From Devon With Death

by Stephanie Austin

  I laughed. ‘You’re just not used to them.’

  This wasn’t really what had upset her. Our Janet, she told me with disgust, had made the mistake of taking her to visit what sounded like a beautifully appointed residential home nearby, on the pretext of visiting one of Janet’s old friends.

  ‘“Isn’t it lovely here, Mum?”’ Maisie sneered in an imitation of her daughter’s voice. ‘I knew what she was up to. She must think I was born yesterday.’

  ‘She worries about you,’ I said in her defence.

  ‘Putting me in with a load of old biddies!’ Her apricot curls shook in outrage. ‘Loony, half of ’em are!’

  ‘She wants you close by, where she can come and visit you.’

  ‘Don’t you start!’ She eyed me wrathfully. ‘I told her, I was born in Ashburton, and I’m being buried here.’ She held up a crooked finger. ‘The only way I’m leaving this cottage is in my box. Mind you,’ she went on sorrowfully, ‘Ashburton’s not what it was. They ripped the heart out of the old town when they stopped the cattle markets …’

  ‘Well, foot and mouth—’ I began.

  ‘It did for the old farming families around here.’

  ‘There’s still lot of farming—’

  ‘They used to hold cattle fairs right out in the street,’ she carried on, ‘where North Street joins East and West Street. The Bull Ring, they used to call it …’

  ‘They still do,’ I told her, although you have to look hard to find the sign.

  ‘They used to drive the cows and sheep straight down to the railway station, right onto the train.’ She grunted. ‘Now we don’t even have a railway station any more …’

  ‘No,’ I sighed.

  ‘And they tore down the pannier market.’

  That was before Maisie was born. She was getting muddled. ‘All those pubs we used to have when my dad was a nipper … now we just got antique shops.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Who buys all these antiques? That’s what I want to know.’

  So do I.

  ‘Antique shops, wine bars,’ she sniffed indignantly. ‘What’s the old town coming to?’ She rapped her knotty knuckles on the surface of her little table in protest. ‘The banks have gone … and now they’re trying to close down our fire station … It’ll be the hospital next, you’ll see.’

  I listened to another ten minutes of this before I escaped to take Jacko out for his constitutional and to fill up the gaps in Maisie’s food supplies.

  Jacko felt it was his duty to remind everyone who was boss after his long absence and snapped and snarled at every dog we met, as well as giving it large to anything on the pavement that had wheels, like pushchairs and mobility scooters. He visibly swelled in importance during these encounters, bristling. He looked like a pot-scourer with teeth. I understood Our Janet’s happiness at parting from him, but wondered if it wasn’t only the dog she was glad to see the back of.

  I was kept awake all night. Rain came down hard, tap-dancing on the roof of the conservatory beneath my bedroom window. It gurgled down drainpipes, filled the weed-choked gutter and overflowed in a drizzling cascade onto the concrete path below where it tap-danced some more. My landlords, whose bedroom is on the other side of the house, were undisturbed by all this, and slept on.

  It was still pouring, though not as hard, as I took the dogs for their walk in the woods next morning. They didn’t mind muddy paths and dripping trees. They loved the swollen streams and wet undergrowth, the smell of damp earth. But I arrived in Sunflowers, after I’d delivered them home, looking and feeling a touch bedraggled. Adam, who I’d come to have a word with, was not best pleased to see me, my shiny yellow mac dripping onto the nice clean floor of his cafe and my wellies leaving muddy boot-prints.

  ‘You just come off a fishing boat?’ he joked, surveying me from behind the counter. There was a slightly apprehensive look in his eye. There usually is whenever I turn up in Sunflowers because my presence often means I shall demand something that involves him in DIY.

  ‘Well, I feel as if I’ve been at sea all night.’ I tore the sou’wester off my hair and deliberately shook out my curls, spraying the place with drips. I didn’t care. There didn’t seem to be any customers about. ‘When are you going to get that damned gutter cleared?’

  ‘It’s the magpies,’ he complained, wisely deciding he’d better make me a coffee. ‘They pinch the moss off the roof and drop it in the gutters.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if magpies are responsible for the buddleia that’s taken root halfway along, but it all needs clearing out.’

