Bunburry--Sweet Revenge

by Helena Marchmont

  What they didn’t find was any fudge. It looked as though environmental health had removed any last vestiges.

  “I’ll see if Elsie’s grand-daughter knows what happened to the stuff at the wedding,” said Emma.

  Alfie gingerly opened the jar of gold flakes and gave a tentative sniff. It didn’t smell of anything.

  “Do you think it would be possible to add laxatives to these in the jar, mix them up together?” Alfie asked.

  “I have no idea why you’re asking me questions to do with cooking,” said Emma caustically. “I thought you were the chef.”

  “So far, I’ve never used gold flakes. Or laxatives,” said Alfie. He looked round. “If someone got in here … there’s so much that could be tampered with.”

  “But Aunt Liz tastes it at every step of the process. She would have noticed it tasted funny. And she would have been ill herself.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Alfie. “Rosemary Savile said some of these laxatives don’t have a taste. And I presume she just tastes a tiny amount – probably not enough to have an effect.”

  “Anyway,” said Emma, “who could have got in? They always lock the place up when they go out.”

  “They’re out now, the door’s unlocked, and we’re inside,” Alfie objected.

  “Yes, but I’ve got a key. I always have a key. I ring the bell because I don’t think it’s polite just to let myself in. And before you ask, no, I did not come in here and poison the fudge.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Alfie murmured. “I rather assumed the Bunburry Parallels were in the clear.”

  Emma looked round again and gave a frustrated sigh. “She designed all this carefully so that everything would be exactly where she wanted it. If somebody did manage to get in, they would have to put things back precisely as they were, or she would have noticed.”

  “Perhaps they did,” said Alfie.

  *

  En route to the hospital, Marge announced that she was coming in with Liz whether Liz liked it or not.

  “I’m not having you upset,” she declared.

  “Marge, dear, will you stop turning this into something it isn’t? Morgan Sutcliffe lost the power to upset me a very long time ago.”

  They were directed to a four-bedded ward.

  “Five minutes, no longer,” said the staff nurse severely. “He’s very weak, and we don’t want him tired out.”

  “Of course not,” murmured Liz.

  They went into the room. Morgan was propped up on pillows, dozing, attached to drips and sensors. Equipment beeped in the background. For all Liz’s insistence that she was perfectly calm, she was shaken by the sight of him. She could scarcely connect this gaunt decrepit figure with the handsome boy she had fallen in love with.

  “Morgan,” she called gently. “Morgan.”

  His eyelids fluttered open, and he looked vaguely in the direction of the sound.

  “Morgan, it’s me, Clarissa Hopkins. Do you remember me? I’ve come to see how you are.”

  “Clarissa?” he said disbelievingly, his voice little more than a croak. “Clarissa Hopkins?”

  “And I’ve brought Marge with me. Do you remember Marge?”

  “I used to have lips like ripe pomegranates, if that helps you place me,” said Marge acidly.

  Liz silenced her with a look. “Morgan, I’m so sorry that you’re ill. You and I have been carefully avoiding one another for fifty years, and I thought it was important to let you know that I wish you nothing but the best.”

  Morgan struggled to raise himself on the pillows but failed.

  “You want to sit up a bit more?” asked Liz. “Let us help you. Marge, you go to that side of the bed.”

  Between them, they deftly manoeuvred Morgan into a more comfortable position.

  Liz poured some water from the jug on the overbed table for him, and helped him to drink it.

  “Thank you,” he rasped. “Clarissa Hopkins. You’re really here to tell me you forgive me?”

  Liz pulled up a chair beside him and sat down, smiling faintly. “Morgan, I forgave you long ago. I thought you should know that.”

  He gave a short bark of laughter which ended in a coughing fit. “Because you thought I was dying?”

  “Because it was something I wanted to say, and at our age, there’s no point delaying.”

