by Agatha Frost
“He can’t promise, but I will,” she whispered in the direction of the police station across the village as the wind whipped snowflakes in circles around the village green. “I’ll figure this out, Gran. I promise.”
5
Saturdays in Julia’s café were always busy, but it seemed half of the village having witnessed Dot shooting Marcus Miller and subsequently walking out of the village hall in handcuffs had made the café the place to be this weekend. After scribbling down every single thing she could think of regarding the event, Julia had spent most of the night nervously baking in her cottage’s tiny kitchen, meaning she had more than enough cakes and biscuits to go around.
Thanks to Jessie, Julia was not the one answering the gossipers’ endless stream of questions, even if she had to hear them all from the kitchen. She had almost decided to keep the café closed, but Jessie mentioning that it might make Dot look even guiltier had compelled Julia to leave the house. After being refused permission to see Dot at the police station, she was almost glad she had something to do other than pacing back and forth at home.
The timer beeped, making Julia jump from reading over the hastily scribbled notes in her ingredients notepad. She was reading over the page she had written about Marcus Miller, but her knowledge of the man was sparse at best, and her online research had not brought up much either. She grabbed a pair of oven gloves and pulled the cinnamon and apple cake from the middle shelf. After poking a skewer stick through the middle, which came out perfectly clean, she tipped the tin upside down onto a cooling rack. It smelled perfect, and just like the candles in her cottage she had taken inspiration from, but she had no idea what she was going to do with the cake; she had no appetite to eat.
Julia peeked through the pink beads and into the café, not surprised to see every seat full and the line reaching the door; the bell had not stopped ringing all morning. Jessie served so quickly she was able to dodge most questions, but it did not stop people using the café as their gossip hub.
“She’s never been very nice,” Amy Clark, the church organist, exclaimed loudly enough so that Julia could hear. “I always knew there was something funny about her.”
“I’d like to say I foresaw this one, but I didn’t,” Evelyn, the eccentric clairvoyant who ran the B&B, replied as she adjusted her icy blue turban. “My third eye has been a little foggy recently. I think it’s all this snow.”
Julia stepped away from the beads before she jumped in and said something she might regret. It seemed that everyone had accepted Dot as guilty because so many people had seen it with their own eyes, but no one seemed to be asking the one question Julia could not shake; why would Dot want to kill Marcus, and why in a village hall filled with over one hundred people on the night she was living her girlhood dream? Wanting to take her mind off the question she could not answer without speaking to her gran properly, she began glazing the cake in shiny icing, but her mind was far from the task, and it was not until the icing had dried solid that she realised she had done a shoddy job.
The beaded curtains parted, and instead of turning to see Jessie, she was surprised to see Johnny walk in, a copy of The Peridale Post clutched in his hand. He smiled sheepishly at her, but she could barely muster the energy to return it.
“I won’t ask how you’re feeling,” he said, taking a step forward, the newspaper held close to his chest. “I’ve been up all night trying to piece together the information for an article, but even I can’t wrap my head around it, so I dread to think what’s going on in your head.”
“Let’s just say I’m a little confused and numb today,” Julia said as she leaned against the silver counter in the middle of the kitchen, her eyes glued on the badly iced cake. “Cinnamon and apple cake? I promise it tastes better than it looks.”
“I can’t stay,” Johnny said, taking a small step back. “My editor has sent me on a mission to get some quotes from some of the cast. I just wanted to warn you.”
Julia looked down at the newspaper, her heart sinking to the pit of her stomach. She held her hand out, but Johnny seemed reluctant to pass it over.
“What’s the headline?” Julia asked, shaking her hand at Johnny to pass over the paper. “Is it that bad?”
“I didn’t come up with it,” Johnny said as he slapped the paper down on the counter. “You can thank my editor for that. He was quite pleased with himself this morning.”
“‘Dotty Old Woman’s Forty-Year Revenge Plot’,” Julia read aloud. “I don’t understand.”
