Murder in Midwinter

by Lesley Cookman

  Ben groaned. ‘Yes, it crossed my mind,’ he said.

  ‘It’s got to be him, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Ben, leaning forward. ‘I expect the police questioned a lot of people in these flats. We don’t even know if it’s the same block, do we?’

  ‘I could ask,’ said Libby.

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ said Ben and sat up quickly as Edna returned with a laden tray.

  ‘Sorry about the mugs,’ she said, ‘But you know, it’s all my brother’s stuff.’

  ‘I have mugs at home,’ said Libby, accepting one. ‘So what happened to your brother? Was he questioned about the murder? The victim lived in one of these flats, didn’t he? I suppose the police questioned everyone.’

  ‘Oh!’ Edna’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘About the murder?’ Libby helped herself to a slice of cake. ‘Everyone knows, don’t they? It was in the papers and on TV.’

  ‘But about him living here?’

  Libby felt the colour rising up her neck and looked at Ben for help.

  ‘He was a friend of a friend of ours,’ he said. ‘He worked at Anderson Place, where Peter and Harry are having their Civil Partnership celebration next Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Edna’s colour was heightened again, and Libby could feel disapproval radiating from her. ‘Well, yes, that was what it was. You see, my brother was away from home – he travels in stationery, you know – and when he came back, he found out that all the neighbours had been questioned because of Mr Cooper living here, so he thought he ought to tell the police about this – er, argument.’

  ‘Argument?’ said Libby, trying not to show any excitement.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Edna, warming to her story, ‘it was the very day poor Mr Cooper’s body was found. My brother was coming home just as this man came out of the flat opposite.’

  ‘Opposite? Opposite this flat?’

  Edna nodded. ‘That’s right. Well, my brother knew that Mr Cooper would normally be out at that time and asked if he was all right, thinking, you know, that he must at home ill.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ said Libby, with a mouthful of cake.

  ‘And this man just pushed my brother out of the way and went down the stairs. Made him fall against the door and bang his head actually. Well, the next day he went away to the West Country and that was that.’

  ‘So when did he have his accident? Not when he banged his head?’ said Ben.

  ‘No,’ said Edna, blushing yet again. ‘It was after the police came to talk to him. He – er – he was rather upset.’ She looked up to see Ben and Libby staring at her. ‘He fell on the stairs.’

  ‘I hope he wasn’t too badly hurt?’ said Libby.

  ‘Oh, no. A bit of a bang on the head and a sprained ankle.’ Edna picked up the teapot. ‘More tea?’

  Fifteen minutes later, Ben and Libby escaped with the fairy costume.

  ‘A drunk,’ said Libby, staring at the doorway of Laurence Cooper’s flat. ‘I bet he wouldn’t have challenged the murderer otherwise.’

  ‘Aren’t you assuming a lot?’ said Ben, giving her a gentle push towards the stairs.

  ‘It has to be,’ said Libby. ‘Edna’s brother is going to do a photofit. They wouldn’t ask him to do that if they didn’t think it was the murderer. And,’ she said, turning to Ben triumphantly as they emerged into the open air, ‘what about that for a coincidence, then?’

  ‘Now that I agree about,’ said Ben, unlocking the door, ‘but it doesn’t get your investigation any further, does it?’

  ‘It’s not my investigation,’ said Libby, ‘it’s a police investigation. Fran’s just helping.’

  Producing her mobile with an expressive scowl at Ben, she punched in Fran’s number as they pulled away from the block of flats.

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the Swan with Guy,’ came the crackly reply. ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s at The Swan with Guy,’ said Libby to Ben. ‘Can we …?’

  ‘Don’t interrupt them,’ said Ben. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Why, where are you?’ said Fran. ‘I heard that. If you’re here, come and join us.’

  ‘See,’ said Libby, putting her mobile away. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘I thought we were going home to do your words,’ said Ben with a sigh, nevertheless turning the car towards Nethergate.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ said Libby. ‘I won’t do anything but concentrate on panto for the rest of the week.’

  ‘And the wedding.’

  ‘Oh, yes, and the wedding. And Bel and Ad are coming Sunday.’ She turned to him with a smile. ‘It was lovely of your mum to ask us all to the Manor. Even Fran.’

