“No,” Janet admitted. “But why would he have so many unfinished works? Surely artists do one painting at a time.”
“As I’m not an artist and can’t draw a straight line even with a straight edge, I’m not the one to ask about that,” Joan said. “Anyway, it isn’t any of our business what he’s doing back there.”
Janet sat back in her seat and frowned. There was something suspicious going on in that store. If Joan wanted to ignore it, she could, but Janet was determined to find out more about what was happening in WTC Antiques, with or without Joan’s help.
Back at Doveby House, over a cup of tea, Joan quickly made a list of what needed to be done before they welcomed their guests on Wednesday. As she filled first one and then a second sheet of paper with chores, Janet remembered why she wasn’t eager to start running the bed and breakfast.
“I’ll just go and do some more work in the library,” she told Joan, getting up from the kitchen table.
“You go and do that,” Joan said, clearly distracted by her list making. “But once I’ve finished the list, you’ll have to stop and help with that instead. We can just lock up the library while the guests are here, so it won’t matter if you leave a mess in there. The rest of the property has to be spotless, though.”
Janet shut the library door and quickly began to pile books against it. With the contents of two shelves stacked behind it, Joan would struggle to get the library door open when she came to get her younger sister. Janet knew she was being childish, but Joan’s list had been nothing but tidy this and clean that, which was never Janet’s idea of fun.
Joan had never embraced Janet’s habit of adding small incentives to her to-do lists. There was nothing Janet liked better than crossing off a chore and finding “have a scoop of ice cream” as the next item on the list, but Joan didn’t see it that way.
Now Janet grabbed the furniture polish and went to work on the two shelves she’d just cleared. There didn’t seem to be any additional hidden panels. Janet had just returned the last of the books to the second shelf when Joan pushed the door open.
“Ah, it looks like you’re in the perfect place to take a break,” Joan said brightly, as she watched Janet slide the last book into place.
“If you mean take a few minutes to sit down with my feet up and read a book, I am,” Janet replied. “If you mean stop cleaning in here and come and clean somewhere else, well, that’s a lot less appealing.”
Joan actually smiled before she spoke. “I’m sorry, my dear,” she said. “I know this whole bed and breakfast thing was my idea and I know you don’t share my enthusiasm for it, but I’d really like to give it a good try. If you really hate it after we’ve had a few guests, we can talk about selling Doveby House and doing something else with our lives.”
Janet thought for a minute before she replied. “It’s a little late now for me to start voicing objections,” she said finally. “And I’m sorry I haven’t been more supportive of your plans. I just hate cleaning and tidying, and it seems like we have an awful lot of that to get done.”
“I know you hate cleaning,” Joan said. “I thought you might like to go and do the grocery shopping instead, while I start tackling the cleaning?”
“Oh, yes, please,” Janet said eagerly. She didn’t exactly like grocery shopping, but if Joan wasn’t with her, she could at least add a few treats to the trolley as she went. Joan gave Janet a detailed list of everything she wanted from the shops and Janet headed out with the promise of apple crumble for pudding after dinner if she managed to find everything on the list.
Janet drove rather slowly to the large supermarket that was some distance away. She wasn’t exactly eager to get the shopping done and get home and it was a lovely day for a drive. Groceries were less expensive at the larger shop than at the smaller store in Doveby Dale, but sometimes the bigger store was unpleasantly busy. Today it wasn’t too bad, and Janet found herself in a fairly good mood as she pushed her trolley up and down the aisles.
“We need a cat,” she said aloud as she unexpectedly found herself in the pet food aisle after making a wrong turn. She’d always wanted a pet of some kind, but when she and Joan had both been working full-time it seemed unfair to adopt an animal and then spend very little time with it. When they’d retired, they’d discussed the idea briefly, but as they planned to travel, again the thought was dismissed. Now, however, they were clearly staying in one place for a while and the large manor house seemed the perfect place for a cat. Determined to discuss the idea with Joan, Janet carried on with the shopping.
She did very well sticking to her sister’s list until the very end. From what Joan had requested, it seemed as if her older sister was anticipating that their guests would be eating their evening meals at Doveby House in addition to breakfast. Perhaps that was part of the arrangement that Joan had made with William Chalmers.
Janet was nearly finished when she reached the ice cream. Joan had requested vanilla, presumably to offer with apple crumble and other puddings. Janet added it to her cart and then found her favourite ice cream in the freezer. Joan wouldn’t mind if she brought home a container of that as well, she decided impulsively.
Back at Doveby House, it took Janet three trips to get everything from the car into the house. Janet could hear Joan working hard on the first floor, presumably cleaning the guest rooms. No doubt Joan would put the couple in the east room, as it was somewhat larger than the west room. It was just a shame that they hadn’t found any art for the walls yet. Janet was still hoping to come up with better names for the rooms eventually.
Once she’d put the shopping away, Janet climbed the stairs and found her sister in the east room.
“I’m back and the shopping is all away,” she told Joan once Joan had switched off the vacuum.
“Excellent,” Joan said happily. “I’ve just been around with a duster and now the vacuum. Tomorrow I’ll give the en-suite a quick clean and then give the west room the same treatment. I’m assuming the Stones will want to stay in here, as it’s the larger room, but I want to give them a choice.”
