Springtime for Murder

by Debbie Young

  “Do you think we should phone Stuart to warn him?” I didn’t want to make matters any worse for any of the parties involved, including his first wife.

  “I don’t have his number, as he’s not one of my parishioners. Nor do I know his postal address. Do you?” He flicked his indicator to follow the diversion around the closed bridge.

  “Afraid not. I’ve only met him once. He came into Hector’s House the other night asking me to change a fifty-pound note into pound coins. I didn’t trust him, to be honest. There was something odd about him. When I asked why he needed so many pound coins, he said he wanted to donate it to your penny mile.”

  “My penny mile? What penny mile?”

  I gave a triumphant laugh. “I knew he was fibbing! What’s more, as he left the shop, his trouser pockets were jangling as if they were already full of change.”

  “Maybe he’d just raided young Angelica’s piggybank.” The vicar clapped one hand over his mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, Sophie, that remark was unworthy of a clergyman. Pretend you didn’t hear it. I’m a wicked, wicked man.”

  I laughed. “It must be hard to be virtuous all the time.”

  He grinned. “Is it, Sophie? You tell me.”

  30 A Real Tonic

  Bunny was noticeably cheerier and more energetic now, although her bruises were more spectacular. She reminded me of a Polaroid photo, slowly developing its colours before your very eyes.

  Mr Murray asked whether there was anything she wanted from the hospital shop, then pottered off to fetch us coffee from the vending machine, leaving us alone to chat.

  “So, my dear, how is the lovely Hector?”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “He’s fine, thank you, and he sends you his love.”

  She pressed her hand against her heart.

  “That’s worth having, as I’m sure you know. He is a dear boy, and you are lucky to have him. And he you, of course.”

  My eyes suddenly filled with tears. “You think so?” A tear escaped and rolled down my cheek. I reached up to brush it away, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but she was too quick for me.

  “Oh, my dear, have you had a lovers’ tiff?”

  Her smile was so kind that I couldn’t help but spill out my worries. With three husbands behind her, and goodness knows how many boyfriends, she had considerably more experience of love than I did.

  I spoke quickly, knowing that the vicar would not be gone long. “I’m probably just being silly, but when the vicar and I left the shop tonight, this beautiful girl Becky arrived, and he seemed very pleased to see her.”

  “Carol’s daughter, Becky?”

  I nodded.

  “Hector told me all about Becky when she first moved in with Carol before Christmas. He said she’s very well-read. It’s only natural that a girl like that would visit your bookshop. Are you saying you don’t welcome her custom?”

  I bit my lip. “The thing is, she doesn’t just come to buy books. I found out the other day that he’s been asking her to help in the shop when I’m not there. And when Mr Murray and I left the shop just now, as she was arriving, Hector let her in and immediately turned the door sign to ‘Closed’.”

  Bunny reached out to clasp both my hands. Hers were thin and bony and smooth as silk. “It must have been about closing time anyway?”

  I sniffed. “Not for another fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t think that’s any cause for alarm.”

  “But that’s not the only thing.” I wondered how much I should tell her. This visit was meant to cheer her up, not weigh her down with my own woes. “He’s started chatting up other women too, like one of the nurses here the other day. When I first met him, he seemed much more reserved.”

  Bunny held up a hand to silence me. “Nonsense. Hector loves you. He’s been telling me all about you since you first moved to the village, yet he has barely said a word about Becky lately, nor any other woman, bar his dear mother.”

  She leaned forward, a twinkle in her eyes. “Maybe there’s another reason for the change in him. You’ve restored his self-confidence. You’ve made him feel attractive as a man, and he’s rather enjoying the effect you have on him. That’s a powerful tool in a relationship. Trust me, I should know.”

  She sat back again, more comfortable this time when her back touched the pillows. “Mind you, I’ve been reading about toy boys in those awful magazines they keep in the patients’ lounge. If I was going to choose one, I could do worse than pick Hector. A young stallion of a man! If you tire of him, just send him down to me at the Manor House.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Much as I loved him, stallion was overstating the case. Still, the only other man she’d seen much of lately was Billy, and he was more of a Shetland pony.

