A Village Murder

by Frances Evesham

  She stiffened. ‘No. In any case, Greg didn’t want to visit anyone else. He said he was too upset to tell the story again. I think,’ she coloured, ‘I think he was hoping I’d ask him to stay, but to be honest, I never really liked the man. Why Imogen married him, I’ve no idea. She could have chosen anyone.’

  Adam got to his feet. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he said.

  Steph leaned a hand on the door handle. ‘I’m sorry Greg’s dead. Even though I didn’t like him much. I hope, you know, it wasn’t too horrible. The papers didn’t say…’

  ‘A rather nasty dose of rat poison, I’m afraid.’

  15

  Bike

  Adam drove home, prepared for the dog’s exuberance, relieved to find his furniture intact. ‘You’re learning,’ he said, ‘and it’s time you had a name.’ He lifted the dog’s lead from a hook near the door. ‘Tell you what, we’ll walk through the village and name you after something we find.’

  The two set off, and for once, the dog walked to heel.

  A car sped through the village at top speed, skidding past The Plough, around the corner and out of sight. Adam listened for the crash.

  Sure enough, a squeal of brakes told him the car had met an immovable object.

  ‘Come on, dog.’ Adam set off at a run, the animal loping alongside.

  The car owner stood, arms akimbo, in the middle of the road.

  Nearby, a bicycle lay on its side, wheels and handlebars askew, while its owner, a lad of about fourteen, struggled to heave it upright.

  The car driver shouted, ‘You could have been killed, you idiot.’ He pointed to a scratch leading from the front to the rear of the vehicle. ‘And look what you’ve done to my car.’

  Adam ignored him and ran past, to the boy’s side, ‘Are you hurt?’

  The boy shook his head and sniffed. Adam peered into his face.

  ‘Come into The Plough.’ He pointed around the corner. ‘We’ll get you cleaned up and call someone to deal with your bike.’ He turned his attention to the driver. ‘Councillor Smith, isn’t it? We’ll need to call the police. The boy’s nose is bleeding. Any crash that involves injury needs to be reported. I’ll phone them, but you need to wait here until they arrive.’

  The councillor muttered under his breath.

  ‘What was that?’ Adam asked, velvet covering steel in his voice.

  ‘Glad the lad’s all right,’ the man grunted.

  ‘So far as we can see.’ Adam said. ‘He needs checking out – a bloody nose means a bump on the head. Could be concussed.’ Councillor Smith snorted.

  Adam led the boy to The Plough and phoned the police.

  The woman who took his call sounded uninterested, since no one was badly hurt, but agreed to ‘send someone to check’.

  The boy sat on the sofa, visibly struggling to hold back tears. The dog laid his head on the boy’s knee, graciously allowing himself to be stroked, as Adam rang the local doctor and arranged for a paramedic from the surgery to look the boy over.

  ‘My dad will go mad,’ the boy sniffed. ‘He told me not to ride round there. It’s the hill, you see. You can get up a bit of speed going down. I didn’t expect to meet anyone at the bottom, though.’

  ‘No one ever does,’ Adam remarked. ‘Still, don’t worry too much about your dad. Councillor Smith was travelling too fast in that Mercedes of his, and I’m a witness. As is the dog, of course.’

  The animal looked up, as if he knew Adam was talking about him.

  ‘What’s his name?’ the boy asked.

  ‘He doesn’t have a name.’

  ‘Why not?’ His hands had stopped trembling.

  ‘He recently arrived. No idea where he came from. No collar, no chip, nothing.’

  ‘He’s adopted you?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  The boy was smiling.

  ‘What do you think we should call him?’ Adam asked.

  The boy’s tongue poked out with concentration. ‘Harley,’ he said.

  ‘Harley? Why would I call a dog Harley?’

  ‘I’m gonna get a Harley in a couple of years’ time. Harley-Davidson. It’s a bike.’

  ‘I know what a Harley-Davidson is, thank you.’ Adam laughed. ‘Hey, dog,’ he called. ‘What do you think of Harley as a name?’

  The dog trotted over and jumped up, trying to lick Adam’s face.

