Murder in Bloom - Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery Series

by Lesley Cookman

  ‘Yes, OK. Where? It isn’t going to be an inquisition, is it?’

  ‘The Sloop,’ said Ian, ‘and of course it’ll be an inquisition.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ asked Guy, when she explained.

  ‘No,’ sighed Fran. ‘It’ll be awkward enough as it is, without you firing up in my defence all the time.’

  ‘That’s what I get for being the protective male,’ said Guy, dropping a kiss on her head. ‘Go on, go and tart yourself up and make him see what he’s missing.’

  Ian was already in the bar at The Sloop when Fran walked in. He stood up and held a chair for her.

  ‘Drink?’ he said.

  ‘Orange juice, please,’ said Fran, much though she would have loved a gin and tonic.

  ‘So tell me what you and the inestimable Mrs Sarjeant have been up to this time,’ he said, after they had ordered. Fran sat back in her chair and looked at him.

  ‘You’ll only be angry,’ she said. ‘And we came across Frank completely by accident. We were looking for tunnels.’

  ‘Tunnels? You found him in a tunnel?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Fran giggled at the thought. She explained about the ice-house and smuggling tunnels, and the coincidence of Libby talking to George at The Red Lion.

  ‘I expect the police have been looking for tunnels, too, haven’t they?’ she said innocently. ‘They were there again this morning.’

  ‘Tunnels, no.’ Ian looked thoughtful. ‘Was this something to do with your – er – thoughts?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Fran, ‘although there was something else.’ She looked down at the table and played with her glass. ‘I saw a sort of, um, implement when I heard Lewis had been delayed in London.’

  ‘Delayed? How did you hear that?’ Ian’s voice was sharp.

  ‘He texted Mog. Libby’s son’s boss.’ Fran looked up at him anxiously. ‘Is there something wrong?’

  Ian’s mouth twisted. ‘You could say that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, tell me, then,’ said Fran.

  The waitress arrived with their food and smiled fetchingly at Ian, who scowled.

  ‘All I can say is that he is helping with enquiries,’ he said, cutting savagely into a sausage.

  ‘New evidence,’ said Fran, spearing a lettuce leaf. ‘The weapon?’

  Ian glared at her. ‘All right, yes, but don’t you dare tell anyone.’

  ‘Not even Libby?’ said Fran sweetly.

  Ian cast his eyes to heaven. ‘I would like to say especially not Libby, but there would be no point.’

  Fran nodded and chewed thoughtfully. ‘Did Frank tell you Shepherd used to be at The Laurels?’

  ‘He did. I was charmed at the coincidence.’

  Fran laughed. ‘Poor Ian,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry we’re such a nuisance. We do try not to get involved.’

  ‘Not hard enough,’ said Ian with a reluctant smile. ‘Come on, tell me what else you’ve been thinking about this business.’

  So Fran told him everything she and Libby had thought and done since Adam first told his mother about the skeleton.

  ‘And I began to wonder about Cindy,’ she concluded, ‘because I think she saw Tony West before she claimed to have arrived on Sunday.’

  ‘She didn’t claim to, she did arrive on Sunday,’ said Ian. ‘That’s proven.’

  ‘Then she came over before. Have you checked that?’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’ asked Ian. ‘Or is that a silly question?’

  ‘She said nothing about West when she first arrived at Creekmarsh, then flew into hysterics when she first heard he was dead. None of it rang true. I was sure I could see her at West’s. In fact, I was almost certain she was his killer.’

  Ian stared. ‘I wish I could tell them all this in London,’ he said. ‘They’re questioning Osbourne-Walker about it now.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s a coincidence too far? The current owner of Creekmarsh killing the man who had power of attorney to sell it to him just after the body –’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Ian, ‘don’t get so complicated. But the evidence is incontrovertible.’

  ‘So what is it?’ asked Fran, pushing her plate away.

  ‘The murder weapon. It belongs to Osbourne-Walker.’

  ‘They found it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Come on, Fran, I’ve already told you more than I should. What was this weapon you – er – saw?’

  ‘It was like a sort of enlarged darning mushroom,’ said Fran, sketching with her hands.

  Ian’s eyes widened. ‘It’s a handmade carver’s mallet, a really unusual one,’ he said. ‘And that’s just what it looks like. It’s an antique.’