  “Ever the diplomat. I hope I’m not going to disappoint you if I tell you I spent the first two nights in the high dependency unit, but since I’m now in here, I must be improving, mustn’t I?”

  He looked so weak that Liz wasn’t convinced. But she responded the way she knew he would want.

  “Of course, and I couldn’t be more pleased to hear that. Morgan, dear, believe me. What happened between us is all water under the bridge. What’s important is for you to keep improving, and get back home as soon as possible.”

  He grasped her hand. “I made a real mistake not marrying you.”

  “Still the smooth talker,” said Marge under her breath.

  Liz ignored her. “Not a mistake at all. A very wise decision. We would never have suited one another. And now you’ve got a lovely family you can be proud of.”

  His face was bleak. “Can I? Do you know what I was thinking at that wedding? Praying that my grandson didn’t turn out like me. He reminds me so much of myself, Clarissa, and not just in looks.”

  He began to wheeze, unable to catch his breath.

  “I’ll get the nurse,” said Marge, but he managed to shake his head.

  “I’m fine,” he managed to say eventually. “But I’ve had nothing to do in this hospital bed except lie here and think, and I’ve got something to say that will shock you.”

  “I’m sure it won’t, Morgan dear, but go ahead if you want to,” said Liz.

  He gripped her hand more tightly. “This so-called food poisoning. I don’t think it was an accident. Poison is a woman’s weapon. What if history’s repeating itself, Clarissa, and this is some girl taking revenge on Greg?”

  Liz patted the hand that was gripping hers. “Morgan dear, it’s very stressful being in hospital, and it’s not surprising you’re thinking such gloomy thoughts. But you need to be positive and concentrate on getting well. I’m going to bring you in some light reading to cheer you up. And maybe a book of crosswords or sudoku?”

  “Clarissa, you’re an angel,” he said. “I don’t deserve you.” He leaned slightly towards her as though he was going to kiss her, but she simultaneously withdrew her hand from his and stood up.

  “Take care, Morgan,” she said. “I’ll visit you again soon.”

  Marge erupted as soon as they were in the corridor. “I swear, if someone hadn’t poisoned him already, I would do it myself.”

  “That seems to confirm his claim that poison is a woman’s weapon,” mused Liz. “Is this a case of cherchez la femme?”

  9. The Bunburry Parallels

  “Poison is a woman’s weapon?” scoffed Emma. “Sexist nonsense.”

  It sounded perfectly reasonable to Alfie. Administering poison didn’t require physical strength, but it did require planning and guile. He was surprised by Emma’s reaction. Surely a police officer should keep an open mind.

  Emma picked up a pebble from the ground beside the bench, and hurled it into the river.

  “Why not a man?” she said. “Don’t you find it peculiar that Greg wasn’t affected?”

  “The groom?” said Alfie, startled. “Why would he want to sabotage his own wedding?”

  “He wasn’t sabotaging the wedding. That was the cover. Collateral damage. He was targeting his grandfather.”

  Alfie shifted his weight on the bench to get more comfortable. He normally loved coming here, Aunt Augusta’s favourite place, listening to the soothing ripples of the river as it flowed under Frank’s Bridge. A place of calm.

>   It was anything but calm today, given how restive Emma was.

  “I can see that the poisoner might not want to get poisoned,” said Alfie. “But surely they would cover themselves by pretending to be affected? After all, if they were making a dash for the portaloos, nobody would know whether it was genuine or not. Doesn’t it show that the people who weren’t affected are the very ones who didn’t do it?”

  “Or it could be a double bluff,” Emma retorted.

  Alfie took a moment to puzzle this out. But he still didn’t have an answer to the key question.

  “Why would he want to target his grandfather?”

  “His inheritance,” said Emma. “Morgan Sutcliffe told Aunt Liz he was worried that Greg was too like him. That might not just mean his track record with women, it might mean his obsession with money.”

  Alfie thought back to the text he had quoted to Edith: Love of money is the root of all evil. A sweeping generalization, but with more than a grain of truth in it. And attempting to murder your grandfather could certainly be classified as evil.