  ‘Don’t say “even Fran” like that,’ he laughed.

  ‘Well, what I meant was, Hetty doesn’t know Fran that well.’

  ‘But Fran’s your friend –’

  ‘And yours.’

  ‘Yes, I know, and she’s on her own down here. My mum remembers what that was like.’

  ‘She’s lovely, your mum.’

  ‘I know.’ Ben took a hand off the wheel and squeezed Libby’s thigh. ‘So are you.’

  Libby snorted with laughter.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ said Ben indignantly, removing his hand.

  ‘Not you.’ Libby wiped her eyes. ‘I just remembered what she said.’

  ‘Edna? What did she say?’

  ‘He travels in stationery,’ said Libby, and whooped again.

  Guy and Fran were sitting by the fire in The Swan with the remains of lunch around them. Libby wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Service is going down in here,’ she said.

  ‘They don’t get the staff in the winter,’ said Guy. ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘I’ll get them,’ said Ben, ‘while Libby fills you in on what we’ve been doing.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ said Fran, when Libby had finished.

  ‘But not helpful?’

  ‘I can’t see how it would be,’ said Fran. ‘Ian’s already told me about him. Knowing it’s Edna’s brother doesn’t make any difference.’

  ‘Poor Edna,’ said Libby. ‘I know she was widowed some years ago, but to have to spend Christmas on your drunken brother’s sofa is the outside of enough.’

  ‘How do you know he’s drunken?’ asked Guy.

  ‘Libby’s making assumptions again,’ said Ben.

  ‘He came home and challenged a stranger who pushed past him. He fell and banged his head. Then, after he was questioned by the police, he fell down the stairs. Sounds like a drunk to me.’

  Fran nodded. ‘It looked like that to me,’ she said.

  They all looked at her and she blushed. ‘In my dream,’ she said.

  ‘And you’ve still no idea who the other man is?’ said Libby.

  ‘No.’ Fran looked out of the window at the wintry sea and Libby frowned.

  ‘Well, I hate to break it up, folks,’ said Guy, standing up, ‘but I’ve got to get back to the shop. There’s a slow rush on, it being Christmas.’

  ‘We’ll just finish our drinks then we’ll be on our way,’ said Ben. ‘What about you, Fran?’

  ‘Oh, I’m going to do one or two things in the cottage,’ said Fran. ‘I know I shouldn’t really, but I’ve got a key, and we’re doing all the legal stuff on Thursday, so I might as well.’

  ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ said Libby, searching in her basket. ‘Here. Jim looked this out and asked us to give it to you.’

  She handed over the leaflet and the photograph. Fran was delighted. ‘I shall frame the photograph,’ she said.

  ‘Here,’ said Guy, ‘let me. That’s what I do.’

  They all left The Swan together, Fran and Guy walking off towards the shop and Coastguard Cottage, and Libby and Ben to retrieve Ben’s car from the car park.

  ‘Are they going to make it?’ asked Libby watching her friends disappearing into Guy’s shop.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Be
n. ‘I hope so. Nothing’s certain, is it?’

  Libby looked across at him, a worried expression on her face. ‘Isn’t it?’

  He grinned and started the engine. ‘Except us,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  FRAN SAT ON THE window sill in Coastguard Cottage and looked out at the sea. This was the view Libby had been painting for several years now, based on the memory of a painting she owned in her childhood, and the view Fran herself remembered from holidays spent here with her mother and her Uncle Frank. Now it was hers, or would be on Thursday, and she was conscious of a contentment she had never previously experienced. She hoped her children would enjoy coming here, although not too often. That could be a problem with the grandchildren, as Lucy might well decide it would be a good idea to off-load her children for a fortnight with granny by the sea. Fran smiled at the darkening sea. No way was she going to let that happen. Lucy would have to learn that she had a life of her own.

