India walked toward the front of the room. “We’ve put the lectern here. Will that be all right? Or would you rather have it elsewhere?”
“That’s fine,” Penelope reassured her as she took off her glasses and polished them on her shirttail.
The frames were large, square, and a dark tortoise. Penelope’s sister had encouraged her to get contact lenses but Penelope didn’t like the idea of poking herself in the eye with a piece of plastic. Besides, she thought the glasses made her look more serious.
She took out her notes to go over them one more time. She was confident of her material—less confident in her ability to deliver it. It was one thing to speak to a group of Gothic novel enthusiasts and quite another to keep a more diverse audience entertained.
Soon the first few people began to shuffle into the room. Penelope glanced at her watch. Five more minutes. She hoped she’d have a bigger crowd than this.
A minute later a whole group of people arrived and began to choose seats. Penelope recognized the headmistress of the Oakwood School for Girls, a boarding school just outside of Upper Chumley. She was a frequent visitor to the Open Book.
Slowly the rows of chairs filled with people, leaving only a vacant chair here and there. Penelope smiled at the audience, spread out her notes, cleared her throat, and began.
“The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole is considered to be the first example of the Gothic novel,” she said. “Walpole was the fourth Earl of Orford and had a very interesting career.”
Penelope was just beginning to work up a head of steam when a frantic scream rang out.
Along with everyone else in the room, she turned toward the door, in the direction from which the sound had come. Within seconds there was another scream and the sound of footsteps thundering down the corridor. The noise was cut off, became a gurgle, and finally ended in silence, which was almost as startling as the scream had been.
Everyone was catching their breath when Gladys hurtled into the room. Her normally ruddy complexion had been drained white. She stared at the audience gathered for Penelope’s talk, her milky eyes wide and bulging.
“There’s a body,” she said finally, her breath coming in gasps. “I went down to the basement to get some more pasties from the freezer the duke is letting us use for the fest. I couldn’t hardly believe me eyes.” She burst into tears.
Penelope managed to hide her own shock at Gladys’s announcement and instead went over to her and put her arm around her. “You poor thing.”
“There’s a body,” Gladys said, giving a loud hiccough. “It’s her. She’s dead.”
And she burst into tears again.
“She’s going to faint!” someone yelled.
Penelope took Gladys by the arm and lowered her into a chair.
“Put your head between your knees,” India commanded, coming up behind Penelope.
Her tone of voice was bracing as if that would help Gladys pull herself together and stiffen her upper lip.
Penelope crouched down so that she was nearer to eye level with Gladys, patted her knee reassuringly, and looked up. “Can someone fetch a glass of water?”
She thought longingly of Mabel’s bottle of Jameson tucked under the counter at the Open Book. That was what Gladys really needed.
A chair scraped against the floor as someone got up and started toward the door. “There’s a lemonade stand outside. Will that do?”
“A good strong cup of tea with plenty of sugar would do better,” India said to the young man. “See if you can bring a cup, would you?”
She waved a hand at the young man and he took off at a trot.
Penelope wasn’t sure what it was that Gladys had seen, but she was quite certain it couldn’t have been a body. Whose body? And why on earth would there be a body in Worthington’s cellar? Surely Gladys was imagining it.
“Maybe we should go check the basement ourselves?” Penelope hoped she wasn’t being TSTL. She’d saved her protagonist Annora from that fate—was she heading into danger herself?
“Excellent idea,” India said.
She appeared to be disappointed at not having thought of it herself.
“Follow me,” India said as she swept toward the door.
Penelope followed in her wake. In spite of her bravado, she felt a quiver of unease that grew as India led the way down a corridor and to a heavy oak door set in the stone wall that led to the cellar.
She pulled it open.
“Do be careful. The stairs have been worn down over the centuries and are quite uneven.”
The air became cooler and damper the lower they descended, and Penelope wished she had a sweater to drape over her shoulders. She was beginning to regret all the Stephen King books she’d read as a child under the covers with a flashlight when she was supposed to be sleeping.
The basement was surprisingly clean and well kept—no cobwebs hanging from the arches or dust blowing across the floor in the draft. It was well lit with electric lights in sconces along the walls and pendant lights hanging from the ceiling.
“Electricity was installed by the sixth Duke of Upper Chumley-on-Stoke in 1887,” India said as they walked along. “And I believe it was Worthington’s grandfather who installed the wine cellar,” she said as they passed a recessed area where racks of wine were visible through a wrought iron grate. “Worthington himself is quite a connoisseur.”
Penelope peered through the grate at the bottles. What she knew about wine could be summed up in two words—red and white. Whenever she bought a bottle for herself, she was more concerned with the numbers on the price tag than the year of the vintage.
“The kitchen used to be down here as well. Of course it was moved upstairs decades ago. Today’s help wouldn’t be content finding themselves working in the cellar. Back then, they were grateful to have a job, and now it’s all protests about salaries and working conditions and who knows what else.”
