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

by Sara Rosett

  We sailed over the bridge and into the open countryside, the road rising and falling gently with the undulating curves of the land. We hit a gentle climb, and I felt the car seat shift, giving a little, and I remembered how it had slid backward the other time I’d driven it. I’d completely forgotten about it. Alex hadn’t had time to get it fixed. The hill was a small one. We crested it and were on the way back down before the seat slipped out of its position. The rise in elevation had given us a glimpse down the road, and I could see a curving trail of red brake lights.

  “That will be the roadblock,” he said.

  I knew what I had to do. The next rise was higher.

  I didn’t know the roads well enough around Nether Woodsmoor to know if I’d have another opportunity. It had to be now. I’d hesitated earlier in the street in front of the cottage and missed a chance. This might be the only other break I got.

  “Relax your hands on the wheel. When we get to the front of the line, you do the talking. I’ll keep my head down, but don’t forget I’ll have the gun—”

  I stamped on the accelerator as we reached the base of the hill.

  My seat flew backward. With fumbling fingers, I unlocked the seat belt and shoved the door open. The sound of the tires and the wind filled the car. Harry shouted something. I had a quick impression of the road as it flew by, dark and glittery black, until it met a thick layer of grass.

  Harry’s hand clamped down on my shoulder. I twisted to the side and saw the car door falling back toward me. I put out a hand and writhed away from Harry’s grasping fingers, shifting toward the door. I heaved myself toward it, more to block it from closing on me than to throw myself out, but the next thing I felt was a crushing impact along my shoulder and arm. Then my breath was gone and the sky and ground were spinning around as I thumped and bumped along like a ragdoll.

  When I stopped rolling, I fought to get air back into my lungs. Gasping and gulping, I managed to push myself up and get my face out of the grass. The sound of a horn filled the air, and I looked up in time to see the little red MG, which had crossed the line into oncoming traffic, jerk back into its lane. Harry must have overcorrected because the car careened back across the centerline and bumped off the road, hitting the grass and taking the downward slope, picking up speed and angling away from me toward a stone wall that cut across the field.

  He turned the car again, and it spun. But he was too close to the wall, and the tires couldn’t get any traction on the slick grass. The back end of the car slammed into the stone wall in a thud of crunching metal that made me cringe.

  “Oh, Alex. You’re going to need to do more than fix the seat in the car,” I murmured as I slowly rolled into a sitting position. But then I remembered how many questions I had for Alex, and my sympathies dropped away.

  Everything ached, but I was able to move my hands and flex my feet back and forth so it didn’t seem that I’d done any severe damage to myself. I shifted slowly to my feet, keeping an eye on the MG, but no one emerged from it.

  A few cars had pulled to the side of the road, and a figure was moving down the hill toward me. “I’m okay,” I called then spotted a police car rolling to a stop at the top of the rise where the MG had left the road.

  I trudged up the hill, every step sending painful vibrations through me. I waved, catching the attention of the policeman who’d stepped from his car. I pointed to the red car. “He’s the one you’re looking for. That’s Harry—I mean, Hector Lyons. And he’s got a gun.”

  I’d never seen a reaction quite like I got from the police officer. He went back to his car and, within a few minutes, the red car was surrounded.

  Chapter 18

  “OUT COLD,” CONSTABLE ALBERTSON SAID to me a few hours later as he handed me a cup of tea. “Looks like the impact with the stone wall threw him forward, causing him to hit his head on the dash. He’s in hospital now, but as soon as he’s awake, we’ll have a go at him.”

  We were back in the church hall, which was bustling with activity, even though it was after midnight. It had taken a long time to sort out the scene after Harry ran into the stone wall. “So, he’ll be okay?”

  “Oh, yes. The doctors say he’ll be out in a few days. Of course, that will mean a transfer to jail until he can answer for the death here. And then there’s the fraud case.”

  “Oh, what about Slink?” I’d told the first police officer I’d talked to about Slink. He’d assured me someone would check on her.

  “I got in touch with Alex Norcutt. He’s taken her to the vet and says no harm was done. Should be back to her normal self tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.” A flutter of commotion drew my attention to the side door where Quimby had arrived. He talked with a few people, but then came directly over to me. “Well. In the thick of it again. Are you feeling all right?”

  “Aside from some aches and pains, I’m okay. Apparently, I’ll really feel it tomorrow.” At least that’s what the first responders had told me. They had wanted to transfer me to the hospital along with Harry, but I’d refused to go for two reasons. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Harry, and I had no idea how I’d pay for a hospital visit. The U.K. might have socialized medicine, but I doubted it extended to unemployed Americans who happened to be in the country. My funds were already tight enough. I promised to get medical attention at the first sign of headache, double vision, or any other unusual condition.

  Quimby motioned for me to follow him to the office down the hall. Once we were seated there, he asked me to take him through what had happened.

  “I suppose I should start with Rafe.”

  “Rafe?”

  “Yes.”

  Quimby consulted a screen on his phone. “But my understanding was that you came here earlier today to report the connections you’d made about Amy Brown being Lillian Stratham.”