  Meanwhile, she wanted to focus on something that had come in to her head when they had been discussing Edna’s brother and the stranger. She was only just getting used to attempting to control what her family had always called her “moments”. When working for Goodall and Smythe she just allowed things to come into her mind and reported on those that seemed relevant, not really believing in any of it. Now, she was seeing that they could be put to work, as they had been by accident last spring and, more usefully, in the summer. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

  It was the stranger, she realised. A large man, with a lot of fairish hair. Or maybe grey hair, and wearing a fawn raincoat, the sort that used to be known as a trench coat. She couldn’t see him clearly, but she was also aware of Bella somewhere in the picture, and of an overwhelming sense of danger. Her eyes snapped open.

  It was almost dark now, and Fran stood up stiffly. Time to go back to Steeple Martin, and time to think about what danger to Bella meant.

  As she drove, she tried to make sense of the picture in her head. With a shock of surprise, she realised she had never seen a picture of Laurence Cooper, and wondered briefly if he was the stranger, but instinctively knew he wasn’t. So the stranger, the murderer, posed a threat to Bella. Why? He had left Cooper’s body in the old Alexandria; was it something to do with that? Something connected the Andersons from the Place to the Cooper family, and there was an implicit connection, too, to Bella’s grandmother Dorinda. There must be something that linked them all together. Suddenly, a name popped into her head: “Earnest.” Earnest? Fran dipped her headlights as she drove into Steeple Martin’s High Street and looked for a place to park as near as possible to The Pink Geranium and the flat.

  She was climbing the stairs when it came to her. On his birth certificate, Laurence Cooper’s first name had been given as Earnest. Now why was that significant? Was that the name of the stranger, too? Was there a link between these two?

  Thoughtfully, she took off her coat and went to put the kettle on. They couldn’t be brothers, she concluded, as Dorothy had been Laurence’s only sibling. So what other link could there be? Something connected to the past, to Bella’s ancestors and the Anderson family? She sat down and put her head in her hands. This was getting her nowhere. Time to forget it and think about something else entirely. She lifted her head and looked straight at the script of Jack and the Beanstalk. Well, that was certainly something else entirely.

  Later, Libby called the entire company together before starting the rehearsal and informed them of the change in casting. She was uncomfortably aware of the general approval of her involuntary takeover, which made her feel even sorrier for Edna.

  ‘We must get her out of there,’ she said to Ben, when they had a ten-minute coffee break. ‘She must be so lonely. I bet she loved doing this panto.’

  ‘Then why did she back out?’ said Ben. ‘She didn’t have to. She wouldn’t have been that bad.’

  ‘Oh, she was pretty bad,’ said Libby, ‘but I was minimising the effect. She would have been much happier as an old villager in the chorus. I wonder who she was particularly friendly with?’

  But no one in the cast appeared to have been on those sort of terms with Edna, although one of the chorus members volunteered having seen her in company with some of the ladies who sold programmes and sweets, and someone else said she lived in Maltby Close.

  ‘Flo,’ said Ben and Libby together.

  ‘I’ll go and see her tomorrow,’ said Ben, ‘you’ve got enough to do.’

  But Libby wasn’t about to let him go alone, and informed him over breakfast at Number 17 that she had already called Flo and Lenny, and they were invited to coffee at ten-thirty. Ben groaned and gave in, and Libby took her toast into the sitting room, where she sat down and called Fran.

  ‘You didn’t say anything last night,’ she began, ‘but there was something on your mind, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Fran sighed. Libby was getting to know her too well. ‘Something to do with Bella, danger and Earnest.’

  ‘Earnest? As in Importance of?’

  ‘Well, not that one in particular, but the name, yes.’

  ‘And Bella’s in danger? From Earnest?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just got this impression of this big man in a trench coat and Bella being in danger. And after that, the name Earnest. Then I remembered that Earnest was Laurence Cooper’s first name.’

  ‘Well, she’s not in any danger from him, is she?’

  ‘No, but because of him, perhaps.’

  ‘Is he an Anderson?’

  ‘He could be,’ said Fran slowly, ‘or maybe I’m just coming at it from the wrong angle. After all, I’m not very experienced at all this, am I? I don’t really know what I’m looking for. It’s more waiting for inspiration to strike, and it could be totally irrelevant.’

  ‘Shall we go up to the Place and see if we can see old Jonathan again?’

  ‘When, exactly? It’s going to be frantically busy up there the week before Christmas, and I bet you haven’t finished your wrapping yet.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Libby, thinking hard. ‘I bet there’s something Harry will need to check for Saturday. I could do that.’