India took a step and suddenly slipped.
Penelope grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?”
“Quite, thank you. I seem to have stepped on something.”
India bent down and picked up a small bead. She held it between her thumb and index finger.
“What is it?” Penelope said.
India put the bead in the palm of her hand. “It looks like a pearl. It’s from a piece of jewelry belonging to some bygone Worthington ancestor no doubt.” India tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. “No sense in leaving it on the floor where someone else might step on it and fall.”
They continued their search, peering into all the corners and the darker recesses between the arches but still didn’t see anything resembling a body unless you counted a suit of armor and even Gladys wasn’t fanciful enough to have convinced herself that that was a human body, although Penelope took the precaution of lifting the visor and peering inside just to be sure.
“I wonder what it is Gladys mistook for a body,” Penelope said as they stopped in front of a large walk-in freezer.
“I can’t imagine,” India said. “Nothing seems amiss.” She frowned. “Is that door slightly ajar?” She pointed to the thin line of light outlining the edge of the freezer door and tut-tutted under her breath. “Gladys must not have shut it properly.”
“I’ll get it.” Penelope stepped forward, put the flat of her hand against the door, and pushed. She turned toward India. “The door won’t close. Something must be in the way.”
She grabbed hold of the handle. The door was indeed somewhat ajar. She pulled it open all the way. The bright light inside the freezer made her blink for a moment and she didn’t, at first, realize what she was looking at.
“Good heavens!” India exclaimed, her face suddenly drained white. She looked at Penelope. “It’s Regina Bosworth. What on earth is she doing in the freezer?”
“I don’t know,” Penelope said, her
voice quavering slightly. “But I do believe she’s dead.”
FOUR
She can’t be.” India bent and patted Regina on the cheek. “Come on, Regina. Wake up. Are you feeling unwell? Have you fainted?” India gasped. “Is that blood?” She straightened up and staggered back a step, pointing at the blood pooled alongside Regina’s body. “It looks as if Regina’s been shot. How on earth . . . it must have been some sort of accident.”
India’s pale skin had turned even paler and her hands, with their brown spots and prominent blue veins, trembled uncontrollably.
Penelope felt her head swim and for a moment, the room appeared to be swirling around her. It made her feel sick to her stomach. She was grateful she hadn’t eaten anything recently. She had anticipated all sorts of adventures in England—finding a dead body hadn’t been one of them.
When the spinning sensation stopped and her stomach settled down, Penelope began looking around. “But there’s no gun,” she said. “If she accidentally shot herself, there’d be a gun nearby, wouldn’t there? It would have fallen from her hand when she collapsed.”
“Yes, of course,” India said. “You don’t suppose . . .”
“Someone has to have shot her,” Penelope said bluntly. “And then taken the gun away with them.”
“That means . . . murder,” India whispered, her voice quavering.
Penelope looked down at Regina’s lifeless body crumpled in the freezer. She hadn’t particularly liked the woman—Regina had been insufferably bossy, snobby, and opinionated—but certainly she didn’t deserve to die like this. No one did.
Penelope broke out in a cold, clammy sweat. She started shivering and had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. It was one thing to read or even write about murder and quite another thing to come across a real dead body. Nothing could prepare you for that.
For a moment she and India were immobilized by shock and then they both started talking at once.
“We’d better—” India began.
“I think we should—” Penelope said at the same time.
India swayed slightly and Penelope looked at her in alarm.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. Quite. A bit of a surprise that’s all. One doesn’t often find a corpse stuck in a freezer.”
“We should call the police,” Penelope said. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, punched in the numbers, and crossed her fingers. She let out a sigh of relief when the call went through. She waited but the phone at the other end rang and rang. Where was all that British efficiency, she wondered?
“There’s no answer,” she said to India. “Someone always answers nine-one-one calls.”
“Is that what you dialed? Well, no wonder you’re not getting an answer. That’s in America. Here we dial nine nine nine for the police.”
Penelope punched the numbers in on her cell, explained the situation to the dispatcher at the other end when she answered, and then clicked off the call.
“They said someone would be here shortly.”
“We’d better go upstairs, then,” India said, giving Regina’s body one last glance, “and make sure no one comes down here and tramples the scene.”
Penelope was startled. She didn’t expect someone like India to be conversant with police lingo and the words sounded strange coming from her. People had hidden depths, she reminded herself.
“It’s probably best if we tell everyone there’s been a slight delay,” India said, “and send them back to their seats. I’m sure the police will want to speak to them or at least take their names and addresses.”
“I agree. And the less said about the incident the better.”
“Yes. It’s probably best if we simply say there’s been an accident.” India shuddered. “I can’t imagine the panic if we mentioned the word murder.”
A buzz of voices, sounding like a swarm of bees, rose from the anxious crowd clustered in the hall when Penelope and India emerged from the cellar.
