by Issy Brooke
“You-hoo!” Francine warbled.
“Goodness. Hi, Francine. How did you…”
“I asked Daisy who asked Ash who said that Billy Choudhury knew but he didn’t but his wife did. So here I am! I couldn’t resist. What a beautiful cottage! Is your dog all right?”
Kali was apparently trying to eat her way through the wooden door in her excitement at having visitors. “Stand back, please,” Penny said to Francine.
As soon as the door swung open, Kali burst through and launched herself in delight at Francine, who screamed and fell backwards, holding her arms over her face. “Get it off, get it off…”
Kali stood over the cowering woman, her tail and indeed her hips waggling in greeting, nuzzling Francine’s face and hands.
“Oh, Kali, come here.”
Kali licked Francine’s wrist and reluctantly came to Penny’s side. She tried not to laugh as Francine sat up, but when she saw Francine’s face, her humour died.
“Are you all right? I didn’t think you were scared of dogs. I’m so sorry. She really has no manners.”
“It’s a Rottweiler! It’s a dangerous dog!” Francine said, her face pale and her hands trembling. Penny felt sick with shame, and also with anger at being unfairly labelled.
“She’s not dangerous at all. I did say stand back … she’s just over excited. I’m really sorry. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
Francine stayed on the ground, looking at Kali. Kali looked back, her head cocked to one side, her tail thumping on the ground.
“I’m not hurt,” Francine said at last. “Gosh. I was so shocked. Wow. What a dog … she is pretty, though. I’ve never been this close to one before. Hello, beautiful.”
“Yes, she is. Come on. I think you need a cup of tea.”
Francine struggled to her feet, her bouncy nature temporarily subdued as she followed Penny into the cottage.
* * * *
Two bottles of wine later, and Penny couldn’t remember why she’d disliked Francine, and Francine couldn’t remember why she’d disliked the dog. They all sprawled across the living room floor as the height of the sofa had grown increasingly risky as more alcohol was consumed. Instead they lay on a plethora of cushions, giggling at childish jokes. Kali didn’t giggle, exactly, but she seemed to get immense pleasure from making the two humans laugh. She’d roll over and over, waving her paws in the air until she got a reaction.
“London isn’t the same without you,” Francine said.
“You’re repeating yourself. You said that before.”
“Yeah but I’m drunk so I can.”
“We’re both drunk. Oh, aren’t we too old to get drunk?”
“Too old! Nonsense. Sense. None. No sense.” Francine snickered. “You’re only as old as the man you feel. Felt any nice men?”
“Only a dead one,” Penny said, her mood shifting from hysterical to maudlin with the alacrity that only a tipsy woman could manage. “Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.”
Francine reached out and patted Penny’s thigh. Kali rolled over and her tongue lolled out of her mouth. Penny had to smile.
Francine said, as seriously as her slurred speech could manage, “It must have been awful. How did he die?”
“Electrocuted.”
“No. Never!”
“But not by his electric fence.”
“Murdered!” That thought sobered Francine up quickly. “There’s a murderer here?” She looked around as if someone was about to burst through the door wearing a balaclava.
“Yes, there possibly is. Unless it was a strange suicide. Or an accident.”
“Oh … so, what are you going to do about it?”
“Lock my doors at night, and stay off private land. More wine?”
“I could really murder a cheese toastie. Oh, Penny, can I stay over tonight please?”
“I kind of assumed that you were.”
Francine grinned sappily. “Thank you!”
* * * *
It was an evening of conversations started and aborted, circular arguments and random observations. But the next morning, as they both hunched over the kitchen table with narrowed eyes and tried to eat some dry toast and painkillers, the question of the murder resurfaced.
Francine had come prepared to stay overnight, and was wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe that made her hung-over pallid skin look even more deathly pale. She clutched a cup of hot coffee and whimpered. “Penny, aren’t you worried that there’s a killer on the loose?”
