An Invitation to Murder: An amateur sleuth murder mystery (A Mary Blake Mystery Book 1)

by AG Barnett

  She couldn’t do that to Dot. She was going to have to confess to slipping Melanie the pills before the police found them in her system, but that wouldn’t be for a while yet, surely?

  In the meantime, she would find out as much as she could about how Melanie had died. Hopefully, she would discover that the pills had been nothing to do with it.

  “I’m just going to check on Freddie,” she said over her shoulder, leaving through the French doors before anyone could protest or ask to join her.

  Chapter Ten

  The air was brisk, but not too cold. The sun’s rays that lit up the grounds before her were strong enough to keep the chill at bay. She scanned the area in front of her for any sign of the actor, but he was nowhere to be seen. At the bottom of the gently sloping grass in front of her was the lake and beside it, the stone folly. If he had headed anywhere, it would almost certainly be there. She moved towards it, trying to ignore the many memories that were fighting for attention in her mind.

  The folly had been another favourite spot of hers and Pea’s when they had been younger. They had so often gone there, hidden from the eyes of the house behind them, and made little paper boats that they would sail across the water.

  The folly was a small, square building containing a single stone bench that overlooked the lake before it. It was a peaceful and tranquil space where they had huddled eating chocolate sneaked from the kitchen and watching the geese swim by.

  The lake was much as she remembered it, with reed beds dotted along its banks, a few groups of lily pads floating on its surface, and the geese who honked bitterly at each other as they splashed in the water on the far side.

  She wondered momentarily how long geese lived, and if any of these were ones she had seen as goslings many years ago.

  As the narrow, gravel path she was following rounded the folly she saw Freddie Hale lying across the stone bench, staring up at the ceiling.

  “You OK, Freddie?” she said, her voice echoing around the hard surface of the structure.

  “Oh, bloody marvellous,” he replied bitterly. He sighed and swung his legs down so that Mary could sit next to him.

  “I know what she was like,” he said quietly. “I’m not an idiot. Melanie had a lot of issues. She used to take them out on everyone else, but I think really she was a bit damaged herself.”

  “Aren’t we all,” Mary said, sighing.

  “She really did think you were great, you know. She was excited about taking over your character and trying to do it justice.”

  Mary smiled and nodded at him, but this version of how Melanie felt about her didn’t tally in her mind with the barbed tongue and sarcastic manner she had encountered in the late actress.

  Suddenly she saw in his face the reason his version of Melanie was so distorted.

  “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  He looked away across the lake. “Does that surprise you?”

  “It does, actually,” Mary answered. “Flintock has just been telling everyone how he put you two together for the publicity.”

  Freddie’s gaze snapped back to her, his face flaring in anger. “Bloody Dave! He shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” he answered after a moment’s pause. “He set it up. I hadn’t even met her until we went out to a club together so that Dave could tip off the press.”

  “But it changed for you?”

  “For both of us,” he answered quickly. “We were both from the same world, we just clicked.”

  “And what did Flintock make of that?”

  “He didn’t care, all he’s ever worried about is getting people talking about me and making sure the press is following my every bloody move. This is all his fault, you know. If he could have just left us alone.”

  “I gather Melanie wasn’t too fond of Flintock?”

  Freddie laughed, shaking his head. “She thought he was a worm, and she’s right. She wanted me to ditch him and sort out my own career.”

  “Which is what she did?”

  “Yes,” he said, a faraway look in his eye. “Melanie was very determined that the only person she could ever rely on was herself.”

  Mary sensed that there was frustration there. Had Melanie not allowed Freddie to be as close as he wanted them to be? He said she had felt the same way about him, but she had been cold enough to him last night and had refused to share a room with him.

  There was something else though. Freddie didn’t seem himself. It was though the words he was saying were playing from a tape—he was on autopilot. Melanie’s death appeared to have broken him somehow.

  “I should have gone with her last night,” Freddie continued, “made sure she was OK.”

  “From what I saw, she didn’t want you to,” Mary said.

  “No, as I said, she always thought she could handle everything herself. She was ill though and I should have gone with her.”

  “I’d better get back.” Mary stood, keen to avoid revisiting Melanie’s mysterious illness. “It’s freezing out here. Why don’t you come back with me?”

  Freddie nodded and rose before following her out of the stone folly with a solemn expression.

  “Does she have any family?” she asked as they followed the path back to the house.

  “I don’t think so, she never really talked about it but I got the impression her mother had died when she was young and her dad left the scene ages ago.”

  Mary felt a wave of sadness wash over her. Melanie Shaw might have been a spiteful young woman, but maybe she had good reason to be.

  “I just wish she’d let me in last night,” Freddie moaned.

  “She was probably already unconscious by then,” Mary said soothingly.

  “No, she answered me.”

  Mary turned to him in surprise.

  “Melanie answered you after I had seen you last night?”

  “Yes, she told me she was fine and just wanted to be on her own. I should have forced her to let me in.”

  “And how did she sound?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, looking at Mary curiously. “It was through the door, she just told me to go away.”

