Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1)

by Issy Brooke

  Cath leaned through the open car window as Penny started the engine and got the heaters going. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said. There was the tinge of alcohol on her breath.

  “Thanks for the invite. I mean it, in spite of my reservations. I really enjoyed myself. Cath, can I ask … has it been established yet whether David Hart’s death, that electrocution, was accidental? Or a suicide? Or a … murder?”

  Cath shook her head and smiled. “I’m not allowed to say. But no, it wasn’t. It was foul play.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “I didn’t say that, right! You’ll get me into trouble. Go home!”

  “I’m sorry. Thank you. Get inside before you get cold.”

  Penny’s mind was a whirl as she drove home. David Hart had been murdered. It was true.

  Somewhere in Upper Glenfield, a murderer was on the loose. And she had found the body! That made her involved. Francine’s words came back to her. She was up to her neck in events.

  It sort of made her a suspect, she thought, as she pulled up outside her cottage. I’m a newcomer to the town too.

  She felt a tingle of butterflies in her stomach. She got out of the car and smiled to herself. I’ve made friends and now I have a purpose. I will find the murderer. Things have to be put right. This is great. Things are going to work out just fine.

  She remained happy until she opened the front door and saw the devastation that Kali had wreaked through her home.

  Chapter Six

  Thursday opened with torrential rain hammering on the roof and bursting from a hole in the guttering, and Penny was delighted. No one walked their dogs in the rain; she and Kali would have a free run of the town. She layered up with new yellow waterproofs and sallied forth. She would have danced and sung a song like a terrible old musical if she knew all the words to anything. Kali seemed surprised at Penny’s exuberance, and behaved impeccably after about twenty minutes of insistent pulling. Penny was discovering that in the battle of wills, she may as well accept that Kali was stronger; so instead of letting the dog dictate where they were going, Penny would stop, and turn around, every time Kali pulled forwards. Eventually Kali realised that pulling got her nowhere. She still tried to pull, but with less heart, and the walk back home was actually fun. Kali was still a pest, but Penny was beginning to feel possessive of her. Kali was her pest.

  Penny spent another hour attempting to sort out the broadband to her cottage. She rang around all the suppliers, found she was restricted in who would service the cottage, and had to concede an expensive defeat. Then she decided she needed to unearth more old, shabby dog-walking clothes. She was developing a line on the thigh of her jeans that was where Kali’s slobbery jowls pressed against her when she wanted treats and fussing. She went to root about in some of the unpacked boxes in the spare room. To her surprise, she unearthed a decades-old sketchbook in the bottom of a box of winter clothes. It reminded her of her student days once more, and she felt warm. It inspired her to get sketching again. She brought the book down to the kitchen and was just leafing through it when there was a knock at her front door.

  She wondered if it might be Francine, back with more advice and wine. She held firmly onto Kali’s collar with one hand as she opened the door slightly with the other, shouting through, “It’s okay, she’s friendly… probably … are you wearing a hat?”

  “Er, no, should I be? I can put my coat over my head.” It was Drew’s voice, and Penny perked up with relief.

  “Hello there! How did you know where I lived?” she asked as she opened the door fully and Kali was released to greet him. Her whole body seemed to wag as she dashed up to the man.

  “Everyone knows where the new London woman lives. We know all your business, remember? Your friend has gone home, then?”

  “That is just creepy. And yes, she has, thank goodness. My liver is hanging by a thread now. How is it that everyone knows who I’ve got visiting me, but no one knows about David Hart?” she asked suspiciously.

  “You’re new and exciting. You’re being watched.”

  Eww. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.” Let’s watch to see what the mad London woman with the dangerous dog does next, she thought. That’s not fair.

  “You do like it, or you wouldn’t have moved here. It’s what people come to small towns for. Your business is everyone’s business, now. This is called neighbourhood spirit.”

  She was suddenly aware that he was standing in the rain and she jumped back into the hallway. “Please, come in.”

