Death in an English Cottage: Book Two in the Murder on Location Series

by Sara Rosett

  “Huge,” Alex supplied.

  “More than huge. Gigantic. If it were an earthquake, it would be a nine-point-five.”

  “That must be bad, right?”

  I pushed my plate away. “It’s a big one. You’ve never been in an earthquake?”

  “No, am I missing much?”

  “Only a moment of sheer terror and then it’s over.”

  “Sounds like snowboarding.” Alex dropped his napkin by his plate. “Fancy a walk down to the river?”

  “Yes.”

  I dropped the subject of the letters as we made our way to the river. We leaned on the balustrade, watching the water rush by, the night air soft and only a few degrees away from chilly.

  “I should get you home. You’ve had a long day,” Alex said, but didn’t move.

  “Yes,” I agreed with my arms firmly planted on the stone. I could feel Alex’s gaze on me. I turned my head to look at him.

  Close-by, a siren cut through the air, startling both of us.

  Chapter 5

  “WAS THAT A FIRE TRUCK? Heading in the direction of the cottages?” I asked. I’d caught a glimpse of it at the end of the street as it sped by.

  “I believe so.”

  “Surely there couldn’t be two fires on our street in one day?”

  “No, of course not. It was probably going somewhere else. Maybe there’s a fire in the woods farther up the hill.”

  I nodded, but we had both pushed away from the bridge and were striding along as quickly as we could. If we were in Southern California where the sun baked and dried the land to the point that any wood was a potential pile of kindling, a fire in the woods might be possible. But I had a hard time picturing the damp and soggy woods catching fire, especially after yesterday’s soaking rain.

  We hurried up the short street to the lane with the cottages and saw the fire truck parked halfway down the street. Smoke filled the air, and I blinked away bits of ash as we hurried forward. “Is it my cottage? I can’t tell.” In the darkness, and with the cottages being so similar and so close to each other, I couldn’t tell which one the firefighters were moving around.

  “No—the one next to yours, I think.”

  We reached the fire truck and stopped on the edge of the lane short of Rafe’s cottage. The front window to the parlor was gone, replaced by a wall of orange flame licking up the edges and flickering at the roof shingles. Firefighters moved back and forth from their truck to the cottage, carrying axes and uncoiling hoses, while others disappeared around the side of the cottage down the narrow opening that ran between the cottages. I was surprised at the firefighters pace. They weren’t lollygagging, but they certainly weren’t hustling around. They were going about their business with a methodical concentration, which I supposed made sense. I guess that they had to assess the situation and coordinate their plan of attack.

  I glanced back at the front window. The flames seemed to have grown, like a chest expanding with a breath. They had swollen into a convex billow that curved in an arch and spread, roiling and churning, halfway up the roof.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Constable Albertson’s craggy face. “You’ll need to back away—” he broke off, searching my face. “Oh, Ms. Sharp—isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised that he remembered me.

  He read my expression and tapped his head by his eyebrow. “I’ve got a good memory for faces. And none of us have forgotten that sad business with the poor bloke who went missing. Are you staying in this cottage?”

  “No. I’m in the one next door.”

  “Who lives here?”

  “Rafe Farraday. We saw him go into the pub. But that was a while ago.” I turned toward Alex. “Did you see him leave?”

  “No, but he could have left when we walked down to the river.”

  Constable Albertson nodded. “I’ll have a word with the lad in charge to let him know. Keep back.” He nodded to an area on the other side of the lane away from the fire truck and the cottages. As we moved, running footfalls pounded up the street. It was Rafe, sprinting up the middle of the lane, his messenger bag pounding against his back. He stopped short, his gaze fastened on the flames pouring out of the window. “Oh, my God.”

  Constable Albertson put a hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “Mr. Farraday, if you’ll move over here…”

  “No. No, I can’t. I have to get in there.” He surged forward, but ran into the wall of Constable Albertson.

  “You have to stay clear of the area. For your safety.”

  “No. I can’t. You don’t understand. I have to get in there. I must—it’s vital.” He looked around frantically.

  “Is there someone else in the house?”

  “No. No, no one else.” He tried to dodge around the constable again, but was again blocked.

  “Pets?”

  “No. It’s nothing like that. But I have to—”

  “No,” Constable Albertson overrode him, using a volume and a tone that I hadn’t heard before. Rafe blinked and focused on him for the first time. Constable Albertson turned Rafe by the shoulders and marched him across to the far side of the lane. “Now. You can either wait here, or I can take you down to the station. Which will it be?”

  Rafe ran a hand over his mouth and closed his eyes briefly. “Okay, I understand.”

  Constable Albertson hovered, staring at him intently for a moment. Rafe put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I get it. I lost it back there. Sorry. I’ll stay here.”

  “See that you do.” Constable Albertson walked away, but gave Rafe several long glances over his shoulder.

  I looked back to the cottage. The smell of smoke and burning wood filled the air. Several firefighters were in position around the cottage. Water coursed through the hoses, arching through the air. The front door was now open, and firefighters were moving into the house.