  ‘I’ll get round to it,’ he promised.

  ‘Before it rains again?’

  He sighed. ‘As soon as I’ve got time.’

  ‘That’s what you said the last time.’

  To be fair, Adam got up early and worked long hours in the cafe. He didn’t get much free time. He always looked tired. Also, he really didn’t like going up ladders. I decided not to nag him any further and accepted the large cappuccino as recompense for my nocturnal suffering.

  It was only as I turned, cup in hand, that I realised that this exchange had been observed from the corner of the cafe by Lottie, who was standing with her head on one side, the tip of her tail wagging, and Daniel Thorncroft, who seemed mightily amused as he surveyed me over the top of his specs.

  ‘Miss Browne with an “e”,’ he said, grinning, ‘come and sit with Lottie and me.’

  I couldn’t very well refuse, and he moved his laptop so I could put my coffee down. Lottie was pleased to see me, and we greeted each other enthusiastically before we settled down.

  ‘Did you enjoy the jazz, Miss B?’ Mr Thorncroft asked. I noticed he was no longer wearing the scary specs with the heavy frames, but had swopped them for smaller, wire-framed ones that suited him a lot better. Ms Swann’s influence, no doubt, I thought cynically. She’d be dressing him soon. Actually, that was a nice shirt he was wearing.

  ‘I thought it was a little frantic in places, but yes, on the whole.’

  ‘You know, I wonder about you, Miss B.’

  ‘Oh?’ I did my best not to sound interested, wondering if it was his constant tone of amused mockery that I found so infuriating.

  ‘I wonder what you’re doing here in Ashburton, that’s all. You don’t sound Devon born and bred.’

  ‘No, I was born in London,’ I admitted. ‘I’m what people around here call a blow-in.’ He was obviously waiting for further information, so I went on. ‘When I was growing up I used to spend my summer holidays with a cousin in Totnes …’

  He frowned. ‘Why? I mean … sorry to interrupt … but why with a cousin?’

  ‘I’m an orphan.’ As soon as I’d spoken, I wished I’d chosen my words differently. I’d sounded as if I still thought of myself as a lonely child.

  ‘Do you think an orphan always feels apart?’ he asked suddenly. ‘From other people, I mean?’

  I was taken aback by this sudden switch to what seemed like a serious question. There was no hint of mockery in his voice now, no twinkle of amusement in his storm-grey eyes. This was personal. I wondered if he was an orphan too.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered, telling the truth despite myself.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said with a sudden grin, ‘that was probably a very strange question. It’s just something Meredith and I were discussing the other night.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She lost her mother when she was quite young,’ he explained. ‘But I interrupted you. Please, carry on.’

  I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to. ‘Anyway,’ I continued after a moment, ‘we’d spent a lot of our time exploring the moor. I decided then I never wanted to live anywhere else.’

  ‘But not in Totnes?’

  Totnes was too sad for me since Cordelia died but I wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘Totnes has become very …’ I struggled to find the words for it, ‘conscious of itself … Ashburton seems more real, somehow.’

  He nodded as if he understood. �
�It certainly has its charms.’ I assumed by that he meant Meredith. ‘But this murder is a terrible thing,’ he went on. ‘I think I met her once, the victim.’

  ‘Jessie?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m sure she was the woman my aunt used to employ as a cleaner until a few years ago.’

  ‘You don’t know why she stopped employing her?’

  He shrugged. ‘Something to do with her move to Torquay, I expect.’

  ‘Probably.’ I pointed to his laptop ‘What about you? What do you do?’

  ‘I’m an environmental analyst.’

  I paused in lifting my cappuccino to my lips. ‘I don’t think I’m any the wiser.’

  ‘I crunch numbers, do costings, carry out feasibility studies, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Feasibility studies into what?’

  ‘Various environmental projects.’ He was being evasive, definitely cagey. ‘I’ve been working up in Scotland the last few months, took a couple of months off to try and sort out the mess my aunt left me with. My employers are very understanding, but I’ll have to go back there soon.’

  ‘And are you getting anywhere?’ I asked. ‘With Auntie’s mess?’

