The Lawley Case

by Diana Xarissa

  The door opened again a moment later. “Good afternoon,” Janet greeted the Fordhams.

  “Good afternoon,” Carol replied. “But what do you have there?”

  “We just received some new blankets from the woman who knits them,” Janet explained. Carol had already expressed interest in one of the blankets. Now she took a closer look at the new arrivals.

  “This is exquisite,” she said, running a hand down the white one. “It must have taken ages.”

  “Susan is very good,” Janet replied. “But she did mention that this one was very hard work.”

  “I have to have it,” Carol said. “Unless it’s crazy expensive, which it probably should be.”

  Janet told her the price that Joan had suggested.

  “Sold!” Carol laughed. She opened her handbag and dug out her wallet. “I even have the cash, because we went to the bank this afternoon.”

  Janet put the money into her pocket. “When I saw that blanket, I knew it would go quickly,” she told Carol. “But I didn’t expect it to go that quickly.”

  “What do you have there?” Judith demanded.

  Janet frowned. She hadn’t noticed the Armstrongs coming back down the stairs.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” Carol asked, holding up her new blanket.

  “If you like that sort of thing, I suppose,” Judith sniffed. “I prefer unique items to mass-produced products in that way.”

  “That blanket was knitted by hand by a local woman,” Janet said.

  “Is that what she told you?” Judith asked. “Because I don’t believe it. They churn these things out in factories in China for pennies and then pass them along to unsuspecting westerners who can’t tell the difference.”

  “I can tell the difference,” Janet said. “I used to knit a great deal and I can tell the difference between machine knitting and hand knitting. I can assure you that this blanket and everything on this table was all made by hand.”

  Judith glanced over the table and then shook her head. “I’m not saying it isn’t well done, but Malcolm and I have travelled a great deal. I’ve seen the factories where they make these things. You mustn’t feel too foolish. Many so-called experts can be taken in by some of the better quality items.”

  Janet bit her tongue and counted slowly to ten in her head. Arguing with guests was never a good idea, and she really didn’t want to give Malcolm and Judith any excuse for demanding their money back.

  “Darling, we need to get ready for dinner,” Edgar said.

  Carol nodded. She gave Janet an uncertain look and then left the room with her blanket. Janet hoped that Carol’s love for the blanket hadn’t been diminished by Judith’s comments.

  “I hope I haven’t upset her,” Judith said with a nasty smirk.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Janet lied. She went to work rearranging things on the table to fill the space that the white blanket had formerly occupied. After a moment, Judith turned and walked away.

  “Let’s go and try to find somewhere with edible food,” she said to her husband. The pair walked out the front door, leaving it open behind them.

  When Carol and Edgar came down a few minutes later, Janet was quick to reassure the woman.

  “I can take you to meet Susan if you’d prefer,” she offered. “Or I can give you your money back, if you’re not still in love with the blanket.”

  “I do still love it, but I’m not sure,” Carol replied. “One of my favourite things about it was that it was handmade. If it isn’t, well, it simply isn’t as special as I thought.”

  “It’s definitely handmade. As I said, you can have your money back if you’re unsure,” Janet replied. “I’ve no doubt it will find another buyer almost immediately, and Susan did say she wasn’t going to make any more like it because it took too much time and energy.”

  “Did she? I’ll have to think about it,” Carol said. She and Edgar left a moment later, with Carol still frowning over her decision.

  Feeling angry with Judith, Janet went to find her sister. Joan was in the kitchen, making them both dinner.

  “You look upset,” she commented as Janet walked into the room.

  Janet repeated the conversation that Joan had missed, leaving Joan shaking her head. “I do wish the Armstrongs would hurry up and leave already,” she said when Janet was done. “Maybe if we offered them their money back, they’d go.”

  “They don’t deserve their money back. In fact, they should be made to pay extra for being so difficult,” Janet fumed.

  “Yes, well, have some chicken and leek pie and a slice of jam roly-poly and you’ll feel better.”