  Rafe watched for a moment, then turned away. His peaked eyebrows stood out darkly against his pale face. He ran his hands up into his hair then bent over double. I exchanged a glance with Alex. “Do you think he’s going to be sick?”

  Alex put a hand on Rafe’s shoulder. “You okay, buddy?”

  Rafe groaned then slowly collapsed. Alex steadied him, helping him to sit down. I crouched down on his other side. “It’s terrible, I know. But at least you weren’t in there and,” I strained to look up over the fire truck. “I don’t see any flames now. I’m sure there will be damage, but it looks like they’ve managed to save most of the cottage.”

  Rivulets of water streamed across the lane and soaked into the grass where Rafe sat. He didn’t notice. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. They’re gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The letters.”

  I thudded down beside him, my knees squishing into the damp grass. “The Jane Austen letters?”

  He nodded, a stricken look on his face.

  “But you said you didn’t have them. That they were safe.”

  He mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I lied, okay? I don’t care if you’ve got a Pulitzer Prize in literature, I wasn’t about to tell you that I had the letters with me.”

  “Where? Where were they?”

  Rafe sighed. “In the parlor.”

  “In some sort of storage container, right? If it was metal…”

  “No. I kept them in an archival box. Acid-free, of course,” he said, his tone edged with giddiness.

  Alex murmured my name in a warning tone. I pulled my gaze away from Rafe.

  “He’s in shock. Go easy on him,” Alex mouthed, then looked pointedly at the tight grip I had on Rafe’s arm.

  I released his arm and sent Alex a frustrated look. “You don’t understand the significance of those letters.”

  “They are pieces of paper,” Alex said. “We’re not talking about the Magna Carta, but even then, its not like anything is as valuable as a human life. Rafe, you had a lucky escape tonight.”

  �
�Were,” Rafe said miserably. “They were pieces of paper. There’s no way they survived.” He pointed at the cottage, which now had black, sooty streaks on the stone around the gaping hole where the front window had been.

  I sent Alex a sour look. “I understand those papers weren’t as valuable as a person, but they were important.”

  “To literary geeks.”

  I frowned at him, but before I could say anything else, Constable Albertson joined us.

  Rafe asked, “When can I get back inside?”

  “Not for a while. A few days, I suspect.”

  “But surely I can go in now, see the extent of the damage.”

  “No, it’s a crime scene.”

  Rafe swallowed. “It was arson?”

  I’d been staring across the street, watching the firefighters. They were still moving around the cottage as well as in and out of the front door, but there was something about Rafe’s tone that drew my attention back to him. He sounded—what? Frightened and…anxious, maybe? I couldn’t quite decide.

  Constable Albertson ignored Rafe’s question. “Mr. Farraday, you stated that no one else was in the cottage.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “So to your knowledge, your cottage was empty?”

  “Yes.”

  Constable Albertson sighed. “They’ve found a body.”

  Chapter 6

  THE NEXT MORNING, I SHOULDERED my tote bag, slipped my phone in my pocket, then stepped outside and managed to lock my front door on my second try—I was getting better—before turning to survey the scene. Rafe’s cottage and front garden were decimated. Plants and grass were trampled into a muddy mess, and a pile of charred wooden debris sat near the lane. In the sunlight, the black smoke stains looked even darker and more ominous than they had in the pulsing lights of the emergency vehicles last night.

  Two men in coveralls were preparing to place a board over the gap where the window had been. The small section of the interior of the cottage that I could see didn’t look anything like a home. It was a charred conglomeration of shapes. Police tape ringed the yard, wrapping alongside the yews all the way to the back garden.

  I was surprised I’d been allowed to return to my cottage last night, but after waiting several hours, Constable Albertson had told Alex and me that residents were allowed to return to their homes. The fire had been contained within the front room and the interior hallway of Rafe’s cottage. It was completely out, and there was no danger of it reigniting.

  I hadn’t slept well. At Rafe’s cottage, a constant flow of activity—the investigation team I imagined—continued until the early hours of the morning.

  “Looks horrible, doesn’t it?” a voice called behind me, and I turned. Beatrice had parked her rusty Land Rover at the edge of the police tape and now walked up the path to stand beside me. “Well, at least the walls are still intact,” she said, hands on her hips as she looked over the cottage. “It’s a good thing Jenny Templeton smelled the fire when she took her dog out for its nightly walk; otherwise, the whole lot could have gone up.”

  I shivered. The fire I’d seen had been a powerful, hungry thing. I didn’t want to think about how awful it would have been if all the cottages had caught fire.

  I spotted Alex walking down the street, his backpack slung over his shoulder. He’d shaved this morning, but his hair was still its usual tousled style, and his white shirt was crinkled. He detoured around the police tape and joined us. We exchanged good mornings, but all of our attention was on the burnt cottage.

  “Pretty grim sight in the light of day,” Alex said.

  “So do they know what happened? How it started?” I asked.

  Beatrice shook her head. “No. Or, if they do they’re keeping it to themselves. All they’ve told me is that the body was a woman.”

  A car in low gear moved up the street and parked behind the Land Rover. Detective Inspector Quimby emerged from the car and strode across the grass to us, his attention fixed on Beatrice. “Lady Stone, thank you for meeting me here.”

