Claire's Candles Mystery 02 - Black Cherry Betrayal

by Agatha Frost

  “Get yourself sat down,” Diane said as she placed Em in the corner seat of a long-cushioned bench running along the back wall. “I’ll get the drinks in.”

  As she hurried towards the bar in the still-empty pub, Diane smiled at Claire as though to say ‘poor thing’. A buffet of plates covered with plastic wrap and foil waited against a wall, and a team of young bar staff slouched and rolled their eyes with disinterest, waiting for the entirety of Northash to cram themselves inside.

  “What you said back there,” Claire began as she sat next to Em. “Do you think your mother could have killed Eric?”

  “I can’t confidently say she didn’t,” Em whispered, the tears still flowing. “That’s why I’m crying. If Fiona wants to shout through a megaphone that my mother is a murderer, that’s her choice. She’s clearly been keeping a lot bottled up, so I’m proud of her for expressing herself.” She roughly wiped away the tears with the back of her hand while blowing out a steady stream of air through pursed lips. “I’m upset because, knowing what I know about Eric now, there’s doubt in my mind about my own mother. You went through it with your uncle. You know what it feels like to have to reconcile the fact that someone close to you could do something horrific.”

  “I do.”

  The door opened, admitting the first of the mourners into the pub. A flood of sympathetic smiles flowed in their direction, but thankfully, nobody approached. Soft, tasteful classical musical, one of Opal’s requests, began playing in the background.

  “She might not have,” Claire whispered, gently shaking Em’s knee.

  “You’re right.” Em laughed before sniffing the tears away. “You’re absolutely right, Claire. The truth about what happened to both of them may never come to light, and maybe I just have to be okay with—”

  The door to the women’s bathroom opened, and Sally walked out. Fiona followed, her eyes and nostrils a matching shade of grief-stricken red. When she spotted Em, a similar expression as the one she’d worn on the morning of Jane’s discovery crossed her face. She went to speak, but the muscles in her face crumbled into a pained sob. Pushing through the thickening crowd, she ran for the front door. Sally didn’t follow.

  “She’s as mad as a box of frogs.” Sally slumped down next to Claire. “She wouldn’t admit it, but I think she’s been up all night, drinking.”

  “Fiona has been suffering for seven years, trapped between despair and hope, to get to that point,” Em said, glancing at the bar. “I fear it may take me another seven minutes.”

  The door opened again, and Claire spotted Damon enter with Ryan, Claire’s parents, and Granny Greta. They scanned the room as though looking for her. Damon spotted Claire first, and she gave him a ‘not right now’ look. He nodded and redirected the group to the other side of the bar before any of them noticed her.

  “It’s not just that,” Sally continued in a low voice, leaning in closer, “they found Eric last night in the rose beds in front of the house. They’ve been keeping it quiet because they knew the funeral was this morning. Didn’t want to cause another scene, but they couldn’t not tell Fiona when they confirmed it was him.”

  “Then I shed tears for Fiona too,” Em said as fresh droplets fell, “and my former stepfather. He was a gentle, kind man, and knowing what I know about him now makes my heart hurt. How utterly trapped he must have felt to believe he had no option but to run away.”

  “Wait.” Sally leaned in further and whispered so quietly Claire had to strain to hear her, “You know about Eric being, y’know, gay?”

  “How do you know?” Claire asked.

  “Because Fiona just told me!” Sally paused, her eyes widening before she slapped Claire on the arm. “Wait, that picture that fell out of the record! Fiona said she found pictures of her dad and Colin kissing and wouldn’t say—”

  Sally’s voice abruptly cut off, and she dropped her head and scratched at her hair as Diane hurried towards them with a tray of drinks. Em clutched Claire’s knee under the table; clearly, the mystery man’s identity was as much a surprise to her as it was to Claire.

  “I know you don’t drink,” Diane said with a smile, placing a glass of fresh orange juice in front of Em. “Claire, I wasn’t sure about you, but I plumbed for gin and tonic. Same as me.”

