by Morgana Best
Chapter 4
Detectives Oakes and Detective Mason pushed through the door. “Where’s the body?” Oakes barked.
“In one of the cottages,” Aunt Agnes said. “He’s a boarder. Well, I should say, he was a boarder.”
“Who discovered him?” Oakes asked.
Aunt Agnes pointed to herself. “I did just then. Will I take you to the body?”
“Yes. The rest of you can stay here with Detective Mason. No one is to move until I get back. Is that understood?”
We all nodded and Aunt Agnes took off in the direction of the Retro cottage with Detective Oakes on her heels.
Detective Mason ushered us into the living room. We all sat down. Detective Mason looked around the room, presumably for somewhere to sit, and then chose the bright red velvet grandmother chair. It was too small for his large frame, and the fact he had to sit bolt upright in it gave him a rather commanding air.
“What happened?” he asked, pulling a notepad out of his pocket. “Was Mrs Agnes Jasper alone when she discovered the victim?”
Aunt Maude was the one to answer. “Yes, the rest of us were in the kitchen eating breakfast. Mr Jones called to say there was a problem and one of us had to go there within five minutes.” She paused, but he waved her on. “And a few minutes later, Agnes raced back into the kitchen and said he’d been murdered.”
“How did you know he was murdered?” Mason asked, his pen hovering over his notepad.
“Agnes no doubt told the officer on the phone that he was murdered with a stake,” Dorothy said. “Why are you asking us this? Are you trying to trap us? Do you suspect one of us did it? If one of us did it, we wouldn’t be so silly as to murder someone here. Besides, we didn’t even know him well enough to dislike him. Well, of course, he didn’t like pets. So I’m not sure that anyone would have liked him, given the circumstances.”
Mason appeared confused. He shifted in his seat and then crossed his legs before uncrossing them. I figured he was wondering if he could sit somewhere else and debating whether or not he should do so.
At least Breena wasn’t in the room. I cast a worried glance around the room, wondering if she had changed into her cat form. There seemed to be nowhere for a human to hide, given the aunts’ taste for antiques. The room was crammed full of all manner of Victorian antiques with a few Edwardian pieces of furniture thrown in. It served to give the room a rather gloomy, cheerless appearance and the fact the curtains were drawn didn’t help at all.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Mason asked me.
“To open the curtains since it’s so dark in here,” I said. “Is that all right?”
He waved his hand in the direction of the curtains. “Sure.”
As I got up, I tripped over one of the boxes that had contained a newly arrived antique Aunt Agnes had ordered the other week and had only recently unpacked. Aunt Agnes loved it. It was a bronze-mounted Majolica cachepot in vivid colours of bright blue and green with huge ceramic flowers stuck all over it. At least that’s how it looked to me. The aunts had wasted no time whisking it up to their altar room.
I heard a yell and looked down. To my horror, Breena, in her human form and thankfully clothed, was curled up inside the box. Unfortunately, Detective Mason followed my gaze.
“Why is that person hiding in the box?” he barked.
Breena shot out of the box, hissed at Detective Mason and ran over to the fireplace.
“This is my niece from France,” Aunt Dorothy said, earning her a glare from Aunt Maude. “She’s just arrived in town and doesn’t speak English.”
“Well, that’s all very well, but why was she hiding in a box?” Mason said.
“She wasn’t hiding,” Aunt Maude said in a commanding tone. “She suffers from agoraphobia. When Agnes ran back here and said the man was murdered, it set off her agoraphobia so she needed to be in an enclosed space.”
I looked at Mason to see if he was buying it. He pulled a face, shook his head, and then looked down his notepad. “All right then. Now you said a stake? He was murdered by a stake? A stake through the heart? I wonder if this could be teenagers acting out scenes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” He paused to scratch his head. “I do believe there are reruns of it at the moment on Foxtel.”
“Not that sort of stake,” Aunt Maude snapped. “An orchid stake.”
Mason looked even more confused than before. “I don’t know what an orchid stake is,” he confessed.
