“I’m not naming names, but Donna did have an awful lot of lunch dates, and she did get picked up by this handsome fellow sometimes. And I don’t believe in a week of Sundays that was her husband.”
“Why shouldn’t Donna be friends with a man? Anyway, I didn’t see him for weeks before it happened.” The older woman crossed her arms over her chest.
A man. That sounded promising. “What did he look like?” Eve asked.
“Tall and broad-shouldered and ever so charming.” The older woman snapped her mouth shut, as if registering Eve’s presence anew, after forgetting all about her.
Eve wished she’d had another choice instead of asking, but it couldn’t be helped.
“I think I’ll try on that blouse,” she said, hoping the women would pick up their discussion while she was out of sight.
She was lucky. As she twirled in front of the mirror in the dressing room, she caught the words “friend in the corner charity shop”. To make her day complete, the blouse flattered her looks. It would be mean not to buy it, after profiting from her skilful interrogation.
As Eve paid for the blouse, she asked, “Is there any kind of vintage shop close by? I’ve promised a friend in the States a few photos for her blog.”
“We only know Kim Potter’s place. You can’t miss it if you turn left at the traffic light. It’s called ‘Helping Hand’,” the younger woman said. “That’s where we take damaged clothes.”
“Only good things, mind,” her colleague said. “Clothes we couldn’t sell with a good conscience, but which need a bit of mending or a good clean. In ‘Paula’s Parlour’ we only stock quality garments.”
“I can see that, and you’ve been wonderful,” Eve said, lifting her glossy bag with her purchase. “I can’t thank you ladies enough.” Her American accent almost slipped. She brought it back in full force. “Y’all have a great day, you hear.”
Eve’s luck ran out when she located the charity shop. It supported half a dozen local causes, from a hospice to an animal shelter, and the spotless window displayed a better class of goods than the usual knick-knacks and musty clothes Eve had grown accustomed to.
Unfortunately, the shop also sported a Closed sign, with a handwritten notice taped underneath. “Closed until further notice for illness.” Eve noticed two dog bowls for food and water in a corner of the room as she peered inside.
An elderly woman joined her. In her hands she held a bulging shopper with albums.
“What a shame,” she said. “I hope it’s not the doggy again. Poor Kim. It almost killed her when she had to give him up for a bit a few years back.”
Eve made a non-committal noise in her throat.
“Inseparable, the two of them.” The woman shook her head. “Could be Kim as well, I suppose. This dreadful tummy bug that’s going around! My grandchildren have been laid up for days.”
“Awful.” Eve made a suitably sad, concerned face. Inwardly, she cheered. With any luck, Kim would remember Donna, and hopefully even the mystery man, unless he turned out to be Ben after all, who’d met his wife for lunch. The shop assistants didn’t seem to know him, but maybe Donna didn’t want to introduce him as her husband. Having an admirer gave her more of a mysterious air than a simple date with her spouse.
The traffic conspired against Eve too. She arrived back to find the pub crowded, with Hayley rushing to serve what appeared to be a meeting of the ladies’ bowls and lawn croquet club, judging by the embroidery on their pink shirts. She’d come back later, she decided as she went to pick up her backpack.
Her afternoon stroll led her along a path devoid of people. Only the owl perched in its customary spot. It turned its head away as soon as it spotted her. She could swear she saw a smirk hovering over its beak.
The pub was still crowded on her return, so Eve headed home again for a ready meal. She decided to drop Hayley a note, which also meant hunting for an envelope in her odd drawer where she stuffed everything she intended to put in its right place one day. Only work correspondence and receipts got filed straight away.
Most people probably had such a drawer, she thought. Although personal messages happened mostly online these days, five years ago people still wrote letters, or diaries, or printed out photographs. If she could lay her hands on Donna’s things, she might find a clue. Except she couldn’t very well ask Ben to have a good old snoop in his deceased wife’s things, if he had kept anything at all. Drat.
