by Agatha Frost
“What did Johnny want?” she asked in a small voice as she took the stool next to Julia.
“It’s a secret for now,” she said, eyes on the folder as Katie set it down. “He was . . . something. I’ve just spent fifteen minutes in a Jim Carey film.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.”
Fingers plucking at the edge of the folder, Katie let out a muted laugh.
“Good news?” Julia asked. “Bad news?
“It’s . . . news.” After a moment’s hesitation, she flipped the folder open. “I asked Barker to look into James Jacobson thinking he’d turn out to be some con man or gangster or . . . I don’t even know.”
“And what is he?”
“A property developer with an offer still on the table,” she said, cheeks flushing pink. “Even after the photograph incident.”
“Developer?”
“He has a track record of buying stately homes and manors.” She spread out glossy photographs, some like Wellington Manor and others twice as grand. “He turns them into luxury apartments.”
“Apartments.” Julia nodded, not wanting to put Katie off the only offer on the table. “It has the space.”
“My dad would kill me if he found out I’d sold the manor to be turned into flats.” She flopped her head onto her folded arms and mumbled, “What do I do, Julia?”
As much as Katie had grown, she still looked to others for guidance and advice more than anyone else Julia knew. That Katie wasn’t afraid to ask was one of the reasons Julia liked her, but it also meant Julia’s words held weight she wasn’t comfortable with. The scone overstock numbers paled in comparison to the debt figures her father had shown her.
“As sad as it is, your dad isn’t here anymore,” Julia said softly, resting a hand on the back of Katie’s crispy blonde bun. “And let’s not forget he left you with this debt. How likely are you to pay it off without selling the manor?”
“From the money I make here and nails on the side?” She counted on her fingers. “Three thousand years? But another buyer could come along next week and keep it the same.”
“Or you might be waiting another year or more. I’ve seen enough episodes of Grand Designs and Location, Location, Location over these last five months to know nothing moves quickly with houses like that.”
“I know, I know,” she groaned, fanning out more pictures, this time of apartments. “And he does a great job. They’re stunning.”
“I can’t disagree there.”
“I need to talk to your father,” she said, gathering up the documents. “I hope he didn’t know about this.”
After a hug that lingered a little longer than usual, Katie left through the back door. Before long, Barker emerged with Olivia, all wrapped up and ready to go home.
“Are you okay to strap her in her seat?” Julia asked, squishing sideways past Barker’s car, which, to Penelope’s credit, did make the lane a tighter squeeze. “I won’t be long.”
One short walk across the green later, Julia knocked on her gran’s door, hoping to banish another storm cloud before the day ended.
“Who is it?” Percy sang through the door.
“It’s Julia.”
“Oh, hello, love.” There was a long pause. “It’s . . . it might not be the best time.”
“Percy, can I come in and—”
“Why don’t you come back tomorrow, my love?” he called, the cheery timbre of his voice barely holding together. “Best to let the dust settle, like you said.”
Julia reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. She had one for the front door, but the message was clear. Besides, knowing her gran and Percy, there was no telling how many chains and bolts on the other side would render her key useless.
“Hugo Scott, MP, on the council came in handy,” said Barker as Julia climbed in the car to Olivia’s delighted raspberries. “I should help prove that politicians’ private pictures are faked more often.”
“Are they faked that often?”
“Good point.” He started the engine with a press of a button on the dashboard. “According to Mr Scott, it’s unlikely planning permission for the apartments would be denied, especially after Katie’s attempt at turning it into a spa.”
“I forgot about that.”
“I still wish she’d built that pool,” he said with a sigh. “From the sounds of it, as long as the outside structure isn’t compromised and any important details are preserved as per listed status requests, the rest can be sliced and diced. I talked to an old detective pal from back in the day. He’s an architect now, and he reckons you could fit four large apartments in there easily, six if they want them small, and that’s not including the attic, which seems to go on forever. Do you think Katie will balk?”
“I’m not sure what choice she has.”
“Whatever happens,” he whispered, reversing out of the spot, “they’re not moving in with us again.”
“Deal. And now that you’re finished with the manor case, I need a fresh pair of eyes on some notes I made earlier. Will you help me, Inspector?”
“Oh, Miss Julia!” he said in his best Belgian accent, twiddling a non-existent moustache. “I would be ’appy to lend my little grey cells to your case.”
The Poirot impression raised a giggle from Olivia, and one glance through the rear-view mirror provided a ray of sunshine to brighten the gloom of the day.
By hook or by crook, tomorrow she would clear those clouds above her gran’s cottage.
12
Dot teased back the curtain at her bedroom window as Barker’s car drove away. She wasn’t one to avoid her granddaughter, but she wasn’t entirely herself today. Who she was, exactly, she hadn’t yet figured out. How many hours of reflection would it take now that she’d seen herself through everyone else’s eyes?
The woman they quit.
The woman who pushed them to quit.
“I should have been the wizard,” Dot said when Percy crept onto the top step with a wheeze. “At our wedding, you were the wizard, and I was Dorothy Gale, but what if I’m the wizard? I didn’t save everyone from the witch. I was just some sad, shrivelled-up old man behind a smoke-and-mirror show.”