“Is that their name?” Janet asked. “Stone?”
“Yes, Harold and Mildred Stone,” Joan replied. “Apparently Harold is a cousin to William as well as a friend and business associate.”
“Lovely,” Janet muttered.
The rest of Monday and pretty much all of Tuesday passed in something of a blur for Janet. She helped her sister clean and air the guest rooms, dusted and vacuumed all of the public spaces, and whenever she had a spare minute, worked hard on the library. While these guests might not be interested in reading, she was sure they would eventually welcome a guest who would be interested in their collection of books.
Wednesday morning, Joan was driving herself and Janet crazy with last-minute preparations.
“Are you sure one vase of flowers is enough for the guest rooms?” she asked Janet for the tenth time.
“I’m absolutely certain,” she told her sister. “The rooms aren’t that large. If we put more vases in them, the guests wouldn’t have anywhere to put their things.”
Joan nodded and paced back and forth across the kitchen while Janet sipped a cup of tea. “Maybe I should have baked more biscuits,” Joan said after a moment.
Janet looked at her for a moment and then shook her head. “We have two dozen different varieties of biscuit. I’m sure they’ll manage,” she said eventually.
“I feel quite sick to my stomach,” Joan confided in her sister. “I can’t tell you how badly I want this to go well.”
“I know,” Janet said. She got up, crossed to Joan and gave her a hug. “It will all be fine, you know,” she said soothingly.
William had told them to expect their guests some time after ten, so when midday arrived with no sign of them, Joan rang him at his store.
“It’s Joan Markham. I was just ringing to double-check that your friends are arriving today?”
“Oh, they’ll be here,” William answered. Janet was s
urprised that she could hear the man from across the room. He must have been shouting into the phone.
The look on Joan’s face confirmed that he was speaking very loudly. “I did wonder if you had an idea when they might arrive,” Joan said. She held the phone out from her ear and both sisters were able to clearly hear the reply.
“Any time between now and midnight, I suppose,” William said. “I’m sorry, but I really must go. Customers, you understand.”
He disconnected before Joan replied, leaving her shaking her head.
“I’ll bet he doesn’t have any customers,” Janet said as Joan hung up the phone.
“I’m starting to wonder if he actually has any friends coming to visit,” Joan muttered.
Janet insisted that the pair eat lunch at their normal time. “If Mr. and Mrs. Stone arrive in the middle of the meal, they can join us,” she told her sister. “I’m not waiting to eat until they get here, especially not until midnight.”
Around three o’clock, just when Joan was muttering darkly about ringing William again, this time to give him a piece of her mind, the doorbell rang.
“Oh, dear,” Joan said. She headed for the front door, with Janet following behind her. Janet could hear her sister taking slow deep breaths to calm her nerves. As the doorbell rang again, Janet found herself following her sister’s lead. Deep breaths weren’t much help as the doorbell buzzed for a third time just as Joan reached the door.
“I was starting to think we had the wrong place,” the man at the door said as soon as Joan opened the door.
“I’m sorry. I was in the kitchen and it took me a minute to get to the door,” Joan apologised. “You must be Harold Stone.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the man said. “And this is Mildred.” He nodded towards the woman next to him on the small front porch.
By now, Janet had reached the doorway and she found herself studying their guests.
William had said they were both in their sixties and Harold certainly looked it. His hair was grey and sparse and his skin was weathered and wrinkled. Janet wasn’t sure where they’d driven from, but his trousers and shirt were incredibly creased, as if he’d been driving in them for days. He was a few inches short of six feet tall and looked reasonably fit.
Mildred had platinum blonde hair that was caught up in some sort of puff on the top of her head. Guessing her age was more difficult, as her face had a strange stretched and surprised look to it that Janet associated with plastic surgery. Her generous curves were spilling out of a top and trousers that were several sizes smaller than they should have been. Janet blinked and then looked away quickly when she realised she was staring at the woman’s heavily made-up face.
“I do hope our room is ready,” Mildred said now. “I’m quite anxious to freshen up.”
“Of course, if you’ll just follow me,” Joan replied.
Janet stepped backwards and watched as the man picked up their single suitcase and followed Joan towards the stairs. Mildred trailed along behind them, following a strangely meandering route in her incredibly high heels. As she shut the front door, Janet was torn between following the group upstairs to watch with morbid fascination what might happen next and wanting to be as far away from the new arrivals as she could be.
Before she’d decided what she wanted to do, Joan was coming back down the stairs.
“That was quick,” Janet said.
“Mildred wanted to freshen up, so I left them alone,” Joan told her.
The sisters exchanged looks that spoke volumes, but didn’t speak aloud, uncertain as to how voices might carry in the house. Only a few moments later, before the sisters had left the sitting room, they heard Harold on the stairs.
“Right, well, Mildred will be down in a minute. We’re heading off into town to see exactly what William’s getting himself up to now,” he told the sisters. “We have a key for the front door, don’t we? I’m not sure when we’ll be back.”
