The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries

by Carrie Bedford

  His aura, invisible to everyone else, danced over his head while he talked. His past, also invisible to his supporters, nagged at me. Plagiarized papers, pregnant girlfriends, marrying for influence and money. None of it was attractive, but I wasn’t sure how much it would sway the electorate against him even if they knew. It seemed unlikely that Eliza Chapman’s accusations would ever see the light of day. I kept an eye open for her. It was hard to imagine her summoning enough energy to leave her wine and her books, but revenge and hatred are powerful forces.

  Anita was in a good mood, excited by the spirited crowds and the snappy speeches. I glimpsed Chris, standing by himself near the back of the crowd, unwilling to push through to a better viewing point at the front, unlike Anita, who’d had no qualms about elbowing her way to the first row.

  Our next stop, in a city center square, felt like a replay, although the turnout was even higher, and the audience more vocal. After that stop, we traveled to Oxford, where Scott addressed a largely student audience in a cavernous hall with wood paneling and old, murky oil paintings on the walls. Once the speeches were done, our busload of supporters adjourned to a nearby pub for dinner. Anita and I sat with Chris, ate chicken pies and drank white wine, listening to the ebb and flow of political debate. When we’d heard enough, we said goodnight to Chris and wandered up the high street to the small bed and breakfast where we’d spend the night before getting back on the bus in the morning.

  Our diminutive room was nestled in the attic of an old Tudor building. The beamed walls, bowing under the weight of the roof, were papered in green, sprigged with white blossoms. The ceiling, covered in the same botanic wallpaper, sloped over two single beds covered with pink and green flowered bedspreads. It was like an Alice in Wonderland version of Kew Gardens. I propped a pink pillow up against the bed head and leaned back. The day hadn’t been particularly demanding, but I felt exhausted, as I often did when dealing with an aura.

  Anita pulled a half bottle of wine from her bag and poured some into two paper cups. She took a sip. “Astringent with a hint of cardboard,” she said. “My favorite.”

  I sipped mine. “It’s not that bad.”

  She held up her cup. “To us,” she toasted. “Auras and all.”

  After taking a big swallow, she cocked her head to one side.

  “When you look at me, do you just see this big circle of impending doom?” she asked.

  “Of course not. When I look at you, I see you, my wonderful, irritating friend. I hardly notice the aura. Besides, it’s just a warning, an admonition to be vigilant. You’re not going to die any time soon. We’ll make sure of that.”

  She raised her paper cup again. “I’ll drink to that.”

  We stayed awake until the early hours. I told her about my fight with Josh, she described the growing hostilities with her father over a marriage she didn’t want. Leaving those painful topics behind, we talked about our careers. By the time we’d finished the wine and turned out the lights, I felt a renewed bond between us, the attachment we’d formed as freshman students just as strong now as it was then. I lay awake in the dark, listening to the old house creak, thankful that Anita and I had put our quarrel behind us. I could protect her better if we stayed close.

  The next morning, we bundled up in our warmest clothes for another day of outdoor speeches. While we were on the bus to Tewkesbury, my phone buzzed. Seeing that it was Eliza Chapman, I answered at once. Her raspy voice seemed to breathe smoke down the phone. “When will the story be in the paper?” she demanded.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Let me find out and I’ll get back to you.”

  “That’s not good enough,” she said. “Give me the name of your editor. I’ll find out for myself.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll check in with him and get back to you.”

  She put the phone down without replying. I called Colin and left a voicemail to warn him that Eliza was likely to be in touch.

  For the rest of the day, we followed Scott from one market town to another, traversing the English countryside like the traveling court of a medieval king, journeying from castle to castle. But these courtiers wore jeans and puffy anoraks, ate cheese and pickle sandwiches, and drank tea from thermos flasks.

  As the crowds increased in size, so did the number of auras I saw. Many months ago, I’d realized I couldn’t handle the emotional toll of trying to analyze every aura, and I’d developed what I called selective recognition. I only took notice of auras over people I knew or who were connected to people I knew. It worked, mostly. Apart from Scott and Lewis, of course, but that was different. Scott was a public figure. His premature death would leave his party without a leader, generating a degree of chaos that would be bad for the country. I felt compelled to do something.

  In a car park at the Mini factory in Cowley, we huddled against the cold for the final rally of the weekend. I took my digital camera out of its protective bag and took some shots of the crowd, working on my camera technique. Through the lens, I noticed a man I’d seen several times the previous day. I felt I knew him from somewhere else and it was only when it began raining that I realized he was the birdwatcher I’d seen on the lake in Hyde Park. He was wearing a sage-colored Barbour jacket, lined with a distinctive tan and black plaid. When he was struggling in the wind to pull his hood up, it caught my attention. Of course, the jackets were popular, but I was still certain it was the same man. Now his earlier presence on the lake seemed ominous. Had he been watching Scott, not birds, through his binoculars?

  I snapped a few shots of him. I’d share them with DCI Clarke. Not that he’d rushed to do anything about Eliza, it seemed.

  Late in the afternoon, with daylight fading and the temperature plummeting, we stood near the front of a large crowd, shivering through Scott’s last speech of the day. Even his enthusiasm was waning. His voice was hoarse, and, if his feet hurt as much as mine did, then he had to be in some discomfort.

