Best Murder in Show (Sophie Sayers Village Mysteries Book 1)

by Debbie Young

  “Can’t I help you with that, Hector?” I asked, sure so much screen time couldn’t be good for his eyesight, or his mental health.

  “What? No, no, don’t worry, only I can do this.” He didn’t even look up. “But you could help by making me another latte. Need to perk the old brain up here.”

  Until then I’d assumed Hector was totally on top of the bread-and-butter side of the business, which I was slowly starting to understand: identifying the best books to stock, ordering them in, shelving them, then returning for credit the ones that did nothing but gather dust. I had never thought of there being a sell-by date on books before, but any that weren’t sold within a reasonable time-frame were jettisoned to make room for replacements that might make more money. Publishers’ sales reps did their best during regular visits to convince us that their books would boost our profits, but I often caught Hector tutting and shaking his head as he inputted data to the computer at the bookshop counter.

  “Worried about your books?” I asked sympathetically, setting down his latte on his mouse mat. “I mean, accounts, not books. If you are, I think you could make more use of me than you do.”

  He looked up with a quizzical expression. “I’m happy with what you’re doing, thank you. The tearoom’s thriving and making a bigger contribution to the bottom line than before. That idea of yours to sell birthday cakes was brilliant. I never knew there were so many people in the village who had birthdays.” As usual, I wasn’t sure whether he was joking. “You’re doing good work with the window displays too.”

  He turned back to his computer and carried on typing.

  The arrival of the first after-school mums as their children crashed through the door made Hector finally move from his stool mid-afternoon. As always, there was plenty of browsing, but not a lot of buying. Books were popular purchases for children’s birthday presents, as were book tokens, which came back into the shop after their parties with the reliability of a homing pigeon. Sometimes book tokens with blatant children’s designs were deployed by mums to buy adult fiction or cookbooks or gardening books, or presents to post to other relatives. I hoped they’d bought them off their children rather than just purloining them, though it seemed a shame the children didn’t want to use them. It was always a joy to see a little boy or girl choose a new favourite book with a birthday token.

  Currently travel books were most popular among the mums. My new shop window display on a summer holiday theme attracted a bit of chatter about their plans for the break from school.

  “We’re off to Turkey,” said one, “but we won’t be leaving the resort. They’ve got everything there we need – kids’ club, swimming pool, health club. We don’t need a guide to the country, unless it’s got a map to the resort bar.”

  I swear I heard my auntie May turn in her grave.

  The first of my new pupils appeared just after I’d finished clearing away following the post-school tea trade: a small blonde girl named Jemima, in Year 2, aged seven, clutching her book bag. Her mum ushered her across the threshold and made a brusque introduction.

  “I can’t get her to read for her fifteen minutes every day,” she said, thrusting a £10 note into my hand. “So I’m delegating it to you.”

  “But we’ve only got half an hour, so that’s only two days’ worth of reading homework.”

  The woman shrugged. “That’s what I’m paying you for. Motivational skills. She won’t listen to her mother. I thought you might make her want to read.” And with that she departed, leaving Hector shaking his head in admonition at the mother rather than the child.

  Jemima looked up at me, wide-eyed. I couldn’t decide whether this was in fear or indignation. I took her by the hand and led her to one of the tearoom tables where we sat down together. She looked at me levelly.

  “So what’s the problem, Jemima?”

  The little girl emptied the contents of her book bag onto the table. “Have you seen our school reading books?” She opened a large white book with a dated line drawing on the cover, called Tommy and Tammy Tidy their Bedrooms, riffling through the pages. The typeface dated it to the 1980s, but the domestic setting for the tale of the two unprepossessing children looked barely post-war. I guessed the storyline was wish-fulfilment, written by a weary parent-turned-author.

  “Goodness, are you reading that as a punishment?”

  “Sort of,” replied Jemima. “Once we’ve got through this series, we’re free readers and then we can read whatever we like. We’re meant to read one of these books every night, but I can’t be doing with it.”

