He had learned over the past couple of days that Harriet was the woman he wanted to be with. His need to spend time with her went bone deep. From the moment he woke up to the second he fell asleep she continued to plague his every thought, his every movement, until he had started to feel lost and lonely without her. Was it love at first sight? He knew it was. Even if he ignored the slightly off-balance, punch in the stomach feeling he had experienced when he had first laid eyes on her, each and every day since, she had been in his thoughts. Throughout the day, even when he hadn’t been working on the investigation, he had wondered where she was, who she was with, how she was coping.
Given the strength of the feelings he had felt on the night they had met, and the relief that had almost overwhelmed him the following day when he had seen her again, he had forced himself through a self-imposed exile of sorts. He had made himself stay away while he had tried to get to grips with the way she had made him reconsider his future. Each day since, having considered every possible nuance of feeling, every ounce of affection, every thought process and scenario, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what he felt for Harriett Marchington was love. There was no other reason for his almost obsessive need to see her again.
It was one of the reasons why he had made arrangements to meet with Alice, and break off his relationship with her. After the dramatics in the tea shop, he knew with certainty that he had made the right choice. Harriett would never have behaved so manipulatively, even if he was ever so stupid as to break off his relationship with her.
Harriett dropped her basket on the table and swiped at the tears on her face. It was ridiculous to feel this upset over something so banal. After all, he meant nothing to her; he was just the detective who was investigating a murder in her house. She had to get on with her life and forget about him. Unfortunately, her heart seemed to have other ideas because every time she closed her eyes, his handsome face swept into her vision to the point that she felt as though he was haunting her.
She took a few moments to calm herself, and glanced at the clock. It was too late to go back to the shop, even though the afternoon service would be in full swing. It was already two o’clock, and the shop would almost inevitably be full of the usual gossips. The latest subject for speculation was the demise of Minerva Bobbington, whom they had been slandering only a couple of weeks ago for having brought the wrong type of roses for the church flowers. It was the last thing Harriett wanted to be involved in, or even listen to.
Right now though, she didn’t want to be alone, but Babette had gone out and wouldn’t be back for several hours yet, and Beatrice and Constance were still at Great Tipton market. She sucked in a deep breath, patted down her skirts, straightened her hair in the mirror above the fireplace and hurried out of the front door. Mr Montague was always someone she liked to chat and share a cup of tea with. He always seemed to have a pot of tea on the go in case any of his customers wanted to stop and chat and today would be no different.
Within minutes, she spied the green sigh of the haberdashery half way down the row of shops which lined the main street. She nodded hello to a few people but didn’t stop to chat and carefully kept her gaze averted from the tea shop as she passed. She had seen enough of tea shops for the time being. Instead, she hurried through the doorway of the haberdashery and immediately her ears were filled with the merry tinkle of the bell above the door.
“Mr Montague? Hello?” Harriett called as she closed the door carefully behind her.
She frowned at the silence that greeted her. Usually she could at least hear Mr Montague shuffling around out back. She frowned and walked around the various bolts of cloth.
“Hugo? Are you here?”
It was highly unlikely for Hugo to leave the place unmanned. She glanced at the sign on the door and read the Closed for business that faced her. That meant that the Open sign was visible to the public.
“Hugo? Are you out back?” She wondered if he had popped to the outhouse at the rear of the store and waited for several moments. She took the opportunity to study several rolls of cloth and some off-cuts of lace. When Hugo failed to materialise, she made her way to the rear of the shop.
“Hugo? Hello? Is anyone there?” Harriett sighed despondently. Wherever he had gone, he had forgotten to close up before he left. She briefly contemplated whether she should lock the front doors and leave the key with the man next door. With a sigh, she made her way around the back of the counter.
“Oh, Lord,” she whispered and stared in horror at the highly polished shoes that pointed skyward. Her gaze reluctantly travelled higher, up the short legs, to the bright red waist coat. Her swallow was harsh in the silence of the room. Her heart hammered in her throat as her eyes swept over the four brass buttons that led up to the pristine white collar of Hugo’s shirt. She edged closer, and cried aloud at the sight of Hugo’s blank stare in his far too pale face.
Hugo Montague was dead.
Harriett’s stomach churned. A blessedly numb sensation coursed through her that dampened the immediate grief. She felt a cold breeze drift gently over her chin but couldn’t bring herself to tear her gaze away from the body of her friend.
How long she stood there, she had no idea. She was only vaguely aware of the faint tinkle of the shop doorway but couldn’t turn around; couldn’t absorb the impact of the death of someone she knew so well and had considered a dear friend.
“Harriett?” The familiar rumble of Mark’s voice drifted over her and snapped her out of her fog of grief.
“Oh, God, Mark,” she whispered and turned toward him with horror-filled eyes.
All of Mark’s senses snapped to attention. A quick glance around the small shop assured him that there was nobody else there.
“What’s wrong?” He watched Harriett step aside and point vaguely to something behind the counter. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He knew, even without moving behind the wooden counter, that he would find Hugo Montague dead.