  Someone behind us shouted; I turned to see a man in a black hoodie shoving his way forward towards the platform. A few people in the audience yelled at him to stop pushing, but he barreled on, using his elbows to move everyone in his way. Suddenly, he stopped. I saw a small dark object arc through the air, and watched in horror as the projectile struck Scott on the head. Two bodyguards leapt towards Scott as he collapsed. They broke his fall, lowering him to the platform floor. Lewis threw himself in front of Scott, shielding him from further attack and from view.

  The mayhem on the stage was mirrored by the frenzy in the audience as supporters grabbed hold of the attacker and pinned him to the ground. Several security guards jumped off the platform, clamped handcuffs on the assailant, and dragged him to his feet while sirens wailed and several police cars slid to a halt near the platform. The handcuffed man was pushed into the back of a car, which sped away with lights flashing.

  Scott lay still on the dais floor, with Lewis and a group of others kneeling or crouching around him. The crowd waited in complete silence. My legs felt like jelly.

  At last, Lewis helped Scott to his feet. Scott held a handkerchief to his head and, for a moment, looked unsteady. Then he straightened up, standing unaided, to look out over the hushed audience. His aura circled above him, just as it had before.

  “It was only a stone, folks,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  He looked down at his white shirt, which was spattered with drops of blood. “Nothing except a ruined shirt and my favorite tie, that is.”

  Everyone clapped and cheered as he left the platform, escorted to a black sedan with Lewis at his shoulder. The crowd began to disperse, everyone talking about the assault. The stone throwing was a petty offensive, no more than a statement of disgust or contempt, but it slammed home to me just how vulnerable Scott was, campaigning like this in such public venues. I felt I had no chance of averting whatever danger threatened him.

  Walking back to the bus, I looked around for binoculars man, but saw no sign of him. Typical, I thought, that I�
��d been worrying about the wrong person. Maybe binoculars man was just a supporter after all.

  “So is Scott’s aura still there?” Anita asked when we’d boarded the bus. “Or was that the threat that didn’t turn out to be one?”

  “It’s still there,” I said, letting her take the window seat. As soon as we sat down, she put on her headphones and leaned against the glass, leaving me to my thoughts, which weren’t good company. After a while, I tried to read, but it was hard to concentrate. I stared out of the window, watching the sky fade from pink to grey to charcoal and the glass transform into a black mirror that reflected colorless images of the passengers. The bus smelled of damp clothes. Everyone was quiet, shocked by the attack on Scott, and tired after two long days of traveling and cheering. Chris sat by himself on the seat in front of me, reading a textbook.

  For a while, I worked on an Italian language app on my phone. After ten minutes of staring at the same word, I gave up. My mind was teeming with thoughts of auras. The bus slowed in traffic when we reached the outskirts of London, where the driver started letting the volunteers off close to bus stops and tube stations. It was raining hard. Anita got off near Ealing Broadway, heading to her parents’ house for dinner.

  “Wish me luck,” she said. “Mum was tight-lipped about it all, but I think Dad’s invited a potential suitor over. It’ll be a nightmare. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Almost everyone had left the bus by the time we approached the campaign office. Chris stirred and called out to the driver.

  “Can you drop me here? I live on that street.”

  He stood up, hefting his backpack on to his shoulders as the driver pulled the bus to a halt at the curbside.

  “Bye, Kate,” Chris said. “Let’s hope for the best on election day. Maybe I’ll see you in Eastbourne for the acceptance speech.”

  Climbing down from the bus, he strode away, collar turned up against the rain. He turned up a side road, disappearing into the darkness. The driver had changed gears and was about to pull back into traffic when I caught sight of Chris’s book on the seat he’d just vacated.

  “Wait!” I called to the driver. “Chris left something. I’ll run and give it to him.”

  “Okay. Shall I wait for you?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll just go straight to the tube station.”

  Picking up the book, I hurried off the bus and along the street Chris had taken. I could see him in the distance, a dark figure appearing and disappearing through pools of orange light from the street lamps. He turned off the road, disappearing from view. I broke into a run, hampered by my overnight bag and the heavy book, but, when I reached the place where I thought he had turned, I couldn’t tell which house he’d gone into. The semi-detached houses, fronted by short driveways, were all identical. I hesitated, feeling the rain dripping down the back of my neck. Just then a light came on downstairs in the house to my left. Guessing that would be him, I walked to the front door and rang the doorbell. A broken gutter above poured a steady stream of water on to the doorstep, and I backed up, braving the rain rather than the leak.

  When the door opened, Chris peered out, looking wary. Even when he saw it was me, his face didn’t seem to relax.

  “Your book,” I said holding it out to him. “You left it on the bus.”

  “Oh, thanks. Those books are really expensive.”

  He took the heavy volume, one hand still holding the front door half open. “See you next week maybe,” he said after a long pause. He was obviously in no mood to chat.

  “Which is the quickest way to the tube from here?” I asked.

  He nodded left up the street, the way I’d come.

  “Okay, thanks. But could I use your loo before I go? I drank too much tea today.”

