.

  Not wanting to appear needy, I decided to check out the exhibits. Hector was right: the marquee was spectacular. I spent at least an hour wandering round in the surreal world of marrows the size of toddlers and runner beans like walking sticks. I’d have an awful lot of questions to ask Joshua and Hector later.

  The marquee certainly provided me with the opportunity to view my new neighbours in a different light. Although all the exhibits were submitted anonymously, once the judging was over, the names of the winners were revealed. I was startled to discover that a number of villagers whom I’d put down as being uninteresting or untalented had remarkable gifts, from intricate embroidery and cake decoration to mammoth marrows and plums too perfect to be true. They were of course all truly the work of the entrants. As a member of the Show Committee, I had learned that any exhibitor would be disqualified if discovered submitting work that was not their own. The committee reserved the right to inspect the gardens of anyone whom they suspected of fraud. I wondered how many times this right had been exercised.

  When I emerged, blinking, into the afternoon sunshine, I spotted a man on the Suffragettes’ float, sawing away at their chains with a huge metal file. None of the WI had been able to find the key, so their driver had had to move their float out of the arena with them all still aboard. People were now queuing up with a series of tools to cut through the metal. I wondered how the women could have been daft enough to mislay their key. I supposed they were at the age where their memories were starting to play up.

  Then I remembered that apart from the biscuits, I’d eaten nothing since breakfast, so I went to join the queue for the deer roast – perfect for lining my stomach before tracking down Hector in the beer tent. I had to force myself to do my bit to support the Show, despite my growing anxieties about my safety in the village.

  24 The Spoils of the Show

  Despite Dinah’s assurances, I was astonished at how readily everyone allowed the show to continue normally. I wondered whether they all knew about Linda’s death. No one had thought fit to announce it over the tannoy. I supposed it might have caused panic and confusion in between shout-outs for lost children and husbands.

  After I’d finished my deer roast sandwich, I ambled around the stalls for an hour, buying raffle and tombola tickets to support the local charities running them, and trying my hand at fairground favourites such as Splat the Rat and the coconut shy. I didn’t think anyone still did coconut shies, but this one seemed to bring out the competitive instinct in men of all ages. Some of the women proved a dab hand at it too.

  I watched Rex showing off to the crowd with a volley of accurate shots. After what the others had said over tea, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was still at the show, but considering the tragedy had been on his float, involving the woman with whom we assumed he was having an affair, I found his absorption in his current task heartless. Perhaps it was just displacement activity for grief.

  “What on earth will Rex do with seven coconuts?” I wondered aloud as I watched him from the sidelines.

  “Juggle?” said Hector, materialising at my elbow. “Pull rabbits out of them?”

  “Or make them disappear,” said Carol, sidling up to Hector. Before I could stop myself, I’d taken a couple of steps back, suddenly nervous in her presence. She smiled at me appreciatively, assuming I was just letting her get closer to Hector. It seemed she hadn’t given up on him romantically yet. “He’s very good, you know. He was showing me the other day how easy it is for shoplifters to smuggle things out without paying. It was quite an eye-opener, I can tell you. I don’t know why he stopped being a magician, because he’s really very good with – what do they call it? – spite of hand. It’s not magic at all, of course. I might have to start frisking him before he leaves the shop in future.”

  Her wistful expression suggested she would find that task no hardship. At that point, Hector did his own vanishing act. To my surprise, I spotted a hint of lust as Carol stared after him mingling with the crowd at the raffle stall. Talk about fickle. Show Day was clearly bringing out the beast in her.

  “Why’s Hector wearing a dress?” she asked abruptly.

  “He’s being Homer, the Greek poet,” I explained. She nodded sagely.

  “Ah well, that would explain it. I suppose it’s one way of advertising his romantic status. I mean, the Greeks invented it, didn’t they?”

  “Invented what?”

  “Homersexuality.”

  Suppressing a laugh, I changed the subject, leading the conversation off to probe about Rex’s interesting former career as a cabaret magician. Now there was a ladies’ man if ever there was one, apparently with no shortage of lovely assistants.

  “When he first moved here, he planned to set himself up as a children’s party conjuror, on the side from his drama teaching,” said Carol. “But that never got off the ground. I don’t know why. But don’t listen to me, my dear. You know I’m not one to gossip. You want to ask the one person in the village that knew him back in his conjuring days.”

  “Who would that be?” I asked, determined to do so.