  “Yes. That was what I figured out in the pub. I came straight here and told Constable Albertson everything. I was on my way home when I worked out the rest. It was The Great Gatsby. If I hadn’t seen it in Rafe’s messenger bag, I probably never would have figured it out.”

  I told him how once I’d realized the book was the first edition everything else fell into place. “The timer Rafe had wanted to purchase, the sound of breaking glass on the day of the fire, how the vandalism stopped after the fire. He’d carefully set everything up so that the fire would destroy the ‘letters,’ leaving him as the sole authority on them. And I bet he staged the vandalism around the village so that the fire would be thought of as another incident. He met with a publicist this afternoon. They were discussing a huge media campaign, both here and in the United States. He intended to use the fake letters to launch him to an even higher level of fame.”

  “So you confronted him with this information?”

  “Oh no. I mean, I didn’t intend to. The pieces were still coming together. I’d accidentally gone inside the wrong back garden on my way home. I was thinking about a flash of blue letters on white that I’d seen inside Rafe’s messenger bag at the pub. I’d just worked out it was his first edition of The Great Gatsby. I was so lost in thought that I went in the wrong back gate. I realized that’s what the murderer must have done.”

  I’d had a lot of time to wait out on the stretch of green countryside while the accident scene was cleared away. Working out what must have happened was a good mental exercise to keep me from fixating on how badly things could have turned out tonight.

  “Harry must have killed Lillian, either on the path behind the cottages or at his home,” I said. “I saw her walking that direction. It makes sense that she was going to see him. If she actually visited him at his house, I could see him waiting until she left, then following her and killing her on the path. Plenty of rocks to use as a weapon.” I paused and blew out a breath, not liking the images the words created. “He probably intended to stash her body in what, up until the day before, had been an unoccupied cottage, my cottage. I’d only been in it one day and hardly home at all, so
he might not have realized I’d moved in. Anyway, the locks are easy to force, so he probably planned to leave her body there until later, after dark. The layout and design of my cottage and Rafe’s are identical. I didn’t have anything in mine that would show someone had just moved in. No boxes or packing paper or even a suitcase left out.”

  “So you think he put the body in Rafe’s cottage by mistake?”

  “Yes. I made the same mistake myself. I walked up to the back door of the cottage next door before I realized it was the wrong one. The back gates and gardens are similar and neither Rafe nor I have anything outside that would identify our cottages. But before Hector—I mean Harry—could retrieve the body, Rafe’s timer turned on the light, which set fire to his cottage. Since Lillian’s body had been placed in his cottage, the death was discovered that night. Of course, I hadn’t worked out the whole thing. I didn’t realize it was Harry. I was still figuring out what Rafe had done.”

  “Take me through that.”

  “I went inside Rafe’s front garden to look at his window, and he appeared behind me. It seemed like that. I never heard him coming. I was probably so absorbed in my thoughts that I didn’t hear him.” I explained about seeing the first edition again. “I tried not to show that I’d noticed it, but he must have seen it in my face. He offered me a cut, ten percent, to keep quiet, but I told him I’d already told the police about it. It was a bluff, but I figured it was better for me, if he thought the secret was out.”

  “Glad we could be of some help to you,” Quimby said dryly. “Go on. What happened next?”

  “I managed to get inside my cottage and lock him out. He left, wandering off with a dazed look. Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes, he was taken into custody in Manchester. He was trying to get on the last flight of the day. He will answer for the arson, but let’s finish your narrative before we get into that. After Mr. Farraday left, what did you do?”

  “Well, I intended to come down here, but I got a text from Alex. At least, I thought it was from Alex.” I recounted Harry’s boasts about cloning phones.

  Quimby’s face got darker and more closed off the more I told him. “One moment.” He left the room, but was back within five minutes. “I have my tech people on it. They say what he described is possible. It was my understanding that you thought it was Felix Carrick who was the murderer.”

  “Yes. It was his protruding brow bone. Stupid of me to think that Harry wouldn’t have done more to conceal his identity.” I recounted what had happened and ended with my tumble through the field. Quimby had a few follow-up questions, but not many. I thought he must be going easy on me because I had mud and grass sticking out of my hair and was huddled inside a borrowed jacket because the sleeve and back of my shirt had been shredded when I went flying out of the car.

  “Okay, that’s all for now. We’ll have more questions, but those can wait. Let’s get you home.”

  “Wait, can you tell me how you zeroed in on Harry so quickly? I mean, I’m really glad that your officers knew exactly who Harry was when I mentioned his name, and didn’t mess around making sure he wasn’t going to come out of the car, gun blazing.”

  Quimby pressed his lips together for a moment, then said, “I suppose you, of all people, deserve to see this.” He tapped a few keys on the laptop in front of him as he spoke. “What you told Constable Albertson set us on the right track. Once we had the connection between Amy Brown and Lillian Stratham, we dug into her background. Like you, we considered men in the village who fit the age and physical profile we were looking for, but then this came in.”

  He turned it so that I could see a picture of Lillian, the beginning of a video, which filled the screen.

  Chapter 19

  I GLANCED BACK AT QUIMBY, my eyebrows raised. “What’s this?”

