‘Be my guest,’ she said to him.
‘Allow me.’ He dipped his finger into the brew and sucked, looking into space as he rolled the taste around his tongue.
Everyone looked at him for his verdict.
‘Not sure. One more.’ Again he dipped in his finger and sucked.
‘Yep,’ he said nodding. ‘Yep. This is good stuff. Top of the range.’
Honey tried not to be aggrieved that she might have tipped in something really good by mistake.
‘Don’t tell me that dusty bottle of sherry was a Chateau Lafitte worth zillions!’ she said, gripped with the fear that she might have poured away something akin to a lottery win.
Clint shook his head. ‘No. A bit extra’s been added, but it ain’t booze.’
Honey noticed that Clint and Smudger, big buddies on the sly, were exchanging wide grins.
‘What? Was the mix too strong?’ she asked, puzzled at their smug faces.
‘Top rate stuff. Cannabis. Lethal mixed with booze.’
Honey searched the grinning faces around her for a hint of guilt.
‘If one of you added....’
Everyone denied it.
Smudger asked her the pertinent question. ‘Who made it? Who took it in?’
Honey was speechless. She made it. She was the one who had taken it into the dining room.
‘It wasn’t me! And if it wasn’t me and it wasn’t one of you lot, it has to be...’ She paused. ‘Somebody else.’
CHAPTER THREE
Separating the wedding guests from their drink hadn’t been easy, but the party had gone with a swing. The last guest had been carried up to bed at around three in the morning.
The following day saw them pretty subdued as they checked out. Most of them had breakfasted on toast and black coffee. Nobody was in the right frame of mind for the Full English.
The bride and groom had left for their honeymoon both wearing Ray Bans to hide their bleary eyed look. Grandfather Templeton was sporting a bruised cheek and the cross dresser was moving gingerly as though his balls were – or had been- clenched in a vice.
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ said Honey, comfortably installed in her office, her hands cradling a cup of strong, black coffee.
Lindsey agreed with her. Today was Sunday, their day of rest, as far as it was possible to have a day of rest when you owned a hotel in Bath, a world heritage site and pretty busy every day and at all times of year.
Alexi, a blonde Lithuanian with cool features and a firm butt, was holding the fort in reception. The under chef was handling Sunday lunch. Smudger, the head chef, had gone to a cricket match.
Honey’s mother, Lindsey’s grandmother, had been poured into a taxi the night before. So far the telephone was silent. Mother was obviously still sleeping it off.
Honey sighed, wriggled her toes and commented on how happy they looked. Her toes, and indeed her feet, were certainly in need of a rest.
Lindsey made no comment. She was sitting with her head back and her eyes closed. Honey instinctively knew her daughter was thinking hard about something, running it through in her mind with the speed and accuracy of the computers she was so good with.
A whizz with modern technology she also had a penchant for history, especially of the medieval kind.
Honey assumed the current deep thought processes were in respect of a man. ‘So who is he?’
‘What?’
‘A new man in your life?’
‘Not exactly. No one in fact.’
Honey wasn’t fooled. There was something in her tone that suggested she was hiding something. In consequence she mentally ran through her daughter’s behaviour over the past week, searching for clues.
She’d worked Monday through to Saturday covering the breakfast shift through to late evening because Alexi had been on holiday. Anna, now part time on account of family responsibilities, was unable to come in because one of the kids had measles.
‘You do not wish for spots?’ she’d asked in her roundabout way.
‘I never wish for spots,’ Honey had replied. The prospect of guests and diners breaking out in spots was not welcome.
Only on Friday had Lindsey been totally absent. When asked, she’d declared she’d gone to confession to ask for forgiveness.
Honey had laughed out loud. They were Anglicans of the modern variety, only attending church for christenings, wedding and funerals. As far as she knew there had been none in the offing last Saturday.
‘Was it Clint?’ Lindsey asked suddenly.
Honey knew what she was referring to, though sensed her daughter’s remark was an effort to change the subject – which made her all the more suspicious.
‘No. It was Clint who identified what had been put in the punch, but swears it wasn’t down to him.’
‘So who was it?’
Honey shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, though I’m presuming it was one of the guests.’
‘Difficult,’ said Lindsey and closed her eyes again. ‘Oh well. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.’
Honey considered her daughter’s profile, thinking how much she looked like her father.
Carl had perished on a trans-Atlantic sail along with his all girl crew. No bodies had ever been found. Sometimes she wondered whether he’d just done a sleight of hand thing, disappearing along with all evidence, i.e. renaming the boat and setting off for some Pacific island with his nubile crew; his idea of heaven.
As regards the doctored punch, Lindsey was quite right. Nothing could be gained from interrogating the wedding guests except a bad reputation. They might even lose their four crown rating if it got to the ears of the English Tourist Board. Reputation mattered.
The Green River Hotel wasn’t exactly the Ritz or even the Royal Crescent and their chef was named Smudger Smith, not Escoffier.
‘Yes. I’m convinced it has to be one of the wedding guests having a spot of fun.’
After finishing her coffee Honey went across to the coach house away from the hotel for a couple of hours respite.