  He stepped into the porch, shaking the drops from his hair, and pulled a bag out of his large raincoat pocket. “I won’t come in and drip everywhere. I just wanted to give you this. I think you might find it useful, with the dog.”

  She took it and unwrapped the bag to find a collection of straps and a metal circle. “What is it?” she asked, shaking it out. Flashbacks to the adult party came to mind.

  “It’s a head-collar for Kali. I reckon it’s the right size. She’s only got a narrow head, hasn’t she, for a Rottie? I mean, it might not work, or you might want to try a different way, or a harness, or whatever, but it’s worth a try.”

  “Oh! How lovely. I don’t know about the fit … look, come on through. You can’t stand in the porch. Come to the kitchen. I’ll put the kettle on. And, thank you. So kind.”

  He kicked off his wellington boots, leaving them in the puddle they had already formed, and followed her to the back of the house, Kali getting underfoot as they went.

  “Settling in?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks.” She realised with some shame that the two empty wine bottles from two nights previously were still standing by the back door, waiting to be taken out to the recycling area. He was going to think her some kind of alcoholic, so she pre-empted that by nodding at them and saying, “Ahh … my friend, she, er … she brought them as a gift ...”

  He smiled. “A cheeky red there. She has good taste. What did she think to Glenfield, then?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t actually leave the living room. I was amazed she came, to be honest. She kind of tracked me down against my will.”

  “What?” Drew took his coat off and folded it so the wet outer layer was on the inside.

  “I didn’t tell her where I lived. She was one of those people who seemed to hang on to me and I couldn’t shake her off. We worked together but she was … annoying. Wow. I sound like a silly school girl, don’t I?”

  “Yes,” he said, and she blushed with shame.

  “I am petty,” she said.

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “Er … no, you’re supposed to say nice things that are lies, just to make me feel better.” Especially as you don’t even know me, she thought.

  “Nope. I’m not going to do that.” He shrugged. “But I did bring you a head-collar, so there’s that.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She had to laugh. “So how does this head-collar thing work, then?”

  He knelt down and encouraged Kali to sniff it. “I noticed how you struggled to hold her back the other day, and it made me think about my work with horses. They put a collar on if a horse needs to pull a cart or plough, right? So the animal can use all their strength. And Rotties, they were used to pull carts, back in Germany. All their strength comes from their chest. But the head-collar means she can’t put her full weight into pulling you over. Just take care with it. Don’t use one of them retracting leads or you’ll hurt her neck. And don’t yank at her. Mind you, you shouldn’t be yanking at her with a normal collar on.”

  “Collars are designed for dogs, though, aren’t they?”

  “It’s my understanding that dogs have something called the oppositional reflex,” he said, the long words clumsy in his mouth. “I mean, you pull and they pull back. It’s automatic. So dragging on the lead won’t get you anywhere.” He patted Kali’s shoulder. “What do you think, there? Smells okay, doesn’t it?”

  Kali tentatively put her nose into the smaller loop. Drew rubbed he
r ears and gave her some more praise. “Do you have any treats that she likes?”

  “No, I don’t want her to get fat.”

  Drew sighed and remained crouching, but he looked up at her with a serious expression. “You don’t really know me and all that, but I kind of feel I need to speak my mind about the dog thing. Er…”

  “Please do. I mean, you haven’t held back so far … Tell me. I need help, I know…” Oh, be gentle, she added in her head. I want to get it right but don’t tell me I’m wrong too harshly. “Okay, you don’t have to lie to make me feel good.”

  “Okay. I won’t. It’s about the dog, not you. So, it’s like this. How will she know if she’s done something right?”

  “I say good girl.”

  “Does she like food? And treats?”

  “My goodness, yes. She won’t stop eating.”

  “If two people wanted you to do two different things, and when you did one thing, person A said ‘well done’ and when you did the other thing, person B gave you a cake, who will you want to please?”