“There’s been an accident,” India announced in imperious tones that even the queen would have envied. “Nothing to be alarmed about.” She held up a hand as the crowd began to murmur in louder tones. “The authorities are on their way. There will be a slight delay in Miss Parish’s talk. If everyone would please go back to their seats.”
The crowd hesitated, whispering among themselves and shifting from foot to foot, until a young man in a navy blazer with a name tag pinned to his lapel came along and shooed them all back toward the room like a sheepdog herding its flock.
India looked around. “What’s happened to Gladys? Surely the police will want to talk to her.”
Violet Thatcher, the wife of the vicar of St. Andrew’s, drifted toward them. She was thin to the point of being gaunt, with sparse curly hair and clothes that looked as if she’d put them together from a jumble sale, which she most likely had.
“Poor Gladys,” she said when she reached them. “I got her a nice hot cup of tea but it was impossible to calm her. She was hysterical.” Violet made a face. “She never did have much self-control. In the end, we decided it was best to summon the ambulance that Worthington had arranged to have stationed outside the fest in case of an emergency. They’ve taken Gladys to hospital. They assured me that they would be able to give her something there to soothe her nerves.”
“Yes, of course,” India said. “Quite. Excellent idea.”
Penelope was amazed at how quickly India had regained her sangfroid. Leave it to the British to keep a stiff upper lip. She herself felt a bit wobbly in the knees. She would have liked to sit down, but if India could handle this, so could she. She didn’t want to be seen as a namby-pamby American.
“I imagine they’ll be sending Constable Cuthbert around,” India said.
Penelope frowned. Surely they were going to need someone with more experience than a mere constable. Walking a beat was hardly preparation for dealing with a murder.
And the fact that he was named Cuthbert did little to convince her of his competence. The name brought a mental picture to mind of one of those roly-poly toys that popped back up every time you knocked it down. Penelope had barely formed the thought when a rotund man in a crisp blue uniform stepped somewhat hesitantly into the room. He was bald, with an impressive handlebar mustache and a belly that strained the buttons of his shirt. He smiled as he approached them and Penelope noticed he had a sizable gap between his two front teeth. It was as if the vision in her head had suddenly materialized.
“Good day, ladies,” Cuthbert said, bowing slightly at the waist. His words came out with the hint of a whistle as air rushed through the space in his teeth. “I understand there’s been some sort of accident in the cellar?”
“You might say that, yes,” India said rather dryly. “I do think the situation calls for a detective, though.”
“Detective Maguire should be along shortly.” Cuthbert looked around. “Meanwhile, I’ll guard the door to the cellar, shall I? Make sure no one tries to slip down there.”
Constable Cuthbert plodded down the hall toward the cellar door. A few people were still milling around but when nothing more exciting happened, they soon became bored and went back to their seats in the library.
Penelope was beginning to wonder how much longer before the detective arrived when a man came walking down the hall toward them. Penelope squinted. He looked vaguely familiar but that didn’t seem possible given that she knew so few people in Chumley. Perhaps she’d passed him on the street or stood in line in back of him at Tesco?
His face came into focus as he got closer and Penelope finally realized where she’d seen him before—standing next to his car after he’d had to slam on his brakes to avoid her MINI because she was driving down the wrong side of the road.
She felt her face begin to burn but forced herself to hold her chin up. Perhaps he wouldn’t remember the incident or pe
rhaps he wouldn’t recognize her.
“You’re the girl who nearly ran into me the other day,” he said as he came up to them. “At least we’re not meeting head on this time.”
So much for that, Penelope thought.
“Is this another one of your victims?” He grinned and gestured toward the cellar door where Constable Cuthbert was patiently standing guard. He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I’m Detective Brodie Maguire.” He held out his hand.
He wasn’t a particularly tall man, but his hand was large and easily enveloped Penelope’s own. His palm was warm and she realized that hers had turned to ice. He shook Penelope’s hand, then turned to India and took hers.
He had light brown hair with a reddish tint that was close cropped on the sides but long enough to curl slightly on top and at his neck and a face that crinkled when he smiled. Penelope noticed again that, despite not being in the least bit handsome, he was a very attractive man.
She was also grateful for his presence. She was more than ready to hand everything over to the police and get herself a nice cup of strong tea—preferably spiked with something like Mabel’s Jameson.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wait,” he said, looking at Penelope and India. “I’d like to view the scene first and then I’ll have some questions for you, if you don’t mind.” He frowned. “You did find the body, is that correct?”
“Not exactly,” India said. “That would be Gladys. Gladys Watkins. Her husband is Bruce Watkins who owns the Pig in a Poke on the high street here in Chumley.”
Maguire nodded. “I’ll need to talk to her.”
“I’m afraid she’s been taken to hospital,” India said.
Maguire looked alarmed. “Was she injured?”
“Not at all,” India assured him. “She became hysterical and needed treatment.” India’s tone of voice made it clear that she herself would have stayed calm under similar circumstances.
Murder in the Margins Page 4