by Lyra Barnett
Now I was completely lost.
“Look, we’ve only got ten minutes. Sit down and tell me what you’re talking about and why the hell you’re in here.”
Betty sighed and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue from a box which looked like it might need refilling soon.
“He came into the café a few days ago, but I didn’t want to tell you because I knew how you felt about it all.”
She stopped as I held my hand up palm out. Occasionally Betty got into a flow that could only be stopped by this action. Harsh, but true. And I’d had enough of not knowing what was going on.
“Betty, who the bloody hell are you talking about?!”
“DCI Marsh obviously.”
“Wait, did you say you met him days ago?!”
“Yes, I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
I slumped back in my seat, hurt that she had not told me she had met this guy, but also that she would not tell about the new policeman when she knew how important it would be for my family. Something occurred to me and I jumped up, not hurt any more, but angry.
“Did you tell him that I didn’t like the police?!”
Betty put her hands to her mouth.
“Oh god, yeah I did! But not like that Flick, I just said that I wanted to introduce him to you, but that I would have to talk to you first because you were a bit, well… prickly around authority. Which is true!” she added nodding her big eyes at me for forgiveness. I sighed and held her hand, anything else would have been like kicking a puppy.
“To be honest, I was thinking that you and him would make a nice couple.”
“Are you insane?! He’s a policeman Betty! And I’m a…” I suddenly remembered where I was, and Betty’s quivering bottom lip told me this could wait for another time.
“Look, don’t worry. I’m sure they’re just going through everything and being thorough. Marsh is just doing his job properly. Has he said anything about why they’re questioning you in particular?”
“They say Mrs Tranter was poisoned! But I made her coffee from scratch in the café!”
Cyanide. That’s why Constable Pearson had been looking it up. They can’t have had lab results back yet can they? From what I’d seen on TV, those things took time. The only thing I knew about cyanide was that it was supposed to smell of almonds. Thank you Poirot. Wait, that was it!
“Betty, did Marsh ask you if you had added any almond essence to Mrs Tranter’s coffee?”
Her mouth widened into a perfect ‘O’.
“Yes! He did! How did you know that?!”
“Just a guess, and I’m also guessing you said no?”
“Course not, she’s not the type to have anything fancy in her coffee like that… wasn’t the type I mean.”
“Right, we need to think who else had access to that coffee this morning.”
Betty frowned at me.
“Well no one, I made it and took it to her.”
There was a knock on the door behind us at the same time as it opened.
“Time’s up,” Constable Pearson said, jerking her thumb upwards to indicate that I needed to leave.
“Don’t worry Betty, we’ll sort this out.” I gave her hand a squeeze and left her in the small windowless room looking like a child being left on her first day of school.
Back on the sunny streets of Stumpwell, I looked up a local phone directory on my mobile. It wasn’t too difficult to find an address under Tranter, Stumpwell wasn’t that big and it wasn’t a common name, with only one entry. I adjusted my route, and in another twenty minutes I was walking down a wide street with trees planted on either side. The houses were semi-detached thirties affairs with big bay windows and well-kept gardens. Overall it was rather nice and I had a hard time picturing Mrs Tranter living here. From the description Betty had given me, the seventh level of hell would be a more apt address for the recently deceased.
Scaffolding was wrapped around one of the houses on my left, and I spotted a figure at the top working at the guttering. I crossed the street over to him and called up.
“Excuse me, but do you know where a Mrs Tranter lives?” I had decided on present tense as, although gossip travelled insanely fast in Stumpwell, I wasn’t sure it had reached this workman yet. The man leaned over the side railing and looked down at me.
“Well she used to live ‘ere love.”
“Oh, so you’ve heard?” I said, surprised.
“Yeah, I’ve ‘eard.” The builder gave a small laugh and turned back to his guttering.
Before I could call him back to question him further, the front door opened and a short bald man with more frown lines across his forehead than I’d ever seen. He moved down the paved path which cut through the neat and tidy lawn and almost walked into me as he came through the open gate.
“Oh, I’m sorry, do excuse me,” he stammered before moving out onto the street and calling up to the builder. “I’m just off to the bank now Mr Jones.”
“Good,” the builder replied gruffly, and the little man waddled off.
This was obviously Mr Tranter, and from his nervous and cowed manner, I’d say his wife had done a good job on him over the years. I decided not to ask him anything right now. After all, the man had just lost his wife. Besides, I thought the builder might be able to give more insight into the couple from an impartial perspective. Though something told me that I might find a lot of people with no love lost for Mrs Tranter.
I was about to call up to the roof again when I noticed the builder was descending anyway. I moved over to meet him at the bottom ladder.
“Allo again,” he said as he turned and saw me.
“So you’re weren’t a fan of Mrs Tranter either?”
I had decided I needed to get him onside if I was going to get anything out of him. He had a narrow face and a moustache so thin I could have done a better job with my eye-liner. One of his eyes was swollen and black, an on the job injury? He looked me up and down as he moved past before opening the back doors of his van and pulling out a lunch box.
“You could say that,” he said sitting on the edge of the van and taking a bite out of a cheese sandwich.
