Springtime for Murder

by Debbie Young

  “It’s a bit of an eyesore for the village, crumbling about their ears,” said Donald. “I say good luck to him.”

  “See what I mean?” grumbled the gardener. “Brady’s got you on side already. He’s a sly bugger, that one.”

  Donald frowned. “He was certainly doing his best to win over Billy last night.”

  “Billy?” I set down my glass of wine so suddenly that a little slopped over the edge on to the bar towel. “I thought Billy was staying the night at Kitty’s to keep her company.”

  Donald glanced at me apologetically. “He just slipped out for a quick pint while she was watching her favourite game show on the telly. Bunny doesn’t keep any alcohol in the house, or else Kitty would drink it. I heard that at her worst, Bunny even had to hide her perfume, or she’d down that too.”

  “Really?” asked Hector. “God, Donald, you’re a worse gossip than any woman I know.”

  I slapped his thigh in admonishment and tried to steer the conversation back on track. “So did Billy just have the one pint and go back to Kitty’s?”

  Donald poured himself half a pint of lemonade and took a swig. “Not by the time Paul had finished with him. Throwing his money about in the bar, he was. He’s got his mother’s charm, persuading even those who didn’t know him to accept his generosity.”

  “So you did well out of it,” said the gardener, tersely. “Double whammy. Happy customers, happy landlord – and more on side for his plans for the Manor House. Donald, he’s got you in his pocket, my son. You’d better look out.”

  Donald scowled. “Are you saying I’m easily bought?” He whisked away the gardener’s glass and tipped it upside down in the glass-washing sink. The gardener gazed at his empty hand, fingers still curved as if nursing the glass. Then without a word, he climbed down from the stool.

  As he reached the front door, it swung open to admit a tall, lean man with sparse dark hair and the unmistakeable aquiline nose of Bunny Carter.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Brady,” said the gardener, his voice obsequious. “Fancy seeing you here again. That’s the second time this year. This must be our lucky weekend.”

  For a moment, a shadow crossed Paul’s face, before an ingratiating smile took over. “Good afternoon to you too, my friend. Glorious day out there.”

  It wasn’t particularly.

  “Afternoon, Paul,” said Donald cheerily, as the new arrival came over to install himself on the recently vacated barstool beside us. “How’s your mother?”

  “What? Oh, fine, fine, thanks.”

  “Have you been to see her?” asked Hector politely. “Donald told us that was your plan. We’ve just come from the hospital ourselves. We must have missed you.”

  Paul started at him analytically.

  “And you are?”

  “Hector Munro, of Hector’s House. Your mother’s one of my best customers. And this is my partner, Sophie Sayers.”

  Paul swivelled sharply towards me, offering me, but not Hector, his hand to shake. “May Sayers’s granddaughter? You’re in her cottage now?”

  “Great-niece. And it’s my cottage now.”

  Paul pointed to a beer tap to signal to Donald for a pint.

  “Same again for these two, while you’re at it, Don.” No-one ever called Donald “Don”.

  Paul turned back to me. “So what sort of price would you be looking for to sell your little cottage? I’d be willing to match your top offer, so you might as well save yourself time and give me first refusal. I’ve had my eye on that place for a while, as well as old Hampton’s next door.” Out of his back pocket he pulled a business card for his property development company. “They’d make great staff accommodation for when I convert the Manor House into a care home.”

  I bridled. “I’m not selling. I’ve only just moved in, and I’ve no intention of living anywhere else.”

  He took a long gulp of beer. “A young thing like you? I can’t see there’s much to hold you in a sleepy place like this. Especially if you’re going to have a houseful of the elderly as your neighbours.”

  “I happen to like old people.”

  Donald tried to lighten the mood. “Shall I take your orders for dinner, folks? We’ve beef, chicken, lamb or nut roast.”

  “Beef, please, Donald,” said Hector, glaring at Paul.

  “Nut roast for me, thanks, Donald,” I said, placing my hand over Hector’s, which was on my thigh. “Besides which, Joshua Hampton has no intention of moving either. That’s the only house he’s lived in all his life, and he’s not going anywhere else.”