Aunt Maude continued in a patient tone. “Mr Jones was here to attend the orchid show. According to him, he is a well-known orchid grower. You know those stakes, the ones they tie orchids to in order to make them stay upright.”
She gestured to a row of orchids on a nineteenth century burr walnut roll top desk.
“Oh, so you grow orchids too,” Mason said in an accusatory tone.
“Of course not. They are fake orchids,” Aunt Dorothy said. “This room is too dark for real orchids, so we have fake orchids. They’re realistic, aren’t they?” Without waiting for Mason to answer, she crossed over to the orchids.
A crashing sound startled me. I swung around and saw Breena standing next to the mantelpiece. A vase was lying on the floor.
Aunt Dorothy looked over her shoulder. “Our niece has poor fine motor coordination.” She brought the orchid over and showed Mason. “See, this is a fake stake. Actually, it’s probably a real stake, but the plants are fake and plastic.”
Mason pulled out the stake. “It seems hard to believe something like this could have killed someone.”
Aunt Maude shrugged one shoulder. “As Dorothy said, this is only holding up a fake orchid. Perhaps the real stakes are more substantial. I wouldn’t know about that.”
She returned to put the orchid back. Detective Mason pointed to Breena. “Why is she doing that?” Breena was sitting on the ground next to the fireplace, munching cat grass overflowing from a brass potted plant holder.
“She’s a vegan,” Aunt Maude said, “and she’s on a special raw diet. All greens you know, for her digestion.”
Detective Oakes returned at that moment. “Forensics are on their way,” he said to Mason. To us, he said, “No one is to go near that cottage until I give you the all clear. Understood?”
We all muttered that we understood.
“Now tell me about this Mr Jones.”
“It was his wife who booked,” Aunt Agnes said, “although there were plenty of follow up emails from him about pets. I expect you’ll be the one to break the news to her, Detective Oakes?”
He nodded. “Quite so, quite so. I’ll get her details from you before we leave. And what town is he from again?”
“He’s from Nelson Bay,” Aunt Agnes said. “I remember that much. He says he’s been coming to the orchid show here for many years, but this was the first time he had chosen to stay with us.”
“And the last,” Detective Oakes muttered. “Did he say why he chose to stay with you?”
Aunt Agnes nodded. “Yes, he sent us several emails about it. He used to stay at one of the Bed and Breakfasts in town, but then they adopted a cat, and he hates pets. He hated pets so much that he sent us lots of emails making sure there were no pets in the cottages.”
“Was he allergic to cats or something?” Oakes scratched his head.
Aunt Maude answered. “No. He made that clear. He said he absolutely disliked all animals.”
“And so you hadn’t met him before his arrival?”
“No,” we all said in unison.
“And you maintain you hadn’t seen him this morning? When did you last see him? I will ask you one by one.” He pointed to each of us in turn, but all of us said we hadn’t seen him since the previous day. He then asked us all in turn what we had been doing that morning. We all said we’d been eating breakfast and chatting, and that no one had left at all until Aunt Agnes had the message.
“What time was the message?” he asked Aunt Agnes.
Aunt Agnes took over
her phone and showed him. He pulled out his own phone and took photos of her messages.
“And did you see or hear anyone that morning, anyone at all? Do you have a cleaner or a gardener?”
“Yes, we have a cleaning lady, but she wasn’t here today,” Aunt Agnes said. “Like I’ve already told you, we were all sitting here for hours having a good chat over breakfast and then I got that message. We chatted for a few minutes more and then I thought I had better go over and speak to the man. I found him with the orchid stake through his head.”
“How did you know it was an orchid stake?” he asked Aunt Agnes. “Are you an orchid fancier as well?”
“I love orchids, but I can’t grow them, I’m afraid,” Aunt Agnes said sadly. She pointed to the orchids we had just shown Detective Mason. “I have to have the fake ones there. Actually, it might not be an orchid stake—it could be something else, but the fact that he was an orchid fancier and the fact it looks like the stakes on my fake orchids made me assume it was an orchid stake.”
