The Lavender Lady

by Faith Martin

  And as everyone looked her way, Effie felt the earth lurch beneath her feet.

  They didn’t know.

  She swallowed hard as her mind did a little flip. How was it possible that they didn’t know? Surely Duncan must have told them? But then why would he?

  She turned to look at him, but it was only when he suddenly reached across and grabbed her hand in a hard, bracing grip that she realized that she must look a sight. She knew she’d gone deathly pale, because she’d felt the blood drain from her face. And no doubt some sort of gormless, clueless expression must be written clearly on her features for Duncan to look suddenly so concerned.

  For a moment — just for one wild, insane moment — she wanted to pretend that indeed Michael had just been working, and was thus too busy to come with her that afternoon. And that, even now, he was back in his study at home, working over blueprints and waiting for her to return.

  But of course, the lie would be pointless. Even though some dark, atavistic part of her was telling her that it might be a good idea to just run with it. That it might be best all around if these people continued to think that she was happily married, and went home each day to a loving partner.

  But of course, Duncan knew the truth, and . . .

  ‘Effie are you all right?’ It was Jean who asked the question first, her voice sharp with concern.

  ‘Yes, Effie, you’ve gone awfully pale,’ Gisela put in worriedly.

  Effie took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she heard herself lie, and forced some sort of a smile onto her face.

  She turned to look at Zoe first, since she was the one who’d asked the question, and for some reason found that she was seeking out Corwin’s face instead.

  He was watching her intently, his green eyes darkening notably.

  And then his eyes slowly drifted down.

  When Effie, too, looked down to see just what it was that he found so fascinating, she noticed that Duncan was still holding her hand in support and encouragement.

  Gently, but firmly, she pulled it away. And to Zoe, she said quietly, ‘I’m afraid I lost my husband last year.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Later, after Duncan had dropped her off and gone back to his long-suffering wife, Effie lay in bed thinking.

  About murder.

  And she was thinking about murder, she freely acknowledged to herself, because it was better and safer than thinking about other things.

  Like the look of pity in Corwin’s eyes when he realized that she was a recent widow. The concerted rush of sympathy from the others, and the approving nod from Duncan, as if she’d finally passed some sort of test, and deserved a brownie point.

  All of which made her squirm, for various different reasons.

  So, all things considered, it was much easier to lie in her bed and contemplate murder instead. And Claudia Watkins’s murder, specifically, since that was clearly what her subconscious had been mulling over. And probably had been for some time now, if the ease with which she was able to contemplate it now was anything to go by.

  With a snort at her folly, Effie turned over in the double bed that still felt so weirdly empty without Michael’s solid presence beside her, and determinedly closed her eyes. She opened them again moments later.

  The thought simply wouldn’t go away, teasing and tormenting her, just daring her to bring it out in the open and seriously think about it. And as she lay, sleepless and uneasy, tossing and turning, she supposed that, as a mental exercise, it beat counting sheep.

  So, OK, Effie thought wearily. Let’s play a game of Indulge Effie’s Paranoia.

  What, exactly, did she have to go on? Well, Claudia Watkins had been a rich, cantankerous old soul, who argued with her family and staff, and no doubt had thought of herself as the local queen bee. And certainly, some people had benefited from her death. Her son and his discontented wife got the house and half the fortune. Effie had no trouble in believing that Celia had made it very clear to her husband just how very much she was looking forward to getting her hands on it all.

  But that hardly meant that Monty would murder his own mother, did it?

  And Isabel and her husband might be in financial trouble too. Perhaps they might even have been facing the very real possibility of losing the family farm, and the land that had been in Jeremy’s family for generations. That might really sting. But could she honestly see either Isabel or Jeremy killing Claudia in order to hold on to their way of life?

  The odious Clive Carteret might well be a ruthless businessman, and guilty of any amount of sharp practices. What’s more, he’d been known to be at cross purposes with his grandmother-in-law over a proposal to build houses perilously close to her beloved home. And, possibly too, over the issue of whether or not he and Ros were ever going to give her great-grandchildren.