  Janet couldn’t argue with her sister, and Joan was right, she did feel better after she’d eaten. Once the dinner dishes were loaded into the dishwasher, she and Joan settled down in front of the television.

  “How’s Michael?” Janet asked during a commercial break.

  “He’s fine. We’d made plans to have dinner together tonight, back when I thought we were only going to have one set of guests tonight. Once the Armstrongs arrived, I cancelled our plans.”

  “You should have gone anyway,” Janet told her. “I can handle the guests on my own for a few hours. Anyway, they’ve all gone out.”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t have to deal with them on your own if they are here. Michael doesn’t mind. Apparently there is some football match on the telly tonight.”

  Janet laughed. Joan had never shown any interest in men in her younger days, even while Janet had gone through several boyfriends. Both sisters had been surprised, then, when Michael Donaldson, who lived in the semi-detached house across the street, had begun to court Joan. After a shaky start, the pair had settled into a comfortable relationship, but Joan usually tried to avoid making plans with the man when the bed and breakfast was fully booked. The entire business had been Joan’s idea and Janet knew that Joan felt guilty whenever she left Janet to deal with their guests.

  “Anyway, I’m going to see him on Monday, after both sets of guests have gone,” Joan told her. “We’re going to spend the day together, touring stately homes.”

  “That sounds fun for you, but maybe not for Michael,” Janet suggested.

  “It was his idea. He suggested it. He said he thought I would need a break after having had so many guests lately, especially as we’ve so many more coming in the weeks ahead.”

  “Well, I hope you have fun,” Janet said.

  They watched a few old American sitcoms and then moved into the sitting room to wait for their guests to return home.

  Edgar and Carol were back first.

  “I’ve been thinking about it and I think I might not keep the blanket,” Carol said. “I mean, I do like it a lot, but I don’t really need any more blankets.”

  “That’s fine,” Janet assured her, mentally cursing Judith. “If you bring it back down now, I can give you your money back immediately.”

  Carol nodded. “I think that might be for the best,” she said.

  She headed up to her room while Joan went to get the money out of the small safe in her bedroom. While they were both gone, the door opened again.

  “I can’t imagine how you live here,” Judith said as she stomped into the house. “We’ve yet to find anywhere with edible food or decent service.”

  “You didn’t like the French restaurant?” Janet asked.

  “We didn’t go there. We thought we should simply try to the little café up the road,” Judith replied.

  “And you didn’t like it?”

  “It was dire. The food was incredibly ordinary and the waitress was stupid. In the end, we had to demand to speak to the manager,” Malcolm said. “And he wasn’t much better than the waitress had been.”

  “That is a shame. I’ve always had good service and very good food there,” Janet said.

  “In the end, the manager only took one of our meals off the bill. He said since we’d eaten everything, we mustn’t have been too unhappy. I told him that we were simply starving after a
most unsatisfactory lunch,” Judith said.

  Poor Todd, Ted, and Stacey, Janet thought. “Perhaps you’d be better off somewhere closer to Derby,” she suggested.

  “Perhaps. But we’re too tired to think about that right now. For now, we just need to go up to our tiny little bedroom and try to sleep,” Malcolm said.

  Judith crossed to the table behind Janet. “It’s quite chilly in our room,” she said. “An extra blanket would help.”

  “We have more blankets upstairs. I’ll walk up with you and get you one,” Janet replied.

  “I can just take one of these,” Judith said. “I did rather like that white one, though. I don’t suppose the woman who bought it changed her mind after I pointed out that it wasn’t what she thought it was?”

  “Even if she had, you’d have to purchase it if you wanted it in your room,” Janet told her.

  “How much did you charge her for it?”

  Janet told her what Carol had paid for the blanket.

  “That’s a lot of money for what it was, but under the circumstances, if she does decide she doesn’t want it, I’ll buy it from you for that price,” Judith said.

