Death Drinks Darjeeling (A Helen and Martha Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Sigrid Vansandt

  It took the village three jumble sale fundraisers, seven pot-luck dinners at the community center and one 5K Fun Run to raise enough money to pay back the Pennys and keep The Iron Maiden’s doors open.

  So from then to now, whenever Susie Penny went off on vacation, she made certain her darling Raymond went with them. The Penny’s annual pilgrimage, however, to sun-drenched southern beaches still caused a great deal of discomfort regarding the normal ebb and flow of pub patronage. What was once a four-pub village was now only three and this disrupted the general feeling of wellbeing for which Marsden-Lacey was mostly known.

  At precisely eleven o’clock on the first day of Mr. and Mrs. Penny’s vacation, the regulars from The Iron Maiden had to shuffle wearily into either The Traveller’s Inn, The Prancing Pony or The King’s Arms and try to make themselves comfortable on unfamiliar seats, readjust their aim at the dart boards and accept that they weren’t top dogs like they’d become accustomed to in their home pub.

  It was the first day of the Penny’s vacation that Martha and Johns, in an effort to find a seat, pushed through the packed crowd of The Traveller’s and luckily found two unoccupied barstools near the dance floor.

  “They’ve got the Irish band back tonight,” Martha pointed out. “Up for a shuffle?”

  “I’ll try to not step on your toes,” Johns said, offering her his hand.

  As they moved out onto the floor, the music changed to a gentle ballad. Johns pulled his lass in to his chest and they let the music fill their hearts. With the lights soft and the convivial sounds of laughter surrounding them, Martha and Johns didn’t need to speak. Their world was perfect in that sliver of a moment.

  The ballad turned over into a riotous song and soon other dancers joined them.

  “May I have this dance?” came a man’s voice from behind Johns. There stood Adam Buchanan, the head of security for Healy. Powerfully built and sure of himself, the ex-marine’s smile was friendly.

  Johns, with a frown, handed Martha over to him and walked over to his barstool. She watched him pick up the pint glass, take a drink and turn around to watch them with cold, dark eyes. The music turned over to a slow song and the crowd closed in separating Adam and Martha from Johns’ view.

  A tingly feeling flitted along Martha’s spine where Adam’s hand rested. She was extremely aware of how he was holding her. His grip was strong, certain and it felt like if he’d wanted to, he could have picked her up off the floor. Something made her push him back while looking up bashfully into his face.

  “Oh, was I holding you too tightly?” he asked in a low, sweet voice.

  Martha nodded and made an effort to find her voice.

  “Yes,” she said. “I see you have the night off.”

  His eyes came down again and there it was, that unwillingness to remove his gaze from hers. Martha felt like a doll in his arms as he said huskily, “Lucky me.”

  The band flipped to a traditional song, “If I Were a Blackbird”. Martha made a quick search of the room. She saw Merriam. His face was cold and she saw the intensity of his focus on her and Adam. She tried to smile at him but Adam turned her around. The music ended and they stepped free of the embrace.

  “Thank you, Martha,” he said gently. “I can see what a wonderful dancer you are. I’m in the right hands. I would love it if you might consider being my date to the Royal Marine Ball?”

  The last phrase hung there between them and Martha, feeling like there wasn’t enough air in the room, smiled weakly.

  “I…I can’t, Adam. I’m seeing Merriam Johns. Thank you for asking though,” she said feeling extremely awkward.

  He took his hand and lifted a lock of her hair sticking to her cheek and lay it down upon her shoulder. His hand brushed her neck. It was an intimate touch and he smiled as he did it.

  “My loss for sure. I could still use a teacher?” he asked.

  Martha blinked, her mind had gone blank.

  “I’ll let you know, Adam. I’ll let you know,” she finally said and turned away walking towards Merriam. Adam disappeared into the crowd.

  As she sat back down, she reached over and touched Johns’ hand laying on the bar. He took it into his own and she felt the restrained power there in his lack of words. Finally, he turned to her and without any jealousy in his voice, he said, “You do know he’s attracted to you, don’t you?”

