Murder in the Margins

by Margaret Loudon

  “This is how many near misses now?” Mabel turned and put both hands palms down on the counter. “Maybe you should consider giving up the car. You can walk to the Open Book and if you need to go any farther than that, you can hire a taxi.”

  “That’s very tempting,” Penelope said, briefly reliving the horror of seeing another car headed straight at her. She raised her chin. “But I’m determined to nail this driving on the other side of the road if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Mabel raised an eyebrow. “That’s what has me worried—that it will one day be the last thing you do.”

  Gladys Watkins wandered up to the counter. She handed over a copy of romance novelist Charlotte Davenport’s latest, The Fire in My Bosom, which featured a rather long-haired, bare-chested man on the cover and a damsel whose look of considerable distress seemed to match Gladys’s own.

  “I can’t begin to imagine what the queen thinks of it,” Gladys said as Mabel dropped some coins into her outstretched palm. “I imagine the poor thing is simply beside herself.”

  “One can’t quite imagine the queen being beside herself,” Mabel said, as she turned toward the register and ripped off the receipt. “She’s made of sterner stuff than that.”

  “That’s certainly true,” India Culpepper said. She’d casually sidled up to the counter in order to join the conversation. “What with all that nonsense about Charles and Camilla she’s had to endure. You know, stiff upper lip and all, that’s her majesty’s motto.”

  “Yes, no doubt that’s embroidered on the throw pillows in the drawing room at Buckingham Palace,” Mabel said dryly.

  “High time the Duke of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke settled down,” Gladys said, her brow furrowed fiercely. “Driving up and down the high street in that sports car of his and getting drunk at the Book and Bottle causing no end of embarrassment to the royal family. He’s very nearly forty after all.”

  “It’s the red hair.” India nodded sagely. “Everyone knows gingers are bound for trouble. Comes from his father’s side. His great-grandfather was known to cheat at cards and”—she lowered her voice—“run around with loose women.”

  Penelope frowned. “Oh, pooh. That’s an old wives’ tale. Redheads aren’t any more prone to getting into trouble than anyone else.”

  India looked far from convinced.

  Penelope quashed the sudden desire to dye her brown hair red to prove them all wrong—although she was hardly the right person to challenge their assumption. Her father had often said that trouble was her middle name.

  “But an American!” Gladys said, clutching her book even more tightly to her ample bosom and piercing Penelope with a laser-like stare.

  Penelope stood up taller and straightened her shoulders. “Americans have become quite civilized, you know. We don’t live in covered wagons anymore.”

  Gladys sniffed. She was as round as an apple with a ruddy complexion and large, guileless blue eyes.

  “I agree with Gladys,” India said, looking quite surprised that for once she and Gladys found themselves on the same page. “Most unsuitable. Of course, Arthur is barely in the line of succession, but still.” She said that last as if it was her final word on the subject and that was that.

  India was to the manor born as the saying goes, and even though the family fortune had slipped through numerous fingers before reaching her in a significantly diminished amount, she comported herself as the aristocrat she considered herself to be.

  “And not just an American,” Gladys was continuing, “but Charlotte Davenport—an American romance novelist.” She said that last as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

  India stared rather pointedly at the book in Gladys’s hand, but the significance of India’s glance was lost on Gladys.

  “Charlotte Davenport is actually quite a lovely person,” Pen said firmly.

  Gladys’s eyes goggled. “You’ve met her?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have,” Pen said. “It was at a writers’ conference—my first. I was positively terrified and Charlotte very graciously took me under her wing. She was already a bestselling author and my book hadn’t even come out yet. I was scheduled on a panel she was moderating—I don’t even remember what the topic was but I do remember being horribly nervous.” Penelope shuddered to think about it. “I developed a sudden case of stage fright when someone in the audience asked me a question and Charlotte managed to coax an answer out of me.”

  “Still . . .” India let the word hang in the air.