  ‘You have to stop doing that, dog. Harley, I mean. Now,’ he went on to the boy, ‘I can hear a car arriving, and I expect it’s the paramedic, to make sure you haven’t done yourself any serious mischief. The one advantage of crashing into Councillor Smith’s car is that the mention of his name gets local services rushing in circles. But you may want to stay out of his way for a while. Bikes aren’t insured, so he’ll have to use his own insurers to cover that rather ugly scratch on the side of his bodywork.’

  The boy’s face fell. ‘I bet he’ll go to our house telling my dad to pay up.’

  ‘Leave that to me.’ Adam still knew a thing or two about traffic police. He was pretty sure they’d put the fear of publicity into the councillor’s head. ‘We’ll head the councillor off. But I’m afraid your bike is well and truly dead.’

  The paramedic gave Alfie Croft, the young boy, a clean bill of health, pronounced a hospital visit unnecessary, and left. The nosebleed had almost dried up by now.

  A couple of phone calls tracked down the boy’s mother, at work in a supermarket in Camilton, and she soon arrived to take charge of her son.

  ‘That Councillor Smith.’ Disgust was written all over her face. ‘Thinks he’s above the law. Get away with anything, politicians do, what with their flashy cars and big houses. That Councillor Jones across the road, he’s another one – rest his soul,’ she added, flustered. ‘Forgot he was dead, for a moment.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ Adam asked.

  She snorted. ‘Oh, everyone knew him. Thought himself Lord of the Manor, he did. Our Alfie, here, used to deliver papers to the hotel, back in the day before everyone read their news online. Never got no tips nor nothing at Christmas, nor any other time. Mean old so-and-so, that councillor. And what with all those young girls employed around the place, who knows what they were getting up to?’

  ‘The staff, you mean?’

  ‘I do. Always young – young enough to be his granddaughters, I reckon. Always female, and pretty. Most of them didn’t stay long. I reckon the man couldn’t keep his hands to himself, that’s what I reckon.’

  Adam wondered if Imogen would recognise that description. Perhaps she would – that might explain her cool attitude to her father.

  Alfie’s mum was still talking. ‘Talk about murders,’ she went on, an excited gleam in her little round eyes, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the councillor had been buried in the garden, that I wouldn’t. There’s more than one person wanted to see the back of him, and that’s a fact.’

  Adam shot a glance at Alfie, relieved to see he was happily playing tug-of-war with Harley and the remains of one of Adam’s slippers.

  Seeing the boy was in no hurry to get home, Adam offered Mrs Croft a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.

  ‘Why, don’t mind if I do.’ Her face lit up. ‘Nothing nicer than a slice of cake and a nice cup of tea when you’ve had a bit of a shock, now is there?’

  Adam bustled about in his little kitchen. He could hear the chef clattering in the pub kitchen, making last minute arrangements before the doors opened. As the tea brewed, Adam left his visitors and put his head round the door.

  ‘Everything all right, Josh?’

  The chef stirred with one hand and offered a thumbs up with the other. ‘Hunky-dory,’ he shouted.

  Adam grinned. Josh was Australian, after all.

  As Mrs Croft and Alfie tucked into enormous slices of chocolate cake, Adam wondered aloud why councillors behaved badly.

  ‘I’m sure they don’t start out that way,’ he said, hoping his guest would take the hint and pass on more gossip about Councillor Jones and his
colleagues.

  Mrs Croft picked up the last few crumbs of cake and licked her fingers with delicacy. She launched into a description of Councillor Jones’ career in the hotel.

  ‘And the way he treated that daughter of his, well, there’s no excuse. Such a nice girl she was, the image of her mother, I’m told. He never forgave her for going off to study gardening and not taking over the hotel. Free labour, I suppose he wanted.’

  Adam said, ‘I’ve heard the councillor had his fingers in all the local pies, as well as the hotel?’

  ‘You bet he did. Any scheme in the county, and he’d be there. How do you think he got planning permission for all the renovations to The Streamside, like that new spa at the back? Such a lovely quiet little hotel it was a few years ago, even though it was nothing like it should have been. The previous owner had seen to that.’

