Murder at Hawthorn Cottage_An absolutely gripping cozy mystery

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘Your garden’s a picture!’ Melissa commented.

  Iris surveyed her neat rows of seedling vegetables and purred with satisfaction before casting her eyes at her neighbour’s neglected plot. ‘Time you got started. Get a few spuds in. Main crop. Too late for earlies.’

  ‘Do I have to get special potatoes to plant?’

  ‘Of course!’ Iris leaned on her hoe and smiled the patient smile of a teacher with a backward but willing pupil. ‘Garden centre might have some left. Need some tools as well. Fork, spade, rake, hoe . . .’

  ‘I don’t suppose you could spare the time to come with me to the garden centre?’ said Melissa impulsively. ‘I’d really appreciate your advice.’

  Iris rubbed her nose with the back of her glove. ‘Don’t see why not.’ Her voice was gruff but she seemed pleased at the request. ‘Tomorrow morning do?’

  ‘Fine — oh, not tomorrow. Gloria’s coming in the morning, and I’ve invited Mr and Mrs Calloway to tea in the afternoon. How about Thursday?’

  Iris frowned and then shrugged. ‘Thursday morning, then,’ she grunted, renewing her attack on the weeds. ‘Want to start on the digging in the meantime? Borrow a fork.’

  ‘Thanks. Maybe I will. By the way, do you know of a restaurant called The Usual Place?’

  The hoe delivered an extra vicious jab and a clump of grass flew into the air. ‘Yes, I know it.’ Iris’s voice was thickly laced with disapproval. ‘Our Gloria works there some evenings . . . if you can call what she does work!’

  Unable to think of a suitable comment, Melissa left Iris to her weeding and went indoors. She cut some sandwiches and made herself a flask of tea, retrieved the folder containing her synopsis and went to her study to spend the rest of the day working on The Shepherd’s Hut.

  Seven

  ‘I hear you work at The Usual Place,’ Melissa remarked as she and Gloria shared a coffee-break. She had worked far into the evening on The Shepherd’s Hut and the coded telephone call that was to play a significant part in the plot was still on her mind when she awoke on Wednesday morning.

  Gloria showed only mild surprise at the question.

  ‘’s right. I helps in the bar two evenings a week. Did Miss Ash tell you?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact she did.’

  Gloria giggled. ‘Thought so! She don’t approve. Says she’s heard about things that go on there!’ By intonation she put ‘things’ in quotes.

  ‘Oh? What things?’ asked Melissa, who had a shrewd idea but was curious to hear Gloria’s version of them.

  One of the big brown eyes closed in a wink that was like a nudge in the ribs. ‘Naughty things! They has private rooms, you see, for clubs to meet, and they has entertainers, like!’ Another wink and more quotation marks.

  ‘Really? What sort of entertainers?’

  ‘You know!’ Gloria’s eyes glowed with mischief. ‘Strippers for one thing.’

  Melissa shook her head and tried to sound shocked. ‘I can’t understand how any woman can bring herself to do that!’

  Gloria nearly choked over her coffee. ‘Men does it too!’ she chortled. ‘Tuesday afternoons there’s a show for the girls. They turns up in droves for a sight of Gorgeous George and his Crazy Cucumber! Course, they tells their husbands it’s for the bingo . . . !’

  ‘Good gracious!’ murmured Melissa. ‘I can’t imagine any of the ladies of Upper Benbury going to anything like that!’

  A second explosion of mirth all but toppled Gloria from her stool. ‘You never know!’ she wheezed as soon as she regained her breath.

  This time, Melissa was genuinely shocked. ‘You aren’t suggesting . . . ?’

  Gloria shook her head and mopped her eyes with a crumpled tissue. ‘Ain’t heard of any,’ she admitted with evident regret. ‘But I wouldn’t put it past one or two of them!’ Her rolling eyes made it plain that a detailed cross-examination would not be unwelcome but Melissa decided not to pursue the point.

  She returned to her original motive for bringing up the subject of The Usual Place. ‘Do you know a girl there called Babs?’ she asked.

  Gloria cocked her yellow head on one side like a reflective canary. ‘There was a Babs working at The Usual Place a while back,’ she said after a moment’s thought.