  “Really?” Paul looked away as he drank some more beer. “How old is he again? He must be older than my mother. Surely he must be starting to lose his faculties by now. Don’t you worry about him inadvertently setting his house on fire, or leaving his taps running and flooding you both, or starting to behave a little oddly towards you?”

  He leaned across, breathing beer in my face.

  “You must know there comes a time when old people aren’t capable of living on their own. Think of your own safety. I’m sure we could reserve one of our nice new rooms for him. He’d only be moving next door. He’d hardly notice the difference.”

  I jumped down from my stool, turning my back to Paul so he couldn’t see the angry tears welling up. “Come on, Hector, let’s find a table for two, shall we?”

  We left untouched the drinks Paul had bought us.

  “I’ll bring you a bottle of your usual,” Donald called after me. “It’s on the house, Sophie.”

  “I don’t know what’s rattled her cage,” said Paul to Donald, loudly enough for me to hear from our booth. “Surely she’s bright enough to see I have my mother’s best interests at heart? You’d think anyone who has seen Mother’s living conditions would be glad she has at least one sensible child willing to come to her rescue.”

  I couldn’t hear Donald’s reply.

  17 Consoling Kitty

  “Now her gate latch is stuck. Do you think she is trying to deter visitors, or has someone been tampering with it?”

  Gently Hector pushed my fumbling hands away from Kitty’s front gate and opened it himself. With my arm through his, we strolled up the path towards the porch.

  “Should we tell Kitty what Paul said?” I didn’t want to upset Kitty, but I felt she had a right to know about his selfish intentions.

  “Probably best not to risk stirring things up. He’ll tell her himself if he wants to. Or perhaps she already knows. She might even be in cahoots with him. It’s none of our business.”

  “It is my business if he’s trying to evict me from my cottage. And Joshua too.”

  “That’s slightly overstating the case, sweetheart. He has no power to evict you. The house is yours. The worst he can do is make you an offer you can’t refuse. Financially speaking, I mean.”

  As we reached the porch, I dropped his arm to clasp my hands over my heart. “Auntie May’s house is priceless.”

  “Well, then, you’re safe. Now, let’s concentrate on what we came here to do: to give Kitty news of Bunny.”

  He raised the door knocker, but before he could use it, the door creaked open, though there was no-one behind it to greet us. Hector stepped gingerly inside. “Hello? Kitty? Billy? It’s Sophie and Hector. Can we come in? Anybody home?”

  The only answer was a loud grunting snore from the direction of the kitchen, from which wafted surprisingly delicious aromas suggestive of an imminent roast beef dinner, and the faint rattling of lids on bubbling saucepans of vegetables on the Aga. Hector and I exchanged quizzical glances.

  “It seems an odd time to fall asleep, right in the middle of preparing dinner,” I whispered. We tiptoed down the corridor to the kitchen to investigate.

  In the armchair in front of the Aga lolled Billy, head back, stockinged feet on the towel rail. Two large cats that may have once been white were curled up on his lap, equally out for the count. He had one hand resting companionably on the back of each of them, as if stroking them had
sent them all off to sleep. There was no sign of Kitty.

  “My goodness, Hector, do you think she’s drugged him and run?”

  Hector stepped forward to put his face closer to Billy’s than I would have dared and sniffed his breath.

  “No, I don’t think so.” As he straightened up, Kitty clattered in through the back door, a battered wicker basket of fresh herbs in one hand and a huge pair of rusty scissors in the other. She pulled a stained tea-towel from beneath Billy’s feet and draped it over the basket.

  “Mint for the sauce,” she said. “Want to keep it fresh till the joint’s cooked.”

  Hector glanced at his watch. “Sorry, Kitty, we didn’t mean to interrupt your lunch. You’re eating late, aren’t you? We’ve already had ours at The Bluebird.”

  Kitty tossed the scissors carelessly on to the kitchen table, perilously close to a ball of black fur that immediately unfurled itself to form a three-legged one-eyed cat. It jumped down from the table and fled through the kitchen door with surprising grace for a tripod. It tried to give Kitty a wide berth, but she still managed to help it on its way with the toe of her rubber gardening clog.