  He gave a grunt of laughter. ‘Not really.’ He was staring at me, smiling. I seemed to be amusing him again for some reason. ‘You’ve got foam on your top lip.’

  I groaned inwardly and wiped it away.

  ‘Well, it’s been lovely talking to you, Miss Browne with an “e”,’ he announced, suddenly standing up, ‘but Lottie and I have things to do.’ With that, he pocketed his specs, shrugged on his coat, packed his laptop under one arm and strode out.

  ‘Don’t let me keep you,’ I muttered to myself. Lottie, who’d been resting her head on my boot, rose and trotted off after him, turning in the doorway to look at me with an expression of sad enquiry before she left.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The only good thing you can say about February is that it’s short. Next to January, it’s probably the worst month to get born in, especially for people like poor old Morris who arrived on the 29th and only gets a real birthday once every four years. The upside of this is that technically he’s only eighteen and a half. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For a short month, it certainly packed a lot into itself, especially rain. It came down heavily almost every day, the deluge pouring off waterlogged fields, sending a slick wet glaze down the tarmac roads and churning the dry lanes to mud. It turned lambing into a miserable business and prevented me from doing many of my usual winter gardening jobs, tidying up herbaceous flower beds and pruning. Even the Tribe began to get unenthusiastic about going out in it. Schnitzel the sausage dog’s mum even bought him a raincoat. The clear, shallow stream that was once the River Ashburn, so quiet and well-behaved, turned into a deep, brown, boisterous torrent that frolicked noisily through the town, burbling as it went, sweeping along rafts of sticks to get stuck under bridges.

  After two weeks of my moaning about the downpour, my landlord finally climbed nervously up a ladder and dredged the muck from the gutter beneath my bedroom window, allowing me to sleep undisturbed.

  I settled back into my routine with Maisie while Chloe Berkeley-Smythe, utterly exhausted by the wet weather, began packing for her next cruise. Speculation about poor Jessie Mole’s murder continued, but more sporadically, the sense of shock fading as tales of sheep-rustling and theft of farm machinery superseded the identity of Cutty Dyer as the main topic of conversation.

  ‘No, madam, I’m very sorry,’ I could hear Morris on the telephone as I let myself into Druid Lodge. ‘I am afraid we never hire out costumes for parties … Well, because they come back damaged …’ He turned to give me a little wave as he listened to the strident female voice on the other end of the line. ‘I am sure you would be very careful with it,’ he went on, sounding genuinely apologetic, ‘but it’s other people, you see. It’s their glasses of red wine we have to worry about. It’s not as if you can stuff beaded chiffon in the washing machine … Well, you could try that fancy-dress shop in Exeter …’ He dropped the receiver as if it had burnt his fingers. ‘Rude cow!’ he muttered, shaking his head as he replaced it properly on its cradle. ‘That was for the Spring Ball up at Moorland Manor,’ he told me. ‘We’ve had a whole rash of these calls over the last couple of weeks.’

  The Spring Ball at the Moorland Manor hotel was a very swanky and expensive occasion held every year at the beginning of March. Tickets cost a fortune. ‘Sophie’s entered a competition in the Dartmoor Gazette to win tickets,’ I told him.

  ‘This year they’ve decided to make it fancy dress,’ Morris sighed, ‘the roaring twenties!’

  ‘Do you really not loan out for parties?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t realise.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, no! People don’t take care of them. We’ve had stuff come back covered in wine, vomit … and worse.’

  ‘But you loaned clothes to me and Sophie when we went to that party at Moorworthy House,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Well, you’re different,’ he said, giving me a hug.

  ‘Where’s the invalid?’

  ‘He’s in the breakfast room.’ As we headed across the hall I became aware of a sweet, sickly smell and a convoluted ribbon of white smoke rippled through the doorway.

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re not on fire,’ Morris sighed, propelling me forward, ‘it’s only Puff the Magic Dragon.’

  Ricky was lounging at the breakfast table, resplendent in a silk Chinese dressing gown, and holding a metal implement in his hand that I did not immediately recognise. Then he raised it to his lips and was almost lost to view in a miasma of scented smoke.

  ‘You’re vaping!’ I cried in horror.