  She had clearly inherited her mother’s defeatism.

  I flicked through the book again. “But can you read it? Or are the words too hard?”

  “No, they’re easy-peasy. They’re just too boring.”

  I closed the book and leaned forward, ready to negotiate. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you. For every night you spend fifteen minutes reading your school book, I’ll give you a star sticker.” I’d found some of these in my work bag when I was unpacking and had the foresight to bring them into the shop for my new pupils. “Then, when you’ve got a card full of stars, you can choose a new book from the shop as a reward. It can be any book you positively want to read, not a reading scheme one. When you’re in Hector’s House, you are a free reader, so long as you read your school books too. How’s that sound?”

  I took her by the hand and led her over to the children’s section, and encouraged her to pick up and dip into whichever books took her fancy.

  “I want that one,” she asserted after a minute, grabbing with both hands a pink sparkly book about fairies with dense, challenging text on every page. “Will you save it for me please so no-one else gets it?”

  She stroked the cover proprietorially. I nodded. “I’m sure it can be arranged. Mr Munro will put your name on it and keep it behind the counter for you. So let’s now read your school book, and if you read it nicely for me, you can read one page of the fairy book at the end as a reward. Then every day on your way home from school, come in and tell me about the school book you’ve read the night before, and we’ll put another star on your card. How’s that sound?”

  She nodded and held out her hand for me to shake. “Deal.” I wondered what kind of wheeler-dealing went on in the village school playground to make a seven-year-old such an astute businesswoman. “Would you like me to make you a friendship bracelet? What’s your favourite colour? I gave your auntie a purple rubber band one last year after she picked me up when I fell over in the park, but we don’t like those any more. We like making bracelets out of string now. I’m going to be a fairy in the Village Show this year. So this book will be good for giving me fashion tips. What will you be?” She didn’t pause long enough for me to answer, keen to pursue her own agenda. “Please don’t be another fairy. I can’t be doing with the competition.”

  When her half hour was up, Jemima skipped happily out of the door with her mum. Only then did I realise that Hector had been watching the whole process with considerable approval. He gave me a playful smile.

  “So, not another fairy, then. What are you dressing up as?”

  “The Wendlebury Writers are all going as their writing heroes, and I said I’d be Virginia Woolf. Though to be honest, I’m wondering whether I should have said I’d go as my aunt.”

  “Just as well if you don’t. Otherwise you’ll confuse any old dears who have forgotten she’s dead and they’ll all be thinking you’re her.”

  He came over to sit opposite me at the tearoom table and reached across to turn my head to one side, so he could see my profile. I jumped slightly as he touched me, his forefinger under my chin. It felt embarrassingly intimate. After all, he was my boss.

  “Virginia Woolf,” he declared. “You’ve got the right nose for her, but the wrong colour eyes. Hers were grey. Yours are blue – forget-me-not blue.”

  He gazed at me critically, as if trying to picture the transformation. Perhaps he fancied himself as a personal stylist.


  Realising I was blushing, I reeled off the list of the authors the other writers had chosen, but I couldn’t get his mind off Virginia Woolf. He went over to the classics section and pulled out a slim paperback.

  “Here you go.” He held up a copy of A Room of One’s Own, the back cover of which featured a wistful black and white profile photo of the author as a young woman. “Easy-peasy, as your young friend would say. You won’t even need to bother with make-up. Leave that to Barbara Cartland.”

  He reached above the door to set the shop’s burglar alarm for the night. I knew we’d have to leave within five minutes or it would go off, but I didn’t want to cut our conversation short.

  “You couldn’t choose a finer role model for your writing either,” he continued, apparently unhurried. “She had a high-achieving ancestor too, in her father, Leslie Stephen.” He picked a portrait from the rack of greetings cards. “Here’s what’s probably the most famous photo of her. She had a beautiful profile.”

  I thought her hair looked a bit untidy.

  “Take it home and you can use it to get the hairstyle right. Then maybe later we can get a photo of you posing as Virginia in the shop and put it on our website and social media. The local paper might like to do a story on it for a bit of publicity for the shop when they’re having a slow news week during the summer. It would be good for your writing career too, of course.”