  It was probably just as well that the vicar returned at that point, spilling coffee from three flimsy plastic cups squeezed between his hands in a precarious triangle. I helped him set the coffee safely on the bedside locker.

  “What are you two giggling about?” He smiled as he settled down into an armchair beside the bed.

  “Just girl talk,” said Bunny, winking at me. “Nothing of any consequence.”

  I hoped she was right.

  31 Dirty Laundry

  By the time the vicar dropped me home, it was dark. I was anxious to check up on Blossom, as it was the longest he’d been alone in the house. Dumping Bunny’s bag of laundry in the hall, I decided to take it round to the Manor House in the morning on my way to work.

  I’d half-expected Blossom to come running up to greet me, but the cottage was eerily quiet. I went from room to room, turning on lights and calling his name, before finding him curled up like a baby hedgehog, asleep on the bathmat. Scooping him up with one hand, I carried him through to my bedroom, sat on the bed with him on my lap and settled down to call Hector. A text wouldn’t tell me whether or not he was alone.

  “Your round, boy!” were the first words I heard when he accepted my call. Billy was apparently closer to the mouthpiece than Hector.

  “First things first.” That was Hector to Billy. “Hello, sweetheart, how’s Bunny?”

  “On good form. She sends you her love.” I didn’t elaborate. “Are you at the pub?”

  “Got it in one. I just popped over for a quick half after shutting up shop and got buttonholed by Billy.”

  With or without Becky? I wanted to ask, but didn’t want to bring her into the conversation. “Shouldn’t he be at the Manor House?”

  “He’s escaped. Kitty gave him time off for good behaviour. What’s this I hear about the vicar delivering some long-lost relative up to the Manor House? I can’t get much sense out of Billy about her.”

  Another voice drowned him out, an uncomfortably familiar one: Paul. “I’ll get these, Bill. Hector can catch up afterwards.”

  I lowered my voice so only Hector might hear. “Her name’s Angelica. She’s Stuart’s wife. Or so she claims. Not the one in Slate Green, but another one. And she’s pregnant and he doesn’t know it yet.”

  “Pregnant?” The background noise disappeared, then I heard Hector, slightly muffled, say “No, not Sophie.” As the hubbub resumed around him, he continued, “Billy’s left her having a heart-to-heart with Kitty. Are you coming up to join us?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  “Of course I do. But you don’t have to. Would it help persuade you if I told you Paul seems bent on buying everyone drinks?”

  I ran my free hand gently over Blossom’s powder puff of a back. He began to purr in his sleep.

  “Quite the opposite. Besides, it sounds like a boys’ night out.” That gave him the chance to confess if Becky was with him, but he didn’t. “I’m going to put my feet up with Blossom and have an early night. You’re welcome to come to mine later if you like.”

  “Thanks all the same, but I’ll give it a miss. I’ll wait and see you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.” I heard the unmistakeable chink of a round of beer glasses being set down
on the table in front of him. “Though I’m not sure I will be at this rate.”

  As I clicked “end call”, I had a horrible feeling that if it wasn’t Becky luring him away, then Blossom’s presence in my cottage might have put him off staying here. I hoped I hadn’t made a dreadful mistake in taking Blossom on.

  As I reached across the pillow to turn my alarm off at eight o’clock, my hand brushed against Blossom’s soft fur. I was tempted to snuggle down with him for ten more minutes, then I remembered I had to drop off at the Manor House a bag of Bunny’s dirty laundry.

  I drew back the bedroom curtains, blinking against the spring sunshine. Working on a Saturday wasn’t really so bad now I’d got used to it. If I didn’t have to be at the shop by nine, I’d have slept through this glorious morning.

  Plenty of other people were already out and about enjoying the weather. A young girl was strolling up towards the shop with a scruffy grey dog on a lead, and Dr Perkins was just striding past my house in the opposite direction. I watched him pause to exchange a cheery greeting with Joshua, who, always up with the lark, was busy deadheading daffodils in his front garden.

