Blueberry Muffins and Misfortune

by Agatha Frost

  “So, let me get this straight,” Julia said as she flicked through the notes she had hastily scribbled down in her notepad. “Mabel Crump ran the library from 1971 until 2008 when she vanished, leaving behind a note, in which she claimed she was moving to Spain to live with a younger man she had never actually mentioned before?”

  “I found the note,” Neil added as he winded Dottie on his lap. “She left it on the counter at the library, tucked under a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.”

  “It was her favourite book,” Dot said as she returned to the sitting room with a plate of digestive biscuits. “Alfie ate all the ones with chocolate, so these will have to do.”

  “Mabel was adamant that the classics were the only books that counted,” Neil said with a slight roll of his eyes. “I started working at the library when I was twenty, and I worked under Mabel for three years. The woman was so rigid. I don’t think there was a book published after 1920 that she enjoyed.”

  “But she loved that library,” Dot interjected as she perched on the chair arm to look over the notes Julia had made. “You can write down that Keith is sixty-four and Donna is fifty. I still have their birthdays written down in my phonebook.”

  Julia scribbled their ages underneath their names before scanning the rest of what she had written.

  “Mabel left the note and was never seen again,” Julia said, tapping the nib of the pen against the paper. “So, is it safe to assume Mabel probably didn’t write that note, there was no Spanish lover, and she never actually left the country?”

  “From what I remember, it looked like her handwriting,” Neil said, almost apologetically. “She had a particular way of curling her ‘C’s. Her writing is still in a lot of the books at the library.”

  “So, we can’t exactly assume she didn’t write the note?” Julia pondered, her pen still tapping. “Gran?”

  “I’d say it’s more than safe to assume she didn’t write it!” Dot cried with pursed lips as she pushed up her curls at the back. “Somebody murdered her, and it’s our job to figure it out! I owe the old girl that much. I should have questioned things more when she left, but nobody knew anything. I tried to talk to Peter at the time, but he seemed in a hurry to draw a line under things, and now he’s lying in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of every orifice like a winning turnip at the farmer’s fair!”

  “Gran!” Sue exclaimed as Pearl burped up her milk bubbles. “The man is at death’s door.”

  “And I’d bet my pension that he did it!” Dot stamped her finger down on the coffee table, causing the teapot lid to rattle. “There was no love lost between Mabel and Peter. I don’t even think they said more than ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to each other. If Mabel had found herself a hunk in Spain, I wouldn’t have blamed her! Unless she rolled herself up in that insulation and crawled into the library roof, Peter Crump is the man behind this!”

  “Well, we’re not going to get much out of him right now,” Julia said as she checked her watch, her lunch break nearly at its end. “I called the hospital first thing this morning, and he’s still not woken up yet. Even if he does, he might not be able to communicate, so we need to look at the rest of the picture.” Julia consulted her notes again, eager to change the direction of the conversation. “After Mabel’s disappearance, did anyone go to the police station to report her as missing?”

  “Not that I heard,” Dot said with a heavy sigh. “I should have done it. I even told Peter as much, but he said ‘she made her choice!’, and that was that. I didn’t feel like it was my place when her family didn’t seem concerned. If Mabel had decided to find a new life for herself, I didn’t want to make it more difficult for her. Oh, I feel like the village idiot! How could I have been so blind?”

  “It’s not your fault, Gran,” Sue assured her as she wiped milk from Pearl’s chin with her bib. “I remember talking to Shannon Crump about it at the hospital, and it couldn’t have been that long after the disappearance. She came in with a broken finger, and I was the nurse who strapped it up for her. She was only a couple of years below me at school, so we sort of knew each other. She seemed devastated that her gran had gone like that. She could barely talk about it. I don’t think it was long before Shannon moved to Wales with her mum.”

