Castle on the Hill

by Agatha Frost

  “It’s what I drink at home,” she said, stepping over a large puddle as she followed him through. “I’ve found I’m more of a tea drinker since moving here.”

  They relinked arms as they set off towards the dark farmhouse. Simon stopped suddenly in his tracks, forcing Liz to halt by his side. She stared ahead at the farmhouse, something white glowing in the dark on the doorstep. They looked at each other, and then back to the motionless ethereal figure. For one ridiculous moment, Liz’s first thought was that it was the headless wife from the castle. After a shake of her head, she yanked on Simon’s arm, and they approached the figure.

  When they were metres away, Liz could see that it was a woman in a white wedding dress. On any other night, she might have been surprised to see someone dressed as a bride at this time of night, but since it was Halloween, the sight did not seem so unexpected, and yet, it did not quite feel right. The dress was too clean and perfect, and the woman wearing it was sobbing into her hands, not even knowing that she was being watched.

  Liz’s foot accidentally struck a small stone, bouncing it towards the doubled-over woman with a rattle. The bride squinted into the dark, her cheeks streaked with mascara.

  “Simon?” the woman croaked.

  “Natasha?” Simon replied, his voice unsteady and eyes wide. “W-what are you doing here?”

  Simon and Natasha stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Liz had no idea what was happening, but she pulled her arm away from Simon’s and took a small step back.

  The woman jolted up and ran towards Simon, her puffy dress floating behind her in the night breeze. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and sobbed into his shoulder. Simon rested a hand on the woman’s back and patted softly.

  “Oh, Simon,” she sobbed. “I couldn’t go through with it. I couldn’t marry him. I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “I should go,” Liz said faintly.

  She waited for Simon to tell her to stay, but she was met with silence. Deciding she was not going to stay where she was not wanted, she headed back to the gate. Baffled and confused, she wandered back down to Scarlet Cove, leaving the farmer and the bride to hug in the dark.

  3

  Liz bolted up in bed the next morning, her dreams having been haunted by headless men and ghostly brides. She pushed her frizzy hair out of her eyes as she stared at Paddy who gazed back up at her with a tilted head from the side of the bed.

  She grabbed her phone, squinting at the time in the murky darkness, the sun barely in the sky yet. She had three notifications. The first was a text from her friend and fellow detective, Miles, who was letting her know the news of the beheading had made its way up to the station in Manchester. The second was a text from Nancy asking how things had gone with Simon. The third was letting her know her mobile phone bill was due now that it was the first of November. There was nothing from Simon.

  Liz tossed back the covers and changed from her pyjamas into a thick jumper and dark blue jeans, the cold nipping at her in between. She felt the white radiator under her small bedroom window, but it had not yet kicked in.

  “Again?” she mumbled with a sigh, making a mental note to call her landlord, Bob Slinger, about the faulty boiler. “Are you hungry, boy?”

  After feeding Paddy and letting him do his morning business in the yard behind her shop, she wrapped a burgundy scarf around her neck and slipped her hands into a pair of mittens. She had an hour until the shop needed to open, so she set off towards Tidal Trinkets on the seafront.

  The wind was stronger than she had experienced before in Scarlet Cove, and the waves were unforgiving as they spat their spray over the sea wall, the small beach below completely hidden. Dark clouds circled above, making the early morning sun nothing more than a grey blur in the murky sky. Even without the clouds, Liz could smell rain was on the way.

  She arrived at the shop at the same time as the owner, Sylvia, who was dressed in a similar fashion to Liz. She hung back by the sea wall and waited for the petite woman to fully open the shop. When she flicked the lights on and perched on her stool behind the counter, Liz approached.

  Sylvia was a little woman in her early sixties. She had an open, caring face, and a talent for crafts, which she sold in her shop. Since opening, Sylvia had made Liz’s shop her supplier of choice, and the two women had bonded over their shared creativity.

  “Hello, Liz,” Sylvia smiled as she entered. “How are you, my dear? Bit early, isn’t it?”

