by Lyra Barnett
“Debt? What’s that got to do with it?”
“Look, remember at the beginning the police thought that it had to be either Betty or Joan Sithers, because they were the only ones who had touched Mrs Tranter’s coffee cup?”
“How could I forget,” Betty said with a shiver.
“Well then I got you out of trouble because the Barter twins told me that Mrs Tranter used a hip flask to give her morning coffee a bit of a kick. That meant that it didn’t have to have been someone in the café, it could have been anyone who could have got to that hip flask.”
“Right, but it would have had to have been someone who could have got close enough to poison the flask though,” Sandra said.
“It was, but forget that for now,” I said taking a huge bite of my muffin. “Think about the letters.”
“The ones that were in my car?”
“Yes, Joan Sithers put them there.”
“What?! But why would she do that? She didn’t kill Mrs Tranter!” Betty slapped her drink down too hard on the table, spilling it across the surface which Sandra mopped up with a serviette absentmindedly.
I swallowed the muffin chunk and washed it down with a gulp of latte before answering.
“She did it for love.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Sandra said, her face rapt with interest.
“Joan Sithers was having an affair with Mr Tranter!”
“No!” both of them shouted at once.
I noticed that people on the tables near us weren’t talking anymore, I was pretty sure everyone was listening. The Barter twins had even given up their precious corner table in order to move to one closer, and were now making a concerted effort not to look in the direction of our table.
“Yes, and naturally, when Mrs Tranter died after adding the booze from her hip flask, she thought it must have been her lover.”
“Oh god, can you not say ‘lover’ about him? I’ve only just had my breakfast,” Betty laughed, making me laugh too.
“Anyway, she realised when she bent down to the body. She grabbed the hip flask and slipped it into her pocket which is why the police didn’t find it. She took it home and called…” I looked at Betty and raised my eyebrows as I spoke, “her lover… and told him that they shouldn’t see each other for a while and that everything would be ok. I don’t think he knew what she was talking about, but when the police then called round to say that his wife had been poisoned, he naturally thought that Joan must have killed her! That’s why he then came back into the café the next day. He had realised that the police hadn’t found the hip flask and so went to get it back before someone else found it, but Joan had already taken it.”
A moment passed as I scanned the other tables. Everyone had given up pretending they weren’t listening now. They all faced me, staring. I noticed that the Barter twins were so entranced, their coffee was still sat untasted in front of them.
“Joan Sithers knew what the letters looked like, because she’d written them.”
“She’d written them?!” Sandra shouted, shocked. “She sat here with her, nice as pie every morning and then went home and wrote those letters, all while she was having an affair with her husband?!”
“Yep.” I smiled, unable to help myself. I could see that Sandra was shocked, but it was Betty’s expression that had made me want to laugh.
“Oh come on Sandra, you know what she was like. I’m surprised the whole town wasn’t sending her nasty letters”
“Anyway,” I continued, after catching the look Sandra gave Betty, “she made some more and posted them through the window of your car Betty, to put more evidence against you and away from who she thought was the real killer… Mr Tranter.”
“So why did Bob Jones kill Joan Sithers?” Betty asked.
“So that she would get blamed for the murder.”
I took another long draught of coffee before continuing.
“Remember the carving Reg Shaw had of the vines around the tree? The vines wrapped so tightly around it that eventually they suffocated it and the tree died. For some reason I couldn’t get the image out of my head and then I realised where I’d seen something that had made me think of that before. It was when I had passed the Tranter’s house after the murder. It was covered in scaffolding from top to bottom, so you could hardly see the house underneath. It’s summer and so the windows of the house were open a lot, I think Bob Jones heard everything that went on in that house. I think he knew Joan and Arthur Tranter were having an affair and he saw it as a way to implicate her and cover his tracks. It was a bonus for him when he realised that Joan had been the one writing the letters as well.”
“Blimey,” said Betty sighing. The rest of the room was full of similar reactions. The odd exhaling of breath, a few heads shaking.
“Hold on,” Sandra said, breaking the silence. “It said on the news that Joan Sithers had been killed with the same poison that Edith Tranter had been. How did he get Joan to take it from him? In her own home?”
The door of the café opened and the tiny bell above it rang, making everyone who was now craning to hear around our table jump with shock. I looked up to see DCI James Marsh framed in the doorway, his long grey coat billowing slightly from the breeze outside.
19
Making Dates
He stepped in looking like a deer that had just worked out what the two lights moving towards it at speed were.
“Erm… Hi, I just thought I’d get some coffee… erm.”
“I’ll get it,” I said, standing up to rescue him from the frozen audience in front of him. I led him through the tables to the counter. “Sorry about this, it’s just that everyone wants to know what happened.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re giving them the inside scoop are you?” I looked up from the coffee machine to see him smiling.
“Is that a problem?” I asked, realising my voice sounded more petulant than I wanted it to, embarrassed that he had caught me gossiping about the case like this.