“How long have you been here?” Mark demanded. He studied her for a moment before he hurried to the front door to flick the latch and turn the ‘closed’ sign around. The last thing he wanted was for some hysterical female to turn up and announce the latest death to the gossips. Right now, he had other things to concern himself with. He caught sight of a flurry of movement outside of the large front window and quickly yanked the door open. The young boy looked curious, but didn’t ask any questions as he was handed a couple of pennies and ordered to fetch the constable.
“Be quick about it,” he called to the lad as he raced to earn his reward.
Once inside, he secured the door again and hurried across the shop. Harriett hadn’t moved and seemed to be in a daze. He moved to stand in front of her and tipped her chin up until her eyes met his.
“Are you alright?” He knew she wasn’t, despite the fact that she nodded jerkily. It was there in her eyes: the deep rooted fear and grief that had yet to surface. He carefully lifted a stool over the body and moved her around to the opposite side of the counter where she wouldn’t be able to see the corpse, and gently sat her down.
“How long have you been here, Harriett?”
Harriett felt each word as though it was being spoken through a tunnel. It resounded through her head over and over in an endless echo. “I don’t know. A few minutes, maybe? I came in and called Hugo, but there was no response. It’s odd for him because even if he is out in the back yard, you can hear him moving around, but I couldn’t hear anyone. I thought he might have gone to the outhouse, so I waited for a few minutes and studied the bolts of cloth over there.” She pointed to the far wall with a hand that shook so badly that he captured it and held in the warmth of his palms. He mentally cursed as her cold fingers trembled beneath the weight of his. He could only hope his warmth and reassurance would ease her out of her terror. Right now, he was relieved that she hadn’t succumbed to a fit of the vapours, or hysteria. As it was, she looked as though she wasn’t sure where she was, let al
one what had happened.
“Did you see anyone else here?”
Harriett shook her head slowly.
“Did you hear anyone out back?”
“No, I already told you, it was quiet in the shop. I couldn’t hear anyone out back at all. I waited for a few minutes but he didn’t appear. It’s unusual for him to leave his shop unattended and unlocked. I contemplated whether to lock up for him and leave the key next door, and went around the counter, then found –” she hiccupped a sob, “I found him lying there like that.” She pointed to Hugo’s body and sucked in a deep breath. “God, Mark, what happened to him?”
Mark shook his head and studied the unusual way Hugo lay all bent and twisted out of shape. From the strange trickle of fluid that had run out of the side of his mouth it looked as though he had choked too. He kept that thought to himself and leaned down to sniff Hugo’s mouth. The slight smell of almonds told him that he needed to know: cyanide. With a mental curse, he eased back on his heels and studied the area around the body. The remnants of a tea cup lay in pieces to one side of his body; its contents had long since soaked into the dusty floor boards. At first glance there was nothing else untoward in the area that was as neat and tidy as the man himself.
He took a moment to lower the man’s eye lids and lifted a bolt of cloth off the counter. He carefully draped several yards of material over the body in order to protect him from prying eyes. Luckily, if there was any such luck in this kind of situation, Hugo had collapsed behind the counter and this afforded him some privacy in his hour of death. Mark knew that he had only recently been poisoned because he was still relatively warm, but who killed him? Why?
He pushed to his feet and returned to Harriett, who remained still and silent. He picked her hands up in his and chafed her fingers in an attempt to put some warmth back into them but after several moments gave up.
“God, come here,” he whispered and hauled her off the stool and into his arms.
Harriett hiccupped around a sob and settled into his chest. A steady trickle of tears meandered down her pale cheeks as she stood wrapped in his warm embrace. She felt comforted and reassured to have his solid strength to lean on. It was a wonderful haven of reassurance in a world of turmoil and confusion. She had no idea what was going on in the usually sleepy village of Tipton Hollow, or how he intended to make sense of it all. Her senses struggled to absorb the events of the day, from seeing him holding hands with the beautiful woman in Great Tipton, to finding Hugo’s body behind the counter, to now being held by the man who was so clearly involved with someone else. That thought alone was enough to make her ease slowly out of his arms.
“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to cry all over you,” she whispered and brushed at the damp patch on the shoulder of his jacket.
“It’s alright, I don’t mind,” he smiled, strangely reluctant to release his hold on her. Whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by a rapid knock on the door. He turned and sighed with relief at the sight of Fred, the village constable, on the front doorstep together with a florid faced young boy who stood at his elbow.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mark moved to let them in and flicked the halfpenny at the boy, who beamed proudly and doffed his cap before he raced off to tell his friends about his good fortune. Mark stared pointedly at Fred, whose face turned sombre as he entered the room.
“I need you to send for my colleague at the station.”
“I will get on to it right away, sir,” Fred replied and disappeared out of the shop. Within minutes the young boy had returned and stood to await further instructions so he could earn himself a second reward.
Relieved that the beat bobby was so efficient, Mark clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s drop the blinds so we aren’t watched. I am afraid that there has been another death, constable.”
“Oh, dear,” Fred sighed moments later when he spied the prone body of Mr Montague behind the counter. “Did you find him, Harriett?”