“Not really. I think, if he was murdered, it was a targeted attack. It must have been someone he knew, who had a reason for it. I don’t believe that anyone else has to worry.”
“I’d worry.” Francine’s eyes were slits against the light but she blinked rapidly in excitement. “What are you going to do?”
“Ah, yes, well, I do have a plan.” In spite of her thumping head, furry mouth and queasy stomach, Penny was feeling upbeat and chipper. She was actually enjoying spending time with Francine. She’d been awful to work with – her relentless enthusiasm had been tiring – but socially? She was a delight. Now Penny was away from London, she was starting to see what an unpleasant person she had been becoming. Thank goodness she escaped when she did. She said, “It gives me something to follow. I’m going to buy the local newspaper and study it and find out about the area, and make an effort to talk with people and learn who is who.”
Francine furrowed her brow. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. How are you going to find the murderer?”
Penny snorted a laugh most inelegantly. “How can I find a murderer? I could go and knock on doors, I suppose. ‘Hi, I’m new here. Did you kill David Hart?’ Yes, I am sure that would endear me to the locals.”
“You found the body! You have a duty. You always stood up for what was right. That’s why I liked working with you.”
“I think I mostly stood up for my own interests. Francine, how are you still so lovely? London life was making me nasty.”
Francine shrugged. “Oh, people are people. Everyone loves someone, don’t they? I just look for that love in them. Hey, do you remember when we were in Berlin?”
“I remember that rather startling club. Why?”
“You stood up to that man, then, who was bullying the poor make-up girl. You were fantastic.”
Penny thought back. Yes, she did remember. He’d accused her of spilling his pint. She hadn’t. It was obvious. But no one spoke out except Penny. “I did what I had to do.”
“You see!” Francine declared in triumph. “And it’s the same with this murder. Anyway, you’re up to your neck in events already.”
Penny remembered, then, some of the reasons that she’d disliked working with Francine. Her enthusiasm was so smothering. She rolled her itchy eyes. “It is absolutely nothing to do with me, and I need to leave it to the professionals.”
“Rubbish! Everyone knows that amateur detectives are far more effective.”
“Such as?”
“Er … Miss Marple?”
“Francine, I’ve got some really bad news and I know this is hard to take, but Miss Marple isn’t real. Oh, and there’s something I need to tell you about Santa Claus…”
Francine waved her right hand in the air dismissively. She had always made reality fit what she wanted to see. “I know that, but even so, it’s true.”
“It is not.”
“You’ve got to find out who did it!”
“I have not.”
Francine sat back, and said, somewhat smugly, “Well – what else are you doing with your time?”
* * * *
Francine left in the mid-morning. She had warmly embraced Penny, as if they were long-lost friends, and Penny patted her in return. Francine even gave Kali a cuddle, and apologised to the dog for calling her dangerous. Kali sneezed.
“I think too much,” Penny told Kali once they were alone. “It was lovely of her to come and see me. I really hated working with her but she means well. It’s a person’s intentions th
at are important, isn’t it? I didn’t see that side of her before. My perception was all skewed.”
Kali cocked her head.
“No, you don’t understand, do you?” she said sadly, feeling the house was suddenly empty. “Come on. Let me get dressed. I suppose I should take you for a walk…”
She didn’t leave the house until midday and she felt reluctant to face the possibility of meeting other dogs. However, she had to take responsibility. “Why are you so reactive?” she grumbled to Kali as they made their way out of the cottage. “Why are you so aggressive?”
Suddenly Penny stopped dead, and Kali lurched against the lead. Perception. It was all about perception. “Are you aggressive?” she asked the dog.
Kali sniffed the ground.
“Maybe, maybe not.” They continued on. “Maybe you’re just scared.”
