by Dawn Harris
‘And why is that?’
‘Because, Dumbo,’ she said patiently, ‘the man who made those threats is a writer.’
‘That’s what he told Gordon, yes,’ I muttered grimly. ‘And not one of us questioned it.’
‘But,’ she protested, zipping up her black cocktail dress, ‘he accused Gordon of pinching his plot.’
‘Yes, I know. But what if that was a red herring? A means of covering up the real motive? I don’t think our quarry is some nutty writer,’ I persisted. ‘I think he’s quite sane and deadly serious. And, what’s more, he’s on this ship.’
She stared at me, not laughing now. ‘If you’re right, Kirstie, that would make us two very dumb detectives.’
‘Yes,’ I gulped. I was suddenly very frightened.
‘Where’s Gordon right now?’ Tara asked.
‘In his cabin.’ He wasn’t bothering with the Captain’s cocktail party. ‘He’s safe enough there.’
A knock on our door made us both jump. Tara answered it and said in relief, ‘Oh, it’s you.’
Dean came in, still wearing shirt and shorts. ‘Thought I’d better warn you, we must be heading for bad weather. The sick bags are everywhere.’ We groaned and he grinned – he’d never been seasick in his life – and he asked Tara, ‘What time is this blessed cocktail party? I’ve lost my invitation.’
‘In half an hour,’ she told him. ‘And at this rate you’re going to be late.’
‘Not me. I’ll be changed in a jiffy. I don’t need two hours like you girls.’
‘Well, hurry up then. Gordon’s not going so we need you to escort us.’
‘You can rely on me, ma’am.’ He swept an exaggerated low bow, and the light caught the pendant he was wearing, showing up an unusual design I’d seen before somewhere......
Once he’d gone, we returned to our sleuthing. ‘We’re dealing with someone very clever here,’ I said. ‘Tara, if you’d planted that red herring, what would you do next?’
She thought for a moment. ‘Befriend Gordon in a way that wouldn’t look suspicious.’
I searched for an example. ‘Like...Dean?’
She glared at me. ‘Kirstie, you’re not suggesting.....’
‘No, of course not. Go on.’
‘Then I’d get all matey---‘
‘Like Dean?’ I teased.
‘Oh, shut up. Then, once Gordon trusted me, I’d push him overboard or something.’ She looked out at the sunset. ‘About now, when the light’s going and everyone’s changing for the Captain’s cocktail party.’
‘Everyone ---- except De-a-n.’ I felt my mouth drop open---I’d just remembered why the design on Dean’s pendant was familiar. I’d seen it before, on the ring Gordon sometimes wore. The one his wife had designed.
When I told Tara, she shrugged. ‘So what?’
‘Gordon said designing jewellery was his wife’s hobby. You can’t buy her stuff in a shop.’
She stared at me, opening and closing her mouth like a goldfish. Finally, she burst out, ‘Do you realise what you’re saying?’
I nodded. ‘I do. Gordon’s wife must have given Dean that pendant.’
‘But they don’t know each other.’ I didn’t answer and she just looked at me, then her bottom lip wobbled and she pleaded shakily, ‘Kirstie, why would she do that?’
I heaved a long, weary sigh. ‘Do you want me to draw you a picture?’ She still shook her head, so I had to give it to her straight. ‘Tara, if Gordon dies before the divorce goes through, who would get all his money?’
‘No,’ she whispered, shaking her head vehemently. ‘Dean wouldn’t.....he wouldn’t.’ The unfazeable Tara was finally fazed. She was too shocked to see the purpose behind the red herring. That, in the event of Gordon’s demise, the police would naturally start a hunt for an unhinged writer, not for a vindictive, money-grabbing wife and her lover.
Two minutes later we burst into Gordon’s cabin, and found him having a quiet drink with Dean on his private veranda, an area of deck between the cabin and the rail. The relief I felt at finding him safe was unimaginable, but I caught the flicker of anger in Dean’s eyes. If I’d had any doubts that look removed them.
Dean was still wearing the shorts and shirt we’d seen him in earlier. ‘What are you two doing here?’ He smiled lazily. ‘You won’t persuade Gordon to go to the cocktail party, I’m afraid. I’ve tried.’
