Pancakes and Corpses: A Cozy Murder Mystery (Peridale Cafe Mystery Book 1)

by Agatha Frost

  “Probably,” Dot said, rolling her eyes heavily. “What isn’t these days? As long as Julia doesn’t tell her new Detective Inspector boyfriend, we’ll be okay.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Julia mumbled, breaking out of her trance to look at her Gran. “We barely like each other.”

  “Sue told me about you giving him a cake.”

  “I thought I was being arrested.”

  “He must like you if he let you off,” Sue offered as she sipped her wine again. “He is rather handsome Julia, wouldn't you agree?”

  “I haven’t noticed,” she said dismissively. “Gran, did you know Gertrude when she was married?”

  Dot looked taken aback by the question. She scrunched up her face for a moment, before pushing up her tightly permed curls and nodding.

  “Of course,” Dot said. “I’ve lived in this village my whole life. The pair of them moved here when Gertrude was pregnant. You’re going back some forty-odd years though. They divorced years ago.”

  “1978?” Julia asked.

  “It must have been,” Dot said with a nod. “Why the sudden interest in Gertrude’s husband?”

  “It’s just something William said,” she mumbled as she tapped a finger rhythmically against her chin. “Do you know what their marriage was like?”

  “Unhappy!” She said without a second thought. “She publically humiliated that man every chance she got! I’m not surprised he went looking elsewhere. He always looked so browbeaten and miserable.”

  “He cheated on her?”

  “Old Frank?” Dot laughed. “Oh, yes! Constantly. Gertrude wouldn’t admit it if you had asked her, but this village talks, and we have eyes. He was seen messing around with many women when William was a little one. He filed for divorce eventually, although Gertrude insisted she kicked him out, but nobody believed that. She was alone after that.”

  “Are you sure she was alone?” Julia asked.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Dot said. “Why is this important? Do you think it’s got something to do with the murder? Last I heard, old Frank died of a heart attack a couple of years ago. You’re barking up the wrong tree with that one.”

  Julia couldn’t shake away what Imogen had said about Gertrude’s secret child. It seemed important and vital to finding the murderer, but she couldn’t quite piece together why.

  “So there’s no chance Gertrude had another child after William?” Julia asked.

  Dot laughed and shook her head. Sue was staring at Julia across the table, frowning and clearly confused. She shot her a look that said ‘why do you care?’, so Julia waved her hand and turned back to their Gran.

  “Something like that wouldn’t be kept a secret in this village!” Dot said. “It’s impossible. She was pregnant when she arrived to the village, but never again. She had William when she was in her forties, and William was about ten-years-old when his father left, so if she had another child in her fifties, that would have been a miracle!”

  The drumming of Julia’s finger on her chin increased as her mind worked overtime.

  “What about Frank?” Julia asked. “Did he have any children after he left Gertrude?”

  “He was just as old as she was, so I don’t think so,” Dot said, clearly getting irritated by Julia’s line of questioning. “Why is this important?”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet.”

  “You need to let this go, sis,” Sue said, reaching across the table to grab Julia’s hand. “You’re getting yourself into dangerous situations. I’m worrying about you.”

  “It’s bigger than me,” Julia said. “There’s a murderer on the loose and if I don’t find them, who will?”

  “The police?” Sue said, laughing as though it was an obvious statement. “Detective Inspector Brown?”

  “He doesn’t see the bigger picture,” Julia sighed. “He’s a typical man. Thanks for dinner, Gran, but I should get home. It’s been a long day and I have baking prep to do for the morning.”

  “But I have trifle in the fridge!” Dot cried. “You can’t go yet!”

  Julia knew the trifle would have been store bought. Her Gran was her father’s mother, so the baking gene was on the other side of the family, not that it had passed to Sue. Sue was okay when it came to measuring and putting things in the oven, but she lacked Julia’s finesse and skills to bake truly delicious treats.