  “Person B. Cake, always.” Penny could already see where Drew was going.

  “If Kali is motivated by food, use that motivation. She won’t get fat if you adjust her main meals. If she puts the head-collar on, give her a treat and take it off again. Bit by bit she’ll learn that the head-collar means good things.”

  “But if I give her treats for everything, I’ll be feeding her all the time!”

  “At first, yes, you will. Use her meal as treats. Why not? Then reduce it. Anyway, she’ll soon learn that the head-collar means walks. Please, do try it. Otherwise you’ll be telling her off more than you reward her, and how can that make her happy?”

  It wouldn’t make anyone happy, she thought. It made sense. “Okay, I’ll try it, I promise. Thank you so much.”

  “Great.” He got to his feet and grinned. “Rewards always work better than punishment.”

  “How’s work? Where do you have you … uh, what’s it called? Smithy? You said you were a blacksmith, sort of.”

  “Yeah, I have a smithy. Actually it’s an industrial unit at the end of the High Street.”

  “How marvellous! I’d love to look round one day. If that would be okay.”

  “You think it’s going to look like a romantic Victorian painting, don’t you?” He laughed. “You can certainly come round. Work is quiet though. I don’t shoe many horses, and I tend to travel to do that on-site. Horses aren’t my thing, to be honest. Their teeth are enormous. No, I mostly end up doing ornamental ironwork. And I’m competing against imports, and it’s a tough business.”

  She looked again at him. The jeans were no-brand and faded, his socks had holes, and his sweater was baggy in the wrong places. “I’m sorry to hear that. How do you mean, that you’re a ‘sort of’ blacksmith?”

  “Ahh, well, I realised I needed to diversify, you see. If smithing isn’t paying – and it’s not – I decided to make a change. I’ve been developing some field-craft sessions with the local hotel, The Arches. It’s kind of a conference centre too, and they already do things like hawking and off-road driving.”

  “That sounds amazing! So you’re like a tracker or something?”

  “Yes, pretty much. Oh – now, that’s beautiful. It can’t be local…”

  His eye had caught the stack of sketches that she’d left on the kitchen table.

  “No, that’s somewhere in Kent.”

  “Did you draw these?” He got closer but was too polite to reach out and touch them.

  “I did. But it was years ago.” She felt embarrassed and exposed. Showing someone a picture she had deemed fit for public view was one thing – having her half-formed sketches spied upon was like being caught in your worst nearly-wash-day underwear. She wanted to scoop them up and hide them.

  He smiled. “You have a talent. I love being out in the countryside, walking, but I can’t even take a decent photo of what I see. Hey. Would you like to try Kali with the head-collar?”

  “It’s raining.”

  “It’s easing off, and you’ll not dissolve, I’m sure. Are you made of sugar? We don’t have to go far. I’ll show you how to persuade her it’s a good thing. Have you any ham you could chop up for treats?”

  Less than ten minutes later, they were walking slowly through the light rain but not going the usual way towards the centre of town. Instead, Drew turned left out of her cottage and took them towards the end of the row, which Penny thought was a dead end. She’d never even walked that way, because she would have felt daft getting to the end, and turning around.

  “There’s a path here,” he told her. “It cuts down to the river and under the bridge where the kids hang out in summer. And then out into hillier land, westwards.”

  It didn’t matter that the rain was soaking everything. The sky wasn’t dark; patches of blue shone brightly through grey clouds. As well as the grey slabs, there were occasional white fluffy bundles, moving quite quickly up above their heads. The fields were already carpeted with green and yellow. She could almost imagine the rain being sucked up into the stems of the crops, growing and blooming visibly before her eyes.

  By the river, the land was muddy but Drew seemed to avoid ever sinking into the bogs, whereas Penny was constantly up to her ankles. “Are you some kind of earth wizard?” she complained.

  He looked back and laughed when he saw her, stuck as she was in an unexpected pool of water. “Don’t step in the boggy bits,” he said.