  He fixed me with a serious gaze, as if daring me to confess that I was nowhere near close to publishing anything.

  “And good for the other Wendlebury Writers too,” I suggested, anxious to broaden his focus, while secretly adding “Hector’s House writer-in-residence” to my list of authorly ambitions.

  We left the building together. As I headed homeward up the High Street, I considered that I never once had writer’s block when it came to lists. Trying to write anything longer than a list was where the trouble started. I was worried that another of Damian’s predictions might come true: that nothing would ever happen here to inspire me to write more. That concerned me even more than my fear of being murdered in my bed.

  17 In Woolf’s Clothing

  As soon as I got home, I had another rummage through Auntie May’s big old-fashioned oak wardrobe for a suitable dress for Virginia Woolf. As I opened the wardrobe’s double doors, the familiar smell of her exotic Eastern perfumes wafted out to greet me. I almost expected to find her hiding at the back there, as if in some latter-day Narnia.

  I ran my hands back and forth through her flowing dresses, savouring the feel of the smooth fabric against my skin. Auntie May had always favoured long dresses at home, presumably compensating for the many months she spent abroad each year in more practical travelling clothes: khaki cargo trousers, vest tops and cool cotton shift dresses. These were shelved at the top of the wardrobe, as she never wore them around the village.

  I pulled down a sage green safari suit and held the jacket up against me, trying to cast myself in her role of seasoned traveller. For a moment I considered posing as Ernest Hemingway, with an elephant gun under one arm, but I didn’t want to disappoint Hector’s Virginia Woolf fantasy, or be mistaken for a supporter of the local hunt.

  I stowed the suit away and pulled out a few dresses, flinging them on the bed for further consideration. An ankle-length silk dress with a fringed hem jumped out as being particularly suitable. Made in a loose low-waisted cut, presumably to guard against the heat in its country of origin (India, perhaps?), it could easily pass for 1930s-style.

  I picked up my smartphone to do a quick Google, making sure I’d got Virginia’s dates right. With that minor point confirmed, I slipped off the jeans and t-shirt I’d worn to the shop and pulled the dress over my head. It slid down as easily as a dropped theatre curtain, coming to rest in exactly the right places. Closing the heavy door of the wardrobe, I gazed at myself in the mirror. It was certainly a dress in which I’d be happy to be seen in public. The cool caress of the slippery silk against my bare skin hit the spot on this warm evening.

  I decided to keep it on to get into my part. Scraping my hair back into a ponytail, I doubled it over in a vague approximation of a low bun at the nape of my neck. Then I grabbed Hector’s copy of A Room of One’s Own and headed for the garden, pausing only to pour a glass of chilled white wine from the fridge on the way out. I wasn’t sure whether Virginia Woolf went much on chardonnay, but I didn’t think she’d object.

  A little later, I woke up with a shiver when a gentle puff of wind passed across my face, unexpected on such a still, humid evening. There was Joshua, sitting in the garden chair next to mine, leaning forward, both hands on his stick. I suspected he’d blown on me to wake me up gently. At least, I hoped it was a blow and not a sneeze. In his hand was a parcel addressed to me that he’d taken in from the postman while I was at work.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Sayers.” He held out the parcel. I immediately recognised Damian’s handwriting on the address label. “If I’m not much mistaken, that’s one of May’s old frocks, is it not?” He ran his eyes appreciatively down my body. “Yes, I remember seeing May in that dress the first time she brought it back from Hyderabad.”

  Unsure whether he was thinking of my body or May’s beneath the cheesecloth, I shivered again, despite the heat.

  I sat up, set the wineglass and book on the ground, and pulled the dress down over my legs. It had slipped up to thigh level while I’d had my feet on the table. “It’s my costume for the Village Show: Virginia Woolf. I’m trying it out. Do you think this looks right for the 1930s?”