  “Why, Linda Absolom, of course!” she said brightly, before the events of earlier caught up with her. “Oh dear. It’s too late for that now, isn’t it?”

  Then she turned and scurried off to admire the exhibits for one last time before the tent was cleared at the end of the day. I’d seen her name on several winning entries
in the floral art section. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to prolong her moment of glory.

  At around 5pm I bumped into Barbara Cartland in the beer tent.

  “I’ve had enough,” she said. “I feel emotionally drained after this business with Linda. I know I didn’t much like her, but still. It doesn’t feel respectful to hang around getting drunk in the beer tent.”

  She nodded towards Sylvia Plath, who was tucking into a pint of Guinness. It didn’t look as if it was her first. She had her arm around another lady whom I didn’t know, who was drinking Chardonnay from a full-sized bottle through a straw.

  Just then, Rex brushed past me, and I noticed a small silver key drop from his codpiece. I didn’t know codpieces were lockable, and wondered idly whether it was the medieval feminist’s answer to a chastity belt. Knowing Rex’s reputation as a womaniser, perhaps Dido had insisted. I bent to pick it up, wondering whether I should return it to Dido rather than Rex, but was distracted by Hector’s reappearance at my side.

  “Like to come to the auction with me?”

  I’d already learned from the Show Committee that the auction was the sale of exhibits donated by entrants at the end of the day. It raised funds towards the Show’s running costs. These were higher than I’d realised, what with insurance and marquee hire, entertainments fees and prize money. The auction sounded like good fun, so I accepted Hector’s invitation, wishing it wasn’t a Platonic date. Oh, that toga!

  The bidding, lubricated by the beer tent, was fast and furious. Many people went home with more goods than they could comfortably carry. Determined to enter into the spirit of it like a real villager, after a glass or two of warm white wine from the beer tent, I got stuck into the bidding. An hour later, when it was all over, I took home three heads of celery, four of lettuce, another jar of jam to add to Auntie May’s collection, a less than successful loaf of white bread, a basket of small floral arrangements, and the makings of a hangover for next morning.

  As I sipped my hot chocolate in bed, I tried to put the best complexion on the day’s events. Without Linda’s death, I would have had a marvellous time, except for those stupid pranks. I couldn’t believe I’d got so het up about them now. After all, they paled into insignificance besides Linda’s death. Or were they connected? Were they just harmless jokes in bad taste, or were they more sinister? Might Linda’s death have been a prank that got out of hand?

  Swirling the rest of my drink around in the mug, I watched the remaining liquid pick up the foam from the rim of the cup. If she’d been in good health, being inside a warm costume for a couple of hours wouldn’t have finished her off. Catherine Howard lived to tell the tale. Maybe Linda had been ill all along, but hadn’t liked to mention it to anyone, especially if she had no close friends in the village. Perhaps she would turn out to have had a congenital heart disorder, or an aneurysm waiting to happen any time. Dinah was probably right. After the post-mortem pronounced death from natural causes, her family would hold the funeral, and we’d all feel better. Except Linda, of course.

  As darkness fell, I became less sure. If there was a murderer at large, mightn’t they strike again? I shivered, knocked back the rest of my cocoa, stood the empty mug on the bedside table, and snuggled down beneath the duvet.

  My last thought before I drifted off to sleep was Damian’s voice saying, “You’ll be murdered in your bed and nobody will be there to hear you scream.”

  25 Debriefing Joshua

  The first thing I was aware of next morning was a loud banging sound. I thought it was inside my head, the result of too many plastic glasses of wine in the beer tent after the auction, until I realised it was coming from downstairs. Someone was hammering on the front door.

  In broad daylight, the sound was far less scary than it would have been the night before. I staggered out of bed and lifted the sash window to see who it was. Leaning out, I saw Carol gently tapping with the brass knocker.

  “Hang on, I’ll be down in a sec,” I called. She looked up and waved when she spotted me.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realise you’d still be in bed.”

  I stumbled into my slippers, trudged down the stairs and hauled the front door open. The sunshine struck me as very bright for so early in the day, till I glanced at my watch and saw it was gone eleven.

  “Come in for some elevenses?” I offered weakly. I showed her through to the kitchen, where I filled the kettle from the tap and got out the makings of instant coffee.

  “I wanted to thank you for bidding so much for my flowers last night at the auction,” Carol began. “That was kind of you.”

  “Not at all. They’re lovely. Much nicer than a lot of other things I might have bid for. I don’t suppose I can interest you in some celery? I have plenty,” I remembered. “I thought I’d take the little jars of flowers to Hector’s House tomorrow for the tearoom tables. I get a bit of hay fever, so probably best not to keep them all.”