  After taking her plate through to the kitchen, Julia slid into her pink pea coat, kissed her Gran and sister on their cheeks, and headed out into the night. She inhaled the night air, appreciating the slight chill. She hoped the walk home would unlock something vital in her brain. She felt like she had all the pieces of the puzzle and the sooner she put the pieces in the right order, the sooner she could get back to worrying about baking, instead of the murder.

  Julia put her hands in her pockets and looked in the direction of her café. Even in the dark, it filled her with pride. She tried to imagine the life she had had back in London, but it felt like it belonged to somebody else, which only made her wonder why she was so reluctant to sign the divorce papers sitting in her kitchen. She didn’t want Jerrad, nor did she really want him to suffer. The relationship with the secretary he had left her for hadn’t lasted longer than six months and he had gone through two other women since. He was welcome to that life, she just couldn’t help feeling he had taken the easy way out, and she had been forced to start her life all over again. She was grateful for that now, but a little part of her, the part that was stopping her from signing the papers, wanted to put a little obstacle in the way of what Jerrad wanted.

  Her thoughts snapped right back to reality when she noticed movement in her café. She thought it was her imagination, or the dark playing tricks on her, so she hurried across the village green. When she saw the definite outline of somebody emptying the contents of her display case, she knew she was witnessing her mystery cake thief in action.

  Julia turned back to her Gran’s cottage, and then to the local police station up the road, but she decided she was going to confront the thief alone.

  Instead of going for the front door, she crept along the alley where she usually parked her blue Ford Anglia, and to the small stone yard behind her café. She saw the beam of a flashlight moving around behind the counter as she carefully stepped into the café. Being as careful as possible, she closed and locked the back door.

  Julia crept across the kitchen and to the beaded curtain separating it from the front of her café. She peered through the beads and watched the tiny, slender figure chomping down on a slice of her latest addition, the lemon sponge cake that she had perfected over the weekend.

  “Enjoying that?” Julia asked.

  The figure spun around, and to Julia’s surprise, it was a girl, and not just any girl, a teenage girl. She dropped the cake and scooped up her bag, but she seemed frozen to the spot. The girl looked from Julia to the front door, assessing her exit route.

  “It’s okay, you’re not in trouble,” Julia said softly when she saw how alive the fear was in the girl’s eyes. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll cook you something proper?”

  The girl raised an eyebrow and glared at her as though she was mad, but to her surprise, she slowly walked around the counter and sat in one of the seats, not taking her eyes away from Julia. After flicking on some of the lights, Julia left the girl sitting in the chair and staring around the café, and she went into the kitchen to see what she could throw together. The only other food she served other than her cakes was toast and pancakes, so she put as many slices of bread into the toaster as she could, and set herself to making scrambled eggs with some of her cake ingredients.

  She set the food in front of the girl, who under the light looked like she needed a good wash. The girl looked down at the food and up to Julia before she grabbed a slice of bread, scooped up as much of the eggs as possible and crammed it into her mouth. Despite the knife and fork Julia had placed next to her, she repeated the grabbing and scooping with her dirty
fingers and black nails until the plate was empty. It was obvious she hadn’t had a decent meal in a while.

  “What’s your name?” Julia asked when she sat across from the girl.

  The cake thief looked to the beaded curtain and Julia knew she was considering her escape, but she turned to Julia and looked down her nose at her, as though deciding she was going to toy with Julia.

  “What’s it to you, lady?” The girl asked.

  “How can we have a conversation if I don’t know your name?” She said. “I’m Julia.”

  Julia held her hand out, even though the girl’s fingers were dirty and now covered in butter and egg grease. The girl stared down at their fingers before slapping her hand into them.

  “Jessika with a k,” she said proudly. “Everyone calls me Jessie.”

  “Well, Jessie,” Julia said as she discreetly wiped her fingers on the edge of her dress under the counter. “Do you mind telling me what you’re doing in my café, and how you got in here?”

  Jessie stared at Julia through narrow slits, as though she was trying to figure out if Julia was a woman to be trusted or not. Julia pushed forward her friendliest smile, and Jessie smiled back a little.