  “Chilly too,” Liz said, rubbing her mittens together in the cold shop. “My radiator is on the blink.”

  “If you’ve come for some warmth, it will be a while until mine kicks in. Customers don’t start showing up for another hour or so, but you know I like to come down here and read my novellas. The peace and quiet is just what I need.”

  The shop was small and modest like most of the others in town, but had more charm than any other souvenir shop Liz had ever visited. Authenticity oozed from the shelves, Sylvia’s beautiful handmade knick-knacks begging to be bought. Liz had already bought a shell covered jewellery box and some necklaces to go with it, not that she had found a reason to wear them yet.

  “I hope you don’t mind me interrupting your reading time,” Liz said, edging closer to the counter as she unravelled her scarf. “I wanted to talk to you about Polly.”

  “I’ve called in a few times, but she’s not being co-operative,” Sylvia said with a heavy sigh as she plucked off her gloves finger by finger. “She says she’s fine, but my granddaughter is an awful liar.”

  Sylvia tossed her gloves onto the counter before plucking a dated and dog-eared romance novella from her bag. Liz caught a glimpse of a bare-chested man with a woman draped across his arm on the cover, but Sylvia quickly turned the book upside down.

  “I was thinking I might pop by and visit her,” Liz said hopefully. “I just want to make sure she’s okay, but I’m not quite sure where she lives.”

  “I think seeing a familiar face other than me will be good for her,” Sylvia agreed with a nod. “I always thought she came to Scarlet Cove to look after me, but then she got involved with that Nathan boy. I knew he was trouble from the minute I saw him.”

  “Did you know much about Nathan?”

  “I don’t even think Polly did,” Sylvia said, sighing as she ran her finger along the tattered back cover. “Not really, anyway. I think she just projected her dream man onto him. Bit of a blank page. Not much personality, if you get what I’m saying. Polly is a sweet girl, but she’s got a head full of dreams. She gets carried away. She’s impulsive.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, she moved to Scarlet Cove on a whim,” Sylvia said. “It’s nice to have my only granddaughter close by, but she came here on holiday a couple of years ago and never left. She had a top job back in Essex, but she left it behind to start her own salon here. It’s worked out for her, but I suppose she’s always been lucky like that. Some people just always land on their feet, but that luck had to run out. She’s getting her share all in one dose, but life can be cruel like that.”

  “I know how she feels.”

  “You do?” Sylvia asked, her kind eyes looking deep into Liz’s. “Well, if you want to try and cheer her up, she lives a few doors down from the Fisherman’s Rest B&B. Number twenty-three. She’ll probably be awake. She’s always been an early riser, just like me.”

  “Thank you,” Liz said, making a mental note of the address. “Enjoy the rest of your book.”

  “Before you go,” Sylvia reached into her handbag and pulled out a metal tin. “Can you give this to Polly? She loves salted caramel fudge.”

  Liz took the box from Sylvia with a promise to pass it on. She left the shop, wrapped the scarf back around her head, and set off towards the Fisherman’s Rest B&B. Just as she suspected, tiny droplets of water fell from the heavy clouds above.

  With the fudge in one hand and a bunch of flowers from the corner shop in the other, Liz walked up the garden path leading
to Polly’s small house near the B&B. She knocked loudly on the door, knowing it was far too early for visitors.

  “Polly?” she called through the wood. “It’s Liz. Are you up?”

  Liz heard shuffling on the other side of the door, so she pushed forward a sympathetic smile from behind the flowers. Polly opened the door and squinted through the gap, the dim light appearing to burn her eyes.

  “Liz?” she croaked, as though she had been asleep. “What a surprise. Come in.”