“Dot’s connection to Marcus Miller?” Johnny asked, arching a brow as he fiddled awkwardly with his glasses before gripping onto the strap of his canvas messenger bag. “I thought you of all people would know.”
Julia shook her head as she read the sub-headline. ‘Eighty-three-year-old Peridale resident, Dorothy South, known locally as Dot, fatally shot the man who conned her out of thousands, Marcus Miller, forty-three years after his original conviction during bizarre play scene.’
Julia squinted down at the three photographs that had been chosen. One of them was a picture Johnny had taken of Dot at her dressing table, but not the one of her posing, the one of her putting her hand up to the camera, her scowling face visible behind her bony fingers. She almost did not recognise the woman in the second picture as her gran, so she was surprised to read that it was her in the caption under the picture. She was a lot younger than Julia had ever seen her, her brown hair curled away from her face, reminding Julia of ‘Charlie’s Angels’ star Farrah Fawcett. She looked to be standing on the steps of a court, a piece of paper in her hand, with a sharply dressed lawyer-type man behind her. The third picture was a police mugshot depicting a young man she did not recognise, and was even more shocked to read that it was Marcus Miller.
“I’ve never heard of any of this,” Julia said, placing the paper on the counter. “Where did you get this stuff?”
“It’s all public record,” Johnny said defensively, taking the paper back and folding it up before stuffing it into his bag. “Not the sort of stuff you’d find online though. It happened in the 70s, but it was all in our village records. It’s common practice at the paper to cross-search names in events like these, but even I was shocked to read all of this.”
Julia shook her head as she stared at the cake, unsure of what to focus on first.
“Marcus Miller conned my gran forty years ago?” Julia asked as she folded her arms. “How?”
“Some land scam,” Johnny said as he checked his watch. “I didn’t understand it much myself. I’m sorry, Julia, but I really need to go. They’re making even more cutbacks at the newspaper. I can’t afford to annoy the man upstairs. I just didn’t want to blindside you with this. There’s not a lot I could do.”
“I’ve heard that a lot recently,” Julia mumbled as she grabbed her pink pea coat from the hook. “Thanks for the warning, Johnny. I appreciate it.”
“Where are you going?”
“To talk to someone who will know about this.”
Hands tight around the steering wheel, Julia drove as quickly as she dared up the snow-covered winding lane towards Peridale Manor. She let out a sigh of relief when the large building appeared through the white fog of falling snow. She pulled up next to the bright pink Range Rover that belonged to her father’s wife, Katie, and ran to the door, her knuckles instantly beating down on the wood. Her father, Brian, answered, her recently born baby brother, Vinnie, resting over his shoulder.
“Julia,” he said with a sad smile as he dabbed at what looked like freshly coughed up milk on his black shirt with a cloth. “I was wondering when I’d be seeing you.”
He stepped to the side and held open the door for her. After Julia removed her shoes and coat, she followed her father through to the kitchen, which for the first time since she had visited, was not spotlessly clean. Baby bottles and clothes cluttered the surfaces, along with dirty plates and cups.
“Hilary’s having physio in the sitting room,” he explained as he softly patted Vinnie’s ba
ck. “It’s going to be a while until she’s ready to get back to work, but we’re not rushing her. She’s been through enough, although I think we need to hire another cleaner in the meantime. I’d forgotten how much work it was to raise a baby.”
Julia thought about the surprise birthday party she had thrown for Barker at the manor a month ago. It had resulted in one of Barker’s nephews being murdered, one of his brothers being jailed, another separating from his wife, and the housekeeper being thrown down the stairs and sent into a coma, which it had taken her a full week to come out of, and who was now struggling to walk thanks to the head injury. The whole ordeal already felt like something that had happened in a bad dream.
“She’s alive,” Julia said uncertainly. “That’s the main thing.”