  Fran nodded. ‘And Tony West gave it to him, didn’t he?’

  Ian’s mouth fell open. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘I’ll call London and ask them to look for Dale’s fingerprints. There were a few there that they couldn’t match.’

  ‘Suppose you could prove Dale had been there. Could you prove whether or not she killed West?’ asked Fran.

  ‘We’d have a damn good try.’ Ian pushed his chair back. ‘I don’t want to hurry you, but I think I ought to get on to this straight away.’

  Fran stood up. ‘So do I,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, and Fran, thank you,’ he said as they left The Sloop, ‘but if you ever breathe a word that I’m gullible enough to listen to you, I’ll clap you in jail.’

  ‘You’ve listened before,’ said Fran, ‘it even got into the papers. If I’m right it won’t matter, but if I’m not, I’ll keep quiet as long as you do.’

  Ian kissed her cheek. ‘Deal,’ he said. ‘I’m a very bad policeman.’

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Guy when Fran went into the gallery to report.

  ‘All right, I suppose,’ she said, perching on the table he used as a desk. ‘He’s going to follow up a suggestion I made. But I mustn’t talk about it.’

  ‘Not even to me?’

  ‘Not even to Libby, according to Ian,’ said Fran.

  ‘But you will,’ laughed Guy.

  ‘Of course,’ said Fran, ‘and I’ll tell you, too.’

  Later, she called Libby and told her everything Ian had said, including the warning about spreading the glad tidings.

  ‘Cheek!’ said Libby indignantly. ‘After all we’ve done for him.’

  ‘Not that much, actually, Lib, but I convinced him with my description of the murder weapon, so he was willing to give it a go. He’ll take a lot of flack if they don’t find any evidence of Cindy being in that house.’

  ‘Will he let you know if they do?’

  ‘I don’t know whether he’ll be able to, but I expect he’ll try.’ Fran paused. ‘He’s really very sweet, you know.’

  ‘Hey!’ said Libby warningly. ‘Wedding day two weeks away, remember.’

  ‘He’s still sweet,’ said Fran. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Have they seen Gerald Shepherd yet?’

  ‘He didn’t say,’ said Fran. ‘They’ll probably need specially trained officers, won’t they?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we’ll find out all about it soon,’ said Libby with a sigh. ‘If Lewis comes back it means they no longer suspect him. Oh, and you didn’t tell me Tony West gave him the mallet.’

  ‘It only came to me while I was talking to Ian,’ said Fran. ‘I expect we’ll hear the whole story if Lewis comes back.’

  ‘And if he isn’t still fed up with us.’

  ‘If what I told Ian means he’s been released, he’ll be too grateful to ignore us,’ said Fran. ‘Let me know as soon as you hear anything.’

  ‘And you,’ said Libby, and disconnected. Almost as soon as she had done so, the phone rang again.

  ‘Hello, Ma, it’s me,’ said Adam unnecessarily. ‘Lewis is on his way back. He wanted to know what everybody was doing this evening.’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  HARRY MANAGED TO FIT them all in at The Pink Geranium: Libb
y and Ben, Fran and Guy, Adam and Lewis. Mog said wistfully he would love to come but thought he might be needed at home.

  ‘I’m surprised Fiona’s let you come back to work so soon,’ said Libby.

  ‘So’m I,’ said Mog. ‘But I get under her feet, and her mother’s there almost every day.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Libby. ‘I see. Better go back home now, then.’

  Lewis, looking drawn but relieved, arrived a little after the appointed time of nine o’clock, bearing a large bouquet, which he handed straight to Fran.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know how you did it, but thanks to you I’m off the hook,’ he said, then leant over to kiss Libby. ‘And you, of course, Lib.’

  ‘It was nothing to do with me,’ said Libby, ‘only marginally, anyway, so sit down and tell us what’s been going on.’

  Donna came over to take their orders and Harry sent out a bottle of champagne on the house.

  ‘Shame I don’t drink,’ said Lewis, ‘but lovely thought. He’s a dish, isn’t he?’

  ‘Hands off,’ said Adam.