  Then I remembered I was still in my nightie, and I stepped back from the window before anyone might spot me. I scrambled into my clothes, downed a yoghurt for breakfast, fed Blossom and grabbed the laundry bag before heading out of the front door.

  I waved to Joshua who was looking through his front room window as I passed his gate, swinging the laundry bag as I walked. I was glad to have this excuse to visit Kitty again so soon, to find out what she’d made of Angelica, and to try to detect whether Stuart really was guilty of bigamy. If so, no wonder he was broke, even without throwing his money away on slot machines.

  I was feeling much more positive after a good night’s sleep. Blossom, who slept almost constantly, was a good influence. But my contentment was to be cut short in an unimaginably cruel way.

  The door to the Manor House was ajar again. Either I wasn’t the first visitor this morning, or Billy still hadn’t fixed the faulty catch. I knocked on the door. The eerie quiet within filled me with unease. Why was no-one up and about? Perhaps Billy would be slow to emerge after the previous night’s shenanigans with Paul, Hector and friends, but not Kitty.

  Pushing the door open and tiptoeing inside, I decided to empty Bunny’s laundry into the basket in the utility room, so that Kitty wouldn’t mistake the black bag for rubbish and put it in the wheelie bin. It irked me that the hospital had put Bunny’s laundry in a bin bag. It seemed disrespectful.

  Early morning sun streamed in through the large picture window in the utility room, and the heat made Bunny’s laundry smell nauseating. As I opened the window for some fresh air, a strangled cry of my name came from the garden. There, just beyond the terrace, stood Billy, staring at me in horror as if he thought I was a ghost. His hangover must have been a corker. I hoped Hector’s wasn’t as bad.

  “Morning, Billy,” I called cheerily, hardening my heart against his self-inflicted misery.

  When he didn’t return my greeting, I went outside, assuming he might not be able to hear me from the garden. As I descended the steps from the terrace, I realised his anguish had nothing to do with a hangover. There at his feet in a crumpled heap lay Kitty, a dark pool haloing her head. Dangling in Billy’s left hand was a large black-handled hammer, its silver claw darkened with tacky blood.

  “It wasn’t me, Sophie, honest to God, it wasn’t me. I found her like this just now. I only left the house for a few minutes after I got up this morning to fetch some sausages from the village shop for another breakfast fry-up, like she asked.”

  I stepped back, my hand over my mouth, before kneeling down beside her prone body to check for signs of life. I did not want to believe that she was gone, though her complexion was waxy and her chest still.

  “She’s definitely passed, my lovely.” I wasn’t sure whether Billy’s term of endearment was aimed at Kitty or me. “I’m so sorry. I know you was getting to be friends with her.”

  I fought back the tears, looking up at the hammer, hanging perilously close now to my own head.

  “Is that the murder weapon?”

  “Must have been.”

  “You shouldn’t have touched it, Billy. There’ll be fingerprints.”

  I clasped my arms about me to fight off an instinct to hug poor Kitty, though it was far too late to comfort her. Her face was the calmest I’d ever seen it, younger and more beautiful in death.

  Billy dropped the hammer to the ground and covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know what to think no more.”

  I stood up, still gazing at Kitty in disbelief. This ending seemed so cruel, just as she was starting to return to some kind of normal life these last few days.

  “Are you going to call Dr Perkins?” asked Billy as I pulled my mobile phone from my handbag.

  “It’s too late for him to be of any use now,” I said. “This time I’m going straight to the police.”

  32 The Blame Game

  “It’s all my fault.” Billy let out a pitiful moan as I poured tea into two chunky mugs on Kitty’s draining board. I’d put the kettle on as soon as I’d phoned the police.

  “Of course it’s not.” I stirred a generous spoonful of sugar into each mug and handed one to Billy. He clasped both hands around it for comfort.

  “It is. I should never have gone out and left her in the company of a stranger.”