  “Was Greg obsessed with money at school?” asked Alfie.

  “He didn’t have to be. His parents showered him with the stuff. He always had the best of everything – he got a Harley-Davidson when he was seventeen.”

  “And what about girls?”

  “What about them? He was good looking and he had a motorbike. They all threw themselves at him.”

  “Including you?”

  “Not my type.”

  Did she mean she didn’t like his looks, his personality or his bike? Or that she didn’t like him because he was a boy?

  “Heather adored him right from the start, but she’ll never adore him as much as he adores himself. He finally started going out with her when he was in sixth form, and they’ve been together ever since – does that qualify them for the title of childhood sweethearts? Anyway, now she’s got him to the altar, and she’s welcome to him.”

  Emma obviously wasn’t Greg Sutcliffe’s greatest fan.

  “You really think he could have tried to kill his grandfather?” Alfie asked.

  “I wouldn’t have said so back then when we were teenagers. But I don’t know what pressures he might be under now. He could have gambling debts. Perhaps he and Heather want a bigger house, and you know what prices are like as you get closer to Cheltenham.” She gave a short laugh. “And if I know Heather, the honeymoon won’t have been cheap. I wonder if they’ll get a refund?”

  She stood up and began pacing round and round the bench. Alfie had never seen her so agitated.

  “This is hopeless,” she muttered. “Not a bit of fudge to be had from the reception. At least environmental health hasn’t got any from there either. So all we’ve got is our suspect. We need to find out whether Greg’s a beneficiary of his grandfather’s will.”

  “Morgan Sutcliffe was happy to talk about his suspicions to Liz and Marge,” Alfie suggested. “When they visit him again, they can ask him who he’s leaving his money to, on the basis that someone on the list has targetted him. They don’t even need to mention Greg.”

  Emma, still pacing, didn’t seem to have heard him. “How could he do that? She’s one of the loveliest people in the world.”

  Alfie watched her warily as she stumped past him again. He had no idea who “she” was.

  “To dump her like that! Aunt Marge said she had a complete breakdown. It took her months to get over it.”

  She was talking about Liz. Now he understood why she was being so uncharacteristically inflexible. She was upset about her great-aunt, and simply taking it out on Greg.

  “Can you imagine?” she burst out. “Somebody you love, somebody you’re going to marry, and they do that to you?”

  He almost gave a gasp of pain. He hadn’t felt a pang like this for months. Vivian. He loved her, he wanted to marry her – and then that dreadful night when she walked out and never returned.

  “I’m not surprised Aunt Liz never married,” Emma continued. “You’d never trust a man again after something like that.”

  He had been prepared to trust again. He had been prepared to trust Betty. And look where that had got him. She definitely hadn’t trusted him, hadn’t given him the chance to explain why he seemed to be flirting with someone else.

  Not bothering to moderate his tone, he said: “Women don’t have a monopoly on unhappiness.”

  “I’m just talking from personal experience,” she snapped back. “There’s Aunt Liz. There’s Laura.”

  He had forgotten all about her sister. He had found out about Laura shortly after his arrival in Bunburry, when he found himself investigating a murder. Emma’s elder sister whose boyfriend dumped her when she fell pregnant, who had suffered a miscarriage, and disappeared off to Birmingham, showing no sign of ever coming back.

  Then there was his own mother. Abandoned by her husband before she had given birth to their first, their only child. And why did the marriage end? Because her husband was having an affair with her sister. It was the sort of thing you would expect to see on some tacky talk show, except it was his family, his closest relatives who were involved.

  Not that he had ever known his father, and he barely remembered Aunt Augusta. It had seemed like a godsend when he discovered she had bequeathed him Windermere Cottage. But now he had found out about the affair, he knew she had left it to him purely out of guilt for wrecking his parents’ marriage. Who had made the first move? His father or his aunt? Did it matter? He blamed them both.

