The Case of the Curious Cook

by Cathy Ace

  ‘All over my head.’

  ‘Ah well, that’s the beauty of it, see, I would only refer you to people who, like me, talk straight and don’t make it all too complicated.’

  ‘That would be helpful.’

  ‘I know many of the residents here over the years have found it to be so.’

  ‘Did you advise a previous resident by the name of Daisy? I believe she left all her worldly goods to this place.’

  Carol wished she could see more than the man’s mouth, which smiled rather too brightly. ‘Maybe, maybe not. It’s difficult for me to recall all the lovely ladies I’ve worked with here over the years. But time is pressing on, Mrs Pugh, so I’ll say cheerio now then. I don’t want to keep you, and I think you mentioned you were due to have a cup of tea with some ladies under the trees outside any minute now.’

  ‘Ta for talking into my thingy. It made it much easier on me. You’re very kind.’

  ‘Kindness doesn’t cost anything, Mrs Pugh. I hope to see you here next time I call, when maybe you’ll be their newest resident.’

  ‘We’ll see. It’s very nice here. Everyone’s very friendly.’

  ‘So are you, Mrs Pugh. ’Till next time then.’

  After he’d left, Carol heard Althea say aloud, ‘I feel I need a bath. That odious little man is an out and out crook. Investments that are safe with guaranteed returns, my eye! When you hear this, Carol, please phone me at your earliest convenience. It’s not urgent, but I would like a little chat, please. Telephone the house itself, not this mobile phone. I want them to know I’ve had a caller. Say you’re a friend of a friend. Use the name Carol.’ She tittered. ‘Oh, you know what I mean. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff quite gets under one’s skin. Thanks.’ The recording stopped.

  Carol walked through to see David and Albert; they were both fast asleep on the sofa, David curled around Albert, protecting him from falling off the edge. She pulled her phone from her pocket and snapped a few photos. Such precious moments, and now they were captured forever. She wouldn’t disturb them – Albert would wake when he needed something.

  THIRTY

  Carol cursed inwardly when her phone rang in her pocket, and she scuttled away so as not to disturb her sleeping son and husband. Shutting the door behind her she hissed, ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me, Christine.’

  ‘Hiya, how’s it going? How was the prison? Have you been yet?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been. But that’s not why I’m phoning. I need your help. Can you give me a hand, please?’

  Even though she knew her friend couldn’t see her, Carol smiled. ‘Of course I’ll do what I can. What’s up?’

  Several moments later Carol’s fingers were doing what they were best at – flying across the keyboard, hunting out the answers to questions that would, hopefully, fuel her colleagues’ investigations.

  Finding a tattoo artist in London’s Soho named Baz wasn’t quite as easy as she’d hoped, but, by burrowing about in a few online forums where ‘ink’ was what it was all about, she finally achieved her goal. She was able to text a name and address to Christine, knowing her colleague would be following through as soon as she reached London, which was where she was heading. Carol took enormous comfort, and pride, in the fact Christine had had such confidence in her ability that she’d simply told Carol she’d pick up the address from her phone when she stopped at the Heston services just before hitting the last part of her trip.

  Then Carol turned her attention to the construction timeline of the Swansea University Bay Campus, and especially the Great Hall, as Christine had asked. She gathered together all the artists’ impressions of the building prior to its construction that had been commissioned by the architects and project-management company, as well as photographs of the finished building, and Lizzie’s drawing of the place. She was elated to discover Christine had been correct – unless Lizzie Llewellyn had seen the completed building, her representation of it wouldn’t have been what it was: slight differences existed between what had been envisaged and what had been built. Carol sent her confirmation to Christine, then took a few moments to think about what it all meant.

  If Lizzie Llewellyn had really created the miniature portraying the building, she had to have been alive when it was finished – long after the date when she was presumed to have been killed. Carol allowed herself to imagine how she and her colleagues would be lauded for rescuing a man from a prison cell where he languished, convicted of a murder that hadn’t been committed … at least, it hadn’t been committed when it was supposed to have happened. Then she realized that fact raised some troubling questions in itself. If Lizzie Llewellyn hadn’t been killed when everyone believed she had been – where was she? And why hadn’t she come forward when her brother was convicted of her murder?

  Had Lizzie, as her brother had always claimed, simply walked out of his cottage that fateful day, and maybe left the country by some means where her passport hadn’t been recorded as being used – Carol’s reading had told her the authorities had checked that at the time. Even so, because of Nathaniel’s high public profile, the story had made headlines around the world. Could Lizzie be hiding out in such a remote place she’d failed to hear about her brother’s fate? Or could it be some sort of dreadful plan she’d hatched to ruin her brother’s life? Carol couldn’t imagine that being the case. Such a level of vindictiveness was beyond reason. The impact such actions would have on her mother alone, let alone her brother, would mean Lizzie would have to be more than heartless to do such a thing.