  Polly opened the door and shuffled back down the hallway, the tie from her dressing gown trailing behind. Liz followed her into the front room, which was decorated just as she would have expected. Every accessory was either hot pink or glittery and silver. The chimney breast had been papered in pink and white zebra print, and a shiny black miniature chandelier hung from the white textured ceiling, despite the room being too small to warrant it. Pizza boxes were stacked up on the glass coffee table as though they were all Polly had been living on over the last couple of days.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Polly said as she curled up in the corner of the white leather couch, a pink cushion clutched to her chest. “I usually keep it so clean.”

  “No need to apologise,” Liz said, sitting next to Polly on the squeaky couch. “You should see my place.”

  Polly could barely raise a smile. She looked nothing like the bubbly woman Liz had loved from the moment she had met her in the hair salon. Instead of her usual makeup covered face and tanned skin, she was completely bare and pale, her white hair in a loose ponytail at the side. She looked as though the ink in the printer was just about to run out and she was the final faint sheet.

  “I’ve just come from your gran’s shop,” Liz said, offering the tin of fudge. “She asked me to give you this. The flowers are from me.”

  Polly accepted both gifts, staring at them for a second before moving them to the side table as though it was a game of pass the parcel.

  “Thank you,” Polly said, barely above a whisper. “Salted caramel fudge is my favourite.”

  The words sounded like they were leaving Polly’s mouth automatically, reminding Liz of an answering machine message.

  “How are you?” Liz asked after another awkward silence, knowing the question was a useless one.

  “I’m great,” she said, her tone unusually sarcastic. “My boyfriend had his head chopped off after I found out he was cheating on me.”

  Liz reached out to grab Polly’s hand, which seemed to take the hairdresser by surprise. Their eyes met, and Liz tried to convey that she understood part of what Polly was going through. The only reason she did not say the words out loud was because she was not sure bringing up her own loss would make things any better.

  “I don’t know what I’m more upset about,” Polly said, suddenly turning to meet Liz’s eyes. “The fact he’s dead, or the fact he was cheating on me. That’s a horrible thing to say, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Liz said, squeezing her hand hard. “You’ve been through a lot. There are no rules to this process. You just have to get through it one day at a time.”

  Polly smiled and nodded, a silent tear trickling down her pale cheek.

  “Is that your police training kicking in?” Polly asked.

  “No,” she replied firmly. “I’m speaking from experience. Not the cheating part, but I’ve been there when it comes to losing someone you love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Liz almost changed the subject, but the words were on the tip of her tongue, and she was not sure if she could swallow them down.

  “My husband died in Manchester,” she started, pausing to take a deep breath. “It’s been two years, almost three now. He was an officer too. We were working on a case together, and something went wrong. He got caught in the path of a bullet that wasn’t even meant for him. It killed him. He died on the scene.”

  “Liz,” Polly said, raising her hand to her mouth. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

  “Why would you know? I came here for a fresh start. It’s what he would have wanted. It might seem odd, but I grieved very quickly because I knew he would have hated me to be stuck there. He was all about living in the present and not worrying about things you can’t control. I knew there was nothing I could do to bring him back, and I just had to accept that.”

  “I think if I could bring him back, I’d kill him myself,” Polly said, letting go of Liz’s hand and shuffling even further into the corner. “My love turned to hatred the second I saw the message from Misty on his phone. He dropped it at the castle, so I picked it up to give it to him. The screen lit up. I saw the message from that tramp. It said something like: ‘can’t wait to see you tonight. Text me when the bimbo has fallen asleep’. It had tons of kisses at the end. He didn’t even try to deny it. He just took his phone and walked away. I tried to follow him, to find out what was happening, but I couldn’t find him. And then –”

  “Do you know who could have done this?” Liz asked firmly, edging forward. “Did Nathan have any enemies?”

  “It must be Misty,” Polly said surely, not hiding her disdain. “She was swanning around that damn bar like nothing had happened. She didn’t care at all. He probably didn’t have enough money to keep up with her and her stupid dreams of getting out of here. She has a reputation.”

  “A reputation?” Liz coaxed.