She sealed the note to Hayley. Until she heard back, there was nothing else she could do.
Eve dropped the envelope behind the bar. Hayley still rushed around. The bowls and lawn croquet club had gone from afternoon tea to pre-dinner drinks to happy hour, judging by the stack of dirty cups and glasses.
Hayley’s grandmother gave her a quick wave, but she too pitched in behind the bar.
Eve lit a fire in the woodburner. The crackling logs and the flickering flames helped her relax. Keeping an eye on the fire also gave her something to do. She cherished a leisurely pace after a bout of frantic work, if she had no fixed plans. This though was the opposite. She badly wanted things to happen, and inactivity was hell.
She could get in touch with her father, something she only did once in a blue moon. They hadn’t been close since her mother died. His second wife had declined to publicly acknowledge Eve’s existence because it made him appear old, as she’d explained on their wedding day less than a year after he’d been widowed. The marriage didn’t last, but the damage did. He was now on to wife number three. Their rare conversations were as meaningful as those she had with her mother who’d need a séance to communicate from beyond the grave.
Still, he was her family. A vague sense of duty, and the need for a distraction, made her type away at an email which would have to pass a few tests before she hit send. There would be no mentions of birthdays, or politics, or money, or health issues, in case they made her father uncomfortable. These limitations made the emails between Eve and her father read like a cross between weather reports, a realtor’s magazine due to her frequent moves, and with the new addition of the owl to her repertoire, soon also a birdwatcher’s diary.
That was the only good thing about climate change, she thought. Although the term as such fell under a strict no-no and it doomed life as they knew it, it kept the communication lively. Her father’s emails spoke either of too much snow, too little snow, too much rain, a drought, or storms that should never have happened.
Had he always been this boring and colourless? As a child she’d adored him and his big chuckle which had died along with her mother. His subsequent choice of spouses had been less than satisfactory, at least from Eve’s point of view. He stopped coming to visit her soon after she’d moved to England, during the reign of the second wife. She’d stopped visiting him shortly after. They saw each other at weddings and funerals, if at all.
Eve hesitated as she read through her insipid text. Should she add one x or two? Three were over the top and might raise her stepmother’s hackles, in case it led to Eve asking for a favour.
One x looked a bit too detached. She groaned as she added a second x and pressed send when the door-bell rang.
Hayley handed Eve a bottle of wine and her jacket to hang up. “A housewarming gift,” she said.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I hauled in Dom. He’s having a ball with all this harmless adoration, and they’ll all be gone within the hour. Like Cinderella, only their night out ends way before midnight.”
Hayley pulled a chair close to the fire and sat down.
“Won’t the men come in for a nightcap?” Eve asked.
“Not when the Pink Panthers are on the loose.”
Eve must have looked perplexed, because Hayley said, “The unofficial club name. They toyed with changing it to Pink Cougars, to scare the old blokes, but it didn’t catch on.” She glanced around openly. “Not a bad place. Bit mumsy for you, I’d have thought.”
Eve shrugged. “I don’t tend to notice after a whi
le. It’s stupid because I’m a sucker for the outwards appearance. In any case I’ve only rented the cottage for a year.”
“That’s a hell of a long stretch to live with mustard and aubergine walls.”
Eve held up the bottle. Hayley waved it away. “Tea would be nice. And then we can chat about whatever you want to know so badly. Unless you invited me over for my pretty eyes and witty conversation.”
“More like your animal magnetism.” Eve added a handful of slightly crumbling biscuits to the tea tray.
Hayley suppressed a yawn. “Don’t let me nod off. It’s the fire, and the fact that I get up earlier than any self-respecting rooster.”
“I was kind of hoping you could tell me about Donna Dryden.”
Hayley’s biscuit dropped into her tea. “Why?”
Eve paused. “Erm …”
“I mean it,” Hayley said. “I need to know before I spill any beans. Is it because of morbid curiosity, the lure of the potential bad boy or do you have an honest to God crush on him?”