  But murder was a big step up from bribing council officials or planning officers.

  And would Ros kill a grandmother that she was clearly fond of just to inherit a few baubles? Even if those baubles might — if sold — net her a vast fortune, and struck envy and malice into the hearts of her neighbours?

  And don’t forget the gardener, the mocking voice in the back of her head reminded her.

  Oh yes. Mustn’t forget poor old Geoff, who might have been forced to retire, if the old lady had gone on living. Now there was a motive for you! Although there was nothing to say he’d have been kept on as gardener once the house had changed ownership, of course.

  With a grunt, Effie turned over in the bed again, and Toad, who had been nestled into the small of her back, gave an elaborate, long-suffering sigh and repositioned himself with a small grunt of his own.

  ‘Sorry, little lad,’ Effie apologized softly.

  And then frowned. A little niggle at the back of her mind was warning her that she’d forgotten someone. But who? Oh yes, the family solicitor. Effie remembered, as a little girl, her grandmother loving to watch those old Hollywood black and white movies made in the thirties, where rich relatives were often bumped off by the crooked family lawyer. Who, if she was remembering her cinematic plots correctly, had all been bilking the family estate for years, usually misappropriating funds and spending the ill-gotten gains on peroxide doxies and trips to Las Vegas.

  Now, granted, she hadn’t really taken to the somewhat oily Mr George Dix, but that hardly meant she could just go about impugning his character. Although, at the barbecue, Monty had intimated that, in his opinion, the solicitor was dragging his feet over probate. Mind you, he was hardly a reliable source of information!

  Still, it was true that Claudia had at least been threatening to take her financial and business affairs elsewhere. And there might have been something behind that other than just her normal awkwardness and the delight she seemed to have taken in riling people. What if she had genuinely come to suspect something untoward about her once-trusted legal adviser?

  Well, for sure, she’d never be able to find out anything about it if that were the case, Effie thought with a wry smile. She hadn’t knocked around the world a bit for forty years without learning that professional bodies took care of themselves. Be they doctors, solicitors or Oxford dons. And she certainly had no remit or excuse to go prodding about in Claudia’s financial affairs.

  Suddenly Effie began to giggle. At least Claudia hadn’t employed a butler, so she knew that he didn’t do it!

  Slowly her mirth diminished and she felt a little tired, but when she tried to close her eyes and sleep, the events at the pub came flooding back over her again, and her heart began to race.

  When she’d asked Duncan, on the drive back, why he hadn’t told Corwin that she was a widow, he’d said, quite reasonably, that he hadn’t considered it to be any of Corwin’s business. Nor, he’d reminded her gently, was it up to him to go spreading around details about her private and personal life to all and sundry that she might not want discussed.

  She’d hardly been able to argue with that, had she? Even though she was getting mo
re and more suspicious that Duncan was playing the arch manipulator again. She was already convinced that he’d asked her to join the C-Fits not so much because he truly needed her to help to research his book, but because he wanted her to get out and about, meeting new people and having new experiences.

  Which might be psychologically sound and a very good idea and all that, but it didn’t mean that she appreciated being moved around like a pawn in a game of chess.

  So she certainly didn’t put it past her old friend to have deliberately kept quiet about her recent loss, knowing full well that at some point, she’d be forced to tackle the issue head on. And thus face her demons.

  Damn him.

  Once again, she was sitting in that pub garden, her heart pounding, aware that Corwin Fielding . . .

  No. No, no and again no. It was simply too humiliating to think about her growing attraction for him and she quickly and gratefully turned her thoughts back to murder.

  That was much easier to deal with.

  So, OK, she thought patiently. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Claudia had been murdered. That someone, for some reason, had decided to bump her off.

  And, if she was going to be that silly, Effie supposed crossly, she might as well go the whole hog and add the happenings at the house to the mix.