“Not at all, the case is all over now. Have you told them the bit about how you single handedly took down a killer wielding a hammer?”
“Not yet, no.”
I slid his coffee to him.
“Oh good, because I’d quite like to hear that bit again myself.”
He turned and walked over to an empty table towards the edge of the throng around Betty, Sandra’s and mine. I grinned and moved back to my seat at centre stage.
“We were in here talking and Sandra, you mentioned something about debt. I suddenly put some things together I’d seen over the last few days. Bob Jones had had a black eye when I first met him at the Tranter’s. At the time I thought he might have got it on the job and thought nothing of it. Then, I saw him on the high street where he told me he’d just sold a load of his granddad’s old World War Two stuff. As we were talking, he suddenly looked panicked and dived into the bookies. Straight afterwards I saw two huge men coming down the street, but again, didn’t put two and two together. I saw those men again doing some dodgy exchange with someone in another car later on, but couldn’t see who it was. I know now that it was Bob Jones driving his mum’s car. He’d had to sell his place and move back in with her to pay off gambling debts. He’d had to go to some shady people when the bookies on the high street had stopped taking his bets, but it wasn’t enough. He thought he had a way out though. He’d landed a big job renovating the outside of the Tranter’s place, which would be enough to get him out of trouble. But then he ran into Edith Tranter. According to her husband, she had nitpicked at every little thing that wasn’t right with the work Jones had done, refusing to pay him until he fixed it all. So he’d gone round the whole place again and changed everything. Then she’d come up with another list of things he wasn’t happy with. I don’t know how long it went on for, but Bob Jones had obviously had enough.”
“So where did he get the poison from?” Sandra asked.
“Remember I said I’d seen him coming out of the antique shop and he’
d sold some of his granddad’s things from the war?”
A dozen or so heads nodded around me.
“Well his granddad was in the Special Forces and his job was to look after the equipment. It turns out he had four cyanide pills stashed in a box that you were meant to take if you were ever captured by the enemy.”
Betty exhaled in a low whistle.
“Bloody hell. And that’s what he used on them?”
“Yep. It had been bugging me how someone could get hold of cyanide these days, so I started looking online and it came up that Special Forces’ soldiers used to have cyanide pills, but I didn’t make the connection straight away. We think he crawled in through a window from the scaffolding and spiked her hip flask which he must have seen her filling on a daily basis. He knew that Mr Tranter would pay up once his wife was gone, so he needed her out of the way.”
There was a low muttering around the room as people began to whisper each other, the story apparently over, when it was suddenly interrupted by James Marsh.
“Come on Felicity, don’t miss out the most exciting bit of the whole story!” He flashed a mischievous grin at me. “Don’t you want to tell everyone how the killer attacked you with a hammer?”
A hush swept around the room as a dozen eyes slowly moved from the detective’s to mine. I felt my vampness kick in. I had avoided talking about when Bob Jones had lunged at me as much as possible, I didn’t want any awkward questions. Now DCI bloody Marsh was putting me in the spotlight in front of the whole café.
“He came at you with a hammer?!” Betty said, her eyes wide with a hint of annoyance that I guessed was because I hadn’t phoned her immediately with this information.
“Yes, he rushed me, but he wasn’t really concentrating and I jumped to the side and he fell forwards and hit his head. It was nothing really.” I gave Betty a pointed look and saw her face change as she understood I was telling her to leave it.
“Well, that was lucky.” She stood up quickly, somehow breaking the spell in the room. “Right, this is a café you know, can I get anyone anything?”
The room descended into a babble of noise as people moved their chairs back to their tables and began either ordering or chatting with others about what they had just heard. Sandra got up and moved back behind the counter, leaving me on my own for only a moment before James joined me.
“Sorry about that,” he grinned, “but I wanted everyone to know what a hero you were, even though it was a pretty stupid thing to go chasing a killer.”
I felt my face flush, partly with the embarrassment of him calling me a hero, and partly with annoyance at the stupid comment. Why did everything seem to be like this with him? I never knew whether I wanted to hit him or kiss him.
“Someone’s got to do the police’s job for them,” I said, my tone sounding harsher than I had meant it to. I saw him almost visibly wince at the jibe, before he suddenly leaned forward and took my hand.
“Felicity, I’m sorry I didn’t catch the guy before you were put in danger. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you.”
I knew he was talking about professional guilt rather than not being able to live without me, but it was nice to hear all the same. I smiled.
“Let me make it up to you. Dinner tonight?”
“OK,” I said, before my brain could even decide if this was a good idea.
“Great, I’ll give you a call later.” He gave my hand a squeeze, stood up and left the café.
20
A Great Offer
“Felicity!”
I looked up towards where the shout had come from and I saw Sandra waving me over to the counter. I stood up and made my way over.