Chapter 7
Eve stared at her guest. “I don’t have a crush on Ben Dryden, or anyone else.”
“Okay.”
“Also, I’m not a thrill seeker or publicity hound.”
“But?” Hayley asked, clearly expecting more.
“The way people treated him the other night. Is it always like this?”
“No. Normally, they’d have spat behind his back or with a bit of Dutch courage, called him out for a fight.” Hayley might as well have spoken about her grocery list for all the emotion she showed.
“That’s horrible.”
“What do you expect? Especially if you’re not one of the boys, which Ben isn’t. He never got drunk with the locals, he had a posh job, a family tree longer than my arm, and a wife who thought she was slumming it.”
“Donna wasn’t popular?” She shouldn’t enjoy hearing that, Eve silently admonished herself, but she did. Which would have been pathetic and despicable, if it hadn’t held the promise of yielding a new crop of murder suspects.
Hailey shrugged. “I think Donna was simply lonely here and out of her depth. She’d married a charming guy with a charming life and a charming place in London, and as soon as his old man is in trouble, that’s over.”
“Ben and his father must be close.”
“Looks like it. But why do you want to know if you aren’t interested in him?”
Eve felt her cheeks grow warm. She moved away from the fire. “I like him as a person, and I want him to have a normal life again. I’d want that for anybody.”
“Nice sentiment, but that’s not going to happen as long as he stays, and he’ll stay until his old man pops his clogs.”
“Or the case is solved.”
Hayley snorted in disbelief. “After five years of a big fat nothing?”
“Is it so unlikely?” Eve asked. “If Ben is innocent, someone else got away with murder.”
“He didn’t ask you for your help, did he?” Hayley gave her a shrewd look.
“No,” Eve said. “He’d much rather be treated like dirt than let anything upset his father. It’s crazy.”
“But you don’t intend to honour his wishes.”
“Would you? I thought you’re his friend?”
“I am. If you really want to dig up the past, I’ll see what I can do to help you. It’ll take me a while to remember most things though.”
“That’s fine. I’ll make a list. Just tell me, did you like Donna? And did Ben love her?” Eve half dreaded the answers.
“Hard to tell,” Hayley said after an interminable pause. “She might have been perfectly nice, for all I know. It’s always hard to be the new one in a small town, and the odd one out. I wasn’t here for most of that period myself, but when I was, I never got the impression she felt like she fitted in when I met her, and she took it out on Ben.”
“In what way?” Eve hoped she sounded noncommittal. She couldn’t imagine Ben playing doormat to a harpy, but some men did that. Like her father, with wife number two.
“Icy glares, snide remarks when she thought nobody would hear her. Silly stuff, really, but hard to shake off,” Hayley said.
“And Ben?”
“He’s not that easy to read. He took it all on the chin, but I have not the foggiest if that was because he loved her and felt guilty about dragging her here or because he didn’t love her and felt guilty about dragging her here.” Hayley’s eyelids drooped. “Sorry. If you don’t want me to fall asleep on the spot, I’ve got to go.”
Eve’s conscience pricked. “I shouldn’t have asked you to see me after a long day. Shall we talk another time?”
“You better believe that. If you’re doing a Sherlock, you need a Watson. Just smarter and better looking.”
An ally and new friend, Eve thought as she snuggled under her duvet a little later. This mission couldn’t fail.
The next day dawned grey, with the clouds hanging low enough to dampen anyone’s spirits. Except for Eve, who took the threat of rain as a good sign, especially if it held off until she needed it to pour down. Maybe a drizzle would be enough for her purposes, but she preferred a good drenching.
She set out under a gunmetal grey sky, wellies on her feet and a flimsy umbrella in her backpack. Nobody could think of her as unprepared as she strolled along the stream.
Ben stood in the place she now considered to be his spot. His face lit up as he saw her. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
“Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night,” Eve quoted. She had no idea why the unofficial US postal service’s motto had popped into her head, but it seemed to fit.