  Martha didn’t play coy. Too many years of being a sincere person in this world had given her a gift of honesty she was never going to betray.

  “It looks that way and then again, he could be just a player. Either way, it doesn’t matter. You’ll have to trust me, Merriam. It’s going to be more difficult…” she hesitated finishing the rest of her sentence but taking a deep breath, she said softly, “than you know.”

  Johns gaze searched her eyes and in them she saw the depth of his feeling for her. He didn’t ask what she meant but his need to know was apparent in how he never released the gentle pressure upon her hand.

  “Yesterday, Adam asked if I would help him learn two dances before his upcoming Royal Marine Ball and I said I would.” Martha hurried on before he spoke. “At the time, I didn’t think much of it, because he told me he was asking someone. Tonight he asked me to go with him to the ball. I told him no.”

  Johns took his hand from hers and raked it through his dark, spiky hair in a gesture of disbelief.

  “Martha, that man,” he said, his voice beginning to rise, “is… is…”

  “I know,” Martha asked, her own tone still sympathetic.

  Johns drummed his fingers angrily on the bar. She watched his face.

  “Merriam, I don’t feel anything at all for him. I don’t want to go through with giving the lessons now but he’s someone we will both have to see on a regular basis because he works for Piers and he’ll soon be working for Helen. We must keep it friendly.”

  Johns’ expression showed he wasn’t sure he needed to be friendly at all. He got up from the barstool and, taking her hand, led her out of the bar. Once they reached the outside air, he stopped and, swiveling around, took her by the shoulders.

  “Martha, I want you to come with me over to the canal. I’ve got something I want to show you. I hope you’ll like it.”

  Sensing that this might be her surprise he told her about earlier, she nodded without saying anything. He pulled her to him and reached down, kissing her fully on the mouth. Martha lost all sense of time and space with the kiss. She melted into him completely and reveled in his strength, fierce love and, yes, his desire to possess her. When they broke, he guided her down to the bench by the canal.

  The water was flowing and high due to the springtime rains. Sitting down on one of the benches under a streetlamp, Johns pulled out a magazine. It was turned over to show a stunning picture of the Scottish highlands. A stately, baronial house sat on a low hill overlooking a vast loch, or lake to the Scots. Pine clad mountains rose up behind the mansion dwarfing it and giving the illusion that it was a child’s plaything for dolls to live in.

  Johns handed the magazine to Martha. She took it and studied the picture.

  “Merriam, this is the place you go every autumn, isn’t it?”

  With a bright, happy expectancy in his voice, he replied, “Yes, and Martha, I’d like you to please come with me. We’ll be there for one week and I promise you with all my heart, you are going to love it there.”

  He looked at her with such a beseeching, boyish expression of hope and pleasure that her heart filled with adoring love.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, my darling man.”

  Martha took his face in her hands and pulled him to her. She kissed him on his forehead, on the tip of his nose and, lastly, on his mouth. They sat for some time watching the water, talking of the beauty of Scotland and how Johns would take her to buy the right gear for stalking the elusive trout on the Inver and Kirkaig rivers.

  After a moment of being quiet, Martha said, “You know you don’t have anything to worry abo
ut, with Adam, I mean.”

  Johns shook his head. “Actually, Martha, I do, but I trust you. It’s him, I don’t trust.”

  “Well,” she said, “when I get back from Germany, there’s going to be a wonderful wedding and the only man I want to dance with is sitting right here on this bench with me.”

  She gave him a squeeze. “I can’t wait. Everything will be perfect. No drama, I promise.”

  Chapter 18

  Leeds, England

  “She sold the house, I know that, but you’re telling me she also moved our offices?”

  George Ryes was staring dumbfounded through the windshield of his BMW and talking to his friend and lawyer, Mitchell Oxney. Across the street, in one of the Tudor buildings he used to call his office only a year ago, sat a huge ‘For Let’ sign. It had never occurred to George that Helen might go on without him.

  “That’s right, Ryes. You made a verbal agreement and gave her the business when you… um… ran off with your receptionist,” Mitchell said, laughing heartily. “God! Fiona’s a looker, but what were you thinking, old boy?”