  Mabel turned to Penelope and winked. “How is the book coming? Do tell us.”

  Penelope suddenly found three pairs of eyes trained on her. She was more than grateful for the change of subject, but she really wished it had been changed to something other than her nearly nonexistent book.

  “It’s coming,” she said as firmly as possible. “I just need to find a reason to compel my main character, Annora, to go against all her best instincts and search this creepy castle basement alone in order to find a chest that’s hidden down there.”

  Penelope thought of some of the pickles she’d gotten herself into growing up—climbing a tree and then not being able to get down, sneaking out her bedroom window the time she was grounded and falling off the roof and breaking her ankle, hitchhiking home her freshman year in college with a knife she’d taken from the cafeteria for protection—but even she knew better than to go into a basement alone with a killer on the loose.

  “That’s a tough one,” Mabel said.

  Penelope nodded. “Tell me about it! I can’t have a heroine who is TSTL.”

  This time three sets of eyebrows were raised in unison.

  “Too stupid to live,” Penelope explained. “It’s the sort of thing that makes a reader want to throw the book across the room.”

  “Quite.” India fingered the yellowing pearls at her neck.

  Penelope looked at her watch. “Ladies, it’s almost time for our meeting of the Worthington Fest marketing committee. Shall we sit down?”

  “Regina’s not here yet,” Gladys looked around as if expecting Regina to magically appear in a puff of smoke. “She’s always late.” She made a sour face.

  “Let’s get settled. I am sure Regina will be along shortly.”

  Penelope herded everyone to the table and chairs Mabel had set up in a cozy nook at the back of the store. Penelope used it for her writing group although her book group tended to array themselves in the mismatched overstuffed chairs and sofa that Mabel had also furnished the nook with.

  The Open Book was to have a stall at the fest, and Penelope had offered to head the marketing committee with the help of India and Gladys. Regina Bosworth was the chairwoman of the fest itself.

  “Shall we start without Regina?” India said, looking around the table for confirmation.

  “Let’s give her a few more minutes,” Penelope said decisively.

  It was now nearly ten minutes past the hour. Penelope opened her mouth to begin the meeting, but just then a voice rang out from behind one of the stacks.

  “I’m here. I’m coming.”

  Regina rounded the corner, flapping her hands furiously. “So sorry, ladies, couldn’t be helped. I’ve had such a busy morning. There’s masses to get through yet before the Worthington Fest opens tomorrow. The Duke of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke had me positively running off my feet.”

  Penelope noticed India roll her eyes. Hardly anyone referred to the duke by his title—around the village he was Arthur Worthington or simply Worthington and was often greeted familiarly by the patrons of the Book and Bottle, where he was known to regularly pony up for a round or two, as Worthington, old chap.

  He and India were vaguely related. Penelope couldn’t remember how, but she thought it was through India’s mother’s line. Of course, while India lived in somewhat straitened circumstances in a cottage on the grounds of the estate, Worthi
ngton had inherited the castle itself along with a substantial amount of money.

  Regina took her seat. She straightened the Hermès scarf at her neck—the queen had one just like it, she never failed to point out—opened her Louis Vuitton handbag, and spread out her things—an expensive notebook with an embossed leather cover and a blue lacquered Mont Blanc fountain pen.

  “Now, Penelope,” Regina said in an officious tone, “would you like to make your report?” She folded her hands on the table in front of her.

  India and Gladys turned to Penelope expectantly.

  “You’ve all seen the banners along the high street,” Penelope began and the others nodded. “We’ve placed posters in all the shops along the high street as well.”

  Gladys nodded. “We have one in our window.”

  Gladys’s husband owned the Pig in a Poke, Upper Chumley-on-Stoke’s butcher shop.

  “And Regina was brave enough to volunteer to be on our local BBC radio station to talk up the fest,” Penelope said. “Brava, Regina.”

  “As if she would have turned that opportunity down,” India whispered to Penelope.