  “Thank you.” Claire smiled politely. “How much do I owe you?”

  “My treat.” Diane held up her hands. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to freshen up in the ladies.”

  When Diane was in the bathroom, Sally pulled the drink away from Claire. Since gin’s reputation had upgraded gin’s from ‘mother’s ruin’ to ‘trendy’, it had been established that Sally loved the stuff and Claire couldn’t stomach it. To her, it tasted like shampoo, with or without the tonic; she was more than happy to let Sally steal it.

  “Eric and Colin?” Claire asked quietly after Sally had gulped down a good quarter of the drink. “Are you sure?”

  “Fiona was deadly sure.” Sally gasped for breath after another sizeable sip. “Bloody hell, that’s strong. She must really like you. I think it’s a double.”

  Sally drank again, but Em didn’t reach for her orange juice. After how much she’d been crying, Claire couldn’t blame her; even thinking about the acid in orange juice turned her stomach.

  “Wait!” Claire sat up straight. “Fiona told me her father was planning to leave Northash because of his secret. What if he was planning to leave with Colin?”

  “Then why would Colin want him dead?” Sally asked, straw still in her mouth. “Unless Eric changed his mind at the last second,” Sally paused to cough, “and killed him in a lover’s rage?”

  “Then why did my mother die?” Em asked, picking up the orange juice. “Was she involved? Are any of these things connected?”

  Sally coughed again. The straw dropped from her mouth, and she set the gin and tonic on the table.

  “And why did your grandmother leave Colin that money?” Claire pushed up her glasses, brow creasing in thought. “Maybe your mother killed Eric, and then Colin killed her for revenge? Seven years is an awfully long time to leave it.”

  Sally coughed so hard it forced Claire to turn and focus on her friend. As she coughed again, her eyes focussed on Claire; she looked terrified.

  The front door banged open, and Ste from the taxi rank rushed in. “They’re arresting the gardener in the park!”

  The chatter erupted immediately, drowning Sally’s next cough. Sally opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t get words around the incessant coughing. Tiny droplets of blood fell into the open hands in her lap.

  “She’s been poisoned,” Claire said, her voice barely above a whisper. Then, with all the force her lungs could muster, she screamed, “Someone call an ambulance! My friend has been poisoned!”

  Those who hadn’t made it to the door turned to stare and gasp. The man behind the bar didn’t hesitate; the bar’s phone was already in his hand.

  Claire wrapped an arm around Sally.

  Her eyes scanned the pub for Diane.

  Where was her polka-dot scarf?

  “Polka-dot scarf,” Claire said, her heart sinking as she thought back to Agnes’s picture. “It was the scarf your mother was wearing the night she was supposed to have left Northash.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Claire pulled her phone from her bag with shaky fingers and unlocked it. The screen was still on the emailed picture of Jane and the loyalists from the morning she left. Em gasped; clearly, the pieces had fallen into place for her, too.

  “I suggest you put that orange juice down,” Claire said, clinging harder to Sally, whose coughing continued unabated. “I daresay it’s just as poisoned as the gin she intended for me.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  T ears stung Claire’s eyes as the ambulance drove away. Regret about not jumping in the back with Sally and Em kicked in immediately, but there was something she needed to do first. She wiped away her tears with her balled up fists as she marched through the front gate
s of Starfall Park.

  “Now, just you wait there!” DI Ramsbottom called as he waddled after her. “You’re telling me the housekeeper poisoned them?”

  But Claire didn’t slow down to repeat what she’d already explained. As scattered and confused as she’d been, she’d told the detective inspector everything she knew. His downturned tight smile had been all she needed to understand he didn’t want to believe her.

  Ramsbottom was too focussed on Colin to consider any other possibilities. Even if he eventually sat down and thought about it, it would already be too late.

  If it wasn’t already.

  Blue and white police tape was wrapped around the house, but that didn’t stop Claire. She ripped it over her head and cut up the sloped grass towards the back door in the Victorian conservatory.