“I work in the café where she went every day, she was a bloody nightmare!”
He turned to me with a look of surprise.
“Were you there when she died then?”
Gossip had obviously reached far enough to give the location away.
“Yes, it was horrible, but… well, so was she!” I felt a little wrong at saying this bearing in mind I didn’t know her, but Betty’s word was good enough for me. I needed him onside and I was well into my role now.
“You can say that again. Four days I worked here in the pouring bloody rain, then she tells me it’s not good enough and she’ll only pay me if I fix it. Bloody nightmare.” His voice drifted off slightly and he looked up and down the street as though looking for something.
“I can imagine.” My words seemed to snap him back to the moment, he looked like he’d been caught off guard.
“Yeah, well, I better get back to work,” he said as he stood up, closed the van doors and made his way back to the scaffolding.
Opening the Whole Latte Love Café door, I was surprised to see Mr Tranter sat at a table, with Sandra pouring him a large port.
“Oh really, I couldn’t,” he protested.
“Nonsense, shock like you’ve had today, you’ve got to,” Sandra said, sliding it under his nose. She looked up at me as I approached. “Hello Felicity love, this is poor Mr Tranter.”
“Hi,” I managed, hoping he didn’t recognise me as the woman who had been stood outside of his house just twenty minutes ago.
“Oh, hello erm, yes.” He nodded until I thought his head might fall off, before taking a gentle sip of port. His eyes were red and puffy, he’d clearly been crying.
“Sandra, can I have a quick word?” I jerked my head towards the counter.”
“You just sit there and rest up a bit Mr Tranter,” she said, sliding one of her famous m
uffins across the table at him before joining me over by the counter.
“What’s he doing here?”
“He said he wanted to see where it happened, understandable really. I think he’s just trying to make sense of it all.” Sandra looked over my shoulder at the widower and sighed. “Funny little man isn’t he?”
I looked back at him to see him break off a tiny amount of muffin, hold it to his mouth and nibble it.
“Yeah, he is a bit. Look Sandra, Betty’s in the police station. They’re questioning her more about this morning.”
“Oh! But why on earth are they questioning anyone?”
I looked over my shoulder, keeping my voice low.
“They think Mrs Tranter was murdered, and I think they think it was something in her coffee.”
“Well stone me! Oh, the poor girl!”
“Shhh!” I said waving my hands and ushering her through the swing doors into the kitchen as everyone in the café turned to look at us. “I’m just guessing at the moment, but Betty was the one who made the coffee, so I don’t see who else could have put something in it.”
Sandra’s jaw dropped.
“You don’t think our Betty?…”
“No! Of course not!” I said, though a part of my brain was sat with its arms folded saying ‘She didn’t tell you about the sergeant though did she? I ignored it. “We need to think who else could have done this though. No one else in the café got sick, so it must have been something added to her coffee and not the beans or anything.”
“Blimey,” said Sandra, automatically reaching for another bottle of port and pouring us both a glass. She must have a stock of the stuff that could fill a warehouse.
As far as I could tell, only two people other than Betty could have added something to Mrs Tranter’s coffee. I drank the sweet port offered to me and pushed open the door to go and talk to Mr Tranter, but he was gone.
5
Opportunity
I left the café armed with a latte and a toasted cheese and mushroom panini. I made my way down East Street until I reached the Reed’s sweet shop and the red sign I had seen from the window of the café that morning. I had recognised it immediately as that of Redford’s, the only estate agent in town. FOR SALE was written across the sign in bold white writing and my heart did a small somersault. I opened the door to the shop, making the little bell tinkle above me. A sound I was very familiar with by now.
“Hello, Felicity my dear! How are you today?”
“Not bad thank you Mrs Reed,” I said with my mouth still half full of panini which I quickly swallowed. “The sign outside… are you selling up?”
“Yes! I’ve finally persuaded him to retire. We’ve got our eye on a lovely bungalow down by the coast, so we can finally put our feet up.”
“Or just become old and useless,” Mr Reed’s voice chimed in as he emerged from the back room. “Afternoon, Felicity.”
“Hi, Mr Reed. Well I’ll be sorry to see you go obviously, but you both deserve a nice retirement.”
“Well thanks dear, now what can I get you?”
I paused for a minute, unsure of how to say it. It felt ridiculous to even think it.
“Well actually, I was thinking of maybe buying the shop myself.”
They both froze for a moment, before Mr Reed stepped out from behind the company and grabbed me, a hand on either arm.
“That’s bloody marvellous, Felicity!”
“Is it?” I replied, stunned. I had expected them to laugh in my face.
“Of course it is! We were thinking the old place would be turned into something awful like a travel agents or newsagents or something,” Mr Reed replied with a broad smile.
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“But how do you know I won’t do the same?”
“Oh, Felicity dear,” Mrs Reed answered shaking her head, “you’re our best customer. We thought you’d be protesting in the street when we told you we would be selling up, turns out you want to keep it going!”