  He gave me an old-fashioned look. “My dear, you look the image of May’s mother, who would have been Miss Woolf’s contemporary.”

  So now I was May’s mother. This family resemblance was getting beyond a joke. I was starting to want to be my own person.

  To distract myself from that disturbing thought, I chattered on for a bit, telling him who the others in the Wendlebury Writers had chosen as their Literary Heroes. Then, having thanked him for taking in the parcel for me, I made an excuse to go back indoors, saying I didn’t have much time to spare before the Wendlebury Players’ meeting . Which was true, but really I couldn’t bear not to open Damian’s parcel. I wondered whether he was feeling contrite and wanted to make up.

  Contrite? Unlikely. Vengeful? Perhaps. After all, it was his idea that I should be murdered in Wendlebury Barrow.

  I gave the parcel a quick shake to check whether it was ticking. Then, in the kitchen with the vegetable knife, I cut through the Sellotape more quickly than I should have done, nicking my left thumb in the process. Ripping off the brown paper, I found inside neither a bomb nor a gift, but a bundle of post that had come to my old flat, of which Damian and his theatrical friends had taken over the tenancy. The bundle consisted entirely of circulars and rubbish that I didn’t want. The only personal touch was a dog-eared postcard of a familiar view of the Rhine, which I remembered buying months before I’d left Frankfurt and never sending to anyone. I flipped it over, thinking Damian might have written a message to me, but it was blank. If it hadn’t been for the handwriting on the address label, the parcel might as well have been sent by the landlord.

  With a sigh, I headed for the front room, flung the circulars on the copper-topped Moroccan coffee table, and sank onto the sofa, curling up and hugging my knees to my chest for comfort. Although it was a warm evening, I felt the need for a hug, but no-one was about to give me one.

  Then something caught my eye in the brass wire cage on the front door that held the post as it came through the letterbox. There in the basket was another postcard, the picture facing me. I could tell it was from Germany, being as it showed a classic town square edged with half-timbered houses. Damian! I’d underestimated him. No wonder he hadn’t included a note in the parcel – he’d sent the postcard separately to give me the fun of getting two pieces of post. I should have credited him with being more thoughtful. He was probably anxious for my welfare, given his warnings about the dangers of villa
ge life.

  I leapt up from the sofa and grabbed the postcard from the cage, turning it over eagerly to see what he had to say.

  “Sorry, Soph, forgot to put this in the parcel.”

  Dippy creative type.

  “Just wanted to let you know I’m moving on.”

  Well, duh, I thought, you do run a touring theatre company.

  “We’re taking the company to the Greek islands for the foreseeable future, to tour the expat communities there. Reckon that could become our permanent base.”

  I didn’t blame him. Better weather, better diet, cheaper wine.

  “No idea of our address till we get there and find somewhere.”

  Still, you know where I live, so it’ll be easy to let me know as soon as you get there.

  “I guess that’s it. Over and out. Damian.”

  So it was definitely over between us after all. Not that I really wanted it not to be. I slipped the postcard back into the letter cage, pretending to myself it had never arrived.

  When I slumped down on the sofa, I saw the letter cage through Auntie May’s eyes. I imagined how she must have felt whenever she saw the postman had delivered a new postcard from me – a short, non-committal message relaying bare facts about my travels; a meagre offering compared to the long, beautifully thought out letters that she sent to me in return. I’d given her a poor deal. I was as bad as Damian. I deserved his pathetic card.

  But May was much smarter than me. Smart enough to recognise the young, brash, self-centred girl that I now saw myself to be. How did she come to be so wise? I suppose she was once one herself.

  Damian’s callous gesture forced my hand to go to the Wendlebury Players’ meeting. Perhaps it wasn’t the ideal route for me to find romance, given my history with Damian, but it seemed a more likely place to meet a new man than where I spent most of my time away from home: a bookshop run by a gay man and largely patronised by women, children and old men with a drink problem. At least at the Wendlebury Players I’d be able to talk the talk. I might get a part in the next play or even sell them one of my scripts.