  “A video that Lillian made after her first visit to Nether Woodsmoor. We just got access to it today. Our tech people had her desktop computer, but they were focused on her email and files. Lillian recorded this video through Legacy.com, a website that helps people handle their online accounts after their death.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard about those types of sites,” I said. “You can name someone to take over your email and social media accounts.” When I’d read an article about them, I’d thought that having something like that would be a good idea, but I hadn’t actually set up an account, putting it off as one of those things that I’d do later. But Lillian’s job revolved around social media and online activities, so I wasn’t surprised that she had lined up a service like that.

  “Right, an online beneficiary. Lillian had named a colleague at work. Once we identified the body as Amy Brown on Wednesday and notified her office, her colleague told us about the account, but she couldn’t get access until she had a death certificate. We were able to expedite the process, but it still took until today to get full access. From the internal information we received from Legacy.com, Lillian logged in to her account on Monday evening from work, made this video, and changed her account settings so that if she died, this video would be emailed to a selected list of recipients, which included her colleague as well as the Nether Woodsmoor police.” Quimby tapped a key and the video began.

  It looked as if she were recording it in her home, maybe an apartment. The lighting was a bit dim and, in the background, I could see bookshelves and a pale green waterproof jacket thrown over the arm of a chair.

  I hadn’t got a good look at her on the path behind the cottages that day when I was struggling to get the gate to latch, but now that the camera was focused on her in a close-up, I could see that besides long, light-blond hair, she had darker eyebrows that slashed straight across her forehead above brown eyes and a slightly upturned nose.

  Lillian cleared her throat and squared her shoulders. “Well, if anyone is watching this that means my plan didn’t go so well.” She cleared her throat again. She must have been sitting in an office chair because she swiveled, and her shoulders rotated from side to side. “I suppose I should start with my name. I go by Amy Brown now, but I used to be Lillian Stratham. I changed my name. It’s all legal and everything, but after what happened, it was impossible to even get a call back, much less an interview.”

  She stopped, looked down at the desktop. “Right. I’m making a hash of this, but hopefully no one will ever see it, so it doesn’t matter. Back to Lillian. When I was Lillian, I worked for Harry Lyster. Yes, that Harry Lyster. The Fugitive Financier.”

  She shook her head and blew out a sigh. “He had us all so fooled. We had no idea he was running a scam. At least, I didn’t, but the police didn’t believe that. I was his secretary, so they thought I would know exactly what had gone on. I didn’t.” She said the last words firmly. “But that didn’t matter. And it didn’t matter that the police never charged me with anything. Employers saw my name, and they moved my resume into the ‘no’ pile. So I changed my name and moved to Manchester. Started over, literally working my way up from the receptionist to the job I have now, managing social media.” She glanced away as she murmured, “At least that was one thing I learned, media manipulation.”

  She refocused on the camera. “So last weekend there I was, going through my life, taking a weekend in the country for a bike race—I’ve taken it up—when I saw Harry.” Her face changed. Her brows lowered and her lips pressed together for a moment. “He was suited up for the bike race, not three feet away from me. He looked different. So much slimmer. And his hair was different, too. I thought it was him, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, so I watched him. I stayed near him throughout the race—but not so close that I drew his attention. Then after it was over, I followed him back to the local pub.

  “He had a pint then picked up a takeaway meal. By then, I was pretty sure, but when I saw him tap the bar twice with his knuckle as he said good-bye to the person who’d brought his food, I knew it was him.” Satisfaction laced her tone. “He used to do that at the end of every meeting, the little rap on the table right b
efore he left. He’d worked hard to change his appearance, but he hadn’t changed his mannerisms.”

  I glanced at Quimby. “Weird,” I said. “He did the same thing the other day at the pub, the first time I met him.”

  Quimby nodded as the video continued. Lillian’s face broke into a slow grin. She tilted her chin upward. “The bar was crowded, so he didn’t notice me, and I made sure he didn’t see me follow him home.” The grin dropped from her face. “He lived in a mansion.” Anger vibrated through her tone. “So unfair. I was wiped out, penniless, after Harry disappeared. I had to use everything I had to hire a solicitor, all because of what Harry did. I wasn’t guilty. He was. But I was the one who had my reputation smeared and ended up with nothing. Nothing,” she repeated, leaning toward the camera, her face filling every inch of the screen.

  She fell back in her chair and ran her hands through her hair, visibly calming down. “So he owes me. I’m going back to Nether Woodsmoor tomorrow and tell him he’s going to pay me a nice little bonus, something to make up for all the trouble he’s caused me.”

  She looked away from the camera a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s about it. I have no doubt that he’ll pay up. He’s basically a coward. He always was more talk than action. This video is my insurance policy. If I’m not back home,” she paused and smiled, “with a much bigger bank balance, then this video will be released. Harry will pay, one way or the other.”

  The video ended there, and I turned to Quimby, stunned. “So she tried to blackmail him.”

  Quimby closed the laptop. “I believe so. We don’t have any confirmation of this video, but when she returned here, Harry may have recognized her and killed her.”

  “Or, she confronted him, and he didn’t believe she had left a message that would expose him. She really didn’t sound like she was worried about him hurting her.”