Brian surprised Julia by passing the baby over to her. Vinnie scowled up at her with his tiny wrinkled face, his tongue resting against his bottom lip. She carefully stroked his wispy dark hair, which was sticking up in every direction. Brian cleared some room on the marble island before clearing the stools of piles of ironed and folded baby clothes. The ironing board and iron in front of the double-fronted fridge told Julia her father had likely been too busy to even worry about what was currently happening to his mother.
“Tea?” he asked, already filling the kettle at the sink. “I still have some of your favourite, peppermint and liquorice.”
“That would be great,” she said, the thought comforting as she stared down at her brother. “He’s so big already.”
She tickled under his chin, prompting him to clasp one of his tiny hands around her finger. He kicked his legs, his brows moving up and down as though he was confused by any face that didn’t belong to his parents.
“You’re lucky he’s not crying,” Brian said as he prepared the two cups. “Screamed the house down last night. Katie’s upstairs having a lie down. Poor thing doesn’t look like she’s slept in weeks. I can’t even remember what it feels like to be fully rested.”
The talk of sleep caused Julia to let out a long yawn, which baffled her younger brother even more. She did not bother to mention that she had not had any sleep herself.
“Half the village rang our house phone last night to tell us what happened,” Brian said as he poured boiled water into the two cups. “I thought it was a joke at first. Kids taking the mickey, you know? When Amy Clark called, I knew it was serious. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, until someone mentioned that it was Marcus Miller that she killed. I’m glad I was sitting down at the time, or that would have knocked me right off my feet. I had no idea he was still knocking around the place.”
“You know then?” Julia asked as she bounced Vinnie up and down. “You know about what happened forty-three years ago?”
Brian brought the two cups over to the island before sitting across from Julia. He stared down at Vinnie for a moment, the smile only a father could have taking over his lips. As though he did not even realise he was doing it, he looked up at Julia to give her a more melancholy version of the same smile.
“I went to school with the guy,” Brian said as he blew on the hot surface of his black tea. “We’re the same age. Never liked him much. We used to go around in the same circles sometimes, but he was always a nasty piece of work. Messed girls around, if you know what I’m saying. Bit of a player. He was charming and good looking, and that’s all you needed back then. When we left school, I didn’t see much of him until all that vile business with your gran. I wanted to kill him.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because it was forty-something years ago,” Brian said with a laugh after slurping the hot tea. “I hadn’t given it a second thought in almost as many years, and I doubt your gran had either. Ancient history until yesterday.”
Julia looked at her tea, and then down at Vinnie. Not wanting to risk spilling the tea on the baby, she decided to wait. As though her father knew what she was thinking, he walked around to scoop him out of her arms. Instead of holding Vinnie himself, he placed him in the Moses basket on a stand next to the counter.
“He’s ready for a nap anyway,” he explained as he tucked a blanket over Vinnie’s tiny body. “It’s not the going to sleep that’s the problem, it’s staying there.”
“What happened between them?” Julia urged, eager to know as much as possible. “I need to know everything.”
Brian sat back on his stool before scratching the side of his head. He slurped his tea again, clasped his hands together, and leaned in.
“It’s been a long time, Julia,” he said with a sigh. “The memory gets foggy with age. I think it was 1975. No, 1974 because I remember the police pulling us out of my twenty-first birthday party at The Plough to question your gran about Marcus. You weren’t born then, but I was already married to your mother. She couldn’t believe your gran fell for it any more than I could. She was always scared of your gran, but I suppose she was vulnerable when it happened.”
Julia sipped her tea, frustrated that her father was talking so vaguely, even if it was nice to hear him talking about her mother, especially at this time of year.
“When what happened?” Julia prompted. “And why was she vulnerable?”
“My dad had just died,” Brian said, his eyes glazing over as though it had happened last week. “Albert. Your grandfather. He was only forty. Nasty car accident. He and your gran were driving back from London after seeing a West End show. They’d go once or twice a month to watch what was new. A drunk driver hit them on the motorway, and they flipped over. You wouldn’t believe it, but that was about a decade before seatbelts were required by law. Your gran was wearing one, your grandfather wasn’t.
