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

by Sara Rosett

  I made plans to photograph Parkview Hall tomorrow, said good-bye to Beatrice, and went into the pub. It was fairly busy with a lunch crowd, but I snagged one of the tall-backed wooden booths that lined one wall. After a quick trip to the bar to order a plowman’s lunch, I returned to the booth and got to work, checking my emails. I had three possibilities, all freelance, one-time gigs, but it was better than nothing. The downside was that they were all in L.A.

  I sent off emails inquiring about the work, then checked the airfare and was glad to see it hadn’t gone up in price. Louise must have been busy in the kitchen, because another server dropped off my lunch. I pushed my computer away and dug into the meal of ham, cheese, grapes, a chunk of bread, apple slices, and carrots along with some condiments on the side. As I tore off a piece of bread, I heard the words, “…your publisher will take care of all the traditional review venues.”

  I leaned to the side and spotted Rafe seated at one of the tables near me. He was turned slightly away, but I could still see his face, and he certainly didn’t look like someone who was worried about a murder investigation or even about the loss of the letters. I wondered if Rafe had told Elise about the destruction of the letters yet. He had one hand looped through the handle of a pint as he lounged back in his chair listening to the woman in a black suit who sat across the table from him. Her back was turned to me, so I couldn’t see much more than her inky black bob, which was cut to knife-edge sharpness, and the red soles of her incredibly high heels. Becca sat at the table with them, but her attention was fixed on her phone.

  The woman with the bob opened a folder and slid it across the table to Rafe as she continued, “This is a sampling of what I’ve done in the past for other celebrities. We’ll use Austen as a hook to draw media interest. Blog posts, newspaper articles, chat shows. We shouldn’t have any problem getting attention, not with the material you have. All we have to do is tap into the cult of Austen, and we’re golden. Tons of free publicity.”

  Rafe flicked through the folder and gave a small nod. “Looks good.”

  “Brilliant,” the woman said, reaching for her phone. “Let’s talk dates. I envision a two-pronged campaign. Phase one will be associated with the book release, then we can coordinate a second push when the documentary airs. That will give you a nice visibility boost. Now, we’ll need to hit media outlets here in the U.K. as well as in the States…”

  Rafe closed the folder and pushed it back across the table to her, but she said, “That’s for you. Keep it.” Rafe leaned over and shoved it into his messenger bag, which was on the floor beside his feet, the flap wrinkled against his leg. He pressed the folder into the bag. As his hand pressed down, I caught a flicker of blue on white in the bag, which for some reason caught my attention. I shifted to the side to see better, but he’d already flung the large flap over the bag, covering its contents.

  “What’s this I hear about someone firing a gun at you yesterday,” Louise asked as she approached my booth, blocking my view of Rafe. “Are you really all right?”

  “Yes, fine. No harm done, well, except to my career. Apparently, I’m too dangerous to have around.”

  Louise frowned her disapproval. “You don’t mean…”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve been fired. That sounds so awful. Maybe I should say ‘let go.’ Although, that makes me sound like an animal released into the wild.”

  Louise pointed her rag at me. “Made redundant. That’s the trendy phrase.”

  “Even worse.” Louise looked sympathetic, and I quickly added, “Don’t worry. I’ll find something else.” I motioned to my laptop. “Already on it.”

  Louise tilted her head as she looked at the screen. “That’s the woman who was killed, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I must have accidentally brushed my hand across the track pad and reopened one of the windows I’d minimized back at the cottage. Amy Brown’s Twitter profile picture smiled out at us from its position beside the banner image she’d chosen, the London skyline.

  “The detective had a picture of her, but it didn’t look like that.” Louise leaned closer to the screen, then she stood up and pressed the fingers of one hand to her lips. “Oh, I was wrong.” She started patting her pockets. “Where is that card? I have to call him. Oh—it won’t be in this apron. I probably washed it.” She tucked her rag into the pocket of her apron and began to untie it. “I’ll have to go to the church hall. They’re still there, aren’t they?”

