“Not a dagger,” she said. “I’ve seen a wound like this only once before. Unless I’m much mistaken, this man was stabbed by a sword.”
Sergeant Jones stared at her. “A sword? You mean an actual sword. In this day and age?”
“I know it seems unlikely but look - the point of entry was just below the diaphragm and travelling in an upward direction. There’s very little blood, see?”
She switched on her phone flashlight to show the modest pool of blood that had gathered on the man’s shirt front.
“That tells me he died instantly – probably as the sword entered his heart. Postmortem bleeding is always limited.”
Fay glanced at David for confirmation and he nodded.
“We’ll know more after the autopsy, but I’m almost sure that this man was killed by a sword – one wielded by an expert, unless it was an accident.”
“A sword … right …” Sergeant Jones made a note on a piece of paper. “And how did you come to be here at all at this time of the morning, Fay love?”
Fay avoided the question. “I can tell you exactly what happened because I saw it all. I even took photographs, although I don’t think they’re worth much. At about four-twenty I heard an engine gunning through the village. I can’t have been the only one who heard it because it was really loud. A late-model sedan came roaring up from over there.” She pointed to the Church Square end of the village. “It screeched to a halt and someone jumped out. I couldn’t see for sure if it was a man or a woman because they were bundled up in layers of clothes and had a knitted cap pulled down low on their head. This person opened the trunk and pulled out a rolled-up rug and dumped it on the side of the road. Their movements seemed uncertain, almost panicky.”
“Just one person?” asked David. “Was there no one else in the car?”
“I didn’t see anyone else.” Fay thought for a second. “Now that I come to think of it, it was most likely a man. Our victim here is no lightweight, especially wrapped up in a heavy rug. The person I saw picked him up as though he didn’t weigh much at all and tossed him aside as though he couldn’t wait to get rid of him.”
“Then I think we can be pretty sure that it was a man,” said Sergeant Jones. “What happened next?”
“He hopped back in the car and laid rubber pulling away from the curb. At that stage I had my phone out and took a couple of pictures.”
She clicked on the camera roll on her phone and scrolled to photographs of the car. Sergeant Jones and David leaned in to look.
“I can’t make out the license plate at all, can you?” said David.
“It’s been deliberately smeared with mud to make it impossible to read,” said Fay. “Definitely not a professional job, although it did the trick. The pros use a kind of reflective paint which makes their license plates appear as blank white rectangles on security cameras. This was the act of someone who hadn’t planned ahead, but still managed to keep his wits about him. The way he was driving suggested panic, but he had the forethought to make sure that he and his car were not identifiable.”
“And why dump his victim here in the middle of the village?” asked Sergeant Jones. “He could have driven him to the west side of the island and rolled him off a cliff into the sea. None of us would have been any the wiser.”
“That could have been the panic again,” said David. “He might not have been thinking straight.”
Fay nodded. “It could be that, or it could be that he didn’t have the time to drive all the way to the cliffs. He was certainly in a huge hurry. Apparently, he didn’t even have the time to drive a little way out the village to dump the body in a field.”
“A farmer, maybe?” suggested Sergeant Jones, himself of farming stock. “Needing to be back in time for the morning milking.”
“Could be.” Fay tried to think who else would have to be somewhere before five in the morning. A farmer was a pretty good guess.
David turned to Fay with a puzzled look. “You still haven’t explained what you were doing here so early. This isn’t the usual route for your morning run.”
Fay sighed. Trust him not to get distracted by side issues like murderers and dumped bodies.
“If you must know, I was spying on the Cracked Spine. I’m determined to find out where Nella gets her clotted cream from.”
The men thought this was hilarious.
“You’ll never crack it, Fay love,” said Sergeant Jones when he had finished chuckling. “That’s a closely guarded secret, that is. Nella won’t give it up for anything.”
“I suppose it’s just as well you were here, or we would never have known how the body ended up in this road. It would probably have been discovered by Mr. Harris, the milkman.” David pointed to the end of the road to where the milk truck had begun its rattling journey through the village.
Bluebell Island had once been considered old fashioned for still having a morning milk delivery in glass bottles. Now it was at the forefront of a green initiative because the milk bottles were completely recyclable. Other towns across England were reviving the old tradition, which Bluebell Village had never stopped.
“We’d better get the body over to the surgery, so I can start the autopsy,” said David. He checked his watch. “I have four hours before the first patients start coming in at nine o’clock. I can make considerable progress in that time.”
“Let’s wrap him up again and lift him in this rug,” said Sergeant Jones.
Fay stood back as they transferred the body into the back of the patrol car. Then Sergeant Jones drove up to the surgery with David and Fay following in David’s car.
An awkward silence settled between them the moment they were alone together. It had little to do with Fay’s confession of clotted-cream stalking, although she was glad that neither man had asked her directly whether her spying had been successful. They seemed to assume that it hadn’t.
The awkwardness had more to do with the fact that David had recently broken up with his long-term girlfriend. There had been clear romantic sparks between him and Fay shortly before that. But somehow, ever since he had broken up with Laetitia, he hadn’t said a word about what might be between them. She was starting to think that he never would.