Gordon leaned back in his chair, his eyes telling me everything was fine. That he knew. ‘I rather think, Dean, that Kirstie expected to find you dumping my inert body overboard.’
Dean choked.
‘And given another few minutes,’ Gordon continued, ‘I imagine you’d have tried.’
Dean staggered to his feet, knocking his chair over, his face ashen. He stretched his hands out to Tara. ‘Surely, you don’t think.....?’ Tara didn’t speak. She simply snatched the pendant roughly from Dean’s neck, and put it beside the ring Gordon handed to her.
‘After that,’ Gordon whispered into my ear, ‘it was elementary, wasn’t it, my dear Watson?’
The Baker Street Detective Agency did indeed become a roaring success, but it was months before I saw Gordon again. He walked into the office one day and smiled at me in a manner that got my heart thumping like a set of bongo drums. ‘Now that I’m a free man again,’ he said, ‘I wondered if you would be interested in another investigation. Of a more personal nature,’ he ended softly.
‘Oh, I would,’ I sighed. Well, why be subtle? I’d waited a long time.
‘Good.’ He grinned at me and suggested, ‘Dinner this evening? I know the perfect place.’
He did too. A fish restaurant. I didn’t notice the name of it until the waiter handed me a menu. It was called The Red Herring.
The Wedding Jinx
Today, Easter Saturday, is my wedding day and I’m as jumpy as a blindfolded volunteer in a knife-throwing act. Believe me, I have good reason to fear calamity. Weddings in our family are jinxed.
Mind you, to the family, the jinx is a hoot. Waves of hysterical, infectious laughter reverberate into the street at the mention of the word ‘wedding.’ They call us the Mad Lovedays. An apt description for a bunch of fun-loving Geordies. Father is a popular primary school head teacher. Mother is involved with several charities, and there are six grown-up children, plus a crazy moggie.
I love them all dearly, and this wedding jinx wouldn’t matter one iota if I was marrying some wild extrovert, someone as nutty as the rest of us. But Huw isn’t like that at all.
He’s the strong, silent type, reserved in company, easily embarrassed and, if our wedding is another Loveday fiasco, I know he’ll hate it. It’s not as if Huw’s had time to acclimatise himself to the family, either. He met them for the first time only last night. I’ve tried to give him some inkling of what he’s up against – to prepare him, if I could.
I mean, even the way my parents met was unusual. My mother drove her motorbike round a sharp bend one day, skidded on some black ice, and crashed into the cherry tree outside my father’s family home. Thrown from the motorbike, she landed at my father’s feet. I giggled as I explained it to Huw. ‘Father tells everyone that Mother threw herself at him.’
‘But, darling, I think that’s rather romantic,’ Huw said.
‘It gets worse,’ I warned. ‘They named me Cherry after that tree, and called my sisters Rowan and Willow, for good measure.’
Chuckling, Huw insisted, ‘They’re delightful names.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, adding with a touch of light-hearted sarcasm, ‘Rowan thought so too, until she married David Tree!’
Laughing, Huw caught me round the waist. ‘Lucky for you then, Cherry, that my surname is Jones and not Blossom!’
But nothing I said could really prepare Huw for my family. So the night before he arrived I begged them to go easy on him. Did they listen? Did they do as I’d asked? No chance. After the introductions were made, my brother, Glenn, slapped Huw on the back and chortled, ‘Hope the family ji
nx doesn’t strike tomorrow. You’ll never guess what happened at my wedding.’
I tried to intervene, but my protests were swamped amid the general hubbub of family hilarity. Glenn put a hand on Huw’s shoulder. ‘As I reached the church, the heavens opened. Never seen rain like it in my whole life. So I thought, I’ll run for it, straight across the churchyard. But I couldn’t see a blessed thing.....’
He paused for breath and father finished it for him. ‘The silly idiot fell head first into a newly dug grave! You should have seen him, Huw. He was plastered in mud from head to toe.’
Gasping with mirth, Glenn continued, ‘Had to rush home, shower and change.’
When the laughter subsided, Huw said in his quiet way, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure I walk on the path.’