  ‘Do you know where she lives?’

  ‘No . . . she left just before I started. Seems there was quite a to-do over some feller who was chasing her.’ She raised her thickly pencilled eyebrows at Melissa. ‘She a friend of yours?’

  ‘No, I don’t actually know her. Someone rang my number the other day, thinking I was Babs and wanting to meet at The Usual Place.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t have been the same feller. That one got smashed up in a car accident. Went there asking for Babs and they told him she’d walked out. He wouldn’t believe it and started getting stroppy. The manager told him to naff off and not come back. Next thing they hear, he’s gone off and wrapped his car round a tree on the way home.’

  ‘How awful! Was he badly hurt?’

  ‘Killed, so I heard,’ said Gloria in a tone suggesting that he had got no more than he deserved. She slid off her stool and prepared to start work again. Evidently her attention span was short; she had already lost interest in Babs and her ill-starred admirer but she was full of concern for Melissa.

  ‘You feeling all right?’ she asked. ‘You looks pale.’

  Melissa shook her head. Her stomach felt full of ice cubes but she managed to pull herself together and forced a shaky smile. ‘I’m quite all right, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. I was working until very late last night.’

  Gloria’s eyes widened. ‘You writing another book?’ she asked. ‘Ooh my, it must be wonderful to be so clever. Is there any romance in this one?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, it’s another thriller.’ Gloria’s face fell. ‘Tell me,’ Melissa went on, ‘how long have you been working at The Usual Place?’

  Gloria pursed her lips and began counting on her fingers. ‘Let’s see now, my Charlene’s six in June and she’d just had her fifth birthday so it’ll be . . .’

  ‘About ten months,’ said Melissa.

  Gloria’s mouth opened at this display of rapid mental arithmetic. ‘’s right,’ she said.

  ‘And you say the accident to Babs’s boyfriend happened just before you started.’

  ‘’bout a couple of weeks before, I’d say.’ Gloria glanced at the clock. ‘Is that the time? I’d best get on and do the bathroom!’

  Left alone in the kitchen, Melissa pursued her line of thought. She was still feeling the effects of shock at the story of the accident but common sense came to the rescue. If her mysterious caller and the man whose pursuit of Babs had ended so disastrously were one and the same, then obviously he had survived the accident. Dead men do not make telephone calls. But it must have been a pretty serious crash and would have been reported in the local paper. A visit to their office, or possibly the reference library, was indicated. But how was it that nearly a year later the man was still pestering Babs to meet him at The Usual Place? And where had he got hold of Melissa’s telephone number?

  It could, of course, have at some time been Babs’s number. Perhaps she’d moved away; in that case her old number would, after an interval, have been allocated to another subscriber. Or the man was confused after the accident and had simply got the number wrong. There could be several perfectly simple explanations.

  The first question presented more of a problem. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed that there was something far from normal in the man’s behaviour. She smelled a story and knew she would not rest until she had got to the bottom of it. After Gloria’s departure she ate a hasty snack and spent a couple of hours weeding her garden with the elderly fork that Iris had thoughtfully produced the previous evening. The mechanical exercise left her mind free to pursue the problem and by the time she went indoors she had settled on a line of enquiry.

  At four o’clock, the Rector and his lady
arrived to take tea with their new parishioner. Mrs Calloway was considerably shorter than her husband. She had straight grey hair cropped close to a round head on a long thin neck, narrow shoulders, very small breasts and heavy hips — like a cello with an extra leg, thought Melissa as she helped her off with her coat. She smelled of lavender water and there were uneven dabs of face-powder on her cheeks and on the end of her nose, which was small and sharp and acted as a ski-slope for the heavy spectacles which she was constantly pushing back into place.

  Melissa gave her guests a conducted tour of the ground floor and would have shown them upstairs as well but the offer was firmly declined by Mrs Calloway who managed to convey, by intonation and disapproving stare, that there was impropriety, if not downright immorality, in the prospect of her husband’s being afforded so much as a glimpse of Melissa’s bedroom. Disappointment flickered across the Rector’s chubby features; he would, Melissa sensed, have liked to see where another woman slept. As a young girl, Mrs Calloway might once have had a certain gamine attraction but in middle age she had neither charm nor femininity. Melissa wondered if her husband ever fantasised.