  He hesitated long enough to make me regret asking. I realized I’d assumed he lived alone, but maybe he shared with other students or a girlfriend and it wasn’t a good time. He hadn’t told me much about his personal life.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make it,” I said quickly, turning away.

  “No, come in,” he said. “The place is a mess, so you’ll have to excuse it.”

  I followed him inside. The front door opened directly into the living room, which was small and cluttered with furniture. A flowery three-piece suite took up most of the space, arranged around a tiled fireplace with an electric fire retrofitted into it. A table holding a small, old-fashioned television lurked in the corner. Dusty silk flowers in a cheap-looking vase were the only decoration. It didn’t look like a room furnished by a young male student.

  “There’s just one bathroom and it’s upstairs,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

  I was about to say I was sure I could find it, but he led the way up the narrow, pink-carpeted stairs to a small landing with three doors. He closed one of them and pointed to the furthest one. “That’s the bathroom.”

  The bathroom was shabby but clean, with lavender carpet flattened from years of use, and pink fixtures that bloomed with lime scale. Maybe Chris was renting the house from a landlady with a penchant for pastels and no money for repairs.

  While I washed my hands, I wondered why he’d been so reluctant to let me in. The house wasn’t exactly Architectural Digest, but it wasn’t anything to be embarrassed about. My curiosity piqued, I tiptoed from the bathroom towards the door that he’d closed, pushing it open a few inches. It was dark inside.

  My brother Leo had been known to call me nosy and meddling, but I preferred to think of what I was about to do as investigating. My curiosity had got me into trouble on more than one occasion. I tried not to think about that right now.

  Light from a street lamp outside illuminated the room enough for me to see a single bed neatly made with a white duvet and matching pillowcase. An old wooden armoire stood against one wall. The room was very neat and revealed nothing particularly interesting, which made me wonder why Chris had bothered to pull the door closed. The headlights of a car passing on the street briefly flooded the room with light and illuminated the far wall. It was covered from floor to ceiling with pieces of paper attached with thumbtacks and tape. I crept in to take a closer look. Not wanting to risk switching on a lamp, I held up my mobile, which shed enough light for me to see that the papers were press clippings and magazine pages, and every one of them featured Simon Scott.

  Chris was truly a supporter, I thought, until I peered more closely at one clipping and saw deep slashes across a photo of Scott’s face. I looked at another and saw similar gouges across Scott’s eyes. Large black Xs criss-crossed some of the photos and there appeared to be yellow highlighter on some of the text, but I didn’t have time to read any of it. My heart was thumping against my ribs and I was finding it hard to breathe. Struggling to make sense of what I was seeing, I also knew I had to move before Chris became suspicious. I crept out to the landing, carefully pulling the door closed. When I reached the top of the stairs, Chris was standing at the bottom looking up at me. Pulse racing and my legs trembling, I made my way down.

  “I feel much better now, I said. “Thanks.”

  He nodded. “I made some coffee. Do you want some?”

  What I really wanted was to get out of the house, but rushing away seemed rude, so I followed him into the kitchen, my hand shaking when I took the cup of coffee he offered me.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I think I’m coming down with something, actually,” I said. “What with the rain and being in close quarters with all those people, it’s not surprising I suppose.”

  I drank the coffee fast even though it was hot, burning my tongue and throat as I took several big swallows.

  “I’d better go,” I said, handing him the empty cup. “It’s getting late. I hope I’ll see you next week.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, following me to the door. I heard him bolt it behind me before I hurried under relentless rain to the tube station.

  13

  Jittery and perplexed, I found it hard to sleep, and w
as wide awake long before dawn, listening to the faint hiss of tires on wet asphalt and the steady beat of rain on the windows. I climbed out of my warm comfortable bed for just long enough to make tea and toast and then hurried back with my breakfast and laptop. Searching online for Chris Melrose brought up half a dozen results, all confirming what he had told me about his postgraduate student status. I couldn’t find anything else on him. General searches on Melrose filled the screen with pages of information, but nothing that was helpful.

  After a while, I got up, put on a robe and went to the living room to look through the photos I’d taken at the campaign events. I printed some of them; a shot of the man with the binoculars, a couple of Chris, and even a decent one of Simon Scott standing on stage with his arms raised in the air. Spreading them out on my desk, I added a photo of Eliza Chapman that I’d printed from one of the old articles on the Internet. In the lamplight, I stared at the images, trying to see the relationships between them. If I could work out the links, perhaps I could save some lives.

  Chris was working in Scott’s campaign office and going to all his campaign events. Was he doing that to support him, as appeared to be the case, or to watch him, the way I suspected the binoculars man was? And if so, with what objective? Revenge, like Eliza Chapman? Chris, Eliza and binoculars man were all possible suspects if Scott’s aura indicated death by murder.

  I checked the time frequently, wondering when Anita might be free. I wanted to make sure she was all right, and tell her about Chris, but she’d told me she was on duty until mid-afternoon. I moved the photos around, shuffling them like cards to see if I could wheedle any information out of them. After a while, I got up and made more tea, throwing on jeans and a sweater while the kettle boiled.