The Slay of the Land (The Heathervale Mysteries Book 1)

by Matilda Swift

  ‘It was only a matter of time before something like this happened,’ said a thin, wrinkled brunette who Arrina recognised as the lady that shouted at her dachshund on the green each morning. ‘Bringing outsiders to our village was always going to end in disaster.’

  ‘I heard the boy who did it had a run-in with Hugo a few months ago,’ added the sharp-nosed owner of the local gift shop. ‘They both ended up in the hospital after it!’

  Then there was a loud, ‘Well,’ from Gertie Cooper, one of Gillian’s closest allies, who stood at the very centre of the coven of gossips. ‘I heard that Arrina Fenn had a run-in with Hugo herself, if you know what I mean.’ Then she gave a stagey nod, which left no doubt about her unsavoury implication. ‘The sort of run-in a married man certainly shouldn’t be having.’

  When the others in the group gasped and leaned in closer for confirmation, Gertie gave another sharp nod that shook the thin floss of hair that was swept up on top of her head.

  Arrina felt a hot flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. She leaned back against the swing door behind her, more than ready to leave.

  Then she saw Phil at the far side of the room. He was pushing people out of his way as he tried to escape the crowd. He caught Arrina’s eye and cocked his head to one side to ask if she was all right. She wanted to sink to the floor and wait there until Phil reached her. She wanted to curl up in a ball and hide. She dropped her gaze to her shoes and took several deep breaths.

  ‘From what I heard,’ came the unmistakably nasal voice of Eleanor Shale—another of Gillian’s close friends, ‘Hugo and Arrina were having several run-ins a week, and that’s why Fiona kicked him out.’

  Arrina felt the words hit her like a slap. The woman was announcing a secret affair right there in the village hall—declaring it like gospel even though the vicious lie could only hurt those who heard it.

  Several other voices chimed in to agree.

  ‘Fiona’s been a mess all summer,’ one said.

  ‘Goodness only knows where Hugo has been staying the past few months,’ said another.

  ‘Maybe,’ Eleanor Shale said, ‘in a certain cottage on top of a certain hill.’

  This was all too much. Arrina flicked her gaze over to Eleanor Shale. The woman was standing just a few feet away. Eleanor brushed a fleck of lint off her sleeve as though it was no concern of hers who might hear the malicious lies she was spreading—even Arrina herself.

  Arrina wanted to run from the room and drown her sorrows in sloe gin and chocolate brownies. She wanted to do that more than almost anything. But she could not let Hugo’s memory be tainted by what this woman was saying.

  Arrina pulled her shoulders back and held her head up high. Then she fixed her steeliest gaze on Eleanor Shale. ‘There was nothing going on between me and Hugo,’ Arrina said loudly, as she stepped closer to the woman. ‘He was a good man, and you should feel ashamed of yourself for spreading lies about him. What sort of person speaks ill of the dead?’

  Eleanor took a step back. The colour drained from her powdery cheeks. ‘I...’ she started. Then the clucking hens around her leaned in closer, pressing their tweed-covered shoulders together. Eleanor glanced around herself before turning to give Arrina her most condescending smile.

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe that Hugo and you were doing anything,’ Eleanor said, pressing a hand to her chest and fluttering her mascara-clotted eyelashes so fast they looked like flailing spiders. ‘I was simply stating what I’d heard around the village. It’s terrible how people gossip around here, isn’t it?’

  Arrina looked back over at Phil. He was now storming up the room’s packed central aisle, shoulder-barging nattering biddies in his efforts to get to Arrina.

  She lifted her hand and twirled a finger in the air. Then she pointed at the stage.

  Arrina turned to face Eleanor and Gertie once again and stared hard at the two older women. ‘As I sometimes have to remind my students,’ Arrina said with all the sharpness of a Victorian schoolmistress, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, it’s best to say nothing at all.’