“My Dorothy,” he said, waltzing in with the bundle of burning sage. “I am the shrivelled-up old man in this relationship, and your name is Dorothy. Perhaps she saved the day, but she wasn’t innocent. Lest we forget the poor witch her house landed on, and the other she threw a bucket of water over.”
“They deserved it.”
“They probably didn’t think so.” He fanned her all over with the woodsy, stinking sage. “And the Wizard still got them home in the end. He didn’t give up when the curtain was pulled back on him, did he?”
“This is where I give up.” She let the curtain fall and retreated to her bed. “Julia must hate me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.” He twirled the smoking sage around his head in a circle. “I only heard concern in her voice. Wasn’t easy to send her on her way, but I did for you.”
Percy planted a kiss on her curls, bringing the sage alarmingly close.
“Alright, now.” She coughed and fanned her hand. “I feel like Julia’s profiterole tower when she spun it with sugar. What are you doing?”
“The energy,” he whispered, glancing around. “Evelyn said she sensed that Penelope had lingered. Nothing has been the same since the séance.”
“As much as I’d like to blame Evelyn’s swaying and crystals for what’s going on,” she said, returning to the window and pulling it up to let in the fresh air, “only I am to blame. But I appreciate the effort.”
Percy dumped the sage in the glass of water usually reserved for his teeth on the bedside table between their twin beds. With a dog each, they stretched out on their beds and watched the evening air dance the curtains.
“I’m embarrassed, Percy,” Dot said, turning away from the window after a period of stillness. “Ashamed, even. That look in Julia’s eyes. How could I ha
ve gone about everything so wrong? I should have listened. She tried to warn me to pull in the reins, but I was far too distracted with my own notions to pay her any mind.”
“It’s best not to torture yourself.”
“She looked so disappointed.”
“C’mon, Dorothy.”
“And the rest of them.” Dot pulled Lady onto her lap and adjusted her bow as she settled. “I brought everyone together to become a group, and what did I do? What I always do. I claimed centre stage.”
“You do have a certain star quality.”
“I know that.” She pushed up her curls. “But perhaps there’s a time and a place.”
“Now, I don’t like your tone,” he said, sitting up and throwing his legs over the bed, a firm finger pointed her way. “The Dorothy South I married wouldn’t give up so easily. What about what you said to Ethel in the library?”
“I was hardly going to tell her everything had fallen apart. Could you imagine the ammunition it would have given her? And that’s when I thought I still had Julia on my side. Now, I have no one.”
“You have me until my dying breath,” he said with a wink. “And Johnny, Leah, and Amy are still members, as far as we know. It’s not over yet, and it’s not about sides. Ethel may be against you, but Evelyn and Shilpa aren’t, and they won’t stay upset forever. In the meantime, you can’t stay cooped up in the cottage.”
“Can’t I?”
“Dorothy . . .”
“‘Be your own hero’, my father used to say,” she recited. “It’s like I heard his voice when Amy crackled through the walkie-talkie. I panicked. Us or him, I thought.”
“No true harm was done,” he said, “and the boy is still on the loose, ready to strike again. But now his face is on the front page of the paper, so people know who to look out for. That’s down to you in part, my dear. Celebrate that because it’s something. This is nothing more than an opportunity to learn.”
“What’s the lesson?”
“We’ll figure that out as we go.” He hopped off the bed and walked to the wardrobe, Bruce tight on his heels. “Now, are you going to wallow in bed for the rest of the evening feeling sorry for yourself, or will you accompany me to my choir rehearsal?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.” He put her shoes at the bottom of her bed. “The fresh air will do you good.”
After readying themselves and the dogs, they walked the short distance to the church arm in arm. Dot didn’t know how far the gossip had spread, or what people were saying, or if what they thought they knew about her was even real, but she donned a disguise just in case.
“It’s not too much?” she asked, checking that the silk scarf was tied under her neck. “And the sunglasses?”
“You look like Audrey Hepburn in her heyday.”
“Percy, your glasses are full of smudges.”
He pulled them off and wiped them on the fresh, crisp shirt held tight behind his suspenders. Sliding them back on, he said, “Still Audrey Hepburn to me.”
“What did I do to deserve you, Percy Cropper?”
“You gave me a chance, dear. That’s all it was.”
Once again, Dot lingered by the photograph of her father, watching as the choir members filed in one by one. Rather than subjecting herself to their stares and whispering, she observed them in the reflection of the picture’s glass.
Only one member made her turn.
“Gus?” she said quietly, motioning him over. “Can I have a word? It’s me, Dot.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, giving her an odd look. “If this is about what happened in the library, I—”
“I’m sorry for how I talked to you at the last rehearsal,” she said, nodding through the arch as she removed her sunglasses. “It was too soon after your wife’s passing to be so . . . forward.”
“Thank you,” he said with a smile more genuine than the one he’d offered the first time she’d approached him. “I appreciate that. Maybe you’re not so much like Ethel after all. She’d never apologise.”