  “Louise, what’s wrong?”

  “I saw her.” She pointed to the laptop. “She was here. That inspector showed me her picture—a drawing, not a photograph like this—and I said I’d never seen her before, but I was wrong. She was in here. I recognize her now. I didn’t in the drawing, but seeing that photo…it was her.” She pulled her apron over her head and balled it up, but then stopped. “I can’t leave. I’m the only one here until one.”

  “I have the inspector’s number in my phone, or you could call down to the church hall. I’m sure they would send someone up.”

  “Yes, you’re right, of course,” she murmured as she shook out her apron.

  “So she was here? On the day of the fire?”

  “Oh, no. Not that day. The weekend before. Poor girl, I felt sorry for her, having that decrepit Felix bloke trying to buy her drinks and flirt with her.”

  “Felix? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. He was too persistent. Couldn’t see that she wasn’t interested.”

  “But Melissa said Felix told everyone that he’d seen Alex talking to her.”

  “Alex? No, Alex didn’t go near her. He was here at the same time. We were bursting at the seams after the bike race. Everyone wanted to come in for a pint after it was over. But I never saw Alex talk to her.”

  “Why would Felix say that?”

  “Probably because he didn’t want to answer any questions himself.” Louise shook her head. “I know his type. I’ve seen enough to recognize them. Pushy. Won’t take no for an answer. I bet there’s something in his past—something unsavory. He didn’t want the police sniffing around him, so he threw out Alex’s name to distract them.”

  “You think he’d do that?” Mischievousness, I could picture that from Felix, but deliberately throwing suspicion on someone else? I wasn’t sure Felix was capable of that, but I didn’t really know him well. “So what happened between Felix and Amy Brown?”

  “Oh, she set him right. Told him off, she did.”

  “What was he doing hitting on her? She was at least ten years younger.”

  “Does that stop a man from trying?” Louise’s agitation faded a bit. “Every time he’s in here, he’s sidling up to some young thing, trying to buy her drinks. Fancies himself a Don Juan, I think, but none of the women ever respond.”

  Hmm…that would have to hurt after a while. Perhaps he was tired of being rebuffed. He might have seen Amy in the village later and followed her. But even if he did kill her, why would he put her body in Rafe’s cottage? Did he even know where Rafe lived? I sighed and went back to my lunch.

  Louise went off to call the church hall, and I glanced around the pub. Rafe, Becca, and the woman planning his media assault had cleared out while I was talking to Louise, so I went back to skimming through Amy Brown’s online life, but didn’t find anything new.

  Louise returned later to clear my plate. “It’s all settled. I’m to come down to the church hall and give a statement at my convenience. They weren’t upset at all.”

  “Louise, on the day Amy Brown died, you were here?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “So you saw Rafe?”

  “Yes.” She lifted my plate in the direction of the bar. “He sat up there, third bar stool from the left the whole evening.”

  “He never left?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe slipped out the back?”

  “No. He was right there in front of me every time I went to get a pint. I would have noticed if he was gone.” Sh
e looked at me, a frown line appearing between her brows. “What’s this? The police asked me these questions and Phil as well,” she said, lifting her chin toward the kitchen.

  I hadn’t met Phil yet; he’d always been in the kitchen whenever I stopped by the pub.

  Louise said, “Why are you asking, too?”

  I hesitated, debating whether I should tell her anything about the investigation, but Alex had once told me that if there was anyone I could trust in Nether Woodsmoor, it was Louise. She knew how to keep a secret. “Have you got a minute?”

  She glanced around the pub. The lunch rush was over and only a few people remained. “Sure.” She slid into the booth across from me, putting my plate back down on the table.

  I leaned forward and kept my voice low. “Inspector Quimby thinks Alex had something to do with Amy Brown’s death.”

  Louise flicked her hand. “Oh, I heard that. Nothing but stuff and rumor.”