  Regina looked around the table and beamed at them. “Thank you. Thank you.” She cast her eyes down demurely. “And,” she said, pausing dramatically, “our little fest has been written up in the Sun.”

  Gladys gasped and clasped her hands to her chest. India looked equally startled. Stories from their little corner of the world rarely made it into the national papers.

  Regina preened. “Gordon—that’s my husband,” she said to Penelope, “places a lot of ads with the Sun for his business. He pulled some strings and well . . .” Regina batted her eyelashes.

  She reached into her purse, pulled out a copy of a newspaper, and placed it on the table. She thumbed it open to the fifth page and tapped a headline with a crimson-manicured fingernail.

  “Here it is. ‘Upper Chumley-on-Stoke to hold its annual Worthington Fest on Saturday. Hosted by the Duke of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke and his American fiancée, the fest is an annual event’—well, you can read the rest yourselves.” She turned the paper around so the others could see.

  A stock photo of the duke and Charlotte Davenport taken at some other event was included with the article. Penelope had seen Worthington from a distance once or twice as he sped through the village in his vintage Aston Martin but had never gotten a close-up look at him.

  He had a roguish air about him—in the photograph at least—with blue eyes that twinkled beneath thick, straight brows and a mouth that looked to be curved in a perpetual half smile—as if he was privy to an especially delicious secret.

  Charlotte looked every inch the duchess she was about to become in a pale pink dress with a full skirt and lace bodice. Her blond hair was in a sleek bun at the nape of her neck and she carried a tiny clutch bag in one hand. Her other hand—with its four-carat diamond solitaire—was laid lightly on the duke’s arm.

  “I still don’t know why Worthington chose that woman,” Gladys said, tapping Charlotte’s picture.

  “Well,” Regina said, raising an eyebrow, “they’re not married yet, are they? Anything could happen.”

  Regina folded the newspaper back up and tucked it in her handbag, and they went back to the business at hand, finishing up their meeting half an hour later. Regina gathered her things together and immediately took off at a trot, yelling over her shoulder that the duke was waiting for her and she simply mustn’t be late. Everyone stood in a cluster as they listened for the sound of the door closing behind her.

  “That woman becomes more insufferable by the day,” India said. “Nouveau riche,” she declared as if that explained it.

  “I don’t know why Worthington chose her to be the chairwoman of the fest,” Gladys grumbled, her expression stormy.

  “Quite,” India said. “I understand that competition for the position was dreadfully fierce among the ladies of Chumley.”

  “She probably badgered him until he cried uncle,” Penelope said.

  India made a sound like a snort.

  “I wonder what she meant about Worthington and Charlotte not being married yet,” Penelope said. “It almost sounded like she was hinting at something. As if she knew something.”

  Gladys laughed. “What could Regina possibly know about it?”

  “I don’t know.” India frowned. “But Regina collects secrets the way some people collect stamps. And she’s not afraid to make use of them either.”

  TWO

  It was a minute or two after five o’clock when India and Gladys left the Open Book.

  “I’ll go hang the closed sign, shall I?” Mabel said as Penelope sank into one of the Open Book’s armchairs.

  Penelope glanced out the window. Traffic on the high street was slowing down; the sun was setting and dusk was beginning to descend, creating pockets of shadow in the doorways and under the trees. The streetlights were winking on and nightlights twinkled in most the shops across the street.

  “Here we go then,” Figgy said, wheeling over a tray from the Teapot, the Open Book’s tea shop. A china pot swathed in a flowery quilted cozy sat on top along with three cups, three saucers, and a plate of cheese and pickle and egg salad sandwiches. On the lower level of the cart were delectable-looking slices of orange and cardamom cake fanned out on a platter.

  Lady Fiona Innes-Goldthorpe, as she had been christened, had had the nickname of Figgy bestowed upon her at a Girl Guide camp when her mother had marked her uniforms and towels with her initials—F.I.G. She and Penelope had hit it off immediately.