“After that, your gran went into a sort of walking coma. She wasn’t herself. She couldn’t be. I know that feeling too well. I went through it when your mother died. She was vulnerable, not that she would admit that afterwards. Marcus Miller was sniffing around Peridale looking for people to invest in his property scam. He convinced people, mainly women because that’s the type of guy he is, to hand over their money to buy a piece of farmland, promising them that when they sold the whole thing in a couple of years, they would all walk away with ten times more than what they put in. He got your gran at the right time. She was worrying herself sick about money. I was trying to help her the best I could, but I was only working at the pub then. Your mum was working in the old bakery on Mulberry Lane. It closed down a long time ago. We tried our best, but at the time I thought I should have tried more so she didn’t feel so much pressure. Being recently widowed makes you feel like your world is coming to an end. When Marcus told her she could get rich quick, I suppose it gave her some hope.
“She handed over two thousand pounds, which doesn’t sound like a lot today, but that was worth ten times more back then when you take inflation into account. That was the money my father left behind from his life savings. She handed over every penny, but I think she took some comfort in not being the only one. There are about thirty women across the Cotswolds who each own a square metre of useless farmland. As you can guess, it wasn’t worth anything. It was marsh, so no one would ever get permission to build anything on it. I think your gran technically still owns it.
“When the police caught up with him, they unravelled dozens of scams. Everything from money laundering to flogging fake designer watches at the market. He got seven years, but he was out in five. I always thought he’d moved away, but I guess he came back.”
“He’s been in the Christmas plays for as long as I can remember,” Julia said, suddenly remembering what her gran had told her during the dress rehearsal. “She hinted that something had happened between them, but she called it ‘ancient history’ too.”
“Because it was,” he said, casting an eye at Vinnie as he began to softly snore through his tiny nostrils. “She even made a point of going to the prison the day he was released to shake his hand and prove there were no hard feelings. It was just after you were born. We went along with you in a pram to mak
e sure she didn’t kill him then. I think once the grief had cleared, your gran realised how silly she’d been, and she wanted to show that he hadn’t affected her. Your gran is many things, but she’s never been a victim.”
“Until now,” Julia said after a sip of tea. “She’s probably being put through the wringer at the station as we speak.”
“Your gran can handle herself,” he said with a smirk. “Imagine the chaos she’s causing down there.”
For the first time since the play, Julia laughed so naturally, it caught her by surprise. She almost felt guilty for laughing at such a time, but her father was right. She could see as clear as day how stressed the interviewing officers would be after spending an hour in her presence. She imagined each of them had been given a scorching dressing down in their first minute together.
“Do you think she did it?” Julia asked, her hands hugging her tea. “I mean, I know she did it, but do you think she did it knowingly?”
“My mother?” he said with a laugh. “Kill someone with a gun? Not in a million years.”
Julia smiled at her father, glad she had someone on her side. At that moment, footsteps plodded across the marble tiles, and Katie walked into the kitchen, her platinum hair matted and her pink silk pyjamas stained.
“Coffee,” she groaned. “Oh, hello, Julia. Sorry to hear about your gran.”
Julia smiled her thanks as she finished the last of her tea. Not wanting to overstay her welcome with the new parents, she slid off the stool and joined Katie in staring down at Vinnie.
“I still can’t believe he’s mine,” Katie beamed as she wrapped her hands around her body. “He’s so perfect.”
“Good genes,” Brian said with a wink as he finished the last of the tea. “Go back to bed. I’ll bring you up some coffee and lunch.”
Katie let out a sigh of relief, kissed Brian on the lips, brushed Vinnie’s hair, and patted Julia on the shoulder as she passed. She reached the archway before turning back and pointing at Julia.