  “Donna couldn’t wait to get out of the village when Mabel left,” Dot said, her eyes vacant as she slipped into her memories. “Donna was married to a horrible man. Bernard, his name was. She said ‘if my mother can run away, I can too’. To tell you the truth, I think Donna only married Bernard to make Mabel happy, not that it did. Bernard was a safe type, and Donna was always the wild child. Donna and Mabel never had a great relationship, but it didn’t stop Donna from trying. They were both too similar. I used to say they were like two rams with their horns constantly locked.” Dot paused to pour herself a cup of tea before squeezing between Sue and Neil on the sofa. “Donna moved to Wales with Shannon and Shannon’s little girl, Ella. Ella was only a couple of years old, but she’s a teenager now. I never saw Donna in Peridale again until the party, but Shannon moved back a couple of months ago with Ella. She’s been working at The Plough as far as I know, not that she’s talked to me. I’ve caught her eye a couple of times around the village, but she looks right through me.”

  “So, Donna and Shannon moved away, but Kylie stayed behind?” Julia clarified as she flicked to the second page. “She was only seventeen at the time. Didn’t she want to be with her mother?”

  “She wanted to stay in Peridale,” Dot said with a definite nod. “I remember that much. She had been so close to her grandparents, more so than her own mother. I always found it funny that Mabel never had a good relationship with her own children, but she was as close to her grandchildren as a woman could be. She loved the bones of them. I think it was a second chance for her to get it right. Kylie stayed in Peridale and moved in with her uncle Keith, and his wife, Sandra. Last I heard, Kylie was still living with them in their tiny cottage up past Peridale Farm. I’ve always said people should leave home the second they turn eighteen if they want to stand a chance at being an independent adult, but maybe Keith and Sandra have been giving her too good a deal. They never had their own children, so maybe Kylie was their chance to spoil someone.”

  Julia finished writing down everything Dot had said before turning to a fresh page to write ‘Mabel Crump’ at the top. She wrote Peter’s name next to it and drew two lines down before adding in ‘Keith’ and ‘Donna’. Next to ‘Donna’, she wrote ‘Bernard’, and added ‘Sandra’ next to ‘Keith’. She drew two more lines underneath Donna and Bernard and added ‘Shannon’ and ‘Kylie’, and underneath Shannon added ‘Ella’. When she finished, she looked down at the Crump family tree, wondering if she had just drawn up a list of suspects.

  “I need to talk to each of them,” Julia said as she snapped her pad shut. “Even if none are directly involved, one of them will know something, even if they don’t think it’s important. People don’t just disappear and then fall through a ceiling a decade later without leaving behind a trace.”

  “If I weren’t so upset, I’d laugh about all of this,” Dot said with a forced chuckle. “This was exactly Mabel’s style.”

  Sue rested her hand on Dot’s, but Dot pulled it away before disappearing into the kitchen again where she blew her nose like a trumpet. Julia drained her tea and slipped her notepad back into her handbag before standing up. She picked up a digestive biscuit and crammed it into her mouth, her only food since a rushed slice of toast that morning before opening the café.

  “I should get back to Jessie,” Julia mumbled through the biscuit as she brushed the crumbs from her black dress. “Will you stick around and keep an eye on Gran? I don’t think she should be alone right now.”

  “I have mummy yoga with Katie at two,” Sue said, her eyes on the clock mantelpiece. “I’d cancel, but –,”

  “I’ll stay,” Neil said as he placed Dottie on the cushion next to him before taking Pearl from Sue’s lap. “It
’s not like the library is going to be open any time soon. Forensics were crawling all over it this morning when I walked past. I hope they don’t damage any of the books.”

  “Trust you to worry about the books,” Sue said before kissing Neil on the cheek and jumping up. “What did I do to deserve a husband like you? You’re too good to me.”

  Neil blushed as he bounced Pearl up and down on his knee. The two sisters said goodbye to Dot, who was distracting herself with the washing up. Julia hated to leave her, but with a body and a heart attack happening only the day before, she knew Jessie would be rushed off her feet with a café full of gossiping customers.

  “Do you have any hunches?” Sue asked as she slipped her feet into her heels in the hallway. “Maybe Gran is right about it being the husband? It usually is when you hear about things like this.”