  She wiped her mouth on a napkin. ‘But the councillor, he could never stop adding bits here and walls there, and if you ask me, he ruined the place. My Fred,’ Fred must be her husband, Alfie’s dad. Adam wouldn’t stop the flow of information to ask. ‘My Fred said he should have been locked up long ago. There were plenty of folks put out when he opened that spa affair at the back of the hotel. Irene that owns the leisure centre in Camilton, for one. He ruined her business, he did. She and her husband had to close down.’

  She paused, apparently running out of tittle-tattle. ‘More cake?’ Adam offered, in a ploy to keep her talking, but she heaved herself reluctantly to her feet.

  ‘Better not, got to watch this tummy of mine.’ She reverted to a stage whisper, as though sharing a shocking secret, ‘Run to fat, you do, at my time of life.’ She raised her voice, ‘Come on now, Alfie. Leave that poor dog alone and we’ll get home. And don’t you worry about your dad,’ Adam could hear her, still talking, as they left The Plough. ‘I’ll make it all right with him.’

  Adam pondered the female staff at the hotel. Was there truth in any of Mrs Croft’s allegations?

  Josh unlocked the doors of The Plough, and the first customers ordered beer. Another opportunity, perhaps, to pick up a little gossip.

  Adam joined the barman behind the bar.

  16

  Restaurant

  A red jacket. That was what Imogen needed for the reunion. Not a red dress – that was far too obviously ‘look at me’, but a red jacket would lift her spirits, and she had just the thing. There was something about the clash of the jacket with her red hair that turned heads.

  When had she last worn it?

  She thought for a moment.

  That was it – for the interview at Haselbury House.

  She’d known that landscaping the gardens there would put her designs on the map. The house had a new owner, recently enriched through clever investment in buy-to-let properties, and even more recently ennobled with a title for services to charity. He planned to make this new home the envy of the county, and money was no object. Imogen couldn’t let such a prize slip through her fingers.

  Sure enough, the jacket had worked its magic. Martin Jenkins CBE had awarded her the contract on the spot.

  She’d still been wearing the lucky jacket when she met Greg for a celebratory dinner that night.

  They’d rolled home in a taxi, buoyed with excitement and champagne. She’d tossed the jacket into a bag of clothes that needed dry-cleaning.

  The dry-cleaner nearest to the flat had closed, and rather than search farther afield, she’d stuffed the bag in a corner, only retrieving it when she moved back to the hotel.

  It had lain, forgotten during the move, at the bottom of a wardrobe ever since then. It was going to be a crumpled mess.

  She clicked her tongue as she rummaged around until she found a black plastic sack, squashed into a corner under a pile of woollen socks.

  She pulled the crumpled jacket out and shook it. Could a spot of ironing do the trick?

  She sniffed, smelt stale alcohol and abandoned the idea.

  What a shame.

  She smoothed down the velvet nap, the feel of it evoking that surge of excitement when Martin Jenkins shook her hand to seal the deal. Her fingers snagged on the edge of a pocket, where the stitching had given way. She investigated further and pulled out the bill from the restaurant.

  She’d insisted on paying that night, and Greg had laughed. ‘Now you’re going to be rich, why not?’

  She looked again at the total and shuddered. Georgiou’s was easily the most expensive restaurant in town.

  ‘Let’s push the boat out for once,’ Greg had said, when she’d suggested a smaller place. ‘Don’t be so stingy.’

  Their meals outside the flat had always been low-key affairs, usually burgers at a fast food chain. Greg had often said he hated posh food – ‘You get a square inch of meat and some fancy sauce. I like a proper man’s meal.’

  She’d had no idea he’d eaten at Georgiou’s before.

  She’d been even more surprised when he whispered behind his hand to the waiter.

  ‘What did you say?’

  He’d waved a hand in the air. ‘I supplied Joe Georgiou with computer equipment. Did him a favour. Thought he’d like to come and say hello.’ Greg had winked. ‘Ah, here he comes.’

  The restaurant owner, tall, with receding hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and an expensive looking suit, had scuttled across the floor.