  “I wasn’t inviting you.” She wiped her grass-stained hands down her garish patchwork batik skirt. “I’m sick of freeloaders.”

  “We’ve just come to tell you how your mother is,” said Hector. “We’ve been to visit her in hospital this morning.”

  “Oh really? I got Billy to phone the hospital for an update this morning, but he didn’t get much sense out of them. I don’t like phones.”

  “Probably Chinese whispers,” said Hector with a smile. “He’s not great on the phone even with his hearing aids. But we can assure you that she’s fine and in good spirits.”

  Kitty let out a huge sigh. She must have been more anxious than she was letting on.

  “She’s likely to be in hospital for a few days more for observation,” Hector continued, “at least until all the poison is out of her system.”

  As he said the word poison, Hector watched Kitty closely for her reaction. She jumped.

  “Poison? She’s been poisoned? What with, rat poison?” She looked away, shaking her head. Tears had sprung into her wide, red-rimmed eyes. “That can’t be right. She won’t have rat poison in the house, lest her precious cats get at it.”

  “Not that sort of poison,” said Hector. “Prescription drugs, wrongly used. She’d ingested a large dose of something that hadn’t been prescribed for her.”

  Kitty puffed out another loud breath, this time more of exasperation, and put her hands on her hips. “What’s she been doing now? I’m the one that sorts out her pills for her. I make sure she gets enough of the right ones and no more. I wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

  She pulled a mug off the draining board and upended an old stone teapot into it, the tea as dark as the pot. As she reached across for the milk bottle on the counter, her hand alighted on a bottle of washing-up liquid which, without looking, she squirted into her mug. As she raised her tea to her lips, Hector and I held our breath.

  Just then, a pan of potatoes on the Aga began to splutter and boil over, spattering Billy’s toes. He snorted in his sleep as Kitty set her mug down and shifted the pan to one side. Returning to the counter, she pulled down a couple more mugs.

  “I suppose you’ll want a cup of tea now you’ve seen me drinking mine? I can put more water in the pot if absolutely necessary.”

  “Oh no, please don’t go to any trouble,” I said. “A glass of water would be fine.”

  There wasn’t much damage she could do to a glass of water.

  “Actually a glass of water would be more trouble,” she muttered, taking two tumblers to a huge ancient fridge in the corner and reaching into its icebox. She pulled out a black rubber mould full of ice and flexed it over the tumblers. Some cubes fell into the glasses, others skidded across the tiled floor. She topped up the glasses from the tap before slamming them down on the kitchen table.

  “So Mother’s going to be all right?” she asked.

  Hector watched the ice cubes in his tumbler cracking and clicking madly against each other. She’d used the hot tap.

  He looked up and gave a reassuring smile. “She’ll be fine, Kitty. She was sitting up and chatting away, just like her old self. We left her enjoying a good book.”

  Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Did you see any other visitors?”

  Hector hesitated. “Just some woman from one of the animal charities your mother supports.”

  Kitty cast an angry glance at the cats on Billy’s lap. “Not that pesky Mrs Lot? I wouldn’t put it past her to poison my mother. She reminds me of the witch in Sleeping Beauty.” I thought of the shiny red apples in Mrs Lot’s gift basket of fruit. “Always sucking up to her. Wretched cats’ home! God knows, she’s been getting enough dosh out of Mother even before she’s dead. She’ll be lucky if Mother has anything left to leave to anyone after feeding all these waifs and strays that get dumped on us.”

  She waved a hand towards a muddled array of cat dishes on the floor, bits of dried meat clinging to the rims, and a large aluminium dog bowl with barely a teaspoon of water puddled at the bottom. Then she glanced back at the stove.

  “The potatoes are done. You’ll have to go now. I need to wake Billy up to eat.”

  She shook him by the shoulders as she shouted his name close to his ears. “BILLY!”

  I was starting to feel drowsy myself, my breathing falling into the same rhythm as Billy’s snores. Perhaps his wasn’t a natural sleep after all?