He had spent the intervening weeks throwing himself into his work – particularly the clinic he was building with donor money. It was his dream that Bluebell Islanders would no longer have to take a ferry to the mainland for ordinary medical procedures and investigations. As the clinic grew closer to completion, his dream was becoming real.
This was the first time Fay and David had been alone together since he had told her about his break-up with Laetitia. She couldn’t say for sure that he had been avoiding her, but it was beginning to look like it. She and David’s father were still great friends and saw each other frequently, but somehow David was never around on those occasions.
“You can drop me at the surgery,” she said as the patrol vehicle slowed down ahead of them. “I’ll walk the rest of the way. It’ll be a good warm up for my morning run.”
“If you’re sure.” He stopped the car to let her out. “I’ll let you know how I get on with the autopsy. It’s an intriguing case.”
Chapter 3
Fay went for her usual three-mile run on the boardwalk that ran for miles along the sea front.
It was a popular jogging and dog-walking route. But at this time of the morning she usually saw only fishermen. When she returned to her starting point, she walked up the cliff steps that led to Penrose House. Then she went inside to shower and get dressed for the day. It was six-fifteen by the time she joined her housekeeper Morwen in the kitchen to prepare breakfast for their B&B guests. Morwen was frying sausages with one hand and scrolling through messages on her phone with the other. Fay had a feeling that she knew what was holding Morwen’s attention. The village grapevine would be buzzing by now.
Fay took her muffin batter out of the fridge and divided it into three batches. She mixed chocolate chips into one of thes
e, frozen blueberries into another, and cinnamon-spiced apple pieces into the third. She spooned the batter into three muffin trays and put these in the oven to bake for twenty minutes. As she closed the oven door, Morwen looked up from her phone.
“I’m hearing some very strange stories about you this morning.”
“Do any of them involve a dead body wrapped up in a rug in front of the Cracked Spine?”
“As a matter of fact, they do. What a thing to happen! Do you have any idea who he was?”
“Not exactly. But he consulted David about a sore elbow last week. His details should still be on file at the surgery.”
Morwen’s eyebrows rose. “So, David was there, was he? Interesting.”
“You don’t have to say it like that. He’s made it perfectly clear that nothing is going to happen between us. He and Laetitia broke up because they weren’t suited. It had nothing to do with me.”
Morwen scooped the sausages out of the pan and left them to drain on some kitchen paper. Then she got started on the bacon.
“I just said it was interesting,” she said. “You filled in the blanks yourself. And I don’t happen to agree with you that he’s made it clear he’s not interested. I think he’s taking a relationship break instead of hopping from one woman to another. That’s pretty rare, in my experience, and definitely something to be celebrated. I’d be more suspicious if he had rushed around here the day after breaking up with Laetitia. A lot of men do it, but it’s not respectful. I prefer this way of doing things.”
“Or …” Fay held up a finger. “He’s not interested in me. I’m starting to think that’s the more likely option.”
“But what about the kiss?”
“That was an impulsive, once-off thing. We had just come through a near-death experience. It was more of a ‘hooray, we didn’t die’ kiss than an ‘I’m attracted to you’ kiss. And apart from that one incident, his behavior towards me has never been anything but platonic.”
Morwen threw her head back and laughed as bacon sizzled and popped in the pan. “Darling girl, you are delusional. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I’m surprised you don’t spontaneously burst into flames. If that’s platonic, I’ll eat my hat.”
Fay shook her head. She wasn’t naïve. Of course, she had noticed the way David looked at her. But his utter silence and withdrawal in the weeks since he had broken up with Laetitia had shaken her faith in her own judgment.
She opened the fridge and pulled out a large bowl of pumpkin flesh. Over the past two weeks, the Cat’s Paw had been holding weekly pumpkin carving competitions. Fay had collected all the pumpkin innards and was busily engaged in turning them into pumpkin pies, pumpkin fritters, candied pumpkin, and even a pumpkin mousse. She would be the first to admit that the latter had not been entirely successful.
The most popular by far were the pumpkin pies. For the American tourists, they represented a taste of home. And for the British guests, they were a new and delightful delicacy.
Today, Fay planned to make a large batch of pumpkin pies to be served with whipped cream at breakfast time and then again at teatime. Her homemade pastry was already rolled and prepared. All she had to do was line her pie dishes, scoop in the prepared filling, top with pastry lids, and pop them in the oven.
But Morwen wasn’t done with her yet.
“Need I ask what you were doing in front of the Cracked Spine at four o’clock this morning?”
“You know what I was doing,” said Fay. “The worst part was that I had to come clean in front of Sergeant Jones and David. You can imagine how embarrassing that was.”
Morwen’s shoulders jiggled as she laughed to herself. “And I suppose you’re still none the wiser about where Nella gets her cream?”
Fay was happy to be able to contradict her. “As a matter of fact, I made a significant breakthrough this morning. My problem was that I hadn’t been going early enough. It was just after four that a woman pulled up in a van and delivered two pails of cream to Nella. It’s obviously a regular thing because Isis was there waiting to lap up the spilled cream.”