  “No. Alex is a suspect. Quimby has questioned him several times.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Louise said stoutly.

  “I know. I couldn’t believe it either, but it’s all my fault.” I explained how I’d seen them both on the path behind the cottages. “Apparently, Alex was one of the last people to be around her while she was alive. He doesn’t even remember seeing her, but since I saw them together…”

  Louise patted my hand. “Well, the inspector couldn’t very well ignore it. He’s got to investigate it.”

  “Yes, but nothing has turned up to take his attention away from Alex. That’s why I was looking at Amy Brown’s accounts. I was sure there would be something…some little mention or a photograph or a name that would connect her to someone else here in Nether Woodsmoor. But there’s nothing. Maybe the connection is from her childhood or something years ago. If that’s the case, then I’m sunk because all of her accounts only go back a few years. It’s as if she didn’t exist five years ago…”

  I sat for a few moments, those words sinking in. Then I pawed through my tote bag and pulled out my Moleskine notebook and flipped back and forth through the notes I’d made. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “Kate, luv, are you feeling okay? You’re looking rather flushed.”

  “That’s it. She didn’t exist five years ago.”

  Chapter 15

  “SEE, LOOK.” I PUSHED MY notebook across the table and paged backward and forward, tapping the paper. “None of her accounts go back more than three years.”

  Louise gave me a long look before glancing down at the pages.

  “She never mentions a childhood home or anything from the past,” I went on. “You know how some people post old pictures of themselves or their family on those days, Throwback Thursdays?”

  “No, I don’t have much time to play around on the computer.”

  “Well, some people do. They post pictures from their past on certain days. She never participated.”

  “Well, maybe she was a private person.”

  “But she wasn’t. Her job was in social media. She posted about the company and software-related issues during her workday and then when she was on her own time, she continued to share…pretty much everything from her day-to-day life—where she went for her bike rides, what clothes she wore, and the food she ate. But now that I think about it, none of the background portions of the sites were filled out. She never listed a hometown or relatives or her schools. And if you’re into sharing on social media, why wouldn’t you fill out your profiles completely?”

  “Maybe she didn’t want everyone knowing all those details about her—for security, you know. There’s always stories on the telly about identity theft and whatnot.”

  “I don’t think it was to protect her from identity theft. She was too casual about other details that could be used to hack her accounts. She mentioned the name of her bank once when she couldn’t get cash from an ATM, and she posted her travel plans before she left as well as pictures when she was gone, which you should never do. It’s like posting a neon sign, letting people know you’ll be away. No, if she was worried about security she would have been more careful about what she posted.”

  Louise handed the journal back, still looking doubtful.

  “And then there’s her name,” I continued. “Amy Brown. As Alex said, it’s such a forgettable name. So common.”

  “I don’t see what you’re getting at.” Louise scooted to the end of the booth and picked up the plate. I was vaguely aware that a few people had come into the pub.

  “I don’t think she was always Amy Brown. For some reason, she changed her name. She didn’t want anyone to know about her past—whatever it was—so she went by a different name and never mentioned anything about it online.”

  Louise still didn’t look convinced.

  “How do you change your name in England? In the States, I think you have to go to court. Is it like that here?”

  “Oh, no. Here you can change it by deed poll.”

  “Deed poll, what’s that?”

  Louise looked over her shoulder at a group of bike riders, Hector in the front, moving to the bar, their clips on their shoes making clicking sounds on the hardwood. “It’s a form. You fill it out, have someone witness it. My sister did it after her divorce. Just showed it to the bank, and so on, anyone who needed it.”

  “That seems a little insecure,” I said, thinking about terrorists threats that were in the news so often.

  Louise shrugged. “That’s all it takes. She could have registered it somewhere—I forget where—but I don’t think it’s required.” Louise moved away to serve the customers at the bar. I pulled my computer toward me and typed “deed poll” into the search bar.