  ‘Yeah, I know he’s spoken for, but a fella can look, can’t he?’ Lewis gave a tired grin. ‘Well, here goes. I was up at the London flat, see, and Katie was at hers. I been talking to my producer, and they want to firm up ideas for the next series. It’s been a bit delayed, so they’re keen to get on with it. Anyway, this morning these coppers turn up on my doorstep with a warrant for my arrest.’ He paused, looking down at the table. ‘It was … well, I dunno how to describe it.’ He looked up. ‘I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t have a chance.’

  ‘That was when you sent the text to Mog?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Yeah. His was the first memory button, and I thought he’d tell you.’ He grinned at Libby. ‘And you. And I knew you’d make a guess at what was going on.’

  ‘And Fran saw your carver’s mallet,’ said Libby. Fran went pink.

  ‘You what?’ Lewis gaped.

  Libby explained. ‘Then she told Ian Connell, the inspector down here, and he relayed the info to London.’

  ‘What, that she’d seen it?’

  ‘No, that Cindy Dale’s prints might be on it,’ said Fran.

  There was an astonished silence round the table. Lewis and Adam looked at each other, stupefied, and Guy and Ben looked bewildered. Fran told them what she had suspected.

  ‘So Ian must have persuaded them to check for the prints and look into the possibility that Cindy was in the country before Sunday,’ said Libby. ‘Brilliant, Fran.’

  ‘They must have found the prints,’ said Fran, ‘or they’d never have let Lewis go.’

  ‘They were quick about it, then,’ said Lewis. ‘They let me go late afternoon.’

  ‘I asked Ian if he’d tell me what happened, but I doubt if he will,’ said Fran. ‘He opened up to me more than he should have at lunchtime.’

  ‘I wonder why?’ said Guy.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said Fran, giving him an affectionate nudge.

  ‘Well, congratulations, Lewis,’ said Ben, raising his glass. ‘I’m really pleased. That means you can get on with the next series as soon as possible, I suppose?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lewis, ‘and guess what, Ad? We’re going to do a whole programme on the garden at Creekmarsh, with updates through the rest of the series.’

  ‘Blimey!’ said Adam. ‘Have you told Mog?’

  ‘Not yet. And we can’t do it until the police say we can, so I guess we need to clear all this up quick.’

  ‘We?’ said Libby, amused.

  ‘Well, you and the cops,’ said Lewis, looking from her to Fran. ‘So what do you think the whole story is, then?’

  Libby and Fran looked at each other.

  ‘I’ll start,’ said Fran, ‘and you butt in if I miss anything.’ She sipped her wine and put the glass back on the table. ‘Here goes. We think, based on our own assumptions and information received, that Cindy Dale killed her husband Kenneth, and Tony West helped her disappear and got Gerald Shepherd into a nursing home as he was already going downhill with Alzheimer’s disease.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Why what? Why did he help her disappear, or why did she kill Kenneth?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Not sure about why she killed Kenneth, except she does seem to have wanted to inherit Creekmarsh, or Gerald’s estate, in any case, and as to why Tony helped her, we don’t know. Coming up to date, once she’d heard about the skeleton being discovered, she was scared that the whole thing would come out. She didn’t at this stage, remember, know that Lewis had bought Creekmarsh. Anyway, she came into the country somehow – I expect the police have found out when by now – went straight to Tony’s house and killed him with the carver’s mallet he gave Lewis.’

  ‘What was it doing at Tony’s house?’ asked Adam.

  ‘I was over there a few weeks ago doing a little job for him and I’d taken it with the rest of me tools. I left it there by accident.’ Lewis shook his head. ‘Teach me to be more careful, won’t it.’

  ‘So she didn’t use it to implicate you on purpose?’ said Guy.

  ‘I don’t think she knew of Lewis’s existence at that time,’ said Fran. ‘All she was keen to do was shut Tony up. She then decided to reappear as the grieving widow and daughter-in-law, to reclaim the estate.’

  ‘Did she think Gerald was dead?’ asked Libby.

  ‘I think she would have known if Gerald was dead, wouldn’t she?’ said Fran.

  ‘Maybe, but she didn’t know Lewis owned the property, so Tony hadn’t kept her up to date with events at all, had he?’ said Adam.

  ‘No, and that’s why we’re concerned that Cindy might go after Gerald,’ said Libby.

  ‘And what’s all this you’ve found out about him?’ asked Ben. ‘And smugglers’ tunnels?’

  Fran and Libby told them of their discoveries with the two landlords.