  “She’s a diva,” Polly said through a strained laugh. “Probably a gold digger too. I bet she’s the type of woman who uses men for whatever she can get out of them. She wouldn’t have got a penny from Nathan. I had to lend him money most weeks, and I bet he was spending it on her. How did I not see it, Liz? Why did I let this happen?”

  “You didn’t make him cheat on you.”

  “Didn’t I?” Polly replied, sniffling hard. “What if I’m not enough? What if I was too annoying? He always said he liked my quirks, but what if he was just with me to have a roof over his head?”

  Liz did not tell Polly her fears echoed something Misty had said. Instead, she grabbed her hand and squeezed again, hoping her sympathy comforted her.

  “So, you don’t know anyone else who had it in for Nathan?”

  “It must be her,” Polly repeated, nodding her head. “Maybe he told her he wanted to be with me? Maybe he realised she was one of those girls?”

  Liz let Polly’s hand slip out of hers again. Polly crammed the ends of her fingers into her mouth and chomped down on her bare nails, which looked like her usual press-on nails had recently been ripped off. Liz knew all too well that mood swings were part of the process, and she was not about to deny Polly that. She watched as the hairdresser gnawed her nails like a hungry animal. She noticed a deep cut on the side of her hand, and it looked quite fresh.

  “I cut my hand on the scissors at the salon,” Polly said when she noticed Liz staring. “Grandma says I’m the clumsiest person she knows.”

  Liz did not ask any more questions. She did not like where her imagination was taking her. She left Polly with her salted caramel fudge and flowers before walking across town to her shop. After opening up, she sat behind the counter and pulled out her sketchpad as Paddy curled up at her feet.

  She flicked past a crude drawing of the front of her shop that she had sketched out last week, landing on a fresh page. With a dark pencil, she wrote ‘Nathan’ in the centre and encased it in a bubble. She drew two lines away from his name, adding ‘Misty Rivers’ to the end of one, and ‘Polly Spragg’ to the other.

  4

  “I heard about your little visit to see Polly yesterday,” Nancy said with a raised eyebrow as they wandered down the seafront with Paddy. “Jack heard someone talking about it in the pub.”

  “I just wanted to check that she was okay,” Liz said casually, wishing she had asked Sylvia to keep the news of her visit to herself. “Someone needs to.”

  Paddy pulled them towards the sea wall before cocking his leg. Liz looked out across the thrashing waves, hoping Nancy would drop the subject and get back
to complaining about her boss at the gallery where she worked.

  “I know you’re investigating,” Nancy continued, tickling Liz in the ribs. “You can tell me. I might be able to help.”

  “I’m just-”

  “Liz Jones!” Nancy cried, stopping her mid-sentence. “You can’t fool me. Spit it out. Tell me!”

  Paddy finished relieving himself, turning his attention to a seagull a couple of steps ahead. He ran forward, yanking on Liz’s arm. She pulled him back as they set off walking again.

  “Fine,” Liz said firmly, squinting into the distance towards The Sea Platter. “I wanted to see if Polly knew anything. I found the body-”

  “And the head,” Nancy jumped in.

  “And the head,” Liz continued. “I feel compelled to at least ask some follow-up questions.”

  An icy gust of wind washed down the seafront, fluttering their hair from side to side.

  “I want to help,” Nancy said with a resolute nod. “You jumped into harm’s way when you figured out who killed poor Frank. Two heads will be better than one.”

  “I’m not investigating,” Liz insisted, her teeth chattering. “And what makes you think things will be less dangerous if you’re helping?”

  “Because I’m your friend, and I happen to know a lot about this little town,” Nancy said smugly. “You could learn a lot from me, Detective.”

  “Retired detective,” Liz reminded her.

  With a friendly roll of her eyes, Nancy linked her arm through Liz’s as they carried on along the front, following Paddy as he sniffed the pavement like a police dog in an airport.

  A stray cat caught Paddy’s attention, dragging them across the road to the business side of the street. The cat darted past The Sea Platter, almost knocking a man off his feet as he carried empty crates in his arms. He dropped the crates, revealing his flushed face.