  “That was late,” Mary said thoughtfully. “She must have fallen between around two and eight or so in the morning.”

  “How do you know it must have been before eight?”

  “Well, we found her at, what? Nine? And the blood had dried quite a lot, so I was giving it an hour or so.”

  They had reached the French doors to the sitting room and Freddie paused as his hand landed on the handle. He looked at Mary with something akin to disgust at her discussing Melanie’s blood in such a matter-of-fact way. “I think I need to go and have a lie-down,” he said gruffly, before entering the room and striding across it, ignoring the calls of Dave Flintock, whose nose seemed to have fully recovered.

  “What did he say?” Flintock asked Mary as she came through the doors and into the room.

  “Nothing, he’s just upset. He’s lost someone he was close to.”

  Flintock gave a mocking laugh and shook his head as he looked back at his phone.

  “He needs to pull himself together, I’ve got people queueing up to interview him already.”

  “All right?” Dot said as Mary joined her and Pea over in the corner of the room by the piano.

  “Fine,” Mary said, looking around at the TV that Steve Benz and Emily Hanchurch were watching from the sofa.

  “The press is already here,” Mary said, nodding to the screen where news crews were standing outside the familiar gates of Blancham Hall, while a rolling ticker tape ran across the bottom of the screen, which declared Melanie Shaw dead.

  “They are,” Pea answered. “Bloody hundreds of them out at the gates already. The police are keeping them back for now, but you know what they’re like. Um, Mary—”

  His change in tone brought Mary’s gaze away from the set and back to him.

  “What is it?”

  Pea turned
to Dot, looking sheepish.

  “They know you’re staying here somehow, Mary, and they’re putting two and two together,” Dot said flatly.

  “What do you mean putting two and two together?” Mary asked. She already knew exactly what they meant, but for some reason, she was enjoying seeing them squirm over telling her. Maybe some slight payback for keeping secrets.

  “They think you might have bumped her off,” Pea said.

  “Oh, right,” Mary said, looking at the both of them.

  “You don’t seem very shocked,” Pea laughed. “You didn’t actually do it, did you?!” He laughed again, but then stopped as he saw Mary’s face.

  “Bloody hell Mary, you didn’t, did you?!”

  “Of course I didn’t!” Mary hissed, looking around to see if the others had overheard their conversation, but all were engrossed in the news report.

  “What is it, Mary?” Dot asked.

  Mary looked around again before leaning in closer to the two of them. “I may have done something a little bit silly last night.”

  “You gave Melanie my pills, didn’t you?” Dot said.

  “What?!” Pea said loudly, making the rest of the room look up.

  Mary shushed him urgently and waited for the others in the room to turn back to the TV before continuing.

  “How did you know?” she asked Dot.

  “Oh, it wasn’t hard to figure out,” Dot sighed. “I noticed there were four pills missing when I went to take them this morning and then I thought about Melanie rushing off to bed and you getting her a drink just before.”

  “Will someone tell me what’s going on?!” Pea said excitedly.

  “I took some of Dot’s pills and slipped them to Melanie.”

  “Bloody hell!” Pea said, eyes wide in his thin face. “What were they?”

  “They were laxatives, if you must know,” Dot said primly, adjusting the plum-coloured cardigan she wore.

  “Oh, right,” Pea said, looking embarrassed and puzzled at the same time.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to do with what happened,” Mary said, her voice sounding more hopeful than anything, even to her own ears.

  “Well, how could it?” Pea asked. “I mean, she might be stuck on the toilet for a little bit, but they’re hardly likely to cause her head to get bashed in, are they?”

  “They could have interacted with some other medication,” Dot said, looking Mary in the eye.

  “You don’t really think…” Mary began but was cut off by her friend.

  “No, I’m sure it was nothing to do with it.” Dot said firmly. “But the police might not see it like that.”

  “The police? But they don’t think I had anything to do with it surely?”

  “Oh, come on, Mary,” Dot tutted. “Of course they do, you’ll be their prime suspect, and that’s before they discover you tried to poison her.”

  “I didn’t try and poison her!”

  “Do you think that’s what the press will say?”

  Mary opened her mouth but closed it again without saying anything. If she didn’t know better, she could have sworn that Dot was enjoying this.

  “This is good news in a way though,” Pea said. “I mean, Flintock might be an insufferable sod, but he’s right, this will be great for your career.”

  “Pea!” Mary said, shocked. “I wasn’t a big fan of Melanie, but bloody hell.”

  “Sorry,” he said, looking again at Dot. “But it’s important you get back on track career-wise.”

  Mary looked at Dot, who was decidedly not returning Pea’s furtive glances.

  “Why is it?” she asked coldly.

  “Sorry, why is what?”

  “Why is it so important I get my career back on track.”

  “Um,” Pea said before Dot cut across him.

  “We’re just worried about you, Mary, we’re your friends,” she said as though the matter was closed.

  Mary turned away from them in annoyance. There was something going on between the two of them, they were having secret meetings and seemed convinced that she was about to fall apart unless they got her back into work.