  “Mitchell, the last person I want marital advice from is an attorney who owes three women alimony.” George paused, then asked, “Helen wasn’t interested in keeping the office, at all?”

  “No, she actually told Brandi, ex-wife number two, that she’d have burned it down, if she hadn’t been afraid someone might have been hurt and if it wasn't a Grade II historical property. Brandi said Helen was pretty broken up after you left. I haven’t seen her since last Christmas when we, me and wife number four, turned on the telly and Helen was talking to some reporter about finding a lost Shakespeare play or something in like that.”

  “Do you know where Helen’s working or if she has taken the money and bought another office?” George asked like a stubborn, whiny child.

  “Got me, you’ll have to ask her yourself. The gossips say she’s got Piers Cousins walking down the matrimonial aisle. Any truth to it? He’s a high-flyer. More money than Croesus.”

  George grunted sulkily. “Who is this Cousins anyway? What’s he do?”

  “Not sure, but I know Phillip Westmorland, his attorney. I sometimes play tennis with him on a men’s league and I’ve seen Cousins with him. I’ll give you some free advice, George, if you’ll have it?”

  “Free?” George said smugly. “That’s a dirty word for you, isn’t it?”

  Oxney chuckled. Like most attorneys, he’d seen this type of thing again and again. The wayward husband realizing his mistake and wanting to come back into the loving, forgiving and, in this case, financially solvent arms of his first wife. Unfortunately for George, the loving wife had moved on and to higher ground.

  “If you want to go back into your old business, do it without Helen. She deserves another shot at happiness, without you mucking it up.”

  George held the cell phone out in front of him to see if he was hearing Oxney correctly.

  “You’re on her side!” he blurted into the face of the phone. “I’m going to get my wife back, Mitchell, and Piers Cousins can go to Hell!”

  He slung the phone into the passenger seat and stared at the cobwebs that had formed in the windows of their old office. His mind went back to when he first laid eyes on Fiona. She was too hot to handle… at first, that is. She had practically thrown herself at him. What was he to do? His mind went back to their first wonderful, heated weeks of thrilling passion. Fiona had moved on to the arms of a Cuban dance studio manager. George sighed.

  A loud knocking on his side window broke his reverie.

  “You can’t park here. This is a loading zone,” the meter maid said, thumbing for him to get along.

  He put the car in reverse, and as he headed towards his hotel, it hit him. He knew where Helen had to be. She was much too conservative to be living in sin with Cousins, so she must be staying with that redheaded she-devil. He’d go to Marsden-Lacey, get a hotel and find Helen.

  Pulling the rearview mirror down, he checked himself for any stray hairs but was arrested by his own spectacular reflection. Thank goodness he could always count on his looks. Helen was going to be his again. How could she resist?

  “The competition will be fun,” he said out loud. “Piers Cousins may have money, but women liked virile men who are alpha to their omega.”

  If he could have kissed himself, he would have. Thrilled with his own internal vision of how it would work out, he smiled confidently and headed the BMW out onto the A56 towards what he hoped would be the first step in getting back his old life, squelching love's tender flame in Helen’s breast for Piers Cousins and making Marsden-Lacey his new home.

  Chapter 19

  Marsden-Lacey

  “Hey!” Martha yelled, causing Helen to jerk her head up from her laptop. The girls were speeding down the A56 out of Marsden-Lacey. They were on their way to London for the exciting dress reveal and afterwards on to Stuttgart.

  “That guy driving the BMW nearly ran us off the road. What a jerk! Hope he gets a ticket and has to do community service picking up trash! Ha Ha!” Martha railed with a devilish smile and a maniacal laugh. Her hair taking its cue from her vicious indictment of bad drivers, tried to free itself from the already messy bun on the top of her head making her look as wild as her heart felt whenever she took the Mini Cooper’s wheel.

  “Shouldn’t you have some empathy for people having to do community service?” Helen asked abstractedly while she scrolled through her emails.