  “Of course. You remember Alex Norcutt and Kate Sharp.”

  Quimby gave us all quick nods of acknowledgement. “Yes. Back for another visit, Ms. Sharp?” The first time I’d met Quimby he’d been dressed head-to-toe in brown, which along with his brown hair, had given him a plain, fade-away look until I noticed his sharp green eyes. Today he was again in a brown suit, but he was branching out. A stripe of navy ran through his tie.

  “No, I’m working,” I replied, “with Alex on the Jane Austen documentary.”

  He looked sharply toward Alex, his eyebrows raised. “Another film?”

  He didn’t sound happy about it, and I couldn’t blame him. The last film project had complicated his work life quite a bit.

  “Yes,” Alex said.

  “Planning to film in and around Nether Woodsmoor, I suppose?”

  “Already filming,” Alex said.

  “So what can you tell us about this poor woman who was found last night, Inspector Quimby?” Beatrice asked.

  “Not much yet. She was young, mid-twenties, no identification on her. I’m in charge of the response unit, which was set up last evening in the church hall. No reports of a missing woman in the area, so we are making inquiries farther afield.”

  “Have you been able to determine what happened?” Beatrice pressed.

  “You mean whether or not it was murder?” Quimby asked. “I’m afraid so. She was hit on the back of the head rather viciously. The medical examiner has determined the injury occurred before the injuries from the fire.”

  Beatrice said, “Worse and worse. It’s horrible that she died, awful, but to know that it was intentional…that makes it so much more disturbing.”

  “Quite,” Quimby murmured, his gaze ranging over the blackened stones.

  Beatrice continued, “Horrible for the poor young woman, and such a shame for us as well. We’ve worked so hard to make Nether Woodsmoor known as a peaceful country getaway.”

  Quimby sighed. “Yes. There’s significant pressure to find the culprit quickly.” He turned to look at Honeysuckle Cottage. “Who lives here?”

  “I do,” I said. “Only for the last two days, though, so I’m afraid I won’t be much help to you.”

  “You knew Mr. Farraday?”

  “Yes, I scouted his cottage as a location to film his interview.”

  “He’s involved in the film project, too?” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and flicked through the screens. “He gave his occupation last night as a lecturer. A literature professor, I believe he called himself.”

  “Yes, he is, but he’s providing commentary for the documentary.”

  Quimby asked, “Is there anyone in this village not associated with the filming?”

  “I doubt it,” Beatrice said, “between lodging, feeding, and outfitting the cast and crew, the whole town has probably either met someone involved in the production, if not sold them something.”

  Quimby didn’t look happy. He refocused on me. “So, in the short time you knew him, did you notice a woman around Mr. Farraday’s cottage?”

  “No.”

  “Did he mention a woman when you did your…scouting…bit?”

  “No, we didn’t talk much, only about the local vandalism and about books.”

  “I see,” Quimby said as if that was strange. Beside him, Alex had the same look on his face.

  “Mr. Norcutt, you’ve lived here much longer. Did you ever see a woman with Mr. Farraday?”

  “Yes, Becca Ford is his particular friend.”

  Quimby tapped the information into his phone then said to Beatrice, “If you have a few moments, I’d like you to walk through the cottage with me.”

  “Yes, I figured as much. I brought my Wellies.” She moved back to her car and removed a pair of galoshes.

  Alex and I had been dismissed, so I led the way down the lane as Alex asked, “Did you get the text?”

  “No.” I pulled out my phone to double check
, but I had no new messages or missed calls.

  “Elise has called an emergency meeting at the inn. Want to ride with me?”

  I put my phone away with a sigh. “Yes. Speaking of that, we need to talk about my transportation issue. What about these cars that you mentioned? The ones the production rented.”

  “Yeah, about that.” Alex cleared his throat. “I mentioned it to Elise yesterday. She said since you’re staying so close to me, we can carpool.” We reached the MG, and Alex opened the passenger door for me. “Sorry.”

  “So, I don’t get use of the rental cars, and she won’t even add me to her contact list so that I know what’s going on?”

  “Let me send a text to Mary about the notifications,” Alex said as he tapped on his phone. “She’ll get you on there. About the car, well, Elise said something about insurance and driver’s license issues.”

  “I have my International Driver’s Permit. I’m perfectly legal to drive in the U.K.”

  “Yeah, I thought that was bunk, but I couldn’t talk her out of it. Maybe you can.”

  “No, I’m going to keep my head down and get my work done.” I moved a plastic bag and several pieces of junk mail out of the passenger seat. Alex nodded and closed my door. “And walk,” I said to myself as Alex moved around the car. “Looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of walking.”

  My plan to keep my head down didn’t exactly work out. The moment we joined the group at the long table in the inn’s restaurant, Elise skewered me with an angry look. “What’s this about a fire in Rafe Farraday’s cottage?” she asked as if I was personally responsible for the situation. She was dressed in black again today, a high ribbed turtleneck and black jeans. The dark color only accented the paleness of her face and the dark circles under her eyes.