Murder at Maple House

by Hugo James King

  I tapped the contacts buttons.

  F for Finley.

  Pressing my finger, the name was highlighted. Followed by the option to send message. I tapped once again. It opened their previous message file.

  The last message was dated back five days ago.

  “After everything I did for you, I never want to see your face again,” I read aloud in a fast mumble. “If I see you again, you’ll wish I didn’t.” It was from Finley. Spencer hadn’t replied, nor had he made any threats.

  It wasn’t looking good.

  This could’ve been a nail in Spencer’s coffin.

  The threat from Finley could’ve easily provoked Spencer into acting out before Finley ever could. A sunken stone dropped in the pit of my stomach.

  I scrolled further up in the messages, each one from Finley without a reply from Spencer. Almost as if he didn’t read them, or he didn’t want to see them or acknowledge it. Each one, a threat from Finley.

  No. No.

  I commanded myself out of the chair at the table.

  If Spencer had killed Finley, he wouldn’t have admitted to it. The threat had pushed him to it. A threat about his mistress.

  My brain had wrangled itself into a mess, thinking through the scenarios.

  I carried Charlie under my arm as we walked into the kitchen.

  The two chefs glanced in my direction as I marched in through the doors.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t their only issue.

  Diane was snapping her fingers at the boys, pointing to the crates of champagne on the counters.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Patrick as he moved swiftly to my side.

  “Glad you’re here,” he said. “She got a little impatient.”

  She continued snapping her fingers. “Chop, chop,” her voice commanded. “They’re not going to serve themselves.”

  “She hates not being in control,” Patrick said, almost like I hadn’t worked for her and didn’t know just how Diane loved controlling everything.

  Sandra approached me, wiping her hands on her apron. “You’re back,” she said.

  “I need another coffee.” I sucked in through my teeth. “My head’s all fuzzy.”

  Patrick hummed. “Responsible,” he said.

  “I can get you one,” she offered. “I need one myself, I’m shattered. Been on my feet all day. You know, they make us wear sensible shoes, but after a while, my feet just ache.”

  I smiled back at her. “I thought you’d finished.”

  “Oh, me too. I thought we’d all be leaving early, with everything that went on.”

  Patrick nodded at her. “I’ll take a coffee as well.”

  “Right away.” She gave Charlie a tickle on the nose before leaving.

  Diane turned a moment later, a huge smile on her face. She held a champagne glass in hand as a small raspberry sunk to the bottom. “Someone told them to take it easy,” she griped. “Probably one of the police officers.”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Have you come to fill your glass?” she asked.

  My head shook; an automatic response. I definitely didn’t want another glass. “A coffee. There’s too much in my head, and it needs organising.” A hitch caught the tail end of my breath, causing me to cough lightly.

  “You’re not still thinking about this whole murder thing, are you?” she asked.

  “Well, actual—”

  Diane turned, snapping her fingers at one of the boys, before moving towards them again.

  Actually, I wanted to tell her, I was thinking about it, and I wondered if she knew anything else. But, perhaps, someone with a more level head would know.

  “Did you know anything about Spencer having an affair?” I came out immediately to Patrick. Diane had given her opinion, mentioning how she thought one of them was having an affair.

  “I doubt he has the guts to,” he said. “Have you met his wife?”

  I shook my head.

  “She’s the one who controls everything.” He butt down on his lips as his eyes grew wide. “I was just talking about him to a mutual friend of ours. He said, Caroline, the wife, had been keeping him on a curfew.” He scoffed and smiled. “As if he was some teenager.”

  “But that would—wouldn’t that give him more reason to cheat?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but she’d know,” he said. “And I highly doubt she’d let that continue.”

  It seemed people either thought one of them was having an affair, or neither of them were. But whatever they thought, they knew their relationship was strained.

  As Diane approached again, she listened to the end of my statement. “I think someone is blackmailing Spencer to take the fall for the murder,” I said.

  “That’s awful,” she interjected.

  “What makes you think that?”

  I didn’t pull out the paper or the phone, but I clutched my purse closer, holding it against Charlie in my arms. “Perhaps Spencer was having an affair, and someone knew, that person could use what they know to make him confess.”

  “So,” Diane cleared her throat. “Someone has it out for Spencer.”

  “Or someone had it out for Finley.”

  The smell of coffee wafted in our direction as Sandra carried two large mugs, one in each hand. “Didn’t know if you wanted it with sugar or milk, so I did the same for both, one sugar in and a splash of milk.”

  “The killer is still here then?” Diane asked.

  “Oh, gosh,” Sandra gasped. “Let me give you these. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  She quickly handed off the mugs and rushed back to one of the counters, grabbing at a used cloth to clean.

  “Maybe,” I said, in reply to Diane. “Maybe the person who did it is still here.”

  “You must have a good reason to think he’s innocent,” Patrick said. “I know, plenty of people hated Finley, not many people hated Spencer. It doesn’t make sense that someone would pin it on him.”

  “The wife?” I suggested.

  Crash.

  A glass shattered against the tiled kitchen floor.