  “No. I don’t. You see, Helen, I’ve felt the whooshing of the crazed traffic along the highway yesterday, known the heart-palpitating fear of a tractor-trailer rig careening out of control directly at me, and my personal favorite, the guy who throws trash out right at me and yells, ‘Put that in your bag, baby!’ I’ve paid my dues and I think it’s made me a better person. It’s humbled me, Helen.”

  “Humbled? That’s not quite the word I think you’re looking for, Martha. What about… delusional?”

  “Ppfff!” Martha objected. “But I have been humbled. You see I realize now that I need to be a better person, Helen. Not go off half-cocked and wield instruments of death at my fellow man. Working along that highway yesterday, seeing my life flash before my eyes multiple times, taught me that we all have a responsibility to do the right thing, the right thing, Helen. Do you see where I’m coming from?”

  “Do the right thing?” Helen repeated flatly as she continued to study her laptop.

  “Yes! Exactly. When you break the law and selfishly ignore the rights of others, you deserve to be picking up trash along the road. I actually thanked Sarah Carmichael at the end of the day. She and I are buds now. We’ve bled together.”

  Helen’s left eyebrow arched as she studied her friend’s profile. Shrugging, she went back to the emails thinking Martha must have found a way to put a positive spin on the enforced community service.

  “What?” Martha asked. “Do you think I’m full of it?”

  “Without a doubt,” came the flat response. “But that’s why I love you.”

  Helen gave Martha a side grin.

  “I never pegged you for a cynic, Helen,” Martha grumbled.

  In relative quiet, the Mini Cooper zoomed along newly budding hedge-bordered roads, over multi-arched grey stone bridges spanning rivers flush with spring rains, and finally onto the three lane motorway headed south towards London. The weather was playing its favorite channel. Lots of quickly moving clouds and intermittent rays of sunshine were peeking through upon the undulating, greening landscape. The two women chatted about the problem with George and the fun of being on a German talk show.

  “It’s called, ‘Get Going With Gotts!’ and Heinrich Gotts is Germany’s favorite talk show host. His assistant said he’s been following the story about the Shakespeare find and he’s dying to meet us. Shouldn’t be a very long interview. There are two other celebrities coming on after us, so we’re probably the ‘special interest’ segment,” Helen was saying.

  “Do you kn
ow who the celebrities are going to be?”

  “No, unfortunately, but they’re sending a car for us and they’ve paid for our night in Schloss Höfingen. I got a call yesterday to ask where we wanted to stay so I picked my number one choice.”

  “This is going to be a hoot, Helen,” Martha giggled. “We’re on a fun adventure this time. No crazies or homicidal maniacs on this trip, just celebrities, bakeries and shopping. I’m so looking forward to the food. Merriam said to try something called Krautschupfnudeln. It’s supposed to be delicious. Next stop, London and your beautiful dress, then on to the continent and Gotts.”

  “You know, Gotts mean God in German,” Helen mused.

  “Hmmm…” Martha returned softly. “That’s kinda weird, isn’t it that I would have phrased it that way?”

  Both were quiet for a while, the mood in the car shifting to a reflective tone.

  “Nah, not this time, Helen. No bad mojo. I’m sure there’s some kind of special protection for brides and their matron of honors.”

  Martha drummed her thumbs on the steering wheel. She turned her head quickly in Helen’s direction and noted the worry creases around her best friend’s eyes. Offering an upbeat smile, she gave Helen an encouraging pat on the arm.

  “It’s going to be fine, sweetie, and I intend to see your wedding goes off without a hitch. That I promise!”

  Chapter 20

  Tübingen, Germany

  “Would you like some hot chocolate?” Sabine asked as she stretched both her arms upward into the air and gave a contented sigh. She’d been lounging on the couch across from an older woman, Annalena, most of the early evening while reading a paperback mystery. Across from her, a young man sat in a chair flipping through a newspaper.

  The television sat in a corner of the room mumbling on in its own about war, weather and the line-up of upcoming programs. No one had paid a great deal of attention to the droning. It was more for background noise and offered a distraction by serving up the occasional odd item to prick their interest.