  The door was locked, and today wasn’t a day for the bell.

  “Sorry, Dad,” she whispered.

  Not taking a second longer to think about it, she gave the back door one swift shove with her arm. The half-rotten wood splintered inwards, swinging back in its frame. She looked down the side of the house at the gang of police officers gathered next to the white tent. They were too busy chatting to notice her.

  “Slow down, Claire!” Ramsbottom panted as he struggled to take the same shortcut up the slope. “You’re not making sense!”

  Maybe she wasn’t making sense, but Claire knew she was right. The sand was slipping through her fingers, and Ramsbottom struck her as the kind of man who took twice the convincing when something came from a woman’s mouth, no matter who that woman’s father was.

  She didn’t stop for him.

  How could she?

  For all she knew, Sally was already dead.

  She flung open the door to the empty kitchen. The stack of dirty dishes had doubled. Muddy boot prints caked the once pristine black and white tiles. The untouched cup of tea Diane had made for Em days ago was still on the table.

  What was the chance it was filled with poison too?

  “Claire Harris!” DI Ramsbottom stumbled into the kitchen, his beetroot face drenched with sweat. “You’ve lost your mind, girl! What would your father say?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I know what my father would do.”

  While DI Ramsbottom leaned against the counter to catch his breath, Claire slipped through the door on the other side of the room. Without a second thought, she dragged a hefty armchair in front of the door.

  The police would have their time with Diane.

  Claire’s opportunity to demand answers was swiftly shrinking; it was too late to jump in the ambulance now. After everything, she needed to understand.

  A fruitless search of the ground floor sent her up the grand staircase two steps at a time. Pure adrenaline masked the burning in her thighs and calves. She reached the landing and paused, removing her glasses to wipe away the sweat gathered on her nose.

  Floorboards creaked on the other side of the square landing. Already looking in that direction, Claire jammed her glasses back onto her face. The gap in Opal’s bedroom door sharpened into focus as a shadow whizzed past.

  The fury in her heart as she marched around the landing scared her. Claire’s sense of humour was dry, certainly, but at her core, she had never been a confrontational person. She preferred banter over arguing, conversation over cornering. But just thinking about the fear in Sally’s eyes at that moment of realisation had changed something in her.

  With strength that would have impressed even the most musclebound attendees of Ryan’s gym, she pushed open the double doors with two flat palms. They crashed into the wall on the other side.

  Diane screamed, her back to the door. With a fistful of jewellery in one hand and a duffle bag in the other, she spun around.

  “C-Claire?”

  “Surprised to see me, Diane?” Claire asked, stepping into the room, her gaze going to another duffle bag on the bed, stuffed with clothes. “Going somewhere?”

  Diane released the jewellery from her fist and let the straps of the open duffle bag hang loose. After a silent split second, Diane forced a laugh and pushed forward a smile.

  Though it seemed impossible, the look in Diane’s eyes told Claire she was going to attempt to play things off.

  And why wouldn’t she? She had been getting away with her games for this long.

  “I was just gathering up some things for the charity shop,” Diane said, seemingly frozen to the spot. “Thought I’d save Em a job.”

  “On the day of Opal and Jane’s funeral?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Odd,” she said, inhaling a shaking breath, “since we were expecting you to have a drink with us. You should have said goodbye.”

  Beneath them, the kitchen door rattled in its frame. DI Ramsbottom shouted Claire’s name. She closed the bedroom doors. With the soft table lamps turned off and the sun on the other side of the house, the large window barely lifted the depth of the shadows.

  “Nice scarf,” Claire said, taking a step forward. “I could have sworn Jane had one just like it. Maybe you found it in the charity shop with the other ones?”

  Diane’s face maintained the pretence for only a moment longer. She dropped her head and the act along with it. Laughing with hunched shoulders, she let the bag slip from her hand, and she sank into the chair at the dressing table.