  Then he opened his eyes and took a moment to register where he was and who he was with. “Afternoon, girlie. Afternoon, Hector. Kitty.”

  Though he was cogent, by now I was feeling very odd myself. I leaned heavily against Hector. “Come on, Hector, let’s not keep Billy from his lunch. Thanks for the water, Kitty.” But Kitty had already turned her back to us and was busy draining the potatoes in a dented colander over the sink.

  Billy got up from the armchair, yawning and stretching, causing the cats to tumble from his lap like Jenga blocks. Then he sat down again at the messy kitchen table and grabbed a knife and fork from a basket of mismatched cutlery.

  We knew when we weren’t wanted. As we closed the front door behind us, I looped my hand through Hector’s arm.

  “I’m feeling a little pecu – pelu – odd.” The porch began to spin around me. “I think there was something in that water.”

  “What, besides ice?”

  “We only have Kitty’s word that it was ice. You could freeze anything inside an ice cube. I’ve seen it done at parties. Cherries. Lemons. Things.”

  “The ice cubes looked all right to me,” said Hector, putting his arm round me to prop me up.

  I shook my head, then wished I hadn’t. It was like being on the waltzers at the Village Show. “Something clear but deadly. Rat poison? Is that what rat poison looks like?” I clutched my stomach.

  By now we’d reached my gate, and Hector opened it and guided me through.

  “Must lie down.” I pulled my front door key out of my pocket and thrust it towards him. “Here. You. Open.”

  Then everything went blank.

  18 How Rumours Start

  Next thing I knew, I was lying on my bed with the duvet pulled over my chest. Throwing it back, I discovered I was fully clothed.

  “What the—?”

  Hector looked up calmly from the window seat, where he was sitting with his feet up, reading a book.

  “Let’s hope none of the neighbours saw me carrying you over the threshold, or it’ll be all over the village that we’ve just got married.”

  I hauled myself up and shuffled my bottom back till I was leaning against the headboard. The late afternoon sunshine streamed in through the bedroom window, and I covered my eyes with my hands. “Ooh, my head!”

  The details of our visit to Kitty started to come back to me. “Where’s the doctor? What does the doctor say?”

  “What doctor?
”

  “You didn’t call a doctor? If Kitty’s poisoned me, that means she was probably the one who drugged Bunny. And maybe Billy too. Shall we go back and rescue him?” I squinted at Hector suspiciously. “You seem all right. Did you not drink your water?”

  Hector put his book down and came to sit on the bed beside me. When he reached up to stroke a stray strand of hair away from my face, I was glad of the shadow he cast over me.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you or Billy that needs medical intervention. Nor with Kitty’s ice cubes. You both just need to take more water with it.”

  “What, with the poison?”

  “With the booze. I’ve no idea how many pints Paul poured into Billy last night, but he was still reeking of beer while we were at Kitty’s. I think he was just sleeping off a hangover. Whereas you polished off a whole bottle of wine by yourself over our lunch at The Bluebird. I was holding back, in case we wanted to drive anywhere this afternoon. So when Donald gave us that bottle of wine on the house, you drank practically the whole thing by yourself.”

  My cheeks turned as red as the wine. “It’s Paul’s fault for making me so cross.”

  Hector smiled. “Maybe. Are you feeling better for your little sleep?”

  “I suppose so. But I still think Kitty was behaving oddly.”

  Hector slipped off his shoes and stretched out on the bed beside me. “Kitty is odd. That’s Kitty for you. But she was no odder than usual.” I snuggled up to him for comfort. “I suppose she’s enjoying her freedom with Bunny not being there to boss her about. But I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary.”

  He was just about to kiss me when I pushed him away and sat bolt upright.

  “Oh, but it was. She was. Think back, now, Hector. Where was Kitty when we arrived at the Manor House this afternoon? In the kitchen?”

  “No,” he said slowly, folding his hands across his chest.

  “In the garden, gathering mint for a sauce.”

  Hector shrugged. “So what? Mint sauce may be meant for lamb rather than beef, but I’ve got a friend who has apple sauce with gammon. That’s not sinister, just sickly.”