  So. Suppose Claudia Watkins was trying to warn Isabel of this fact — and as Gisela would more dramatically have put it, that was why her poor restless spirit was wandering around seeking justice. It would account for the reason why Isabel had begun having bad dreams.

  Now at this point, Duncan would almost certainly point out that it was perfectly possible that Isabel, too, might have had just the same kind of doubts as Effie was having now about the manner of her mother’s death. And that subconsciously, the dreams were her way of trying to work them out.

  Why not? It made sense. Of a sort.

  For the moment, Effie would ignore the cold spot in the bathroom and the scent of lavender. Since she didn’t, as yet, have any rational explanations for them, it was pointless speculating about it.

  OK. So, just for the sake of not having to resort to counting sheep, why not take it as a given that someone killed Claudia? And that the events at the house were somehow related. After all, Effie thought reasonably, perhaps that wasn’t quite so wild a thought as all that. People did get murdered every day, somewhere in the world, didn’t they? You only had to watch the news or read a newspaper to concede that. And rich people were killed for their money too. She could think, off-hand, of a number of modern cases where that had happened.

  So, if Claudia had been murdered, Effie mused, indulging herself for the moment, there was surely one blindingly obvious question that she should now be asking herself. Namely: how? And perhaps, as a good addendum to that: how had they got away with it so successfully?

  Ah yes, Effie, how indeed, she asked herself with a wry grin. For the facts were plain enough. Claudia had been an elderly lady with a known heart condition. And she had been found, by her daily help, collapsed beside her bed. Presumably, the daily had had a key to let herself in with, and the house had been securely locked up?

  Effie didn’t know. She could always find out, she supposed, since Isabel would be bound to know.

  But of course, she couldn’t possibly ask her! Effie groaned. Some Miss Marple she would make! This was madness. She rolled over onto her side, once more apologized to her dog, and closed her eyes grumpily.

  Of course, she could probably find out by asking someone else . . . Everyone in the village would know all the gory details by now. Jasmine at the herbalist shop for instance, not to mention the nosy old lady with a taste for sweets.

  OK, just suppose for argument’s sake that the house had been securely locked up for the night. Clearly there could have been no obvious signs of a break-in or someone would have noticed and called the police. So what did this prove? Nothing. The family probably all had sets of spare keys. And Claudia might well have been the kind who liked to sleep with her windows open for fresh air. And unless the house had a burglar alarm, which Effie didn’t think it did, then presumably anyone reasonably agile and determined enough could have been able to sneak in, do the deed, and sneak out again without leaving any suspicious evidence behind.

  But what deed exactly had they done? Claudia hadn’t been bludgeoned, or shot, or stabbed. Colonel Mustard hadn’t taken a lead pipe to her in the library.

  Effie sighed and giggled again.

  But still, the game she was playing was better than lying awake, obsessing about other things.

  OK. So if Claudia had been killed, there was only one way it could have been done. Obviously. It had to be poison. The old lady must have been poisoned.

  Effie was aware that, because her doctor had seen Claudia the day before her death, no post mortem had been deemed necessary. Indeed, her GP had presumably signed the death certificate without a single qualm. And why not? Claudia was in her eighties with a failing heart, and had clearly died of heart failure.

  Unless she hadn’t — unless someone had truly contrived to poison her.

  Effie stared up at the ceiling and frowned. What did she know about poison? Nothing. What did she know about how a GP assessed cause of death? Nothing. What did she know about what tell-tale signs there might have been on the body if foul play had been employed? Again — nothing. If Claudia had been smothered by a pillow for instance, rather than poisoned, would there necessarily have been any bruising to alert a doctor that all was not well? Claudia was an old lady and, for all her cantankerous ways, probably a rather frail woman. She could have been overcome without putting up too much of a fight, surely?

  Just thinking about all the possibilities was making Effie’s head swim. What’s more it was pointless. And becoming more and more silly.