Harriett nodded jerkily and accepted the sympathy on Fred’s face with a half smile. “I came for tea with him.”
“You had tea with him most afternoons, didn’t you?” Fred’s round usually took him past the tea shop. Although he never stopped, he always popped his head through the door to hail a greeting as he went on his duties. Today he had been held up by a strange message that had turned out to be nothing but a merry chase and hadn’t taken his usual afternoon stroll through the neighbourhood.
“I hadn’t planned to, but it is my day off and I wanted to drop by to see how he was. I haven’t seen him for the past few days, and I missed our usual chats. When I got here though, I found him like -” she waved blankly behind the counter and lapsed into silence.
Mark appeared in the doorway that led to the small yard at the back of the shop. He had studied the gate and the back door but there was no sign of forced entry. It pointed to the fact that whoever had added the poison to Hugo’s tea and entered through the shop’s front door, or had been allowed entrance to the yard by Hugo, who had closed and locked the gate.
“What did it?” Fred asked as he squatted down to lift the cover off Hugo’s face. He frowned at the strange odour around the man’s mouth and glanced at Mark.
“Poison,” Mark sighed and moved to the dresser in the back room to study the contents. He lifted the lid of the small metal box of tea, and sniffed the contents, and repeated the procedure with the sugar, milk and several other items. A rummage around in the cupboards revealed nothing untoward. There was no sign of any household poisons for pests; there wasn’t even a demon trap in the shop. There was nothing to indicate that the tea may have been poisoned by mistake by Hugo himself, who had inadvertently done something silly like stirred his tea with a spoon he had used to lay poison out for rodents. Instead, everything was as clean as a whistle and in keeping with someone who ran a neat and tidy store.
“Did Hugo have someone helping him?” Mark called as he studied the numerous cups and saucers stacked neatly on the dresser.
“No, he worked alone,” Harriett replied. She carefully skirted around Hugo’s feet to stand in the doorway and watch Mark’s search of the back room. “He was a little pernickety with his things. Everything had a place and he would get quite grumpy if anyone messed with his piles. Lots of people called in to chat with him though. There was always someone here, sitting on the stool out front, sharing a cup of tea and chat.” Her voice quivered at the thought of that easy generosity so cruelly, and so unnecessarily, erased. “Hugo was a nice, kindly man who was no threat to anyone. He liked a bit of gossip, obviously, everyone does. Even those who say that they don’t indulge in gossip lie. It’s the mainstay of village life, especially in somewhere like Tipton Hollow. Why would someone do this to such a helpless old man? What purpose would it have?”
“To stop gossip,” Mark replied starkly. He could see no reason to favour her delicate sensibilities. This was the second death in less than a week. He couldn’t discount the message that had been issued at the séance that ‘H is in danger’. So far, although Minerva Bobbington didn’t have H in her name, Hugo Montague did. Had Hugo been the person the threat had been issued to? It looked entirely possible now, however Mark had to question whether Hugo was the only intended victim. He closed his eyes as he realised that Harriett had intended to have tea with Hugo on that very same afternoon. If she had not had been in Great Tipton, she would have been in the haberdashery with Hugo and would have drunk the poisoned tea that killed her friend.
That led him onto another thought that made him sick to his stomach. Was Harriett the intended victim? He sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to quell the worry that swept through him at the thought that it could have been her behind that counter, on the floor, dead.
Mark disappeared outside and combed the nearly empty back yard as he tried to blank that particular image out of his mind. The outhouse revealed nothing except for a few squares of neatly cut newspaper next to the privy, and a solitary demon trap stationed beside t
he door. The coal house beside that held nothing but coal and a battered dustpan and brush. Aside from that, there was nothing in the yard.
He had yet to do a more intensive search of the back room of the haberdashery, but suspected that whoever had poisoned Hugo’s tea hadn’t been careless enough to leave a packet of poison around, or left any indication as to how they had managed to get the poison into Hugo’s tea. That left Mark to consider the very distinct possibility that whoever had poisoned Hugo, was someone with whom he regularly shared tea and gossip. His thoughts turned toward Harriett, but he immediately discounted that notion. It was simply inconceivable to him that someone so pretty, so intelligent and seemingly honest would stoop so low. She simply wasn’t the murdering kind; if there was a murdering kind of person.
Minutes later Doctor Woods arrived. He took one look at Mark’s face and paused just inside the doorway. “Too late, I take it?”
Mark nodded and waved to the body behind the counter. “Far too late, I am afraid. I need you to provide me with a cause of death, although I think I may know what it is.” He didn’t expand further and merely stood back to allow the man to inspect the body.
“He has been dead about an hour or so,” David sighed. “He is still slightly warm, and has no sign of rigor mortis.”
Harriett shuddered at the dispassion in the David’s voice. She hated the controlled manner in which he spoke about the death of her friend, but knew that it was his job. He couldn’t become emotionally involved in his patient’s lives. Still, the way in which he discussed the morbid details of Hugo’s body made her feel slightly sick.
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