She took out her umbrella. Up close it looked pathetic. “Maybe not sleet.”
“Listen,” he said.
A sudden breeze ruffled the leaves but that was all. She gave him a puzzled frown.
“There’s no bird song,” Ben said.
“That means what?”
A fat drop hit her in the eye, followed by a bucket load of rain. Eve had her answer. She flinched. She wrestled with her useless umbrella; after all she’d bought it for this very reason, but a little bit of protection would have been welcome after all. She wanted to look wet and in need of shelter, but not like a drowned rat.
Ben pulled up the hood of his waterproof jacket. He took her arm and said, “We’d better make a run for it.”
“Where are we going?”
“My home is closest. Unless you mind going there.”
Eve could have punched the air in triumph. Instead, she settled for saying, “That sounds like a good idea.”
Ben’s home lay fifteen minutes at a brisk pace behind the wooden cabin. Eve glimpsed a tree hollow with something feathery inside, maybe her avian alibi. Her wellies squelched in the few muddy spots, but most of the path stayed solid. That was interesting. Not that she’d expect footprints after five years, should the killer have used this escape route, but Donna had died on a rainy evening. Maybe her assailant had left muddy foot prints. She’d need to ask Hayley or find a way to see the police report.
Eve shivered as they reached the house, a forbidding two-storeyed manor with a half-timbered front. The two wings were lower and made completely of grey stone.
Her wet jeans clung to her legs. Rain ran down her collar and onto her back. She hoped this visit was worth risking a cold.
Ben led her through a side door into a small boot room. The smooth flagstones ran unevenly towards the wall, and the door. He took her jacket and handed her a towel from a cabinet.
She dabbed her face dry and ran the towel through her hair.
“That’s better,” she said.
“Would you like to dry off in front of the fire before I run you home?”
“Yes please.”
She placed her wellies next to Ben’s boots on a wooden rack and followed him into a large room with shabby furniture, a few what must be ancestral portraits, and a large fireplace. Only the antlers and stags’ heads were missing to mak
e it a country house cliché. For a second, she could understand why Donna hadn’t felt at home, although with a white-washed ceiling to bring out the dark beams and the brown wainscoting that ran halfway up the walls replaced with something lighter, this room could be comfortable.
Eve reined in her thoughts. She wasn’t here to critique the interior design.
From another room she heard a mechanical squeal. The wheelchair, she assumed.
“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
Ben pointed towards the hallway. “Upstairs, second door on the left. It’s better equipped than the one down here.”
Eve clasped her backpack and slipped out of the room. While the ground floor had come straight out of a period picture, the second floor returned her to the present with its ankle-deep silver carpet and pale blue walls.
The bathroom boasted two large oval sinks, and the amount of chrome, glass and marble tiles with a subtle pink and gold thread running through them convinced Eve that this had been Donna’s design. Not such bad taste after all.
Eve quickly opened the cabinet to see if the dead woman had left anything else behind. No. All the contents of the rooms confirmed were that Ben took his dental hygiene seriously, he used quality care products, and he had two aftershaves. Also, since one lonely toothbrush stood in the holder, he definitely had no regular overnight visitor.
She battled the urge to snoop in the master bedroom. If she got caught, she had no excuse. She could have told Ben the truth, that she would have loved to see anything left behind by his wife, but he probably would tell Eve to go to hell.
The fire crackled as she came down with her face washed and her hair brushed. A slick of lip balm gave her the satisfaction of looking fresh without obvious make-up.
An elderly man who must have been easily Ben’s size before ill health shrunk his body, gave her an unreadable look. The right side of his face was slack from the bushy eyebrow downwards. A shock of brown hair sparsely threaded with silver looked too youthful for the rest. He held little resemblance with his son, but that could be due to his physical changes.
Let Sleeping Murder Lie: A cozy mystery Page 5