“Isis?” said Morwen. “Oh, you mean Nella’s cat. Who was the woman?”
Fay pressed her pastry into the corners of the pie dishes with her thumbs. “I was hoping you could tell me. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her.”
“What did she look like?”
“Mid-thirties. About my height. Slim build. Bright red hair almost to her shoulders. It was very dark, but I noticed the hair when she stepped under a streetlamp. I know I’ve seen her around a couple of times, but I have no idea who she is. Her van came down Mountain View Road so presumably she lives up that way.”
“That sounds like Lolly Granger of Elf Farm. And you’re right – she lives about two-thirds of the way up Mountain View Road. Mind you, ‘farm’ is a bit of an exaggeration. It’s more of a plot or smallholding.”
“If she’s a local, why don’t I know her?” asked Fay. “I’ve been here nearly a year now. I thought I knew just about everyone.”
“The Grangers are a strange family. They live completely off the grid. They get their water from a borehole and from a stream that runs through their property. They generate their own electricity with solar panels and a wind pump. You’ll never see them in the village buying food because they make or grow it all themselves. Someone once told me they’re vegetarians. I know they keep cows and goats and chickens, but presumably only for the eggs and milk.”
“Cows, huh?”
“That’s right. And they grow all their own vegetables. A couple of times a year, Lolly will come into the village to buy stationery or shoes for the children. Their kids don’t even go to the local primary, so she probably homeschools them.”
Fay nodded. “I think I saw her in the newsagents once. If she didn’t have such striking red hair, I probably wouldn’t have remembered her.”
“Could she really be Nella’s secret supplier of cream?”
“I saw her myself. She carried the cream into the Cracked Spine in two metal pails. She didn’t even have to knock. The door opened as though someone were looking out for her. I think it’s pretty conclusive. The only question now is whether I can persuade her to supply the Cat’s Paw as well as the Cracked Spine.”
Fay put her pumpkin pies in the oven just as the muffins came out. She removed her apron and loaded food items onto a tray before going upstairs to the breakfast room to stock the buffet.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” said Morwen as she was halfway out the door. “In among all the messages about the body in the rug this morning, I got a couple of texts about a cat that has been spotted on Cliff Road. People seem to think it’s a stray.”
“I hope it’s not another wild-goose chase.” Fay had vivid memories of trying to catch an alleged stray cat in the vicinity of Bluff Lighthouse a few months earlier. The locals had laughed at her attempts, claiming that the cat was a ghost. Fay wasn’t quite prepared to concede that they were right, but she had certainly had no luck in capturing it. “This isn’t another ghost cat, is it?”
Morwen laughed. “No. Apparently this one is quite real. People say it’s not a young cat and that it’s in bad condition. They say it’s very shy and won’t come near people. But one of the ladies who texted me said she could have sworn it had a scrap of collar around its neck, as though it had once been someone’s pet. It’s been spotted near the retirement estate. You’ll look into it, won’t you, Fay?”
“Of course.”
Fay’s heart was wrung by the thought of a senior kitty in poor condition living a feral life. A feral existence was okay for younger cats but became almost impossible as they got older. She was determined to catch this senior citizen and get it off the streets for good.
After breakfast, Fay let her fingers do the walking through Bluebell Island’s online directory.
This modern-day answer to the Yellow Pages was a comprehensive guide to all the services offered on the island. It was as useful to locals as it
was to tourists because it offered way more than a guide to the local B&Bs and guesthouses. Whether you needed ballet lessons for your child, or had a wooden cabinet that needed to be French polished, or you wanted a beehive removed from your garden, the online directory was the place for you.
Word of mouth worked very well, but only the online directory had all the details you needed. All you had to do was enter a search term into a little box at the top of the page, and the website would bring up the entries related to that word.
Fay struck out with ‘swords’, ‘sword fighting’, and ‘dueling’.
She was about to give up, thinking that there was nothing like that on the island, when the correct term suddenly popped into her head. Embarrassed that it had taken her so long, she entered the word ‘fencing’ into the search box.
This time she got a hit. The Galliano School of Fencing offered lessons to everyone from beginners to experts. There were individual classes and group classes. Interested parties were invited to apply to the ‘Maestro’ who went by the name of Massimo Galliano. A local phone number was included.
Fay opened her phone and did a location search for Galliano School of Fencing on her Maps app. It showed up in the High Street. The fact that the school of fencing seemed to share a location with Sweet’s candy store told her that it was probably upstairs. That must be why the name Galliano seemed familiar. She must have seen signs for it in the village.
She decided to pay Mr. Galliano a visit. There was no saying that the stab wound that had killed that morning’s murder victim had been inflicted by a fencing sword, but it was a good place to start. She put on her coat and wrapped a scarf around her neck. Then she set out to walk down to the village.
Chapter 4
Several businesses in the High Street were getting into the Halloween spirit.
Fay spotted witches, ghouls, aliens, and several Harry Potters serving behind the cash registers of numerous shops. The decorations ranged from the usual bats, cobwebs, and black cats to more creative themes like Hogwarts or Dragon Realm.
The Cat That Got the Cream Page 2