  ‘Trust my mother to be on those sorts of terms with pub landlords,’ said Adam with a snort.

  ‘So will the police confirm all these theories?’ said Guy.

  ‘Well, one seems to be confirmed,’ said Libby. ‘They’ve let Lewis go. Let joy be unconfined.’

  At the end of the meal, Lewis gave a little speech and became slightly emotional, to Fran and Libby’s delight and Ben and Guy’s embarrassment. He then sat down, blew his nose and drank a whole glass of water.

  ‘Hope Katie’s come back to look after you,’ said Adam, patting him on the arm.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Lewis. ‘She had a few things to clear up, she said, because I’d told her we were going to be in London for weeks. She’ll be down in the morning.’

  ‘She won’t lose any sleep over Cindy’s fate,’ said Libby. ‘She couldn’t stand her, could she?’

  ‘Hated her,’ said Lewis. ‘I should have realised they’d met before, you know. There was such a – oh, I dunno, a feeling between them. Why didn’t she tell me before, though?’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t think she had to?’ said Fran. ‘Did you know she’d known Tony and Gerald that far back?’

  ‘I didn’t know she knew Gerald at all,’ said Lewis, ‘and I didn’t realise she knew Tony as well as she did, either.’

  ‘I can see why that was,’ said Libby. ‘She was probably scared you’d think she’d got the job with you through undue influence or something.’

  ‘We’ve already talked about whose idea it was that she came to work for you, haven’t we?’ said Fran. ‘It was Tony’s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Think so,’ said Lewis. He stood up. ‘Listen. Thanks for being such a support, everybody, but I gotta go. I promised me mum I’d phone her this evening. I talked to her earlier, but she’s a bit jumpy. I’ve asked Katie to drive her down here tomorrow, so she needs to start packing.’

  ‘Typical male,’ said Libby, watching Lewis leave the restaurant. ‘Not bothering to tell his mum until eleven o’clock at night that someone’s picking her up tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Perhaps s
he’ll say no,’ said Fran.

  ‘That’ll larn him,’ said Libby.

  The next morning Lewis rang Libby to invite her and Fran to lunch at Creekmarsh to meet his mother, who would be arriving with Katie around eleven.

  ‘She said yes, then?’ said Libby.

  ‘’Course,’ said Lewis in surprise. ‘Why shouldn’t she?’

  Fran and Libby arrived in their separate vehicles just before one. They were greeted at the door by a beaming Katie, who led them into the kitchen, where a small brown-haired woman sat at the table in front of a large mug of tea.

  ‘This is Edith,’ said Katie, ‘Lewis’s mum. Edie, this is Mrs Sarjeant and Mrs Castle who’ve been helping Lewis.’

  Edie pushed back the chair and stood up unsteadily, holding out a hand to Libby.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘You done a lot for my boy.’

  ‘Nothing really,’ said Libby, ‘just stood by. Fran – Mrs Castle – is the clever one.’

  ‘Never had no truck with all that nonsense before,’ said Edie, gripping Fran’s hand with both of hers, ‘but blessed if it weren’t right as rain this time.’

  ‘I’m really glad for you,’ said Fran, looking uncomfortable. ‘How is Lewis this morning?’

  ‘Full of plans, he is,’ said Katie. ‘Down talking to that Mog and Adam about his show. Police have been and gone, and you wouldn’t believe how they’ve changed.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ said Libby, pulling out a chair.

  ‘That nice detective inspector, the dark one –’

  ‘Connell?’ said Libby, with a sideways look at Fran, who ignored her.

  ‘That’s the one. So polite, he was. They were here when Edie and I arrived, and he couldn’t have been nicer. Looks like they’ll have finished here, unless that Cindy turns up again.’ Her face darkened. ‘Which she won’t, if she’s got any sense. I always knew she was a bad’n.’

  ‘You knew her when Gerald lived here, didn’t you?’ said Libby.

  ‘Not to say knew,’ said Katie. ‘Met her. She was a little – well. I’d best not say. Glad she’s gone, that’s all. Now, anyone for tea? Shall I freshen that, Edie?’

  Lewis came in a little while later, during which time Fran and Libby had heard all about Lewis as a little boy, Lewis as a tearaway teenager, Lewis as an apprentice chippy and Lewis as a joiner, before going on to the great heights of Lewis as a TV personality.