* * * *
“Right. I can do this. Francine told me to, after all,” Penny muttered to herself. Francine had, indeed, insisted that Penny attend the kitchenware party. It would be “a blast” and “a scream”, apparently. She stood outside Cath’s detached house, still feeling the lingering effects of the previous night’s drinking clouding her tender head. The house stood in a remote spot halfway between Upper Glenfield and Lincoln, set back from the main road and hidden by tall cypress trees and conifers. Lincolnshire seemed littered with square, boxy houses, standing alone and isolated and surrounded by fields and dark, intimidating hedges, just like this.
There were half a dozen cars on the wide gravel driveway, and all the windows were lit and welcoming.
She’d had agonies about what to wear and had changed her clothes four times until she’d had a severe word with herself and settled on black trousers and a patterned blouse. Her bony knees meant she would never wear short skirts, and long skirts made her feel alarmingly hippy-like. The black trousers reminded her of her confident, corporate days. Still she felt a little nervous as she pressed the bell. In London, she could flounce into a room and charm everyone. Here it seemed different. This was not her familiar territory.
Cath flung the door open and her wide smile instantly made everything all right. “Come in! Now then! I’m so glad you came. Please. This way. Oh, don’t worry about taking your shoes off. I’ve got kids. For your own sake, you’ll want to keep them on. Plasticine, ugh. Shoes are the least of my worries – here we are. Can I get you a drink?”
“I’m driving. A softie, please. Do you have any lemonade?” She was never, ever drinking again, anyway, she promised herself and her liver. Never.
She found herself in a long lounge, with a table at one end that bristled with bottles and plates of nibbles. There were two overstuffed three-seater sofas, two matching armchairs that seemed to have been inflated and then smothered with cushions, and a selection of chairs brought in from the kitchen, the dining room, and possibly from outside on the patio if the plastic ones were any clue.
She recognised the beehive-wearing woman from the gossip in the bakery aisle at the mini-market. There were four other women there, all clutching drinks and smiling with open, friendly faces, and plenty of unashamed curiosity. Cath did a brief introduction, missing out exactly how they’d met under awkward circumstances, and everyone chorused hello.
The beehive woman, who was revealed to be the local hairdresser and called Agatha, patted the spare seat next to her on the three-seater. “Now then, come here, my love. I have seen you before, haven’t I? Eh?”
“Yes. I think I interrupted your conversation. In the mini-market?”
“That’s right! I remember. I saw you again but you were talking to Warren. Or at least, he was talking to you.”
Penny bit her lip. In a small town like this, she didn’t want to speak badly of a man who might turn out to be someone’s uncle or brother or secret crush. “Yes. He’s quite a … determined sort of man.”
Agatha howled with laughter, and announced to the whole group, “You hear that? You hear what she said, eh? Warren’s a determined sort of man!” She turned back to Penny and patted her on the knee as if Penny were five years old. “Now you listen to me, my love. He’s a horrible pest of a man who doesn’t understand ‘no’ and I am sure he means no harm but don’t you encourage him, you hear.”
“I wasn’t encouraging him at all!”
Someone else said, “Yeah, Agatha, that’s not fair. A woman only has to be breathing to encourage Warren.”
“I did tell him no. Anyway, it’s not all bad. Warren is the reason I’m here, to be honest,” Penny confessed. Cath was standing close by and she grinned.
“Yes, he was coming after both of us, wasn’t he?” she said. “We evaded him pretty well.”
“Yes. I was avoiding him which is why I kept on asking you about this party,” Penny said.
“You wouldn’t have come if Warren hadn’t been pursuing you?” Cath raised an eyebrow in mock indignation.
“Well … it’s not something I’ve ever done before.”
“There’s always a first time!” Agatha gurgled, making it sound like a filthy joke, and everyone laughed.
Cath began to set out some interesting and innovative new plastic kitchen products while the rest of the women continued to drink and chat. Some of the items looked frighteningly similar to the things Penny had seen at the more “adult” party she’d unwillingly attended. She didn’t like to ask what the long thin yellow thing, with the spiral on the end, was designed to do.