  “I’ll let you know,” Janet said, determined to keep the beautiful white blanket far away from the horrible woman.

  “There’s no need for that,” Carol said from the doorway. “I can see now that you were just saying horrible things about the blanket so that I would return it and you could snap it up. Well, I won’t give you the satisfaction. I’m keeping this blanket and I’m going to love having it.”

  Judith stared at her for a minute and then shrugged. “As I said, it’s cold in our room. That was the only reason I wanted another blanket. I would have thought, with the price we’re paying for our tiny room, that we would have adequate heating.”

  “You can adjust the temperature in your room yourself,” Joan said as she walked back into the room. “I showed you how to do that when I took you to your room.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Judith snapped.

  “I can show you again now, after I’ve found you some more blankets,” Joan offered.

  “We won’t need more blankets if we can adjust the temperature, will we?” Edgar said.

  “Come along, then, let me show you again,” Joan said. She turned and walked out of the room. After a moment, Malcolm and Judith followed.

  “I’m sorry,” Carol told Janet. “I let that awful woman’s lies make me question my own eyes. I can see that the blanket was handmade by someone with tremendous talent. No doubt she could see that as well. I promise you I will treasure this blanket.”

  “It truly is lovely. I’m just glad you’re going to appreciate it,” Janet said.

  When Joan came down a short while later, she was shaking her head. “Those two are determined to get their money back, one way or another,” she said. “I checked their room again after they went out for dinner and I found that the control knob for their thermostat had been removed. I found it in the desk drawer and replaced it. No doubt they thought that when I went up with them I would find it missing and would be forced to compensate them for not having heating in their room.”

  Janet shook her head. “I wish I could have seen their faces when you opened the door and the knob was in place.”

  Joan laughed. “It just about made up for the trouble they’re causing,” she said. “But now I’m going to bed. I can’t help but hope that they’ll decide to leave tomorrow.”

  In her bedroom, Janet snuggled up with Aggie. “I really don’t like our guests,” she confided to her pet. “Edgar and Carol Fordham are lovely, but Malcolm and Judith Armstrong are terrible.”

  “Yooowwll,” Aggie replied.

  “Does that mean they’re criminals?” Janet said. Aggie had been useful in the past at identifying criminals, although Janet hadn’t mentioned that skill to her sister, at least not yet.

  Aggie shrugged and rolled over on her side. As she began to lick her paw, Janet wondered about the men that Stuart had overheard at the garden centre.

  “What about Nick Berry?” she asked.

  Aggie kept licking and didn’t reply.

  “Okay, what about Jim Rodgers?”

  “Yoooowwwlll,” Aggie said.

  “Martin Lawley?”

  Aggie went back to her grooming.

  “Martin mentioned his neighbours. What were their names?” Janet muttered. “Jasper Jones?”

  Aggie switched to licking a different paw.

  “What about Joseph Jones? Janet tried.

  “Yooooowwwlll,” Aggie said.

  Janet lay back on the pillows and tried to think. If Aggie was right, the two men in the garden centre were probably Jim and Joseph. Now Janet just had to find a way to let Robert know which men he should be investigating.

  Chapter 8

  Janet helped Joan with breakfast the next morning, serving all of their guests in the dining room. The added distance from the Armstrongs made them slightly more bearable. They limited their complaints to the quality of the orange juice, something that Joan purchased in a carton, which was just as well. Janet wouldn’t have tolerated any complaints about her sister’s cooking, not when she knew how wonderful it was. Once both couples left for the day, the sisters cleaned the guest rooms.

  “You start on the Fordhams’ room,” Joan told Janet. “It’s my turn to deal with whatever the Armstrongs have left for us today.”

  She opened the door and Janet held her breath. “It isn’t as bad as yesterday,” Janet said happily. “We need to make sure they eat in the dining room every morning.”

  When the chores were out of the way, the pair ate a light lunch together. After that, Janet curled up in the library with a book. She quickly found that she couldn’t focus, however, as she couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Aggie the previous evening.