  Although she hated taking sleeping tablets, Effie finally admitted defeat, sat up and put on the lamp. Then she reached into the bedside table drawer for a small brown bottle and spilled two pills into the palm of her hand. Although her own GP had prescribed them for her after Michael died, she’d rarely used them, and the bottle was still half full.

  Feeling a little shamefaced, she trotted to the bathroom, popped the pills into her mouth, turned on the cold tap, bent over and filled her mouth with water and swallowed. Relieved that they didn’t stick in the back of her throat (she’d always had trouble swallowing pills), she went back to bed and lay back down in the darkness, waiting for them to work.

  But even as she finally began to drift off to sleep, her mind was still working furiously away. Her last coherent thought was that, although she might not know much about how heart conditions worked, and what might cause death without any obvious signs, there was someone she could ask who would know all about it.

  Someone, moreover, who was a GP herself, and would thus have a good insight into what Claudia’s own doctor would have been thinking and doing.

  Her friend, Penny Harris.

  * * *

  Extract from the journal of Corwin Fielding:

  23 April: The barbecue at Aynho was a qualified success. At least we managed to win over most of Isabel’s family to the idea of our continuing investigation into Claudia’s case, with the possible exception of Monty Watkins and his wife Celia, and perhaps Clive Carteret. However, Rosamund was clearly pleased that we had made such a good impression on the friends and neighbours, and Malc even got an invitation from one of them, a Mr Tony Inkerman, to check out a deserted and derelict barn on his land that, local legend had it, was haunted. Naturally, Malc agreed that we’d be interested, although he told me afterwards that Tony himself had never ‘experienced’ anything in the barn, since he hardly ever went there. But when Malc managed to draw him out a bit more, Mr Inkerman admitted that, back in his father’s day a tramp had been found dead in the barn, presumably having died from drink-related problems or hypothermia. This clearly needs more research, and I’ll ask Gisela if she would like to go there one evening and see what
she can intuit.

  After the barbecue, Professor Fergusson, Effie and the rest of us went to a pub for a drink, and during the course of the evening, we discovered that Effie has been recently widowed. Naturally, we were all very shocked and saddened by this news.

  It also worries me slightly, as people who are grieving and still in mourning have obviously heightened emotional baggage to deal with, and aren’t ideal candidates for the sort of work that we do at C-Fits. In fact, had I known this from the start, I might not have accepted Effie so readily into the team. Which is something that I suspect Professor Fergusson may well have been aware of. Although I have no proof that he deliberately kept this circumstance about Effie’s recent loss from me, I do have my suspicions.

  I also noticed that the professor seemed to be very attentive towards Effie. Although I believe I detected a certain amount of coolness and wariness on Effie’s part that makes me think that she doesn’t particularly welcome this.

  Needless to say, we’re all now concerned about Effie. Both Jean and Gisela especially have become very friendly with her, and will, of course, do their best to look after her when she’s with us on vigils.

  Lonny did take me aside after we left the pub and asked me if I thought that it was a good idea for a recently widowed person to be joining our team, echoing my own doubts about this. And I had to admit to him that I didn’t think it was ideal, either.

  But to be fair, so far Effie hasn’t exhibited any obvious signs of distress or of being under strain whilst with us. In fact, had Zoe not inadvertently uncovered the truth, I doubt that either I, or any of the others, would ever have guessed that Effie had recently undergone such a trauma.

  What’s more, she clearly has no intention of trying to use the C-Fits for her own personal agenda. But if, for instance, she were ever to approach Gisela and ask her to try and make contact with her deceased husband, then, naturally, I’d have to reconsider our position. At the very least it would be a massive conflict of interest and, to my mind, grossly unethical to undertake any investigation that involved a member of the team personally. But I really don’t think that situation is likely to arise. There is an aloofness about Effie that is quite striking, and which tells me that she would be very unlikely indeed to want to involve anyone in her private life — especially relative strangers such as ourselves. She also seems to me to be the type of person who keeps her emotions tightly under control.