  ‘Gregory, my friend,’ he’d gushed in a Mediterranean accent, rubbing his hands together. ‘And this must be your lovely partner.’

  ‘My wife. We’re celebrating.’

  ‘Excellent. I love a celebration. Is it a birthday?’

  Imogen had opened her mouth to speak, but Greg had interrupted. ‘She’s a landscape architect and she’s going to redesign the grounds at Haselbury House.’

  Joe Georgiou had beamed, a line of sweat forming on his upper lip. ‘Many congratulations, Mrs Bishop.’ He’d clapped his hands, bringing the waitress skidding to their table. ‘Two bottles of our best champagne for my friend Gregory and his wife. Be quick.’

  He’d waved away Imogen’s thanks, losing interest as his eyes followed the figure of the waitress as she hurried away.

  Imogen had been glad when he left them to their meal. There had been a look exchanged between the two men that made her uncomfortable.

  Greg enjoyed making deals, but he never discussed them with her, and she’d long stopped asking.

  They’d both drunk far more than usual, that evening. She’d spilled half a glass of champagne on her best red jacket, giggling like a child, and Greg had phoned for a taxi to get them home.

  Now, she held the bill in one hand, sat on the bed, and closed her eyes. That was the last time she and Greg had enjoyed each other’s company. They’d led almost separate lives for years.

  She needed to know more about Greg’s activities. Had he been involved in shady deals, and could they have led to his death?

  She ought to give Adam Hennessy the address of the restaurant.

  Now, though, Imogen was off to a reunion, and if she couldn’t wear the old, stained and crumpled red jacket, she’d make do with her cream silk blouse and tight-fitting black trousers.

  She’d call on Adam tomorrow morning and tell him about Joe Georgiou.

  17

  Reunion

  Imogen drew up, stomach churning, at her old school, thirty year old memories whirling in her head.

  Since the school closed, the building had become an entertainment venue.

  It was smaller than she remembered. The track on her right had led to the hockey sheds, while the left-hand path headed to the sixth form entrance.

  She steadied herself against the car, already regretting the four inch heels that pinched her toes. She checked the ballerinas in her bag. She’d be needing those soon.

  ‘Imogen Jones.’ Imogen gasped as Mrs Hall, biology and art, appeared, over seventy but still styling her hair in a neat grey roll around her head.

  Imogen held out a hand, felt warm, dry fingers on hers, and a rush of dé
jà vu. The years dropped away and she was a tongue-tied schoolgirl again.

  She struggled for words. ‘How are you? You look so well. I mean, are you still…’ She stumbled to a halt.

  ‘You mean, fancy me still being alive, don’t you, dear? Well, I’m happily retired and thrilled to be invited back here.’ Her blue eyes, bright as ever, twinkled at Imogen. ‘I’m in the reception party. Toni asked me to look out for you.’ The smile faded. ‘I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. Your father was a pillar of the community and a good friend to the school. We wanted to let you know how sad we all were to hear of his accident.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Yes, some of the girls have been planning a reunion for your year group, but no one was sure how to get in touch with you. I had no idea you’d returned to the hotel until I read about your husband’s death. You poor thing, you must be devastated.’ She gave Imogen’s arm a squeeze. ‘But, then, Toni tells me she bumped into you anyway, in town. Wasn’t that a happy coincidence?’

  Imogen swallowed. No need to tell her teacher she’d been in the police station.

  ‘Wasn’t it,’ she murmured, following Mrs Hall along the familiar path to the left.

  The sixth form common room looked oddly familiar, yet different. Sleek leather sofas had replaced the ancient, worn-out chairs and the unwieldy piles of books, primarily used to hold coffee mugs, had disappeared.

  Imogen could almost smell musty books and cheap perfume from the old days.

  The hubbub in the room rose at each new arrival. Imogen scanned faces. Her old companions had aged, lines had popped up round eyes and mouths, but she would have known them anywhere.

  Toni grabbed her, kissing both cheeks. ‘How wonderful that you’ve come. I wasn’t sure—’

  ‘Nor was I, to be honest, but since you’d taken the trouble to invite me…’

  Toni’s laugh was high-pitched.