  “I need an outing,” she told Joan a short while later.

  Joan was busy baking biscuits. “I have a prescription that needs collecting from the chemist’s. I was going to go later, but if you’re that bored, you can go and get it for me.”

  “I will, and maybe I’ll go and see William while I’m there,” Janet replied. She and the antiques dealer had agreed to take things slowly, but it had been weeks since they’d spoken. Janet couldn’t help but wonder if William had found someone else or if something was wrong. She’d been unable to work up the nerve to ring him, but if she was going to be in the shop next door to his, well, it would be rude not to visit.

  Janet went up to her room to get ready to go out. She ran a comb through her shoulder-length grey bob and then patted some powder on her nose. A fresh coat of lipstick finished her efforts. “You’ll have to do,” she told her reflection, patting a hip that was more rounded than she might have liked. Joan, even though she cooked and baked regularly, had always been slender. Janet, who rarely did either, tended to be a good deal curvier. While people always insisted that the sisters looked alike, Janet didn’t agree. They did share the same hairstyle and blue eyes, but as far as Janet was concerned, that was where the resemblance ended.

  “I’ll be back soon,” she told Joan as she collected the car keys from the kitchen drawer.

  “No need to rush,” Joan replied. “I’ll plan dinner for six, if that suits you.”

  “I’m sure that will be fine, unless William asks me to have dinner with him.”

  “Let me know if you do make plans with William. Maybe I’ll invite Michael over for your share of the roast chicken and apple crumble.”

  “If it’s apple crumble for pudding, I’ll be home,” Janet laughed. “You know it’s my favourite.”

  Joan grinned. “I thought you deserved a treat after having to deal with our guests this week.”

  “I do, at that, and so do you.”

  “It’s a good thing I like apple crumble, then, isn’t it?”

  As Janet headed for the door, she tried to think. What was Joan’s favourite pudding? Was she a terrible sister for not knowing?
Joan knew hers because Joan was the one who always prepared their meals. There was no reason why Janet had to know Joan’s choice, though. Joan could make her own favourite whenever she wanted it. Still feeling slightly unsettled, Janet drove into Doveby Dale and parked in the small car park for the shops.

  “Ah, good afternoon,” Owen Carter said from behind the counter at the chemist’s shop. “How are you today?”

  “I’m fine,” Janet replied. She and her sister both liked the tall man who was in his late forties. He’d been sent to manage the shop when Michael Donaldson sold it to a large national chain. After dealing with some ill health, Owen was back to running the shop, and Janet couldn’t remember the last time she’d been there when he hadn’t been the one behind the counter. “How are you?”

  “I’m very well, thank you.”

  “I’m here for Joan’s prescription.”

  “Ah, yes, let me find that for you.”

  Janet looked around the shop for a few minutes while Owen searched through a large box. “This is a good price for tissues,” she said. “I may have to buy a few boxes.”

  “It is a good price. We aren’t carrying that brand anymore, so we’re clearing them out. I have several more cases of them in the back, so I’d love it if you’d buy a few boxes.”

  “Can you give me a better price if I buy a whole case?” Janet asked, thinking that their guests seemed to go through an awful lot of tissues.

  Owen named a price that seemed very reasonable to Janet. “Yes, please,” she said.

  “Here’s Joan’s prescription,” he said. “If you can sign for it, I’ll go and get your case of tissues.”

  Janet signed and then Owen loaded the large case into her boot for her.

  “Thank you very much,” she said. “I wasn’t looking for tissues, but they’ll definitely come in handy.”

  With Joan’s bottle of tablets in her handbag, Janet looked over at the door to WTC Antiques. For a moment she thought about simply getting into the car and driving home. While she was arguing with herself, another car drove into the lot. Janet’s heart skipped a beat when she recognised it as Martin’s car. She stood very still, wishing she could make herself invisible as Nick and Jim climbed out of the car.