  I’d forgotten about Angelica. “Oh my goodness, do you think she killed Kitty?”

  “If she did, the cops will have no trouble tracing her.” He gestured towards a soft pink leather handbag at the opposite end of the table. “I reckon she might still be upstairs. There was a light on in one of the spare bedrooms when I got back from The Bluebird last night. I’m guessing she stayed over.”

  I set down my mug. “Are you sure it was her up there and not an intruder? Why didn’t you investigate?”

  “Would you take kindly to a drunken old man knocking on your bedroom door at midnight? I wasn’t born yesterday. Besides, I had no reason to think it wasn’t her. The two of them was getting on like a house on fire when I went up The Bluebird. I thought it was Kitty’s lucky day, getting a second new friend in the space of a week. There’s not many as will persevere past their first impressions of Kitty, but she’s not a bad lass underneath it all. I mean, she wasn’t.”

  He passed his hands over his eyes as if to block out the memory of what he’d just seen. “She was a cracker as a girl, before she got mixed up with all that druggie festival crowd.”

  “What a waste. And poor Bunny. However are we going to break it to her?”

  Just then there was a soft footfall in the hall. One of the cats had woken up and was heading for the back door. I leapt up to block its path, overtaking it on its way to the utility room and locking the cat flap. I didn’t want to risk the cats treating Kitty’s body like a giant dead mouse. Besides, they might disturb valuable evidence at the crime scene.

  A sharp rap at the front door cut short our speculation, followed by a cry of, “Hello!”

  I went out to see who it was, hoping it might be the police already, though they’d have had to break the speed limit to reach the village that fast from the Slate Green station, especially with the bridge still closed for repair.

  Billy remained slumped over his tea. This morning he seemed so frail. Would he ever dig graves again? I supposed he would have to dig Kitty’s.

  As I entered the hall, Dr Perkins was walking in without waiting to be invited. I backed up as he came through to the kitchen and dumped his black bag on the table as if he owned the place.

  “Sophie, my dear, what on earth are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work by now?”

  I didn’t return his too-hearty smile.

  “Just doing a quick neighbourly favour on my way to Hector’s House. But as it happens, I’m very glad you’re here.” I turned to Billy. “You stay here and drink your tea. I’ll show him.” The do
ctor raised his hands in mock surprise. “Show me what, Sophie?”

  I grimaced. “It’s Kitty. She’s in the garden.”

  “The garden? Out and about at last? That’s good news. What’s she doing there?”

  “Not much, actually.” I hesitated. “You’d better bring your black bag And brace yourself. Although I expect in your line of work you’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, I don’t suppose many of them have been murder victims.”

  He gave a loud gasp, then followed me outside. As I stopped to make sure the back door was closed to contain the cats, he waited for me to lead him down the terrace steps. When I pointed to where Kitty lay, he put his free hand to his mouth.

  “Billy found her,” I explained. “And also the hammer that had been used to hit her on the head.” Looking at Kitty afresh, I noticed details that had escaped me first time round. Some acid-green leaves were crumpled in her hand. The doctor followed my gaze.

  “She must have grabbed the nearest plant to steady herself as she fell,” said Dr Perkins. “The wound is at the back of the skull, you’ll notice, so the fatal blow must have been delivered from behind. She may not have heard the attacker creep up on her.”

  The doctor sighed. “I suppose I’d better certify her death.” He opened the catch on his bag and pulled out a pad of pre-printed forms which lay conveniently on the top of his medical paraphernalia.

  I put my hand on his arm to delay him. “I don’t think so, doctor. It’s not as if we found her dead in bed of natural causes. Surely this is a matter for the police? Won’t they bring their own doctor along? I’ve already called them to report this as a suspected murder. They should be here any minute.”

  He shook his arm to dislodge my hand.

  “I’m entirely capable of certifying this lady’s cause of death, thank you. You should have called me when you found her.”

  I resented his patronising attitude. “Like I did when we thought Bunny had been murdered? I’ve regretted not dialling 999 straight away ever since.”