“William said you’d want to take your evening meals here,” Joan told him.
“Oh, well, maybe another time,” he replied with a wave of his hand. “I reckon tonight we should make William buy us dinner in town.”
Mildred came down the stairs now. She had exchanged her wrinkled shirt and trousers for a very tight and very short black dress. She tottered over to her husband on yet another pair of skyscraper heels and took his arm.
“Off to see William, then?” she asked.
“Yes, let’s go,” Harold replied.
“Have a lovely evening,” Janet said as the pair headed for the door.
“What time would you like breakfast?” Joan asked.
“Oh, we aren’t much for getting up early,” Harold replied. “You needn’t worry about breakfast for us. We’ll probably roll out of bed at midday anyway.”
Harold pulled open the door and he and Mildred disappeared through it, leaving Joan and Janet staring after them.
Chapter Four
“I think we bought too much food,” Joan said faintly, after a moment.
Janet crossed to the door and checked that it was shut properly. She locked the door and then turned back to face Joan. “They seem nice,” she said, a touch desperately.
Joan stared at her for a moment and then began to laugh. “They seem terrible,” she corrected Janet after a while. “I should never have said yes to William Chalmers. I don’t like him and I can’t imagine why I thought I’d like his friends.”
“Well, we’re stuck with them for now,” Janet replied. “We’ll just have to make the best of it.”
Joan sighed. “Thank you for being nice about this,” she told her sister. “I suppose it’s my own fault for being so eager to get the place open.”
Janet opened her mouth to reply, but a knock on the door interrupted. She turned back around and pulled the door open.
“Constable Parsons, how nice of you to visit,” she said brightly to the young man on the porch. “I do hope you haven’t come to warn us against anyone this time.”
The man shook his head, returning Janet’s smile. “Not at all,” he assured her. “I was just driving by and I realised I hadn’t spoken to you two in a while. I wanted to see how you were doing, that’s all.”
“Do come in and have a cuppa,” Janet suggested. “Joan baked loads yesterday and our guests don’t seem interested, so you may as well have some biscuits, too.”
Janet stepped backwards and let the man into the house.
“Good afternoon, Constable Parsons,” Joan said.
“You both really must call me Robert,” the man told them. “No need to be formal with me.”
“Why don’t you come into the kitchen for that cuppa,” Joan said, finding herself unable to add his Christian name to the end of the offer. Although the man was only in his twenties, and looked younger, the sisters had been raised to believe that authority figures commanded respect and that included using their formal titles.
Janet followed the others into the kitchen. Joan quickly put the kettle on while Janet began to pile several different sorts of biscuits onto a large plate. While Joan fixed the tea, Janet set out small plates for each of them and then put the large plate in the centre of the kitchen table. Only a few minutes later they were all settled in with tea and biscuits.
“So, when do you think you’ll be open for business?” the man asked after a moment.
“We actually have guests now,” Joan replied.
“Do you? I didn’t realise.”
“They’re friends of Mr. Chalmers’s,” Janet told him. “He asked us if they could stay here for a few days while they’re visiting with him.”
“Friends of Mr. Chalmers’s, did you say? What was the name?”
“Harold and Mildred Stone,” Joan answered. “But you don’t think there’s anything wrong, do you?”
The man took a sip of tea before he spoke. “I’m sure they’re lovely people,” he said eventually. “I just like to keep track of everyone in my little village, that’s all.”
“I do hope you won’t be expecting us to ring you every time we’re going to have guests,” Joan said.
“Not at all,” Robert replied quickly. “But I’ve had a few, um, interesting conversations with Mr. Chalmers. I’m more interested in his friends than in most people.”
“Have you been to his shop?” Janet asked.
“I have, several times,” was the reply.
Janet opened her mouth to ask another question, but Joan silenced her with a look. Janet could tell that her sister thought she was being nosy. I probably shouldn’t mention the back room, Janet thought as she nibbled her biscuit. That would definitely make me look nosy.
“They’ve just arrived today,” Joan told the policeman. “In fact, they arrived not long before you did. They did little more than drop off their bags before they headed down to the antique store.”
“Perhaps I should pay Mr. Chalmers a visit,” Robert said thoughtfully. “Just check in on him and see how business is going.”
“It wasn’t going at all when we were there Monday,” Janet said. “We were there for over half an hour and no one else came in at all.”
“I suppose, with the prices on most of the things he’s selling, he doesn’t need many customers,” Joan said. “Just one or two wealthy ones.”
“I’m not sure he’ll find many of them around here,” Robert said. “Doveby Dale isn’t that sort of village.”
“I wonder why he chose to have a shop here,” Janet said.
Robert shrugged. “I was told he was tired of the hustle and bustle of London and wanted a change. You can’t get much quieter than Doveby Dale.”
“Which is lovely, but not necessarily good for a small business,” Janet replied.
“But that’s really none of our concern,” Joan said firmly. “I’m sure Mr. Chalmers has his reasons for being here. There’s little point in our speculating on them, though.”
Janet thought about objecting, but she bit her tongue. It wouldn’t do to make the young policeman think she was sticking her nose in, after all.
The Chalmers Case Page 3