  Well, she was doing just fine, thank you very much. Yes, she had probably wallowed for a bit and drunk too many G&Ts, and, yes, she had slipped some laxatives into Melanie’s drink, but who wouldn’t have done the same in her situation?

  She realised that Dot and Pea were talking, discussing how they could get everyone some food, but she wasn’t really paying attention.

  Instead, she was watching the three people sitting on the sofa across the room. Flintock was still glued to his phone, only occasionally looking up at the TV screen while his stubby fingers whirled away on his keypad. Mary shuddered to think how he was using the situation to further Freddie Hale’s career.

  The two of more interest to her, though, were Steve Benz and Emily Hanchurch. Steve was slumped, his head leaning on his right hand as he stared listlessly at the screen. His eyes were puffy and red, his skin pale. Mary had the impression that he wasn’t so much watching the screen in front of him as just gazing at nothing.

  Emily Hanchurch, on the other hand, was much more alert. She was perched forward on the edge of the sofa like a very tall bird. Looking intently at the screen, but every few moments, turning to glance at Steve next to her.

  They were next to each other on the sofa, but Mary noticed that the distance between them seemed slightly wider than was natural. She wondered if they were maybe regretting their late-night tryst.

  There was something else about Steve that unsettled her. His eyes looked more than just in a daze—they looked switched off, as though he had checked out completely.

  “Speak of the devil,” Pea said, pulling his phone from his pocket and moving away from them.

  “Who?” Mary said, spinning around.

  “Hetty, I’d imagine, weren’t you listening?” Dot said, looking at her curiously.

  “She was supposed to be up here making breakfast but hasn’t turned up and it’s past lunch now. Is everything all right?”

  “Well, that’s a stupid bloody question, isn’t it?!” Mary said, folding her arms. “Of course I’m not all right! Melanie’s been murdered, half the world seems to think I’m the prime suspect and, to top it all, I actually might be once they find out I slipped her some pills just a few hours before she bashed her head open.”

  She had poured this out in a low, angry whisper, but now vented, her shoulders slumped as her eyes filled with tears.

  “Bloody hell, Dot,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “What if she fell because of the pills. What if it was all my fault?”

  “There’s no point in thinking like that until we know more,” Dot said firmly, “and whatever you do don’t say anything of the kind to the police.”

  “They’re going to find out eventually,” Mary said gloomily.

  “They will, but before they do, I’m going to tell them that I gave them to her.”

  Mary looked up at her friend in shock.

  “What are you talking about?!”

  “I’m going to tell them that the pills were mine and at some point in the night I thought I’d play a joke on Melanie and slipped her some.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not a child, Dot, I can look after myself.”

  “Believe me, this is best,” Dot said.

  Before Mary could protest further, Pea joined them again. “Hetty’s down at the front gate, apparently it’s chaos down there and the officers won’t let her through without say-so from the big boss up here at the house. I’ll go and ask this Inspector Corrigan if she can come up. We do have to eat, after all.”

  He grinned at them both and turned away, heading back towards the hallway.

  Pea was always uneasy whenever anyone was arguing around him and tended to talk incessantly to prevent the argument from continuing until he found an excuse to get away. Mary sensed that that was what had just happened here.

  She stared across at the TV, which was still
droning on in the background. The rolling news station it was set to had moved to back to its usual cycle of daily events. But the gates, which were just a few hundred yards from where they were standing, still reappeared periodically and scrolling across a yellow banner at the bottom of the screen in-between was the news of Melanie’s death. Seeing it on the screen suddenly made everything seem very real.

  “I’m not going to let you take the blame for something I’ve done, Dot,” Mary said firmly.

  “A fat lot of good your sense of integrity will do when the press is all over you because you’re the prime suspect in a murder case. Who knows what they’ll dig up?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, turning to her.

  Dot sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Look, I think we need to talk.”

  “You mean about how you and Pea seem to be having private little chats about me late at night?” Mary said, suddenly feeling a flash of anger pass through her. From Dot’s face, Mary knew her words had hit home. Her friend’s eyes widened and her skin paled before her cheeks flushed a deep red.

  “Don’t worry, I didn’t tell the police that you were up at all hours having secret meetings.”

  “We’ve only ever had your best interests in mind,” Dot said in a sad, resigned voice.

  There was something in the way she had said it that rocked Mary. How long had this been going on? How long had they been talking about her, plotting between them about how to manage her? Was she really that crazy?

  “For God’s sake!” a voice screamed from behind her. She spun around to see Steve Benz, his face contorted in fury as he loomed over Emily Hanchurch on the sofa.

  “A woman has died!” he continued. “Show some respect and bloody well leave me alone!” He stormed from the room, leaving Flintock cackling in his armchair.

  “I thought it was the actors that were supposed to be the drama queens?” he said, laughing. “The bloody producers are just as bad!”

  “Oh, be quiet, Flintock,” Mary said, moving across the room to Emily, who was sitting wide-eyed with tears streaming down her face.