“Need a hand?” I said, still deep in thought about tonight’s dinner offer.
“No, I need you to come back here,” she said, vanishing through the swing doors and into the kitchen.
“Is everything alright?” I said to Betty as I lifted the section of counter which raised on its hinges and passed through. She laughed at me and shook her head.
“Maybe if you didn’t run out in the middle of conversations you’d know!”
She turned back to the customer she was serving, taking their money for the coffees they had bought.
A sudden realisation rushed through me and I burst through the doors and into the kitchen.
“Oh god, Sandra, I’m so sorry for running out on you like that! You were telling us about your retirement and I just left you!”
“Oh, don’t you worry about that, just sit down.”
She smiled and I noticed that once again there were two glasses of port laid out on the small round table set out for staff in the kitchen.
“I was telling you that I’m retiring, but you ran out before I got to the bit where I could ask you something.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Well, Betty as well, but she’s already said yes, as long as you do.”
“Ok…”
I wasn’t sure what she was about to say, but it suddenly felt as though there was a lot of pressure on how I would respond.
“I’m going to keep the café on, and I’d like you and Betty to run it for me.”
“Wow, are you sure?”
“I’ve never been surer of anything.”
I was stunned. I had always thought that one day Betty would take over the café, it just seemed to be the natural progression, but I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, and I certainly hadn’t expected me to be involved at all. The café had always been a temporary thing for me. Something I was doing while I worked out what I really wanted to do. My mind flashed to the sweet shop and how the bank had reacted to me wanting to take it over. Sandra was offering me a great chance, and I had to take it.
“That’s so kind of you Sandra.”
I stood up and moved round to give her a hug, but she held a hand up waving me off.
“Hold on, I haven’t finished.”
I returned to my seat, baffled.
“Before I came into this bit of money, I had decided to expand the business, and I still plan to.”
“Right…”
“I’m sure you’ll have noticed as you’re their best customer, but the Reed’s place has gone up for sale.”
I froze and a tingle ran down the back of my spine.
“Well you know I’ve always had a lot of recipes for this stuff, you’ve helped me with a lot of them, and I thought the sweet shop would make a good addition to the café.”
I still didn’t say anything, I could barely breathe.
“Anyway, I’ve put in an offer and they’ve accepted it, but they are very protective over the shop and what really swung it was when I told them I was going to ask you to run it.”
“I jumped up from my chair and made a high pitched noise from my mouth that I didn’t even recognise as me. I dashed round the table and wrapped my arms around her and squeezed.
“Sandra, this is incredible!” I pulled away and looked at her as she laughed. “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t have much experience and…”
“Felicity, I have literally never seen anyone eat as many sweets as you do. To be honest, I don’t know why you’re not my size and all your teeth haven’t fallen out. But one thing I do know, is that you know sweets.”
I hugged her again as I felt tears fill my eyes.
A few moments later I had calmed down enough to sit and drink my port. Sandra poured me another one.
“So Betty will be based in the café, and you’ll be based over there, but I expect you both to help each other out where you can. This is one business, not two. You’ll both start here early in the morning and get baking, then you can go over and open the sweet shop and we’ll hire someone else to help Betty out here. Does that all sound ok?”
“It sounds perfect,” I said, unable to wipe the beaming smile from my face, I dived forward and hugged her again.
21
Making Choices…
I lay on my bed staring up at the high c
eiling with its strange patterns of centuries old damp and daydreamed.
Running my own sweet shop. Ok, it wasn’t technically mine, but maybe one day. For now I could just enjoy getting to know the business and have some fun experimenting with various recipes.
All those times when Sandra and I had tried various concoctions out in the kitchen of the Whole Latte Love on a slow day, now I could do it for real.
My phone buzzed on the mattress next to me and I flipped it over to see James Marsh’s face staring back at me. Fear burst into my chest as I sat bolt upright and stared at the ringing phone. He was ringing to arrange dinner tonight, so why was I suddenly panicking? Why didn’t I want to answer it?
I knew full well why. He’s a policeman and I’m a vampire. But why hadn’t I said no before? I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. The shop. The chance of my dream job meant I couldn’t risk anything upsetting my life here in Stumpwell. If people started asking awkward questions around here, I’d have to leave, not just the town, but my dream.
I picked up the phone and clicked the green answer button.
“Hi, James.”
“Hi, Felicity, just wondered where you wanted to eat tonight? Apparently the Stump and Well have a special on where…”
“James, look I’m really sorry, but I think I’m going to have to take a raincheck on tonight.”
“Oh, right. Everything ok?”
“Yeah, fine. Maybe another time.”
“Right, no problem. Night then.”
“Night, James.”
I hung up and laid back on the bed. I felt bad for letting him down, and a little sad that I wasn’t actually going to go on a date with him. I had to be sensible though. It would never work between us and I had a new adventure to focus on.
I smiled to myself. It was going to be fun.
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