Detective Oakes nodded slowly. “Quite so, quite so. I do believe you might be right. Is there anything else you can tell me about him?”
Aunt Agnes bit her lip. “No, not really. As I said, he had never boarded with us before. He particularly asked for a cottage that had a good north room so he could put his orchids in it. We assigned him the Retro cottage.”
“Did he see photos of that cottage before he booked it?” Detective Oakes raised his eyebrows.
“I have no idea, but he said he didn’t care about the decorating—he only cared about good north light for his orchids,” Aunt Agnes explained. “He arrived yesterday and was sitting right where Detective Mason is sitting now.”
Mason shifted in his seat. Aunt Agnes pushed on. “He said again that he didn’t like pets, and then we showed him to the cottage. There was no word from him until I got that text from him this morning, and when I went over I found him dead. That was the only contact any of us had with him.”
“And you said you don’t have any other boarders at the moment?” Oakes asked.
“Only Lucas here,” Aunt Agnes said, “but he’s a long-term boarder. We don’t have any new boarders and we’re not expecting any in the next week.”
“All right Mrs Jasper, would you fetch me any other details you have on him. If you could give me a printout, that would be wonderful.”
Aunt Agnes left the room and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t getting the vibe he considered any of us to be suspects. Oakes turned his attention to us once more. “I don’t want to upset you ladies, but the murderer must have been outside while you were having breakfast. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything? You don’t have a dog, do you?”
Breena hissed at the mention of the word ‘dog.’
Mason looked at her. “Who is that girl and why is she playing with that ball of wool?”
“This is my niece,” Aunt Dorothy said. “She’s agoraphobic.”
Detective Oakes frowned for a long time and then said, “Did I ask if you had a dog?”
“We don’t have a dog,” I said, “and we didn’t see anyone around. We didn’t hear or see a car. We didn’t see anything at all, or hear anything.”
Detective Mason piped up. “You know, maybe the murderer sent the text asking to speak to the Jasper sisters.”
Oakes folded his arms over his chest. “And why precisely would a murderer do that?”
Mason appeared a little nervous. “Well, you know, to throw off the timeframe. Maybe he murdered the victim the night before and then returned to send the text so people would think the victim was murdered in the morning. I saw it on an episode of Death in Paradise.”
Oakes could barely keep the exasperation out of his voice. “What earthly purpose would the murderer have for doing that?”
“Forget I said anything,” Mason said, clearly discomforted.
Aunt Agnes returned and handed a bunch of papers to Detective Oakes. “Is there anything else we can do for you? Do you need me to come down to the station to make a witness statement?”
Oakes shook his head. “No. The statement I took from you in the cottage should suffice. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else. These orchid growers take things very seriously, apparently.”
I looked over at Breena, who was swinging from the bottom of a curtain, swatting at a fly. Aunt Agnes wasted no time showing the detectives out.
Chapter 5
Aunt Agnes stood at the door, presumably to watch the police drive off. She shut the door behind her and leant against it. “All right, all of you into the kitchen. We have to form a plan of attack.”
Soon we were all in the kitchen sipping Witches’ Brew, all of us, that is, except Breena, who was sitting at the table slapping milk from a saucer. Occasionally she licked her hand and ran it over her face. I shook my head in despair. Would she ever act like a human?
Aunt Agnes shoved her phone under my nose. I at once averted my eyes. “I don’t want to look at a murder victim, Aunt Agnes,” I protested.
Aunt Agnes muttered to herself and tapped her phone. She pushed the phone under my nose once more. “I’ve cropped it so you can only see the murder weapon. Do you notice anything strange about it?”
“Other than the fact that it’s sticking out of a dead man’s head?” I said, shutting my eyes once more.
Aunt Agnes snatched the phone back. “There. I fixed it. Now what can you see?”
Lucas, Aunt Dorothy, and Aunt Maude stood behind me, looking at Aunt Agnes’s phone. Breena continued to wash her face with her hand.
“There’s a pink sticker on it,” Lucas said. “Can you enlarge that, Pepper?”