  EIGHTEEN

  The boy from earlier, he’d dropped and broken another glass. A loud humph came from one of the chefs on his approach to him in the kitchen.

  With a hand pressed to her chest from the momentary fright of the noise, Diane huffed. “Let’s get back outside.”

  Charlie’s ears were perked, on alert.

  “Do you think it could’ve been the wife?” I asked once again.

  “Caroline?” Patrick hummed over. “But why would she kill someone?”

  Diane nodded. “It seems all too far-fetched for her to have done this, and all for what, to get revenge on a potential affair?” she waved a hand in the air.

  “You know something we don’t?” Patrick asked.

  “It doesn’t add up,” I said. “None of it does.”

  We walked towards the exit door out of the kitchen.

  “Expand,” Diane said, rolling a hand at me.

  “If you killed someone, you wouldn’t readily confess to it like that, would you?”

  They appeared to mull the question over.

  “Guilt,” she finally replied, pushing with her freehand on the swing door.

  Guilt could’ve been the motivator, but if they really had so much bad blood between them, and with the texts I’d seen from Finley on Spencer’s phone. I wouldn’t assume Spencer felt guilty if he’d done it—in fact, I’m sure he felt relief.

  Standing outside the kitchen, shuffled by the wall so I wasn’t a distraction, I watched as Diane and Patrick walked off, stopping once in a while to talk to whoever it had been they’d invited among the sea of businesspeople.

  “I’m putting you on the floor,” I said to Charlie, “try not to run off, again.”

  With my coffee and purse in hand, precariously balanced, I readjusted the shawl on my shoulders. I should’ve left it on the chair, the constant feeling of it almost falling off or losing it completely made me pau
se out of fear.

  I took a sip of the hot coffee, recoiling my head back away from the cup at the heat.

  “Let’s take a look and see what else I can find out in this phone,” I grumbled to myself, picking the phone out of my purse. Entering in the birth year as the passcode, and voilà, I was back to the message thread from Finley.

  “Find anything?” Ruth asked, appearing at my side, seemingly out of nowhere.

  “Nothing,” my knee-jerk reaction said, before noting Ruth’s long frame, standing in her shimmery green pantsuit. “Actually, I found these texts from Finley.” I handed her the phone. “Spencer didn’t reply, at all.”

  Looking through them, she hummed. “Or, he replied and deleted them.”

  “Read,” I said. “They aren’t texts someone has replied to. These are texts someone sent out of anger because they didn’t get a reply.”

  She tssked her teeth with a chomp. “I’m surprised we’re not looking into Spencer’s death.”

  I had the same thought. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “I looked everywhere, under tables, telling people I was looking for Charlie. I looked in different corners, inside bins, any plastic bags. Whoever did this, covered their tracks.”

  “They knew what they were doing,” I hummed. “Or at least, someone had told them what to do, and how to do it.”

  Ruth continued to read through the messages, making mouth sounds as she found text threads which were quite abusive. I continued drinking my coffee in an attempt to organise my thoughts. There must’ve been something we were missing, something that connected all the pieces without having to reach too far.

  “What do we know?” Ruth asked. “To this point in time.”

  “Finley died with a note in his pocket. Someone was out to kill him. We think it was poison, but until someone runs test, we won’t know, and by that point, whoever did it will be out of this room. Then Spencer gets on the stage, takes the blame, and we find another note in his pocket, this time making him confess or else ruin his life with news about the mistress.”

  “Well, we need a connection between Finley, Spencer, and Nora the mistress.”

  “All I can think of is the wife,” I said. “But I’m doubting it. She’d get nothing from Finley’s death. Now, if Spencer had died, she’d get the lot. Him, staying alive, getting a divorce, albeit from prison at this moment, doesn’t make sense.”

  “Good point.” Ruth tapped her fingernails against the screen in quick succession. “So, someone knew about Spencer and Nora. Their target was Finley, and getting Spencer to confess was there way of smoothing things over for them to escape.”

  We looked onwards at the backs of heads as people talked to each other.

  It could’ve been any one of them.

  “Did you check his table?” I asked.

  She nodded back. “They weren’t his friends.”

  “I wouldn’t claim to be the friend of a someone who’d admitted to being a killer either.”

  “I did ask if they had a number for his wife, you know, because friends always have their spouses’ numbers, and they didn’t even think he was married.”

  I didn’t recall whether he was wearing a wedding band. “I think we’ll have to talk to Paul,” I said.

  Charlie yapped. The sound of his feet skittered against the hardwood as he zoomed through the swing doors of the kitchen.

  I chased after him, almost spilling what was left of the coffee when my feet realised they were still inside heels.

  Ruth followed me inside.

  The two chefs flared at the nostrils, their faces painstakingly red.

  We found Charlie at the bin, standing on his paws as he scratched at the plastic.

  “Oh, not in there,” a woman chuckled, picking Charlie up with two hands beneath his stomach. It was Lorraine, with a large smile on her face. “I think he can smell all the food.”