I laughed again. They were right on two counts, I would be distraught if the best sweet shop I had ever visited shut down, and I did want to keep it going myself. I had been searching for something to call my own for what felt like forever. Something to give me a purpose other than hanging out at my parents’ house pretending that I wasn’t the one thing that defined me; being a vampire. Bearing in mind I already ate my own body weight in sweets each week, why not run a sweet shop?
“Well I don’t know how I’ll do it yet, but I’ll give it my best shot.”
“Oh I know you will, and if it’s to you, it’ll be at a good price,” Mr Reed said before rustling through some papers from under the counter. He produced a small sales booklet made up by the estate agents and handed it to me as his wife shoved a bulging white paper bag under my nose.
“Here, on the house. All your favourites,” she said with a wink.
It was late afternoon as I arrived home. The sun dipping below the trees which lined the driveway, casting dancing shadows around my feet as I walked. My phone buzzed in my pocket and I pulled it out to see Betty’s picture again.
“Hey Betty, you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m home now, but apparently Sandra’s been called in.”
Makes sense, I thought. She was the owner of the café after all, though she was in the kitchen when it had all happened, so they were definitely wasting their time.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine. Have they said any more about what happened?”
“All James has said is that it was poison, and… Oh god, I’m so annoyed with myself!”
After wondering for a moment who the hell James was, I realised it was Detective Marsh.
“Betty, don’t worry. You haven’t done anything wrong.” I felt like I really shouldn’t have to be repeating this as much as I was.
“I know it’s just… the other night when I was with James, he was asking me about work and I told him about Mrs Tranter and said…”
I reached my room and kicked off my shoes before collapsing on my bed.
“Said what?” I asked, though I had already guessed the answer.
“I said that she drove me so mad, it was all I could do not to put laxatives in her coffee.”
A moment passed where I tried not to laugh, and Betty sighed softly down the phone helplessly.
“Oh come on Betty, everyone says stuff like that, it doesn’t mean you poisoned her! Just that you knew what a horrible old cow she was!”
“But James says he has a duty to report it and that I had put myself into an awkward position.”
I was starting to like this Marsh character less and less, but for the moment, I decided to be diplomatic.
“Look, I know he has a job to do, but he can’t really think it’s you. They’ll find who’s behind this soon enough and it’ll all be water under the bridge.”
“Felicity! Felicity dear, are you in?” My mother’s voice rattled around the hall outside my room.
“Yes Mum, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Ok dear, we have some guests I’d like you to meet.”
Guests? My mum and dad never had guests. Ever.
“Look, Betty, I’m going to have to go. Have a bath and a glass of wine and get some rest. I’ll come down and see you in the morning.”
She said goodbye in a quiet voice and I hung up before turning to my dressing table mirror to make sure my hair was vaguely respectable. It was, but I looked paler than ever under its jet black sweep. I’d got too much sun today and hadn’t had my blood yet. Not a good combo for a vampire. I’m not sure exactly what would happen if I gave up blood and moved to the desert, but I didn’t want to find out.
I left my room and made my way downstairs until I heard voices coming from the open door of the drawing room on my left. Although I didn’t know what to expect guests of my parents to look like (family being the only people who ever really visited) I definitely wasn’t expecting this.
Three people stood with my parents, all sha
ring various alcoholic looking beverages in our best glasses. One of them was a woman so small and thin, and wrapped in so many layers that for a moment I thought someone had just brought the wheelchair in to hold everybody’s coats. Then a bone white arm had moved from the pile and applied a large amount of brandy to the thin lips of its owner. The person stood next to her was a tall, angular man with a nose like a beak. It was so large, I couldn’t tell if the round spectacles that perched on top were small, or just dwarfed by his nasal proportions. He was dressed in a smart black suit with a pink carnation giving a dash of colour at his lapel. He had an air of superiority about him that gave me the impression he was important, or at least thought he was. The third person was the one who had really grabbed my attention. Mousy brown hair sat in a tussled heap on top of a face that, only after my dad had called my name twice, had I realised I was staring at.
“Felicity!”
“Oh, yes, sorry.”
I tore my eyes from the dark, handsome features of the man that I had just recognised, and moved over to join my parents.
“Felicity, I want you to meet our new lodgers,” my dad said, gesturing to the small group of people next to him.
In shock, I looked from the old woman in the wheelchair, to the man with the large nose, and finally to the man I had seen in the café that morning, and one of my prime suspects in the murder of Mrs Tranter.
6
House Mates
“Sorry, did you say ‘lodgers’?”
My dad’s smile froze at the tone of my voice.
“Er, excuse me, I just need to have a word with my daughter. Marjory, why don’t you refill everyone’s glasses?” he smiled briefly around the room before leading me towards the French doors which led out into the garden.
“Dad, what the hell is going on? I thought you were just having the odd guest every so often? ‘Lodgers’ sounds a lot more permanent to me!”
He looked over his shoulder back towards the doors, making sure they were far enough away that they wouldn’t be heard before speaking.
“Felicity, we talked about this just yesterday. We needed to do something, your mum and I aren’t getting any younger you know.”
For someone who was present at the beginning of the industrial revolution, this was a bit of an understatement.