  ‘Libby, you’ve got the panto to sort out, too,’ said Fran. ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Libby grumpily. ‘But you’re to tell me straight away if you think of anything else.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Fran. ‘Of course I will. Now I’ve got to get on with packing boxes ready for next week.’

  Lenny opened the door to Ben and Libby later in the morning. Flo welcomed them in with a steaming cafetiere in one hand and a cigarette in the other. ‘They’ll never stop me,’ she said to Ben in answer to his questioning look. ‘Young Libby’s a different matter.’

  Young Libby looked sideways at Ben and cleared her throat.

  ‘So what’s the problem, then?’ said Flo, when they were settled. ‘Edna Morrison?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Libby, and explained.

  Flo snorted. ‘That brother,’ she said. ‘More trouble than ’e’s worth.’

  ‘Oh, you do know them, then?’ said Libby with relief.

  ‘I’ve known Edna since ’op pickin’. She’s younger than me, o’ course, but I knew her then. That Eric was always a nuisance.’

  ‘Is he a drunk?’ asked Ben. ‘That’s what Libby thinks.’

  ‘Oh, yes. She’s gone over there to make sure he don’t go off on another bender. ’Ow he keeps his job, I don’t know.’ Flo sniffed and poured coffee. ‘She ought to come back ’ome fer Christmas. They’re all having dinner together in Amy’s house, you know.’

  ‘Amy?’ asked Ben.

  ‘The warden. They have a lovely time,’ said Flo. ‘Course, I got me family, ’aven’t I?’ She reached across and patted Lenny’s arm. Lenny smirked.

  ‘So she has got friends, then?’ said Libby. ‘I was worried about her.’

  ‘And she’s worried about her brother,’ said Flo. ‘Mind you, she could always bring him back here. She
’s got a spare room.’

  ‘What a good idea!’ Libby turned to Ben. ‘I’m sure it’s her brother that’s made her give up the panto. If she brought him back here, she could come back into it.’

  ‘Not as the Fairy?’ Ben was aghast.

  ‘No, she wouldn’t want to,’ said Libby. ‘But in the chorus. Like I said last night.’

  ‘You could ask, I suppose,’ said Ben doubtfully, ‘but I don’t see how you can suggest she bring her brother here. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Flo could,’ said Lenny. ‘Couldn’t you, gal?’

  Flo nodded. ‘Course. I’ll give ’er a ring when you’ve gone. Let you know later.’

  ‘Thanks, Flo,’ said Libby, looking as though she would really rather Flo phoned now. ‘I feel really bad about her being stuck down there.’

  ‘She still does the shop,’ said Lenny. ‘In Steeple Mount.’

  ‘Oh, the animal rescue place? Yes, she mentioned that,’ said Libby. ‘I’m glad she’s got something in her life except her brother. And she shouldn’t be sleeping on a sofa at her age.’

  Flo gave her an old-fashioned look. ‘Course not, gal,’ she said.

  It was after Libby had spent an hour at the theatre with Ben sorting out a lighting problem and reluctantly returned home to finish wrapping Christmas presents that Flo called.

  ‘Difficult, gal,’ she said after a discreet cough. ‘She wanted to bring ’im up ’ere first off but ’e wouldn’t come.’

  ‘But all he’s got is a sprained ankle and a bump on the head,’ said Libby. ‘Surely he could be left, now.’

  ‘I told yer, she don’t want ’im goin’ on a bender. Says she’ll think about it and try and make ’im see sense.’

  ‘Did you tell her about coming into the chorus?’

  ‘Course I did. Sounded pleased.’

  ‘Well, that’s all we can do, I suppose,’ said Libby. ‘At least she knows she’s got friends.’

  By now, the afternoon was drawing in and Libby had had enough of wrapping. It was nearly all done now, thanks to Balzac being a less interfering cat than Sidney, who had, in fact, finally been released from seclusion in the conservatory and sat glaring at the interloper from the back of the sofa. Libby lit the fire, put the kettle on the Rayburn and took a couple of the newspapers and files to the table in the window, pushing the laptop aside.