  “Maybe,” Julia considered, not wanting to commit to anything until she had more information. “I’ll let you go. Nature’s calling, and I’d rather go here than battle through my customers to use the bathroom at the café.”

  After kissing Sue on the cheek, Julia walked upstairs, glancing at the framed photographs on the wall as she did. Some were of Dot from her younger days, but most were of Julia and Sue as children, who Dot had practically raised after the death of their mother.

  When she reached the top step, the last photograph made her stop. It was of Dot and Mabel, both in matching pleated skirts, white blouses, and brooches. Dot did not look much different than she did now, so Julia guessed it could not have been taken long before Mabel’s disappearance. Mabel, who was a slender woman with a grey French roll in her hair, beamed at the camera, her two front teeth poking out just like her childrens’. Julia had moved away from Peridale years before Mabel went missing, but she had foggy memories of the woman who had been her gran’s best friend. Most of them were from childhood and revolved around how much Mabel had always scared her at the library.

  After relieving herself and washing her hands, Julia left the bathroom, which still had the same salmon suite it always had, and made her way to the top of the stairs. As she assessed the picture of Mabel and Dot again, she heard a man grunt from behind the door that belonged to the bedroom she had once called her own. For a moment, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end until she remembered that Alfie was lodging with Dot. When the temporary suspicion eased off, Julia knocked on the door.

  “Dot?” Alfie called. “Don’t come in!”

  “It’s Julia.”

  “Oh,” he replied before pausing. “Okay, you can come in.”

  Unsure of what she was going to see, Julia twisted the brass knob and pushed open the door. Alfie, wearing white overalls, was standing in front of the pink floral wallpaper from Julia’s childhood. He had a roller in one hand and had started painting over the pattern with neutral cream paint. Aside from the paint, the rest of the room was as Julia had left it on the day she had moved to London to live with her then-husband fifteen years ago. The sudden change made her heart twinge a little, but she did not begrudge Alfie the chance to make the room his own.

  “Dot’s going to kill me,” Alfie said with an awkward smile as he nodded down at the paint splodge on the pink carpet. “I dropped the roller.”

  Julia chuckled to herself before walking back to the bathroom. Moments later, she returned with a cloth in a bowl of soapy water. Alfie gratefully accepted it before dropping to his knees to scrub at the paint.

  “This used to be my room,” Julia said as she peeped through the net curtains at her café across the village green; it looked full. “How have you settled into Peridale?”

  “I love it here,” he said, pausing to brush his dark hair out of his face. “Jessie is great, the people are nice, and Dot is hilarious. There’s never a dull day. It’s nice to have somewhere to call home.”

  Before finding Jessie, Alfie had travelled the world, acquiring tattoos in each country along the way. Julia had been worried that he would find it difficult to adjust to life in a small village, but the bonus of finally being with his sister seemed enough to keep him settled.

  Alfie continued scrubbing the paint before his phone pinged in his pocket. He dropped the cloth into the water, wiped his hands on his paint-splattered overalls, and retrieved his phone. Just like at her cottage when fixing her oven, a smile spread across his face, and Julia knew exactly what that smile meant.

  “Someone special?” Julia asked as she perched on the edge of the bed, which creaked under her weight. “You look just like Jessie when Billy sends her a message.”

  Alfie quickly typed something before looking sheepishly up at Julia. He looked as though he did not want to share the information, but he reluctantly turned the phone around to show her a picture of him and a girl. His arm was around her shoulder, and they were both smiling at the camera; Julia instantly recognised the young woman.

  “Her name’s Kylie,” Alfie said, his voice turning to a whisper as though they were being listened to. “It’s early days. Me and Billy went to the pub after a job a couple of weeks ago, but he went home early. I stayed behind to finish my drink, and Kylie came in. We got talking and just clicked straight away. We’ve been on a couple of dates, but I don’t really know where it’s going yet.”

  “That smile tells me you really like her,” Julia said, deciding not to mention she already knew who the girl was. “She’s very pretty.”