Off came the shoes and the tights, out came the footbath. She turned the knob to vibrate. A froth of water was accompanied by a low level buzz.
If she was to marry Doherty she had to look her best and that included her feet.
Things were progressing. They were giving it serious consideration. They’d tossed around a few ideas about where and when to get married. Church had to be considered. Honey was a widow. There were no barriers as such. Doherty was divorced, but the church wasn’t so straight laced as it had been in the past.
To this end, tomorrow they were visiting the church they favoured most, St Michael and All Angels in the village of Lower Wainswicke, just outside of Bath.
Everyone knew the church and the village and how pretty it was. Only Caspar, chairman of the Hotels Association voiced an objection.
‘What does a village church have that Bath does not?’ He’d sounded quite insulted.
‘Peace and quiet. No traffic. No members of the public walking across between the wedding party and the photographer...’
‘And no mayhem or murder, I suppose,’ Caspar stated loftily.
Honey hoped he was right.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Reverend Constance Paxton, vicar of St Michael and All Angels parish church in the village of Lower Wainswicke, declined another piece of fruitcake made by Mrs Flynn, head of the flower arranging committee. She also declined another schooner of sweet sherry.
Mrs Flynn lived in a four storey cottage on a side road just behind The Angel Inn, the oldest and best eating establishment in a village that dated back to Anglo Saxon times. Suffering from arthritis, she only used the lower floors of the cottage, the upper levels remaining unused for years.
The village had an upper and lower level, the upper consisting mostly of detached houses from the inter war years, square solid lumps now dissected from Lower Wainswicke by the main road connecting Bath to the M4. Connection between Upper and Lower Wainswicke wa
s by way of a tunnel beneath the main A46.
Lower Wainswicke had glorious views across open farmland. The houses were all quaintly historic ranging in size from terraced two bedroom cottages to magnificent detached edifices with mullioned windows and stone or slate roofs.
There were no shops in the village and the school was some way distant, a modern conurbation that although very functional was nowhere near as pretty as the old school which on closure had been purchased and turned into a private dwelling by a family from Birmingham.
The church was picturesque as well as historical, and stood apart at one end of the village. Rumour had it that a lady in waiting to Anne of Cleeves was buried there, though no one knew exactly where that was.
Trees, songbirds and the smell of flowers and warm grass prevailed in the churchyard. A dry stone wall separated it from the High Street. It also had an air of continuity, a number of names on some of the ancient tombstones still appearing in the local telephone directory.
Its ancient lych-gate of old oak and stone tiles had formed a backdrop on wedding photos to many happy couples. So there it was, if a couple wished to get hitched in a picturesque village not far from Bath, nothing could beat St Michaels.
Mrs Flynn had three cats, all black with orange eyes and a direct way of looking at people. Centuries ago ignorant folk might have thought even one black cat a sign that she was due a dunking in the village duck pond, but those days had gone.
She also had a budgie named Philip that was so quiet, Constance wondered if he was stuffed. Out back a few chickens had the run of the garden and occasionally strayed into the house.
The house smelled of musty feathers; Constance put it down to the chickens, though the budgie couldn’t be entirely free of blame.
Mrs Flynn was recounting weddings past and present in her long drawn out way. It was clear she did not approve of outside contractors coming in to provide floral decorations for the many weddings taking place so regularly.
‘Of course you didn’t get these outsiders coming in and taking over when the old vicar was here. He wouldn’t have any of that nonsense,’ she pronounced accusingly, her false teeth clicking at least three times throughout the sentence. ‘It was the responsibility of the church to provide floral decorations back then. The bride’s and bridesmaid’s bouquets and the buttonholes were provided by outside contractors of course, but decorating the church was always in house, if you know what I mean.’
The Reverend Paxton nodded sympathetically whilst wishing she were somewhere else. Mrs Flynn lectured her as though she had no idea what she was doing.
‘Still, we have to give people what they want, Mrs Flynn. It’s the march of progress. We live in the modern world and have to accept that things change over time.’
‘That may be,’ Mrs Flynn said slowly. She eyed the female vicar somewhat accusingly, as though she too were a part of that change – which to some extent, of course, she was. Female vicars had not been envisaged in Mrs Flynn’s younger days.
‘Still. I think we could have done just as good a job if they’d let us.’
‘No doubt,’ said Constance, swigging back the last of her tea and dusting the crumbs from her chest as she got to her feet.
‘Now I really have to be going. I’ve a sermon to write.’
‘Of course vicar. And whilst you’re there, you might take a look at the coffer. I’m sure somebody has spilt water on it. Now that won’t do, will it. Not blemishing something as old as that.’
The coffer had been dug up around two hundred years ago, but an expert had put its age at over a thousand.
‘Saxon rather than Norman, so here before the church was built, which means there was a Saxon church before this one,’ he had pronounced whilst peering at her through spectacles that looked too big for his face.
Constance promised Mrs Flynn that she would take a look at the coffer.
‘No need to see me out. I’ll shut the door firmly behind me,’ she added pleasantly whilst trying not to appear too hasty to leave.
Mrs Flynn nodded gratefully. She was on the waiting list for a knee replacement and her pain was obvious. She preferred to sit.