  When Mabel had first seen the two of them with their heads together she’d muttered, “Uh-oh, here comes trouble.”

  Figgy had black hair that was spiked with gel on top, two earrings in each ear, a stud in her nose, and a tattoo of a peace symbol by her ankle. She had been doing a bit of catering and had dreamed of opening a tea shop. Mabel had offered to rent her space inside the Open Book. Everyone agreed that there was no better combination than a nice cuppa and a good juicy novel.

  “So how is the book coming?” Figgy said as she poured out the tea.

  Penelope made a face. “I suppose you could say it’s coming.”

  “It should be quiet enough for you,” Mabel said, “now that Ruth Goldstone and that crazy Chihuahua of hers moved out of the place next door.”

  Mabel had loaned Penelope a small cottage a bit of a ways down the high street but within walking distance of the Open Book.

  “Oh, it’s quiet enough,” Penelope said.

  She was used to her walk-up on East Eighty-seventh Street in New York City, where cars roared down the street all night long, people shouted to each other at two o’clock in the morning as they headed home from the bars, and dogs barked whenever the mood struck them.

  Figgy handed out plates and Penelope helped herself to a cheese and pickle sandwich, a combination much beloved by the British and which she was slowly coming to appreciate herself.

  Mabel looked over at Penelope. “How are you getting on, then? Settling in, are you?”

  Penelope laughed. “Sometimes I feel a little bit like an exhibit in a museum or a rare animal in a zoo. People seem to find Americans terribly exotic. That surprises me because I always thought our two countries had so much in common.” Penelope popped the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth. “I mean, we’ve given you fast food and you’ve given us David Bowie and the Great British Baking Show.” She made a face. “I suppose it’s hardly a fair trade.” She smiled. “I don’t blame you for being resentful.”

  “You’re a novelty, that’s all,” Figgy said. “Most of the residents of Chum have been here for generations. Some of them have never been to London even though it’s only a little over an hour on the train. There isn’t much diversity. Give them time to get to know you.”

  “They certainly seem to resent the fact that Worthington
is marrying an American. They almost make it sound as if she’s some sort of alien from outer space.”

  Mabel laughed. “They’re just jealous. Every mother of girls for miles around has fantasized that their daughter would be the one to capture Worthington’s heart. They’d be grousing just as much if he’d picked someone from London or Cornwall or Wales.”

  “That’s certainly true,” Figgy said as she nibbled on the corner of an egg salad sandwich. “My mother still harbors the hope that I’ll snag someone with a title. When she heard I was going to be living in the same town as Arthur Worthington, it only added fuel to her fire. I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a whole trousseau tucked away somewhere for me embroidered with Duchess of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke. She was positively gutted when she read about his engagement in the Sun.” She made a sad face. “I don’t know what she’s going to think when she finds out about Derek.”

  “I thought your parents knew about Derek,” Mabel said.

  “They do.” Figgy began shredding the edge of her napkin. “Only I sort of glossed over a few things when I told them about him. Like the fact that his father is Pakistani and his last name is Khan.”

  “So what?” Penelope said. “It’s your life.”

  “And Derek is a lovely person.” Mabel reached for another slice of cake.

  Figgy blew out a huge breath and her bangs fluttered in the air for a second.

  “He is. And it certainly doesn’t matter to me. But my parents?” She rolled her eyes.

  “I thought he was terribly charming,” Penelope said. “I’m sure your parents will love him.”

  “I hope so,” Figgy said, but her tone was glum.

  Mabel stretched out her legs. “Tomorrow is the big day. I hope everything goes well.”

  “No reason it shouldn’t,” Penelope said, helping herself to another sandwich. She’d suddenly realized she was starving. “We’ve got the books all packed and ready to go. The stalls have already been set up on the Worthington grounds, and the weather reporter is predicting sunny skies and exceptionally mild temperatures.”