  “She is,” Alfie agreed as he looked down at the phone. “It’s just been so long since I’ve properly dated, I don’t want to rush it. I haven’t even told Jessie yet. I have a feeling she’d hate Kylie.”

  “Why?”

  “Kylie’s into her makeup and fashion, and Jessie is – well – Jessie is Jessie.”

  Julia knew exactly what Alfie was saying. Even though she had only seen Kylie in a nursing home uniform, her perfect make-up and precisely done hair told her she put more effort in than Jessie ever cared to.

  “When’s your next date?” Julia asked casually as she looked around the room, her eyes landing on the height markings Dot had made next to the doorframe as Julia had grown up.

  “Her grandad is sick,” Alfie said as he slipped his phone into his pocket. “He had a heart attack at some birthday party. But we’re still texting a lot. She seems pretty upset about it. I don’t think she wants to talk about it, and I’m not going to push her. I get it. When my parents died, and they separated Jessie and me, I didn’t talk about it for years. In fact, I don’t think I talked about it properly until moving to Peridale. But, her grandad could still pull through, so there’s hope for her.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  Alfie smiled sweetly before rinsing the cloth in the water. Julia decided against mentioning that the words ‘death’s door’ had been thrown around in reference to Peter.

  “Her uncle used to rent the builder’s yard at the bottom of Mulberry Lane before he retired,” Alfie said, switching gears as he wrung out the cloth. “She thinks he can put me in touch with the owner and get a good deal. Billy has been pushing to get some premises to have a base since day one, so it’s almost like fate is doing the rest for us.”

  “I suppose it is,” Julia said, wondering if Kylie had more than one uncle, or if Alfie was referring to Keith. “I should get back to the café before Jessie tells me off. If you can’t get that stain out, you could always move the bed to the other side of the room to hide it. It’s how I used to have it anyway.”

  “Thanks for the tip, cake lady,” Alfie said, saluting with two fingers as Julia headed for the door. “Tell Jessie I said ‘hi’.”

  After promising that she would, Julia hurried down the staircase and out of the cottage. On her way across the village green to the café, she spotted a camera crew out of the corner of her eye and was surprised to see that Barker was the one being interviewed while he clutched a copy of his book. A young man held a fluffy boom microphone over his head to catch every word he was saying while a second man asked him questions from a clipboard.
Deciding Jessie could wait for a minute, Julia cut across the green towards the village hall. She slowed down when she spotted Izzy standing behind the cameraman with her phone glued to her ear.

  “And cut!” the interviewer cried when Julia reached them. “I think we got it.”

  “Perfect,” Izzy said while pressing her phone to her shoulder. “Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate you getting out here at such short notice.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Chris laughed as the cameraman and the microphone operator headed towards a white van parked in front of the church. “When I called the station and told them what had happened here, they canned a whole segment about a cat who’d saved a family from a burning building to make room for it. If this doesn’t sell your book, nothing will.” Chris stopped talking when he realised that Izzy had stopped listening and was more interested in her manicure. “Hey, if you’re not busy later, maybe we could grab a drink for old time’s sake?”

  “Sorry,” Izzy said with a tight smile, not sounding the least bit apologetic. “I am busy.”

  The reporter nodded before awkwardly backing away and joining the rest of his team in the van. Izzy tossed her phone into her large handbag before spotting Julia. She smirked slightly before turning to Barker and resting her hand on his shoulder.

  “You did great,” Izzy said as she gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I don’t know why you were nervous. You’re a natural. That was the publisher on the phone. Copies of your book are flying off the shelves, and it’s only the first day! You’re going to be a hit!”

  “You think?” Barker grinned as he looked down at his book. “With what happened at the launch, I thought my chances were ruined.”

  “Are you crazy?” Izzy cried with a cackle, slapping Barker playfully on the arm. “It couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it myself! It’s a PR dream! If I were you, I’d scrap whatever you’ve written of the second book and write about this. You’ve had The Girl in the Basement, now you should write The Woman in the Ceiling. It’s got a ring to it, don’t you think?” Izzy spun around before Barker could even reply. “Julia. Nice to see you again.”