But once the family started on the reminiscences, there was no stopping them. In the end, I had to get him to safety. ‘Huw’s had a long journey,’ I pointed out, ‘and he needs some rest before tomorrow.’ An aunt had offered to put him up in her spare room, and I insisted on driving him there that minute.
Father winked at Huw. ‘Dreadful fusspot, our Cherry. Always been the same. Thinks you need protecting from us lot...’
Glenn butted in, ‘She warned us, you know.’ I’d picked up a little of Huw’s lilting Welsh accent, and Glenn began mimicking me in a high-pitched voice. ‘Be on your best behaviour with my Huw.’ They all jumped in then, trying to outdo each other’s Welsh accents.
‘Every week, on the phone, she was. Wa-a-nin’ us....’
‘You’ll fr-i-ghten my Huw off....’
‘Dead wo-orried, she was, Huw......’
It was impossible to keep a straight face. Huw just stood there grinning in amusement. Huw has a kind and gentle nature, a quiet dignity, an inner strength. His has been a rather solitary life on the family farm. An only child, he took over the farm at 18 when his widowed father died. Even his hobbies are rather solitary. Fishing, walking in his beloved Welsh mountains, and carving animal heads on walking sticks. The most gregarious he gets is taking part in sheepdog trials.
That was how we met – at a sheepdog trial, a few weeks after I moved to Wales. I’ve always loved watching working sheepdogs and was used to them, having spent a good deal of time on my grandparents’ farm.
I’d moved to Wales when the large company I work for closed the office in Newcastle. Some of us were offered transfers and I looked upon the whole thing as an adventure. I am probably the quietest member of the Lovedays, but no-one would ever call me shy. Having watched Huw compete in the trials, I was determined to meet him. I overheard someone say he carved walking sticks to order, and having boldly introduced myself, I placed an order.
‘For my father,’ I explained, with what I hoped was my most bewitching smile. ‘He loves walking.’ I was prepared to order walking sticks for each of my three brothers and one brother-in-law, if that’s what it took. Luckily, that wasn’t necessary, and our relationship galloped along. Despite his reserved manner, Huw knew what he wanted, and that included marriage.
We began making plans for an Easter wedding, sitting cuddled up on the sofa in front of a blazing farmhouse fire. As I snuggled comfortably into the crook of his arm, Huw suddenly blurted out in horror, ‘Oh, Lord, I’ll have to make a speech at the reception, won’t I?’ He ran his free hand agitatedly through his hair. ‘I’m useless at that sort of thing.’
I started to reassure him when I remembered the family wedding jinx. If only, I thought, I could ensure a perfect day for Huw. No embarrassments, and no disasters. Suddenly I saw the obvious answer. One which meant no speeches either. ‘Let’s get married quietly,’ I urged. ‘Here in Wales.’
‘We can’t do that,’ he declared, aghast. ‘Think how hurt your parents would be.’
He hadn’t met them, or any of my family, as it wasn’t easy for him to leave the farm, but he knew what they all meant to me. That was the moment I took a deep breath and told him that if he wanted a proper Loveday wedding, then he ought to know about the wedding jinx.
‘Jinx?’ he teased. ‘Cherry, you don’t believe in that sort of thing, surely?’
I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Oh, don’t I? At Rowan’s wedding,’ I said, ‘the vicar got his dates mixed up and had to be fetched from a cricket match.’
Huw laughed. ‘Could happen to anyone, that.’
‘At my brother Drummond’s wedding,’ I continued inexorably, ‘my deaf great-aunt, aged 92, suddenly announced, very loudly, in the church, ‘The bride’s mother looks a right miserable old cow. And you know what they say --- like mother, like daughter.’ By the time I’d told him of Glenn’s run-in with the grave, Huw had gone very silent. ‘I’m the fourth to marry in our family,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see, the jinx is getting worse each time? Honestly, Huw, I’d understand if you’d rather get married here in Wales.’
I curled my arms round his neck and ran my fingers through his dark, wavy hair. ‘I want you to have happy memories of our day.’
‘Me?’ he said in surprise. ‘You’re worried about me?’ I nodded, and he looked deeply into my eyes. ‘Do you think, my lovely girl,’ he said, ‘that I could be happy starting married life without your family there to wish us well?’ I hadn’t thought of it like that. With tears stinging my eyes, I threw my arms round him, praying that the jinx wouldn’t spoil everything.