  “Good idea,” said Carol cheerily. “They’ll be good for local eco – enviro – good for the insects and birds.”

  For someone who had possibly just committed a murder, she was remarkably bright and breezy. Did she have no conscience, no remorse? I didn’t want her to know of my suspicions and was glad of the flowers as a talking point to keep the conversation going.

  “Lovely for humans to look at, too. You ought to sell them in the shop, you know. Though people might not buy big fancy arrangements, I’m sure you could do those little bunches at an affordable price.”

  “Do you think so? I’ve never thought of it before. Rex insisted on making up those little hanging flower balls to go with the queen costumes. He said they added an extra touch of authenticity. Apparently Tudor ladies used to carry flowers to stop them smelling bad, in the days before baths caught on. I have to say, having stitched all those ladies into the costumes on such a hot day, I began to see their point.”

  I went cold, although my hands were round her hot mug of coffee. I set it down on the table in front of her, then picked up mine and hung on to it with both hands lest she’d come on a mission to drug it. No point putting temptation in her way.

  I vaguely recalled learning about Tudor life in school history lessons. “I thought it was plague that they were trying to ward off.”

  “I think we can safely assume that Linda Absolom didn’t die of plague,” said Carol. She reached over to the box of flowers and pulled out one little ball of blooms that hung from a scarlet ribbon. “This was her posy.”

  I stared at it askance, feeling deeply uncomfortable about its presence in my kitchen. It no longer seemed as pretty as before; I felt like I’d stolen a wreath from a grave. While I didn’t want to hurt Carol’s feelings, I determined to get rid of it as soon as we’d analysed the rights and wrongs of who won the prizes at the Show and she’d gone.

  I finally got dressed around noon, after carefully hanging my Virginia Woolf dress up in the wardrobe once I’d found where I’d left it the night before: in a heap on the bathroom floor. I’d enjoyed being a bluestocking for the day, and I hoped I’d have the chance to wear it again soon.

  As I came back downstairs to the kitchen, wondering whether I could yet stomach any toast, I saw Joshua approaching the back door. When I let him in, he sat down at the kitchen table, admiring the home-made bread and jam that lay next to my auction haul.

  “Been baking this morning, have you?” He knew the answer already. I cut a slice of bread for him to sample and spread it with some of the jam, giving it a miss myself. The scarlet jam, which had not set properly, reminded me too much of blood, and of poor Linda. I knew this was irrational, because her blood had not been spilled.

  “They’re pretty,” said Joshua, noticing the box of flowers once he’d finished his first mouthful.

  “Yes, Carol did them. Did you see how many awards she won yesterday for flower arranging? She took the overall trophy for Best Floral Art too. I told her she ought to sell little arrangements like this in the shop. It’s not as if she’d h
ave to buy any materials, because she’s got a garden full of flowers. I remember visiting it with Auntie May when I was little.”

  “Hector told me you’ve got an eye for business.”

  “Ha, he keeps saying that, but usually he passes his ideas off as mine. It’s kind of him, but I’m not sure I deserve it.”

  “Oh, just humour him,” said Joshua. “I’m sure his intentions are of the best.”

  “But what about these flowers? I’m not sure it’s right to have Anne Boleyn’s flowers here when Linda’s lying dead in a hospital mortuary.” Gingerly I picked up her posy with a tea towel. “I’m not superstitious, but I don’t feel comfortable with them in the house.”

  “Why not hang them up on that basket hook outside?” Joshua pointed to a wrought iron curlicue outside the window. “I meant to tell you, I took down May’s hanging baskets after she died as she’d not got round to planting them. They looked so desolate, hanging empty there. They’re in her garden shed if you want them.”

  I stood on the bench outside the window to put the flower ball on the wall hook. The ribbons fluttered in the light midday breeze. A sprinkle of rain overnight had freshened the air agreeably. I was feeling a little better.

  “So what do you think about Linda’s death?” I asked Joshua on my return. “Do you think it was natural causes?”

  I watched him carefully, thinking that if he was involved, he would be cautious in his response.

  Joshua looked at me reproachfully. “Why shouldn’t it be? Young people die too.”

  “She wasn’t exactly young. She was in her forties.”

  Joshua chuckled into his tea. “My dear, when you’re my age, forties seem like childhood. Why are you so convinced it may not be the case? Did you see anything suspicious?”