Instead, Penny said to Agatha, “Speaking of unpleasant men, and I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but can you tell me more about David Hart, that farmer who was … found dead? Was he ever married at all?”
“No, he never married, but he had his share of lovers!” Agatha said. “Isn’t that right? What about that latest floozy on his arm–”
“Now, Agatha, that’s not fair. I liked Mary,” someone said.
“Mary!” Agatha snorted. “Her. Huh. No better than she should be, that one!”
It was a curious phrase that Penny thought she understood without really making sense of it. “Did he really have a lot of … lovers?”
“I don’t know,” Cath said. “I actually think it’s a lot of gossip with not a lot of truth. He had a few girlfriends from time to time, but honestly, he wasn’t parading up and down the High Street with them. He kept himself to himself, mostly. Everything else is mere speculation.” She spoke firmly and warningly.
Agatha sucked at her teeth. “Maybe. But he was seeing Mary, most recently. That’s true, isn’t it? That Mary Radcliffe from along North Road. All jingly bracelets. She thinks she’s something but she’s not. Eh!”
Someone with a little more heart and feeling said, “I wonder how she’s taking it? His death, I mean. They might not have been married but even so. It must be hard.”
There was a moment of respectful silence, and even Agatha looked abashed. “True, true. A difficult situation for anyone, under the circumstances. I wonder how he died …” Agatha petered out but looked quizzically at Cath, who shook her head.
“No. No idea. I’m not at work right now. Read the paper tomorrow. Let’s look at these pots! Have you ever seen an egg timer like this?”
No, Penny had not. She had thought it was a lemon squeezer. Penny was glad that the conversation was being steered away from the topic of the murder. Fascinated as she was by the rumours and gossip, the fact was that a man was dead – and she had touched him. She shuddered. It didn’t matter that he was single, or a womaniser, or any such thing. Some people’s lives would now be missing a piece. A family was bereaved.
However, though she no longer wanted to talk about David Hart, the figure of Mary, his last girlfriend, did intrigue her. “Does Mary work?” she asked, thinking it was likely to be a safe topic of conversation.
Cath’s face looked up, startled, as Agatha laughed again, and said, “Oh, she’s here and there! Eh? She’s doing those cards now, isn’t she? She’s always been into that craft stuff. Jewellery and cards and what have you.
Glue a feather onto a bit of paper and write ‘peace’ in swirly pen, and charge three quid, eh. My kids did better at primary school.”
“I bought a sundial off her,” someone said. “It was made from a bit of slate. It wasn’t bad till the sticky-out bit fell off.”
“Well, she certainly needs the cash,” Agatha said. “Ooh! Is that one of those things that does nuts?”
Cath passed her the fluorescent yellow plastic thing that looked more like a small rocket. Quite what it was supposed to do to nuts was anyone’s guess. Penny sat back and pondered what she had learned. Would Mary be named in the will? It depended on how recent a girlfriend she was. Was she more? A partner, a lover. If she needed cash, she could have…
No. She pushed it out of her mind. It wasn’t her business.
Agatha was waving the nut-mangling thing at her. “Have you ever seen the like? See how it moves!”
“Er…”
Someone else was cooing about a knife sharpener, and the chance to talk more about Mary was lost.
* * * *
The kitchenware party lasted a lot longer than Penny had expected. She had ended up buying some multi-coloured stackable storage boxes and a cleaning cloth with micro-something embedded in it, that promised miracles just short of getting up and doing the dusting itself. Even though she hadn’t had any alcoholic drink, she felt warm and fuzzy as she said goodbye to the gathering of women and got into her car. It had been two good nights for her in a row. She felt mellow.
Cath was the last to say goodbye. The police detective had become progressively more relaxed and then raucous as the night had progressed, and increasingly incautious about what she said. She had regaled them with some lurid tales about how criminals smuggled mobile phones which made everyone cross their legs as their eyes watered.