  Then she strode past them with her head held high. She had had enough of Eleanor Shale, Gertie Cooper, and all of their mean and small-minded friends.

  Arrina had been tempted to stare them down with the same look that made schoolboys quake in their seats. But she knew that the real source of this gossip wasn’t the women out here. It was Gillian DeViers. And Arrina was not going to be frightened of the woman’s power in the village any longer.

  Phil cleared a path through the crowds, with Arrina following right behind him. Using sharp elbows and unflinching determination, they made it quickly to the stage.

  Closed meeting or no closed meeting, Arrina was going to face down Gillian DeViers. She was going to have her say.

  24

  At the front of the village hall, Arrina took the stairs to the stage in two large bounds. The volume of the voices in the room dropped several notches. Arrina saw dozens of heads swivel her way. But she turned her back on everyone and dashed straight to the side of the stage.

  The door was stiff, and Arrina had to yank it hard. Then she closed it firmly and found herself alone in a long, dimly lit corridor. Arrina had been down there several times before—she’d helped out with Christmas bazaars, charity concerts, and all manner of other local events, and she knew the backstage area well. From where she stood, she could turn left into the storage room, walk straight ahead and leave the building by the back exit, or turn right and go directly to the annex. This last option—the small, windowless meeting room off to the right—was where Arrina thought the Parish Council would have hidden themselves for their secret, closed-door meeting.

  The scraping of chairs from that direction confirmed it. They were getting set up in there and would soon be working through the agenda.

  Arrina took a step towards the door.

  But then she stopped.

  She tried to take another step forwards, but her feet refused to move.

  Arrina had come here fuelled with anger and desperation to speak with Gillian DeViers. However, in the quiet dark of the corridor, her mind compelled her to wait.

  The low murmuring of voices from the annex urged her attention that way. But her brain refused to follow. There was something she needed to remember. Something she’d heard. It was important. It was... something about Hugo.

  Then it came to her: that’s why Fiona kicked him out.

  That was it! Eleanor Shale had said it with her ugly nasal whine. Fiona had kicked Hugo out of the house.

  Back in the noisy hall, Arrina had been distracted by the insinuations Eleanor was making about Hugo and Arrina’s run-ins. Arrina hadn’t paid attention to anything else Eleanor had said. But she remembered it now.

  The other women had all seemed to know about it as well—they’d said that Hugo and Fiona had been separated all summer and he hadn’t been sleeping at home.

  Arrina wondered if the police knew about this.

  If they did, they almost certainly didn’t know about Fiona’s anger at the will as well. Arrina was the only one who’d overheard that, and she’d told nobody but Julie.

  She cursed herself now for being so quick to strike Fiona from her suspect list. What with a broken marriage and worries about money, the woman seemed to have more than enough motive for murder.

  The police should have been looking at Fiona instead of Olly.

  But was the evidence enough? Arrina couldn’t just stride into the police station and present them with a rumour and an overheard conversation, could she?

  Arrina stood still in the corridor and squinted down its length. The only light came from the door at the far end, which had a window set into its top half. Through the glass, she could see several people in the car park of the village hall. A few were huddled together and gossiping, but most were heading home. Arrina spotted Phil, who had already left by the main door and was striding determinedly towards his battered farm truck and muttering something that Arri
na knew she was better off not hearing.

  Her own steely-blue car was parked out there, at the far end of the car park. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it calling to her, begging her to zoom over to the police station now and make a scene.

  They would laugh her out the door. She knew that really. And yet, she was sure she was onto something. And if Arrina could give the police another suspect, then they would have to free Olly.

  A deep, booming voice in the annex shouted something about sheep and fences. That had to be Phil’s item on the agenda. From what she could make out through the door, it didn’t sound like it was going well.

  Arrina thought back to Fiona’s large limestone house. Perhaps there was something there that could point to the woman’s guilt—something she could tell the police to look for so they would stop looking at Olly.