  ‘It’s delightful, quite delightful!’ declared Mr Calloway at intervals, admiring living-rooms, kitchen broom-cupboard and downstairs loo with equal effusiveness. When they returned to the sitting-room he settled in Melissa’s favourite armchair and sat beaming and expressing approval of everything he saw while his wife perched on the edge of the settee, clutching her handbag and muttering that they couldn’t stay long. Having failed to lure Melissa into either flower-arranging or the Women’s Institute, in both cases on the plea of pressure of work, she obviously considered the visit a complete waste of time.

  His wife’s disapproval did nothing to inhibit the Rector’s appetite. He ate and drank heartily and was lavish in his praise of the scones and fruit-cake.

  ‘All home-made, I’m sure!’ he said, holding out his cup for the second refill.

  ‘I don’t know how you manage it,’ his wife remarked sourly, ‘with all the calls on your time!’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ agreed Mr Calloway, either oblivious to or deliberately ignoring the sarcasm. ‘Getting settled into a new house, on top of all your writing . . . and I see you’ve been busy in the garden too. You must find your days very full!’

  ‘Miss Ash has kindly offered to help me with the garden, or at any rate to advise me about it,’ said Melissa, ‘and I’m very lucky to have found Mrs Parkin to help in the house.’

  ‘Ah, yes, dear Miss Ash, so very kind,’ beamed Mr Calloway. ‘You are indeed fortunate in your neighbour . . . and Mrs Parkin is a real treasure, isn’t she, my dear?’

  Mrs Calloway glared into her cup, her mouth screwed up as if her tea had turned into vinegar. ‘She’s a vulgar little slut!’ she hissed. ‘I only put up with her because there’s no one else in the village prepared to do housework!’

  Her husband’s smile wavered, like a sun struggling to penetrate hazy cloud. ‘Come, my dear, we mustn’t be uncharitable,’ he wheedled. ‘I know the gossips say unkind things against Glor . . . Mrs Parkin but you know my views on repeating unsubstantiated rumours. She’s a devoted mother, and you yourself must admit that she’s a first-class worker.’

  The argument had no visible effect on his wife, who merely sniffed, declined Melissa’s offer of more tea and announced that it was time to go.

  As she stood up, her sharp, darting eyes fell on a group of photographs on a corner cupboard. There was one of Simon’s father, eternally radiating the boyish charm that Melissa had once found irresistible, which she kept on display more out of loyalty to his parents than out of sentiment. The rest were of Simon: with his grandparents; in the school cricket team; at Oxford, self-conscious in gown and mortar-board. Mrs Calloway scanned them all with little mews of rapture, finally homing in on a portrait of Melissa and her son as a toddler at her knee, a toy train clutched in a chubby fist.

  ‘Aaah!’ she exclaimed, sounding like Iris addressing Binkie. ‘Bless his little heart, isn’t he lovely!’

  For the first time, Melissa felt a spark of sympathy between herself and the Rector’s charmless spouse. ‘Yes,’ she responded with pride, ‘he was a beautiful baby.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Simon.’ Mrs Calloway repeated the name in a crooning whisper, as though she were tiptoeing round the crib of a sleeping infant. ‘How old is he now?’

  ‘Twenty-five.’ Melissa indicated the main photograph. ‘That was taken three years ago, when he graduated.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s an engineer, he works in the States.’

  ‘Aah!’ The expression of sour disapproval had given way to a gentle, maternal tenderness. ‘I’ve got two boys, you know. Such a shame they have to grow up!’ She shot an accusing glance at her husband as if he had some responsibility for the passage of time. He spread his hands and gave a helpless little smile. ‘I didn’t know you had any children, Mrs Craig.’ For the first time Melissa felt that she had done something meritorious.

  ‘Just the one. His father died before he was born.’

  ‘What a pity! It would have been nice for Simon to have a brother or sister.’ She made clucking noises, implying that the procreation of children was the sole reason for a husband’s existence.