  “Do you know why I came to Bunburry?” he asked.

  He thought he had said it in a perfectly neutral way, but there must have been something unusual about his tone since Emma stopped in her tracks and turned with a startled expression.

  “No,” she said, coming to sit side-on at the end of the bench so that she could look at him.

  Alfie looked out over the river rather than returning her gaze.

  “I was living with someone. We were going to get married. She was killed in a car crash.”

  He sensed rather than saw or heard Emma’s reaction.

  “She was pregnant. I lost her, and I lost our child. I thought my life was over too. I couldn’t bear being in our home without her. But I didn’t want to go out, where I would constantly see places we’d been together.”

  He took a deep breath. “Windermere Cottage was an escape, a retreat. And then gradually, largely because of Liz and Marge, I began to take an interest in things again. I can’t pretend I no longer miss her, but I no longer miss her every second of the day.”

  A warm hand slipped into his.

  “I’m so sorry,” murmured Emma. “And I’m sorry for what I said.”

  Alfie gave a half-smile. “That’s all right.”

  He gave Emma’s hand a comradely squeeze and let it go. “Anyway,” he said briskly, “it's not a competition, men's unhappiness versus women's. Come on – we've got work to do.”

  “We do,” agreed Emma. “Speaking of which, I think we should pay the unhappy couple a visit. They’re still at Greg’s parents’, where the reception was. Heather’s mum wanted to take her home with her, but Heather didn’t feel well enough to go anywhere, not even back to her own place. Olivia’s staying on to help look after her – apparently she just keeps crying.”

  Alfie’s heart sank. He hoped she had stopped by the time they arrived.

  Once they were in the Jaguar, Emma directed him out of Bunburry and towards Witney. It would have been a pleasant journey under other circumstances, but Emma was radiating tension.

  “I still haven’t heard anything from my friend in the lab,” she said.

  “That’s good,” said Alfie.

  “Good?” she burst out. “How is it good that she’s going to confirm it’s the fudge? Once the report is out, nobody will touch the fudge again.”

  Alfi
e feared that was true. It took a long time for any business to build its reputation, and seconds to lose it. But he said soothingly: “It’s good because we’re getting a heads-up. Once we find out how the fudge was contaminated, that could help us identify who did it. And we may have solved it even before your friend in the lab gets in touch. Time is still on our side. Don’t despair.”

  “You’re right,” she said with sudden determination. “There’s the video and photos still to check, and Elsie’s grand-daughter can hopefully tell me who was involved in putting the fudge out for the guests.”

  “Philip might have some useful information as well. He wasn’t free earlier because of parish duties, but he’s going to be hospital visiting, and I said I’d catch up with him there.”

  “Good. That’s good. And we’re getting close to where the Sutcliffes live. I once went to a party Greg threw when we were at school.”

  “I thought he wasn’t your type,” said Alfie.

  “He wasn’t,” said Emma. “I didn’t go because of him. I went because of Eric Gibson.”

  Eric. Eric was definitely a boy’s name.

  She gave a reminiscent laugh. “I totally pursued him – I’m lucky he didn’t take out a restraining order against me. I was so desperate to get him that I didn’t realise he just wasn’t into girls.”

  Eric, her teenage infatuation, had been gay, and she hadn’t even realised. Of course she would now make it a rule never to assume that someone was straight. Alfie felt more cheerful.

  “The place got wrecked,” said Emma, sounding equally cheerful. “So did all of us. We got through his parents’ booze, and there was a lot of smoking. Not just Marlboro.”

  “Benson & Hedges too?” asked Alfie and was rewarded with a laugh. “How did you turn from a life of a crime to being an upholder of the law?” he went on.

  “Except I’m not now, am I?” she said, her tone changed. “I’m facing disciplinary procedures for discreditable conduct. Breaching standards of professional behaviour in respect of authority, respect and courtesy.”