  Arrina ran through her memory of the rooms in the house—the sitting room, with its clusters of happy photographs; the kitchen; dining room; office; library, and the formal front room.

  She couldn’t recall anything useful—no signed confession left lying in the open, no picture of Hugo with his face slashed through with an X. Those seemed more like the crazy acts of a movie serial killer anyway. She was looking for something subtler than that, surely.

  But there was nothing at all that came to mind. She gripped her hands into tight fists, squeezed her eyes shut, and forced herself to think a little harder. She raced through her memories of Fiona’s house once again. Beige walls, plush carpets, soft lighting, and nothing.

  A loud scraping of chairs made Arrina jump. She opened her eyes and looked around. But there was nobody in the corridor with her. The noise was coming from the direction of the annex.

  Then she heard ‘...this Arrina situation...’ come from the other side of the door in the strident tones of Gillian DeViers. The woman’s voice seemed to find the thick wooden door no object. Arrina stepped closer to the room. ‘It’s bad enough that the access road matter even came up on the agenda this week,’ Gillian said, her voice barely muffled by the wooden door, ‘but for her to actually show her face here as though nothing has happened...’

  Arrina gawped at the door. She stared at the shadowy wooden rectangle as though it was the source of the outrageous statement. All thoughts of Fiona fled from Arrina’s head. Her anger at Gillian flooded back and overpowered them.

  Searching her memory for evidence could wait. Confronting Gillian DeViers could not.

  Before Arrina knew what she was doing, she turned the handle and stepped into the room.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Arrina said loudly, ‘but—’

  Her path was immediately blocked.

  ‘I’m sorry. This is a closed meeting.’ It was Victor Stones, the chair of the college’s Board of Governors, who took a neat step back to avoid being run into.

  Victor was not a member of the Parish Council. Arrina stared at him and watched his moustache twitch. Perhaps Julie had been right to suggest there was something going on between Victor and Gillian. That had to be how he’d got into the closed meeting for the discussion of the access road.

  ‘I know that,’ she said when she’d recovered from her surprise at seeing him there. ‘I’ve simply come to provide the forms that were requested.’ She stepped to the side to go around him. Victor slipped smartly in front of her once again.

  Victor cleared his throat. ‘Arrina,’ he said, ‘I need you to step outside.’

  Arrina and Julie often referred to him as Victorian Victor. The man lived up to the name right then as he gave a slight bow and gestured with a stiff hand towards the doorway. Arrina was the same height as Victor, and his head blocked her view of people behind him, who were all now suddenly silent.

  ‘This is about the access road,’ Arrina said, her voice as strong as she could make it. ‘I simply want to present our final bid for it and answer any questions that the council might have. There may be some things that you’re not quite up to speed on yet.’

  Arrina tucked her hair behind her ears, trying her hardest to keep her hands steady.

  Victor’s moustache twitched once again, but he stayed firm as he blocked her path. ‘I need to ask you to step outside,’ he repeated, and he gestured again with the stiff open hand of a man who was used to getting his way.

  Arrina craned her neck and caught a glimpse of the Parish Council members. None of them was looking in her direction.

  She saw the very edge of Gillian’s heavy tweed jacket. Arrina considered dodging around Victor and rugby-tackling the awful woman from her seat. But instead, she took a deep breath and let herself be shown back into the dimly lit corridor outside.

  ‘Victor,’ she said as soon as the door had closed behind him, ‘I simply want to present the case. I appreciate you being here to represent the college in this—’

  ‘This isn’t the best time or place to be discussing this,’ he said, ‘but I do need to speak with you on a matter of some urgency.’

  Arrina was confused. The urgent matter was happening right there behind the door. She was sure that the Council was bringing down the red Application Denied stamp at that very minute.

  ‘The access road—’ she started before Victor raised a hand to silence her.

  ‘Arrina dear,’ Victor said. His face was hidden in the shadows, but his voice made it clear he wasn’t happy. ‘You needn’t concern yourself with that. I have something rather more important to discuss with you.’