As she closed the door behind her, The Reverend Constance Paxton breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs Flynn was the dragon of the flower arranging committee, the woman who breathed fire if anyone dared to question either her opinion or her status. At eighty-four years of age, it was her one remaining reason for living, the high spot of her week, and she clung to it tenaciously.
Even now Constance could feel her ears burning as though they’d been soundly boxed. She promised herself she’d check them for redness in the bathroom mirror when she got back to the vicarage.
The sun was setting behind St Michael’s Norman tower, and the air was fresh.
Constance took a few more breaths to clear Mrs Flynn from her head and begged the Lord’s forgiveness for lying about having a sermon to write. The truth was that she had two people coming to see her about the possibility of a church wedding, but daren’t let Mrs Flynn know that. Despite her bad knees, the old girl would do a high-speed shuffle to the church, determined to berate them about having the flower committee decorate the church, and not some freelance who didn’t know the old place like the locals did – basically meaning herself.
Being faced with Mrs Flynn’s demands was enough to put the couple off marrying in church, or at least in St Michael and All Angels.
As for writing sermons, well if there was one thing she was good at doing, it was that. It was one of the reasons she’d been allocated this parish, though hardly the only reason. On the death of her husband, also a vicar, the powers that be, namely them that allocate the plum parishes, had taken pity on her. ‘Praise the Lord,’ she often muttered whilst surveying the handsome old houses and feeling – actually feeling – the sense of eternity that is a church in the region of eight hundred years old.
Donald’s death wasn’t the only reason for securing this position of course, but she didn’t dwell on the other things that had swung it for her. She was grateful she was here and that was all there was to it.
Before heading for the vicarage, she took the lane leading to the church and the mud and stone car park outside. The lane ran between the walls of the village hall on one side and an ancient tithe barn on the other.
Wedding cars only just squeezed through the gap finally spilling out into an expanse of space in front of the lych-gate.
Neither the narrow approach nor the bumpy turning space for the wedding cars was ideal and when it rained the muddy surface smeared wedding dresses and stuck to shoes, the latter tramping all the way up the aisle.
She’d been badgering for the car park to be properly surfaced, but there were issues with one of the neighbours.
Harold Clinker lived in a red brick detached house behind red brick walls and his red brick gateposts were topped with round stone balls.
The house had been built in the reign of Queen Anne on land that in medieval times had belonged to the church but sold during Henry the Eighth’s rein to a Sir Bertrand Hicks, for services rendered. No one knew for certain what those favours had been, though opinion veered between the two main suspects, sex and money, the end product being murder. Powerful people did like loose ends neatly tied up.
Nothing regarding ownership had been recorded amongst church documentation except for the sudden conveyance of the land to the owner of Belvedere House – one Thomas Fortune – a fortuitous name, for the sum of ten guineas, cheap even back then.
The church and the house had stood side by side in uneasy harmony for a few hundred years – until now.
Harold Clinker had seemed an ideal neighbour for the first six months following him moving to the village. Everything changed when he proclaimed that the land outside the church belonged to Belvedere House; his house.
He’d cornered Constance one morning after the mothers and baby group held on a Tuesday morning in the village hall.
‘It’s written down. He
re, in the deeds,’ he’d shouted, waving an official looking title deed in one hand whilst slapping it with the other. ‘I’ve taken a day away from the office to make this plain to you. No more wedding cars are to come down that lane. It’s too tight and I’ll hold you responsible if my front wall gets damaged.’
Constance had asked him if he didn’t think that a little unfair. ‘What about the brides? Their dresses will be ruined.’
He’d found that amusing. ‘They can walk. It ain’t far.’
For all his wealth and fine clothes, Mr Clinker had an uncouth manner and a North London accent – a man trying to be a gentleman but not quite making it.
The matter had been passed to lawyers, a costly firm in Bath acting for him and the London based firm who customarily acted for the Church Commissioners in all things secular.
Despite all she stood for, The Reverend Constance Paxton threw a spiteful look in the direction of the high wall, the handsome wrought iron gates and the glimmer of light coming from the porch light.
Although hailing from London, Clinker was distantly related to the family that had owned the house for generations.
At first Constance had ignored the matter, hoping it would go away or some compromise would be hammered out between lawyers. Then a faded plan had been attached to the lych-gate outlining the boundary in red.
Constance hated confrontation, but Clinker brought out the worst in her. Not that it did any good whatsoever. No amount of arguments and calls for understanding had got through to him. He wanted the whole area covered in tarmac in order to minimise wear and tear on his top of the range Mercedes and his wife, Marietta’s Range Rover. He didn’t want any other cars using it except for his. He finally compromised. Yes. Wedding cars would be the exception, but he did have the right to tidy it up a bit.
The parish council, led by the redoubtable Mrs Gertrude Acton, and seconded by the equally redoubtable Mrs Anne Flynn, supported by the vicar, had agreed in principle with the exception of the material to be used. The tarmac, they argued, would spoil the look of the church. Gravel they would accept, though not as much as they would the laying of cobblestones. Cobblestones were expensive, besides which Harold Clinker declared his horse box would be bounced around all over the place.
Marriage is Murder Page 3