  “Oh, you’re good, Claire,” she said, wagging a finger at her. “I knew I should have opted for vodka.”

  “I’m more of a Hesketh Homebrew girl, myself.”

  “Then I was nowhere near.” Diane sighed as she stroked the silky polka dots. “Suits me, don’t you think?”

  Claire’s lips parted, but no words emerged. The smirk on Diane’s lips turned her stomach. She was bragging, showing off her prize.

  “You snatched it from Jane’s neck,” Claire whispered, taking a step back, “and you wore it to her funeral.”

  “What’s life without a little risk, eh?” Diane looked around the cavernous bedroom, the tension leaving her body on a sigh. “I’ve been playing that game my whole life. What do I have to show for it?” She scooped up another fistful of jewellery and tossed it across the room at the bed. “Jewellery? Forty years of service to that monster and I get left the bloody jewellery?”

  The penny dropped for Claire. She turned to look at Opal’s bed. The sheets were tossed back, the mattress still indented with the shape of her tiny body as though she would be back from the loo at any moment.

  “The will,” Claire said, frowning at the empty chair facing the large window. “The house. That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? You wanted the house.”

  “Everyone wants this house!” Diane picked up the jewellery box and launched it at the bed; the wooden box burst into an explosion of silver and gold against the headboard where Opal would have been. “I put up with that woman for forty years! You haven’t the slightest idea how awful she was! She was rotten to her core, and yet I snapped to her every demand. I played along. I played her game. She promised the house to me, and she left it to that freak – the one person who doesn’t even want it!”

  Claire recalled what Sally had told her about the estate going straight from Jane to Em, and then another puzzle piece snapped into place; she’d have to thank Sally if she got the chance. More tears rumbled, but she bit them back and let her anger dry them.

  “Did she promise you the house?” Claire asked, stepping forward again. “Or did she promise you the house if her family line ended?”

  “The line ended with Jane!” Diane stood, balling up her fists by her face. “Em hadn’t been family in Opal’s eyes for years!” She picked up the chair and launched it through the front window. “You promised! You said you’d never leave anything to her.”

  The chair hit the ground below in a flurry of tinkling glass shards. A light breeze licked at the delicate curtains as sounds of confusion came from below.

  “Jane’s weekly visits,” Claire remembered aloud, annoyed that she
hadn’t connected the dots sooner. “You told me yourself. She came every week to see her mother, and you’d talk in the kitchen together. You poisoned her, and you did it slowly because you knew nobody would notice.”

  “And did they?” Diane stood in the empty window frame, her body a grey silhouette against the sky. “Jane told us she was finally retiring from the tearoom weeks before she announced it to the village. I hoped I’d paced the dosage so she’d die in France. Perhaps I was a little over-zealous sprinkling the arsenic into her tea on her final visit the morning before she left.”

  Claire felt like a fool. She’d been so focussed on establishing Jane’s movements up until her death, she hadn’t thought to dig in the opposite direction.

  “Easy mistake,” Diane said with a shrug. “I learned that lesson with Eric. Hoped he’d die when he got home, and that people would point the finger at Jane for poisoning him, but the old fool died here at the kitchen table.”

  Claire clenched her eyes and winced.

  “The observatory,” she muttered. “Fiona told me her father visited the observatory the night he went missing in 2013, but you told me it was never used.”

  “Eric wasn’t using the observatory to gaze at the stars,” Diane hissed over her shoulder. “He was meeting Colin there to do who knows what behind Jane’s back! He made such a fuss to Opal about letting him use it to gaze at the stars like Timothy had done, and she fell for it.”

  “And you murdered him.”

  “Eric was in the will separate from Jane!” She spun around, tossing her hands out. “What was I supposed to do? Opal liked him for some reason! Eric was an agreeable man, and that’s all Opal wanted from people. I had to get him out of the way.”

  Diane turned back to the window and leaned out as though to look up at the observatory through the trees. Claire took a step forward, the urge to push her out tingling her fingertips.