  Arrina felt her heart squeeze tightly in her chest. Of course, he had heard about Olly. News of the arrest would have spread around the village before the boy even reached the police station.

  But she didn’t want to discuss it with Victor. The retired doctor didn’t know the students like Arrina did, and he would never believe some blue-haired art student over the claims of the police.

  ‘We’ve been working towards this for months,’ Arrina said, trying weakly to bring the conversation back around to the access road.

  ‘The subject we need to discuss is rather more pressing,’ Victor said. ‘We ought to find somewhere to sit down and go through it clearly.’

  She could not sit down with this man and talk about Olly. She imagined Victor drafting a press release to distance the college from the boy. Victor would expect her to follow the party line, even though she was suspended, and say that Olly was a dangerous element that they were glad to see locked away.

  ‘I have some important files here,’ Arrina said, refusing to play along. ‘If you’re not going to permit me back into the meeting, I would appreciate it if you’d take these in yourself.’ She lifted out the documents that needed to be presented to the Parish Council and pressed them into Victor’s hand. As the things in her handbag resettled, the bottle of sloe gin in her bag clinked against something metallic.

  ‘Arrina, I—’

  ‘Wait,’ Arrina said, taking a step back to think about what she’d just heard. The tinkle of glass on metal tugged at a memory. She looked into her bag. It was half-empty now she’d taken out the files, but in the dim light of the corridor, she couldn’t see inside it clearly. She tilted it towards the window. The light caught on something shiny and metallic, and Arrina realised exactly what it was.

  The charm bracelet. She’d found it outside Fiona’s house as she’d ducked beneath the office window. Then she’d dug the silver chain out of the grass and thrown it into the bottom of her bag. She’d meant to leave it in Fiona’s mudroom, but she’d been too panicked and had just shoved on her boots and run.

  Perhaps that was evidence she could take to the police. A bracelet hidden in the grass was certainly suspicious. It suggested a fight or an affair. Perhaps both.

  She looked down the corridor at the bright window. She needed to go outside and take a closer look at what she had.

  Tony Mellor walked across the car park right then, looking like an answer to Arrina’s prayers. She hadn’t seen him inside, but he must have been sent to the meeting in place of a new recruit to present the list of lo
cal crimes. And though Arrina’s heart gave a slight twist of pain at seeing him, he was exactly what she needed right then.

  Arrina could take the bracelet to him and tell him about the conversation she’d overheard about the will and the fact that Hugo and Fiona had been separated all summer, and he would help. He would let Olly go. She was sure of it.

  Arrina set off towards him quickly. ‘Sorry, Victor,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘I have to dash.’

  ‘Arrina,’ Victor shouted after her, ‘we really must talk.’

  But Arrina didn’t stop. She sped up to a run as she neared the door, holding her arm down tightly over her handbag and the evidence it contained. All she needed was to show this to Tony, and he would set Olly free.

  She burst through the door at the back of the village hall and scanned the car park for Tony’s taut, familiar frame.

  She couldn’t see him anywhere. Then an ear-splitting engine revved into life, and Tony’s motorbike edged out between two parked cars.

  Arrina waved as his helmet turned her way, but he didn’t return the gesture. He glanced quickly around the car park and shot off towards the exit. Arrina sprinted after him. She waved her arms over her head, even shouted, ‘Stop! Wait!’ but it made no difference. Tony’s motorbike turned onto the road and quickly zoomed away.

  25

  Arrina kept on running until she reached the end of the car park. She let out another weak, ‘Wait!’ Then she slowed down and stopped as she reached her silver-blue XJ6. She leaned against the side of the car to get her breath back.

  As she stood there panting, she imagined what Tony would have said if she’d caught him.

  Whose is the bracelet? Could it be Fiona’s? Could she have dropped it in the grass herself? And this conversation you claim to have overheard, what exactly was so incriminating about it?