  I placed the mug from my hands on the side and pulled Charlie back in my arms. “Enough running away,” I said, pressing my face close to his. “We can get food out there. I’m sure there’s something dog-friendly.”

  “I can fix him something if you want,” she said. “But then he might come back in again later when he gets hungry.” She chuckled.

  I didn’t need him running off, and his leash was in the car; I didn’t think I’d need it.

  “That’s alright,” I said.

  She smiled. “Glad they got the guy who killed him,” she continued. “I mean, how crazy must your life be to firstly, kill a guy, and then after that, confess.”

  “You’re from Briarbury, right?”

  “Come and go,” she said. “Never lived there, but I’ve lived in many places near. It makes travelling to these jobs much easier.”

  I nodded. “So, you didn’t know either Finley or Spencer.”

  She shrugged. “Never met either of them.” A smile crept in on her face. “But it would’ve been something to gossip about tomorrow, me, meeting someone like that. I bet it’s all over the news.”

  “Eve,” Ruth said, tapping my shoulder.

  I turned and she pushed the phone into my face. “What is it?” I asked, my eyes adjusting to the light of the phone.

  She shook her head, her eyes side glancing to Lorraine. “Look,” she said, passing me the phone.

  It was a new text, only seconds ago received.

  WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

  From Caroline.

  The news was out there now.

  People were reporting on Spencer as the killer.

  “We need to get to Paul,” I said.

  Ruth nodded. “I need to call Frank,” she said. “I’ll see if he’s had any updates from his friends at the hospital. Although I’m not sure where they would’ve taken Finley.”

  We hurried back to the table.

  More people were glued to their phones as the breaking news of the night had been broadcast to the nation. A murdered man at a well-to-do print publishing company event. The optics weren’t great.

  On the table, at my seat, there was a place card propped up in a triangle. My name scrawled on the front of the card.

  Nobody else had them.

  The font was instantly recognisable.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked, reaching around inside her purse.

  Flipping it. I read what was written.

  Leave it alone or else…

  Charlie licked at my neck and chin, shocking me to jolt to the side.

  NINETEEN

  Ruth grabbed my arm. She shook her head and sighed deeply.

  “I know,” I said, as if reading her mind. “We need to tell Paul now.”

  It was the only thing we had left to do, and this was the final puzzle piece. The unpicking at the stitch of what everyone believed. This wasn’t Spencer at all, and whoever had done it, was in this room, and watching us.

  We walked out, freely through the hallway and into the reception area.

  The woman Finley had arrived with was still in the corner of the room, still on the phone to someone, scoffing and pulling her face in all directions as she listened to what the person on the other end was saying.

  I waved at the people on reception.

  “What are you doing now?” Paul’s voice called from the front door of the entrance.

  “Paul,” Ruth and I said together.

  I fiddled with the paper, my purse, and juggled Charlie in my arms before handing the note to him.

  Unfolding the paper. He glanced at it and shrugged. “What is it?”

  My eyes darted to all the people in the room. The man and woman at the reception desk were clearly listening, and the woman Finley had brought, while occupied, I sensed she was watching.

  “That’s not all,” I said to him, a hand clutched to my purse.

  “Well?” Paul held his hand out like a child expecting sweets.

  I nodded to the doors. “Can we go outside?”

  I knew it was chillier outside, but it was also away from stran
gers’ ears, and that’s not what we needed right now. People who weren’t going to listen and spend the next day spreading it like gossip.

  “What is it, Eve?” he asked as we were outside.

  I set Charlie on the ground. He brushed his back against my legs, sitting beside me. He panted lightly, probably welcoming the fresh air from being stuck inside all stuffy.

  “We found another note in Spencer’s jacket,” Ruth said, triggering me to move my hands once again, unbuckling my purse to grab at the paper. “We don’t think he did it.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I don’t think he did.” Handing the paper over. It was the same paper stock, the same handwriting. Both done by the same person.

  “What you’re saying is, someone wrote two notes, one to you, and one for him, and this proves his innocence?” he asked, analysing both notes over. A glare in his eyes, turning the notes over in his hand.

  “Have you taken his statement?” Ruth asked.

  He nodded. “But we’re waiting for him to sober up as well.”

  “He’s still here?”

  “He’s sleeping in the back of a car.”

  I prodded the note in Paul’s hand, the note Spencer had received. “Well, let’s ask him if this is what someone gave him,” I said. “Someone here has made him confess.”

  “And, chances are, he doesn’t know what killed Finley,” Ruth said. “If he was poisoned, which I think he was, Spencer isn’t going to be able to tell you which poison he used, or how he got close to him.”

  “Agreed!”

  “Listen,” Paul said, he extended his tongue out slightly to bite the end.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We can ask him who Nora is,” he said.

  Ruth presented the phone. “We know.”

  “We found his phone too.”

  Paul scoffed, his mouth breaking into a wry smile. “How long have you been holding onto these?” He pulled his police notepad from his pocket and tucked the two pieces of paper inside them. “You know, we had someone in there looking for his jacket.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He wanted to call his wife,” he said.