  ‘Did you come by the footpath?’ asked Melissa as she escorted her guests to the door.

  ‘We did not!’ declared Mrs Calloway. ‘I’ — she laid heavy stress on the pronoun — ‘am not prepared to soil my shoes and stockings tramping through mud and dead leaves!’ She glared at her husband’s feet and legs as if they bore evidence of previous short cuts.

  He gave a sheepish, choirboy’s grin. ‘It brushes off!’ he protested.

  His wife ignored him. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ she said to Melissa, and her smile was almost friendly.

  ‘Yes indeed!’ said Mr Calloway. ‘Most kind . . . quite delightful . . . delicious cakes . . . thank you so much!’ He made scooping gestures as if doffing an invisible hat.

  Iris was working in her garden as they left. She passed the time of day with them before strolling over for a chat with Melissa.

  ‘Miserable bitch!’ she muttered as soon as the visitors were out of earshot. ‘Can’t think why he married her!’

  ‘They do seem an oddly assorted couple,’ agreed Melissa. ‘How old are their sons?’

  ‘Grown up. Take after their father. Lovely boys. Army, both of them. See you’ve made a start,’ she went on, indicating the garden.

  ‘Yes, I did a bit this morning. It’s hard work though — when you’re not used to it,’ she added defensively as Iris gave a slightly superior smile and marched across to inspect her efforts at close quarters.

  ‘Should really double dig,’ she commented. ‘Soil’s a bit heavy. Put in some leaf-mould. No chemical fertilisers, stick to organics. Make a compost heap!’ she continued, striding over to a corner behind the garage. ‘Do fine here, out of sight, gets the sun, rot down a treat!’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ murmured Melissa.

  ‘Want a hand for an hour?’ Iris offered. To do any more gardening that day was the last thing Melissa wanted but it was so plain that Iris wanted to help that she felt unable to refuse.

  ‘That’s kind of you. I’ll just run in and change.’

  Iris nodded, heading back to her own cottage. ‘Getting another fork. Shan’t be a tick,’ she called over her shoulder.

  By the time the potato patch had been prepared and Melissa had cooked and eaten her supper, she was too tired to do anything but flop into a chair and read for an hour before going to bed.

  The next morning was spent with Iris, first at the garden centre and subsequently in the garden planting potatoes. Feeling that a return of hospitality was long overdue, Melissa invited her neighbour to supper the following evening and spent part of the afternoon hunting through her cookery books for vegetarian recipes and making up a list of ingredients mi
ssing from her store-cupboard.

  After supper she went to her study to work on The Shepherd’s Hut but the more she tried to enter into the minds of her characters and manipulate the threads of her plot, the more her thoughts kept switching back to the actual people and events that had set her ideas in motion. It was all too ridiculous. Every day, writers were drawing on their own experiences, embroidering them with imaginary and sometimes bizarre or sinister detail. That was the very essence of fiction. She herself had been doing it quite successfully for years. So why should reality, instead of fading into the background as it normally did, now insist on taking the centre of the stage? She had a sense of unease, almost of foreboding. In the end she gave up and went to bed.

  Eight

  In the morning she drove into Gloucester. It was her first visit to the city and she would have liked to explore it at leisure but just now there were other things to do. She found a health food shop and a greengrocer, took her purchases back to the car and then, in accordance with the plan she had worked out the previous day, asked a passerby the way to the office of the local paper.

  Her informant, a harassed-looking woman with a shopping-bag, gabbled something, pointed in the direction of the cathedral and hurried on her way. Attempting to follow the imprecise directions, Melissa took a wrong turning and found herself in a narrow passage. On one side was a second-hand bookshop, on the other a bar and restaurant with a modern frontage that only just escaped being vulgarly ostentatious. The name was emblazoned in gilt letters on its plate-glass window. The Usual Place.

  The door stood open to the warm spring sunshine and Melissa went inside. It was not yet twelve o’clock but already a few customers were taking an early lunch. At the far end was a bar where two or three men and one woman were perched on stools, chatting and joking with a genial, balding man in shirtsleeves who was serving them with drinks.

  Melissa climbed on to a stool and ordered a dry sherry from a plump, cheerful-looking barmaid.