Huw arranged with a good friend for the farm to be taken care of for ten days to cover the wedding, and our honeymoon in Paris, which is why he didn’t arrive in Newcastle until last night.
The wedding is at noon, and it’s panic stations in our house. People are rushing everywhere, and everyone wants to get into the bathroom. Nothing changes. Mother leaves her hat on top of the fridge and we find the cat asleep on it. I’d be happy if that was the only thing to go wrong today.
After resuscitating mother’s hat, father and I finally dispatch everyone off to the church. Huw phones just before he leaves, and sounds very nervous. And I’m still so jittery father puts his arm round me and assures me everything’s going like clockwork. ‘Don’t you worry, Cherry love, nothing embarrassing will happen at your wedding.’
When we reach the church, I’m almost ready to believe him. Everyone who matters is there. I just catch a glimpse of Huw and the vicar hurrying back towards the vestry. I guess he’s forgotten to sign something.
The best man keeps patting the pocket that holds the ring. Mother is in her place, along with every member of our family. The organist sits ready and waiting. And, at last, I relax. Everything is going to be all right, after all.
When the vicar reappears, I know Huw must be close behind, and I turn to father, who smiles. ‘Here we go, Cherry.’ He takes my arm and whispers, ‘Did I tell you how beautiful you look?’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ I say happily. ‘Thanks for everything.’
I take a deep, calming breath and wait for the organist to begin. But nothing happens. I check my bouquet, the bridesmaids smooth their dresses. Still no music. The organist exchanges glances with the vicar, who just shrugs. I look down the aisle and my heart begins to pound. Huw isn’t there.
No Loveday has ever been jilted at the altar. Surely he hasn’t – not Huw. Then I recall how nervous he’d sounded on the phone. Perhaps he’d wanted to tell me then and hadn’t been able to. Then I hear a strange, muffled hammering noise.
The vicar goes off to investigate and the congregation begins whispering again. The hammering grows louder and more insistent, and so does my heart. Father says, ‘Stay here, Cherry love. I’ll find out what’s going on.’ I try to beg him not to leave me, but my tongue is stuck fast to the roof of my mouth.
Five long minutes pass before he appears again. He speaks briefly to the best man, then standing in front of the guests, he announces with all his usual jollity, ‘Does anyone have a screwdriver? The bridegroom’s locked in the loo!’
Huw hasn’t run out on me. The family jinx has struck again. Needless to say, the whole congregation erupts with
laughter. The Lovedays’ reputation is intact. Father goes on, ‘The lock has broken and we need a screwdriver to take the door hinges off.’
A guest gets one from his car, but by the time the service eventually begins, people are arriving for the next wedding. It’s utter chaos --- in typical Loveday style --- but all I can think of is Huw and how desperately embarrassed he must be.
When I finally reach his side, I look up in trepidation, to find his eyes are glowing with love, not embarrassment. In that brief moment, I realise how wrong I’ve been.
Wrong to imagine that his reserved manner and solitary lifestyle would prevent him coping with a mere jinx. Wrong to believe that a man who’s run a farm from the age of eighteen, isn’t used to overcoming problems. Huw’s never needed me to protect him. I’m a fool not to have realised that before.
Grinning hugely at me, Huw winks, ‘Guess I’m really one of the family now!’
THE END
OTHER TITLES BY DAWN HARRIS
All available from Amazon
Novels:----
The Drusilla Davanish mystery thriller series
Letter From A Dead Man
The Fat Badger Society
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The Ebenezer Papers (1930s mystery thriller)
Collection of short stories
Dinosaur Island
Reviews for “Letter From A Dead Man.”
“A delightful murder mystery in an 18th century setting.” Historical Novel Society
“Letter From A Dead Man has a similar wit to Pride and Prejudice, and Harris holds up a mirror to society in the sort of way that Austen did.” Margot Kinberg, whose Confessions of a Mystery Novelist have brought her many awards in America.
Reviews for “The Fat Badger Society.”
“The book sits well within the historical mystery genre, and I have no hesitation in recommending The Fat Badger Society as an enjoyable historical read.” Historical Novel Society.