  “You should really get a good security system,” Jessie said looking around the café. “The back door is too easy to pick. You’re lucky it’s me and not some of the others.”

  “Others?”

  “Homeless folk,” Jessie said, as though it were obvious. “They’re not all honest people like me.”

  “Honest people don’t break into people’s cafés and steal.”

  “It’s not stealing if it’s food,” Jessie said. “Not really. I just really like your cakes, lady.”

  Julia was touched by the compliment.

  “How old are you, Jessie?”

  “Old enough,” she snapped back.

  Julia chuckled. She liked Jessie’s spirit. It didn’t seem that Jessie was going to give Julia that information, so Julia had to guess for herself. She had dark hair and pale skin, which was covered under a layer of grime and dirt. If Julia had to guess, she would have guessed the girl wasn’t any older than eighteen.

  “Why are you homeless, Jessie?” Julia asked.

  “Because I am.”

  “Don’t you have parents?”

  “Dead.” Jessie said in a matter-of-fact voice. “Died when I was a baby. Been in the system ever since.”

  “So you ran away from a care home?”

  “Foster parents,” Jessie said, and Julia sensed a hint of anger deep in her voice. “They’re not even looking for me. Been gone for three months.”

  “I’m sure they are looking for you.”

  “They’re not, lady,” Jessie snapped. “They just care about the money. Got some more of that new lemon cake stuff? It’s good.”

  Julia smiled and nodded. She went into the kitchen and pulled the cake out of her fridge. She cut a slice bigger than she had ever cut before and took it through to Jessie, who was scratching furiously as the back of her thick, unwashed hair.

  Jessie devoured the cake in record time, even licking her fingers afterwards. Julia knew she couldn’t just sit by and let this child go back out into the world in such a state, so she came up with a plan in that moment.

  “How would you like to come to my cottage and shower? I’ll even give you a bed for the night, if you want to take it.”

  Jessie stopped licking her fingers and scowled at Julia. She stared down her nose again, her eyes scrunched up as she thought about what Julia had just offered.

  “What’s the catch?” Jessie asked, folding her arms across her chest. “There’s always a catch.”

  “No catch.” Julia held up her hands and sat back at the table. “That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.”

  Jessie wrinkled up her face again, but it seemed the offer of a hot shower and a bed was too much to pass up. She shrugged and picked up her bag, and waited for Julia to lead the way.

  After locking up the café, they walked up to Julia’s cottage in silence. Jessie jumped at every small sound, making Julia wonder how many nights the poor girl had spent outside alone. Had she slept rough through the long winter?

  Jessie spent almost an hour in the shower, emptying Julia’s boiler out of every last drop of hot water. She didn’t mind. When she walked past the bathroom to see if Jessie was okay, she heard her singing a song Julia recognised off the radio, and it put a smile on her face.

  After her shower, she sat in front of the fire, which Julia had got going just for her guest. With a towel tucked under her armpits and another in her hair, she sat shivering in front of the flames. Without the layer of grime on the girl’s face, she looked even younger than Julia had first thought.

  “Why are you being nice to me?” Jessie asked out of the blue, jolting Julia from reading her Gertrude notes over and over.

  “Everybody deserves kindness,” Julia said.

  Jessie smiled and bowed her head. She bid Julia goodnight and headed off to the guest bedroom Julia had made up for her. If Sue or Dot found out about her houseguest, they would think she was irresponsible for letting a homeless thief into her home. If it had been another person, Julia might have agreed, but she saw Jessie for what she was; a lost girl who enjoyed her cakes and needed an ounce of compassion.

  Mowgli curled up in her lap, as she sipped her fresh peppermint and liquorice tea. When she heard loud snoring coming from the guest bedroom, she pulled out her laptop and balanced it on the chair arm, and for the first time since the murder, she researched something other than Gertrude Smith.