  ‘Oh, don’t you bleedin’ start!’ he gasped irritably, flapping the smoke away with one hand. ‘Everyone complains cos I smoke, now I’m trying to give up the fags everyone moans just as much!’ He subsided into a rasping cough. He looked awful, his skin pale and dry as old parchment, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot.

  ‘By everyone he means me,’ Morris explained quietly.

  ‘And her!’ Ricky pointed an accusing finger at me.

  ‘Sit down, Juno, love.’ Morris seemed unimpressed by all the retching and coughing. ‘I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘No, it’s good that you’re trying to give up,’ I told Ricky, trying to sound conciliatory. ‘I’m impressed.’

  He growled. ‘Don’t patronise me.’

  ‘She’s come to see how you are, you miserable old bastard,’ Morris reproved him, smacking him across the back of the head in a rare moment of temper. ‘Try and be nice.’

  I tried to mollify him. ‘I’ve brought you some grapes.’

  Ricky’s eyes narrowed. ‘Green or red?’

  I pushed the bag across the table to him. ‘Black.’

  ‘Ooh, sexy!’ He opened the bag with his fingers and peered inside as if he suspected a rat was going to leap out and bite him. After a moment he reached inside, drew out a solitary grape and popped it in his mouth. ‘One of my five a day,’ he mumbled.

  Morris made a harrumphing noise, pouring tea.

  ‘But you are feeling better than you were?’ His chest infection had been so bad he hadn’t been up to seeing visitors.

  ‘I had to call an ambulance one night.’ Morris sighed, placing a plate of biscuits on the table. ‘They wanted to take him to hospital.’

  ‘I didn’t know this.’ I was horrified, felt neglectful.

  ‘He refused to go.’

  Ricky shuddered. ‘They’re not getting me in one of those places. I’m allergic!’

  ‘But he is better?’ I asked Morris, talking over the invalid’s head.

  ‘Now that he’s getting visitors, yes. Mandy came to see you yesterday, didn’t she?’ Morris added slyly.

  ‘She came to do her ministering angel act,’ Ricky said ungraciously. ‘Daft cow!’

  ‘Digby seems very sweet,’ I commented. ‘Have they found anywhere to live yet?’

  ‘Don’t think
so. Yes, Digby’s a gent.’ He turned to Morris. ‘We met him when we were doing Wind in the Willows that Christmas, remember?’

  Morris nodded. ‘Must be forty years ago.’

  ‘Was he Toad?’ I asked. He’d be perfect with his portly stature and bulging eyes. He only needed painting green.

  ‘He was.’ Ricky grinned. ‘I was Ratty and Maurice here played Mole.’

  Morris performed a little bow and made it somehow mole-like.

  ‘Oh, do it again!’ I urged them. ‘Wind in the Willows would be wonderful! Put it on next Christmas!’

  Before anyone could reply the phone rang again. ‘That’ll be someone else after costumes for this ball,’ Morris sighed, getting up to answer it.

  ‘Well, they’re not having ’em!’ Ricky rasped, trying not to cough. ‘Remember what happened to all those claw-hammer suits we loaned out for that Tory Party bash? If all they can teach them at public school is how to start food fights …’ He lapsed into another fit of coughing, shaking his head to refuse a glass of water when I suggested it. He’d settled down by the time Morris returned from his phone call and turned his attention back to me. ‘So, Juno, tell us what’s happening in the world of murder and mayhem.’

  Another thing about February is that it contains Valentine’s Day. In recent years this has meant absolutely nothing where I am concerned, and I had begun to view the appearance in the shops of cards with hearts on and bouquets of red roses with growing cynicism, because I wasn’t getting any. But this year, I got invited to dinner.

  The invitation came from Luke. My heart sank, to be honest. Although I think he’s a nice lad, and very talented, I didn’t nurture any romantic feelings for him, and I found the thought he might be harbouring them towards me a bit worrying.

  Actually, his invitation couldn’t have been less romantic. I was alone at the time, in the shop. It was towards the end of the day and I was thinking about cashing up. With the coming of twilight, the rain, which had fallen for most of the day, had dwindled to a fine drizzle, forming a nebulous mist that hung in Shadow Lane, turning the single street light into a pale blur.