  “It’s all boggy bits,” she replied crossly. “Apart from the bits you magically know to step on.”

  He pointed at the dark green spears of foliage. “See those rushes? They like water. It’s a clue. That clump of yellower grass there, that will be fine to walk on. Take a leap onto it.”

  She jumped to the patch of grass and found her feet land on soft but solid ground. They continued on, Penny watching carefully, and learning where to walk. She felt like some kind of old-world tracker. She wanted to go on one of his field-craft courses now.

  “Speaking of clues,” she said to Drew’s back. “What do you think to the death of David Hart?”

  “A tragic accident, for sure. And a horrible way to go. They say he was electrocuted by his fence!”

  “It wasn’t an accident and it probably wasn’t his fence. I happen to know that he was murdered.”

  “No. Really?” Drew stopped dead and turned. “How do you know?”

  “I was told by … a police officer,” she said cautiously.

  “Oh, that Cath blabbed, did she? Get a drink inside her and she’s anybody’s. So to speak. Well, well. So, who did it?”

  “That’s the thing,” Penny said. “They don’t know! Perhaps a serial killer is on the loose!”

  “Not here in Upper Glenfield. Anyway, most murders are accidental, aren’t they? Like, manslaughter stuff. The situation is usually that one bloke pushes another bloke in a pub, he falls down and hits his head, and boom – dead. The bloke that pushed him is then liable for manslaughter.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe this was premeditated. You are a proper local. Who would want David Hart dead, do you think? You know all my business, apparently.”

  “Are you a part time police officer, now?”

  “No,” she said. “I want something to do and I did find the body, so I’m linked. I’m connected. And I thought perhaps an outsider like myself could bring a fresh eye…”

  “You’re having crime investigation fantasies, aren’t you?”

  She shook her head stubbornly, but had to agree. It was all Francine’s fault for encouraging her. Now the idea was in her head, she couldn’t shift it. “No. Yes. Maybe. There was one time in Dusseldorf where someone was stealing from the canteen truck and I worked out who it was… maybe I have a gift for it.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’ll get into trouble.”

  She shrugged. “I know I’m being facetious but really, I’m just using it as a way to get to know people and the community. It’s a great con
versation opener. I was at a kitchenware party last night and they were all talking about it.”

  “A kitchenware party?” he said. “Is that a cover-up for something else? No, don’t answer that, let me live in ignorance. Look, my advice is, don’t listen to gossip and rumour. It’s got more than one person into bother here in Glenfield. Someone lost their job over it not so long back.”

  “Did they? Oh dear.” They continued walking, side by side. “But listen. You told me about the ramblers and that guy called Ed. He’s a prime suspect, isn’t he?”

  “No one would kill over the question of access to a footpath! Would they?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “I’ve seen footage on the news of protestors. People get really angry about local issues. I was involved in the documentary about the shade of pink someone painted their house in Cornwall. It got really rather heated. Some people did end up in court. And the other thing is, what about the dead man’s brother? Thomas, isn’t it? I had heard that they argued.” Okay, she had to admit to herself. That was pure gossip overheard in the mini-market.

  But Drew agreed. “They didn’t get on at all but there always seems to be more to it than just sibling rivalry. There was some kind of silent bitterness. Oh, listen to me… I’m as bad as the rest of them.”

  “It’s just community spirit and neighbourly interest; it’s fine,” she reassured him. “Who was the older brother of the two?”

  “Thomas was.”

  “Were there any other siblings?”

  “Nope, just David and Thomas.”

  She persisted with her questions. “Did David inherit the farm or did he buy it?”

  Drew thought for a moment. “He inherited it, but I don’t really know why it went to him and not Thomas, being as he was the older one. Except … okay, thinking about it, maybe it was because Thomas was never very interested in any of that. He went off to join the Army and then he worked all over the world, as some kind of close protection officer.”