  When Julia popped her head into the guest bedroom on Wednesday morning, she wasn’t surprised to see Jessie had already left. The bed had been perfectly made, and the towels had been neatly folded at the end of the bed. She wondered if she would ever see Jessie again, or if that was the end of her stolen-cake mystery. Now that Julia knew the truth, she wasn’t sure if she was happy she had cracked the case.

  On the other hand, she was eager to crack the murder case. A good night’s sleep had reenergised her efforts to find the killer, and she had woken up with a possible theory about Gertrude’s secret child.

  Julia pulled the red velvet cake out of the oven and placed it straight onto the cooling rack. Mowgli ran in from the garden, his fur covered in dandelion spores. He shook them off before jumping up onto the counter to pad towards her, adding more muddy paw prints to the already covered divorce papers.

  “What do you think, Mowgli?” Julia asked as she stroked under his chin. “Do you think I’m being silly by not signing this and getting it over with?”

  Mowgli purred and bounced up to butt her face. Julia wanted to believe her cat was telling her she should open and sign the papers in her own time, but she knew he was just hungry.

  After feeding Mowgli, and icing the red velvet cake with butter roux icing, she hopped into her blue Ford Anglia and set off towards the village. She only got a couple of metres before Emily Burns jumped out into the road waving her arms. Julia slammed her foot on the brakes, and they screeched out, stopping inches away from Emily. She didn’t seem to notice how close she had come to being hit because she scurried around to Julia’s door and waited for her to roll down her window.

  “Have you heard the news?” Emily asked as she pulled her gardening gloves off. “William Smith has been murdered!”

  “Murdered?” Julia gasped, her hand drifting up to her mouth. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve had four people call me already this morning to tell me!”

  Julia knew the Peridale gossip network could spread false information in a heartbeat, but she doubted something so serious would make its way around the village so quickly if it weren’t true.

  “I need to go,” Julia said, winding her window up before Emily Burns could engage in conversation.

  She sped down the winding lane faster than she had ever driven before. As she passed Barker’s cottage, she slammed on her brakes again when she saw him pushing his
arms into his camel coloured trench coat, a slice of burnt toast clenched between his teeth.

  “Is it true?” Julia asked as she jumped out of her car. “That William has been murdered?”

  “Good morning to you too, Julia,” Barker mumbled through the toast, before tossing it into the grass and wiping the butter and crumbs from his lips with the back of his hand. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Is it true, or not?”

  Barker unclipped his gate and walked around Julia and towards his car.

  “It’s true what they say about small villages,” Barker muttered under his breath, a smirk already forming on his lips. “I only just found out myself and yet the gossips are already talking. Yes, it’s true.”

  The smirk quickly dropped when he seemed to remember that the gossip in question was about a dead man.

  “Was he stabbed, like his mother?” Julia asked.

  “That’s need-to-know information.”

  “If somebody found his body, that information will be all around the village in no time, if it isn’t already.”

  “That’s just it,” Barker said as he ducked into his car. “One of our officers was walking home past the village green when they saw Amy Clark leaning over the body, soaked in William’s blood.”

  Detective Inspector Brown slammed his car door. Julia knocked on the window and he pressed the button and the glass slid down.

  “You’ve arrested Amy Clark for William’s murder?” Julia asked.

  “Not just his murder, Gertrude’s too. You were right to be suspicious of Amy Clark,” Barker said as he twisted his key in the ignition. “You’ve done your part, Julia. Get to your café and carry on with your life. I'm sure you’ll have plenty of customers today who all want to use your business as a gossip hub.”

  With that, the window slid up and Barker sped off down the winding alley, taking the corners dangerously sharp.

  The entire drive to the café, Julia was trying to understand why she didn’t feel relieved that somebody was in custody for both murders. Amy Clark had been one of her prime suspects. She had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, and she had been caught red handed at the scene of a second murder, but something didn’t sit right with Julia. She wondered if it was because it felt like an anti-climax to her investigation. Had she really expected to walk into the station with her little notepad, having figured out the murder? It felt like something that would wipe the smile off Barker’s face, but she knew it wasn’t realistic.