Dot didn’t think she was like Ethel at all, but Gus didn’t linger long enough for her to ask why he’d make such a comparison. It felt good to apologise, but it was only the first of many. Turning to the picture, she remembered her ambition when last she’d stood in this spot – minus the scarf and glasses.
“I gave being the hero a shot,” she whispered to her father. “Didn’t quite work out the way I hoped.”
“And what was it you’d hoped for?”
Dot’s sunglasses flew off as she spun towards the startling voice. Father David scooped them up and handed them back as he once again joined her in standing before the photograph.
“Whispers on the wind tell me your new neighbourhood watch team has fractured?” he asked as she slipped her glasses back on. “How did you hope it would turn out?”
“With glory?” She sighed. “My moment in the sun? Who knows what I was thinking, Father? Perhaps I wasn’t thinking at all, and that’s where I strayed.”
“The ego wants what the ego wants,” he said, “but a reason to start a neighbourhood watch it is not.”
“It’s fine. I’m giving it up.”
“Now, I didn’t say you should do that.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Maybe you should?” He shrugged. “It’s not for me to say. Perhaps it’s not even for you to say since the group isn’t yours to claim.”
“That’s the problem,” she said, removing the glasses again. “I only saw myself. I confess, I have been a terrible friend.”
“I’ll take your confession, though we are Church of England and not Catholic,” he reminded her with a wink. “I’ll listen all the same, any time. If you believe in something, giving up truly isn’t an option.”
“I believed in being the hero.”
“Another terrible reason to want to help people.”
“It’s something silly my father used to say to me,” she admitted. “‘You’re the hero of your own story, Dorothy, and nobody tries to be the hero more than you.’”
Father David reflected as the choir reached their first glorious crescendo. In the mix, Percy’s voice stuck out to Dot’s ear; she knew it the best.
“I can’t claim to know what your father intended with those words,” he began, “but a part of that saying is missing. Being the hero of your own story isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s always a chance that in doing so, you’re becoming the villain of someone else’s.”
Dot opened her mouth to protest, but the words didn’t come. How many years had she waited to learn that lesson, and why hadn’t it been obvious to her before?
“He only used to say it when I was rebelling,” she revealed with a fond smile. “I was always up to something.”
“Only good trouble, I hope.”
Father David picked up a full box of tinned food from the donations station and went back into the church. Dot sank into the chair, struggling to process this revelation. She had a stronger than ever urge to apologise to everyone for her bullish ways.
But the dust did need to settle first.
It wasn’t like she didn’t have enough to be getting on with. There were, after all, a burglar and a killer on the loose.
Oh. And Bruce, too.
“Oi!” She ran after the little French bulldog as he trotted through the open doors, his lead trailing behind him. “Where do you think you’re running off to?”
Stumpy tail in the air, he wiggled around the corner. Dot walked as fast as her legs would carry her without breaking into a run. Though Bruce was big as a football and about as clever, his dumpy legs could pick up speed if he tried.
“Finally,” she said, slowing when he paused to cock his leg against a tree next to the village hall. “Don’t you dare think about running off again, you little scamp.”
Dot scooped up the lead and jumped back when she noticed a woman sitting behind the tree Bruce was still emptying his bladder against. She immediately recognise
d Vicky from the coffee van and crammed her sunglasses back on.
“Sorry about him,” Dot said when Bruce finally pulled away as the woman stood. “He just goes wherever he pleases.”
“I shouldn’t have been sat down there anyway.” She forced a laugh, though the inky mascara settling in the lines around her sixty-something eyes told a different story. “I was just having . . . a moment.”
“Yes, we all have those,” Dot said. “I can do you one better than the grass.”
Dot sat on a nearby bench in the church grounds, and as Lady and Bruce stood patiently, Vicky settled next to her. She wasn’t sure if the disguise was working or if Vicky even remembered her brief visit to the coffee van, but perhaps it didn’t matter. Vicky had left Peridale’s Eyes at the right time.
So why the tears?
“Would you look at me.” Vicky pulled a packet of tissues from her bag and blew her nose. “I think I’ve just been dumped.”
“Oh, no!”
“If our relationship was even anything to begin with,” she said, budging closer on the bench. “Why are men like this?”
“Oh, I know,” Dot replied, covering the wedding rings from both happy marriages. “Total pigs.”
“Exactly!” She laughed. “It’s nice to know someone gets it. They string you along, lie to you, and then cut you loose when you’ve served your purpose. I’ve had it. I thought he was different, but they’re all the same. All. The. Same.”
Ethel’s parting words to Gus wriggled free and rattled around her mind.
“Give my love to Vicky, won’t you?” she’d called after him.
Dot took Vicky in. Plain, age appropriate, with an air of desperation . . . or at least a need to be liked. Prime target for an affair if the midweek dramas were to be believed. If Penelope had hopped from Desmond to Gus, it wasn’t difficult to imagine Gus hopping to a model a decade younger, especially one right under his nose in the neighbourhood watch group.
“You lose them how you get them,” Dot stated. “It’s never easy being the other woman.”
“I never said I was.”
Hadn’t she?