  A few minutes of searching confirmed what Louise said. You could indeed change your name by deed poll by filling out a form and having it witnessed. Then you simply presented the form to banks and governmental agencies. I dug deeper and found that there was a way to register the name change in a governmental publication, the Gazette, which had a webpage. I clicked over to it, entered the name “Amy Brown,” and got over four thousand entries. I managed to narrow the results by date then added the qualifier “deed poll,” which brought up only two results.

  The first one was a woman abandoning the name of Amy Brown to take the name of Amy Blythe. The other was a notice of a woman who abandoned the name of Lillian Helena Stratham to take on the name of Amy Helena Brown. The date on the notice was four years ago. I was reaching for my phone when Louise stopped by my booth again. “Any luck?”

  “Yes, I’ve found a woman named Lillian Helena Stratham who changed her name to Amy Helena Brown four years ago.”

  Louise looked off into space and repeated the name, then shook her head. “I thought there for a second that it sounded familiar, but I can’t place it.”

  I put my phone down. “Really, it sounded familiar?” Louise nodded, so I did a quick search for the name, but nothing recent came up. “Let’s try a few years ago,” I said, but Louise had moved away to serve some customers. I set the search to look for information older than three years, and pages and pages of results loaded.

  I clicked through to the links. Each one of them were news stories about a financial scam involving a man named Harry Lyster. I skimmed through a few of the articles. Four years ago, Harry Lyster, owner of a London-based investment firm, had been under investigation for fraud. Lyster had maintained his innocence right up until the moment he disappeared.

  The name Lillian Helena Stratham wasn’t listed in the headlines of the articles. It was buried in the text, usually only a line or two, and she was almost always referred to as “secretary Lillian Helena Stratham,” who had been questioned. Some of the articles hinted that Lillian knew where her boss had gone. None of the articles had any pictures of Lillian, but there were plenty of Harry Lyster.

  Louise had been motoring around the pub, balancing a tray of empty pint glasses, but as she passed my table, her steps checked. She leaned down to peer at the photo at the t
op of the news story, which showed Lyster, a heavyset man with brown hair in a suit and sunglasses, stepping into a limousine.

  “Oh, I remember him,” Louise said. “The Fugitive Financier, they called him. Ran some sort of scam then disappeared with millions.”

  I clicked over to another article with a picture of him seated at a white linen-covered table. It had been taken through a window, which caused a haze to blur his features. “Amy Brown was his secretary.”

  “The woman who was killed knew the Fugitive Financier?”

  “Yes. She worked for him. Her name was Lillian Stratham. She was interviewed by the police and had her name in the news. That’s probably why her name sounded familiar to you. I bet it was impossible to get a job after the scandal. Her name is in most of the stories, especially the ones after he disappeared with either outright accusations or hints that she was in on the scam. I bet she changed her name and moved to Manchester to get a fresh start.”

  “And then she ends up dead here in Nether Woodsmoor,” Louise said slowly.

  “That can’t be a coincidence. I mean, not with the way she died—so violently.”

  “Blimey.” Louise let out a long breath, then glanced around the pub. “Then that could mean…”

  “That she recognized someone here.”

  We both looked back at the photo. Louise set down the tray and leaned closer. “Isn’t there a better picture of him? That one is so grainy.”

  “Not without sunglasses or a hat. Seems he was quite fond of hats, always had his face shaded.”

  Louise said, “Does remind me of someone.”

  “I know, but I can’t quite place the person,” I agreed. I studied the photo, trying to figure out which individual features looked familiar. “It’s the brow bone, I think.”

  “Hmm, yes. So prominent,” Louise murmured, then her eyes widened, and she looked toward me.

  We both spoke at the same time. “Felix Carrick.”

  Constable Albertson ran his hand slowly over his mouth as he studied the notes he’d made as I recapped what I discovered in the pub. “So you think the woman who was killed—Amy Brown—was really this Lillian Helena Stratham? And that she knew Felix Carrick, who is actually a fugitive, Harry Lyster?”