I swiped my fingers across the screen to enlarge the pink sticker, and held my fingers there. “Why it is a sticker,” I said. “A strange pink sticker. There’s writing on it, but I can’t quite make it out.”
Aunt Agnes snatched the phone back. She fiddled with it for a while and then said, “Aha! It says ‘Sale.’”
Aunt Dorothy slammed her fist on the table, startling all of us. Breena stopped grooming herself and hid under the table. “I’ve got it!” she proclaimed. “That’s our first clue to the murderer.”
“Get a hold of yourself. Have you gone completely mad?” Aunt Agnes scolded her. “What on earth are you going on about, Dorothy?”
“It is clear the murderer is a stingy person,” Dorothy said. She tapped her chin and then added, “A very stingy person. Imagine choosing a murder weapon that was on sale. What sort of a murderer would do that? A stingy murderer, that’s who. We are looking for someone who is penny-pinching.”
Aunt Agnes rolled her eyes and groaned loudly. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Dorothy. No, I’m afraid the murder is tied in with The Other.”
I gasped. “What? The Other murdered that pet hating man?”
“How do you come to those conclusions, Agnes?” Lucas said. He always was the voice of reason.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, and it seems strange that a man would die just when Valkyrie’s parents come back to town. I find that extraordinary. Surely that concerns you too, Lucas?”
Lucas nodded slowly. “Yes, it does concern me greatly, but there is still the possibility, even a good possibility that it’s nothing to do with The Other.” Aunt Agnes made to speak, but Lucas held up one hand, palm outwards, to forestall her. “It’s too early to tell. Did you take any other photos?”
“Of course I did. I found the body, allowed myself a few moments of shock, and then at once rallied and took photos of the entire room.” Aunt Agnes was clearly quite pleased with herself. She handed her phone to Lucas.
Lucas thumbed through all the photos too slowly for my liking. “Do you see anything there that looks suspicious?” I prompted him.
“Only the dead body.” His tone was dry.
“He was a most unpleasant man, so perhaps lots of people didn’t like him,” Aunt Agnes said.
“People don’t get murdered just because people do
n’t like them,” I told her, “otherwise half the population of the world would be dead.”
“It’s a penny-pinching person, I tell you,” Aunt Dorothy said. She was talking to the grandfather clock.
Aunt Agnes jumped up, took Dorothy by the shoulders and led her to the table. “Dorothy, you really need to get glasses.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyesight,” Aunt Dorothy snapped.
I knew the aunts were about to launch into a round of bickering, so I tried to think of something to forestall them. “What should we do?” I asked the aunts. “No doubt the detectives will solve it if it isn’t anything to do with The Other. Yet if it is something to do with The Other, then we need to solve it.”
Lucas shook his finger at me. “I don’t know about this ‘we,’ but I should certainly look into it. I am a Cleaner, after all.”
We all smiled and nodded, but I knew the aunts had no intention of not getting involved. Of course, a Cleaner’s duty was to find and punish any deeds by vampires that could cause discovery in the human world. Lucas was the one who had the legal right to investigate.
“How will your investigation begin, Lucas?” Aunt Agnes said in a sugary tone.
Lucas was not deceived. “Exactly what are you up to, Agnes?” He narrowed his eyes at her.
When she didn’t answer, he said, “I’ll have to go to the winery now.”
“Now?” I parroted. “But I thought you said we couldn’t have any contact with my parents until tomorrow in the tunnel?”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to my uncle’s house. I’m going to speak with the managers and just make sure they haven’t noticed anything. Obviously, I won’t ask them outright, but I’ll make conversation and see how things are going. I want to make sure they haven’t seen anyone sneaking around. I’ll tell them there have been robberies in the area and ask them to keep a lookout.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Lucas, do you think any of us are in danger?”
“No, or I wouldn’t leave you here,” he said. “If this murder is to do with The Other, then at the very least one of the motives could be to keep us distracted. Perhaps The Other suspect or even know that your parents are back in the country.”