  And what about all that blood? Carol picked up the phone and spoke to Mavis. She wanted the opinions and insights of an experienced nurse on matters pertaining to how much blood a person could lose without becoming debilitated, or dying. When she hung up she sat clicking the end of her pen for some time – something that always helped her think.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘I’m so pleased we’re sitting together for dinner, Gladys, I thought you were avoiding me. They say such horrible things about me here – but there, I should expect nothing less of this lot. All a load of ill-bred know-it-alls. Common as muck, some of them. Now tell me, my dear, where do your people come from? I heard they were in trade – but there’s trade, and trade. I’m sure you know what I mean.’

  Althea, Dowager Duchess of Chellingworth, stared across the dining table at Sylvia Trumbell and carefully weighed her response. It was true she’d been warned off the woman she was about to dine with – by pretty much everyone – but she had admitted to herself that, in a place like Mountain Ash House, gossip could run amok and reputations become sullied for no real reason, so she’d joined her with an open mind. However, having spent only three minutes alone with Sylvia so far, she had to admit the woman had already marked herself as a snob of the worst type, and the possessor of an acid tongue.

  ‘My parents owned an ironmongers shop in Tenby,’ replied Gladys, sticking to her cover story. She couldn’t help but add, ‘I’m not sure how you’d categorize that sort of trade.’

  Sylvia pursed her mouth as she considered her response; the deep wrinkles around her lips suggested it was something she did a good deal, and had done for many years. Althea thought her mouth looked mean, and wondered what Carol would be making of it back in Anwen-by-Wye on her computer screen.

  ‘Not the sort of thing there’s much call for these days, with all these giant American-style warehouses selling all sorts, I’d have thought. And your husband? Dead, I assume. What did he do? Made a good living, did he?’

  Althea noted the fingernails filed to rounded points, and the pastel pink nail varnish carefully applied. Sylvia was the only woman at the home who wore make-up, had her hair colored and styled and attended to her hands. All the better to show off her collection of stone-encrusted rings, earrings and bracelets.

  ‘He was a farmer, of sorts,’ said Althea – not altogether untruthfully – thinking of the six-thousand-acre Chellingworth estate. ‘And we rented out a few properties on our land.’ That a
llowed for the entire village of Anwen-by-Wye.

  Sylvia shook her head. ‘That must have been a hard life for you,’ she said. ‘Don’t make any money at all, do they? Farmers, I mean. And to earn a living as a landlord? Well, you’ve got to be hard as nails and keep your costs down. Like the Cruickshanks do here. Good business heads, they’ve got, I’ll give them that. How did you find this place?’

  Althea steeled herself. ‘Through an old friend, Daisy Drayton. Did you know her?’

  Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. ‘Knew a Daisy Davies.’

  Althea wondered if Daisy Davies and Daisy Drayton might be one and the same. Perhaps her old acquaintance had remarried. It would certainly go a long way to explaining why Carol hadn’t been able to find any recorded death of a Daisy Drayton.

  ‘A right old fusspot, she was,’ continued Sylvia with a look on her face that suggested she’d been sucking a lemon. ‘Always going on about horses. That’s all in the past, I told her. She carried on as though she’d won the Olympics or something.’

  Almost certain they were speaking about the Daisy she was interested in, Althea said, ‘The Daisy I knew always rode well. I’d lost touch with her in recent years. I don’t suppose you recall how things were for her … at the end? One of your fellow residents seemed to think the Daisy who lived here was called Drayton.’ Althea made her face look sad when she spoke. She hoped it would work.

  ‘You mean Iris? Dumb as a bag of hair, that one. Daisy was Davies, not Drayton, in the end. And how did she die? You’re a bit gruesome, aren’t you? I don’t know the details, so I can’t tell you. All I know is an ambulance took her away from here, and she never came back. They usually don’t. Even if they’re chucked out of the hospital – which they seem to do two minutes after you can manage to get along without all the machines they attach to you these days – they get packed off to a proper nursing home. When you asked if you could record this, is it because you’ve got dementia? They won’t take you here with that, you know. You’d be a danger to yourself and others. It’s best if you let them lock you up if you’ve got that.’

  Althea struggled to hold onto her temper. ‘I’m perfectly well, thank you,’ she replied coolly. ‘I don’t have a good head for lots of details, and I knew I’d be trying to take in such a huge amount of new information over just a few days I wanted the chance to look back on it in the weeks to come when I’m making a decision.’

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ conceded Sylvia. Althea suspected this was a great compliment, coming from the hyper-critical woman. ‘You could do worse than this place, I suppose. They don’t stint on the food and the jaunts are pretty good. Fred’s a card, right enough; always helps jolly us along. We’re all off to the Chellingworth Summer Fete next weekend. Will you still be here then? You could come with us.’

  Althea didn’t panic, she simply replied, ‘I’ll have left before then, but I might see you there in any case. Have you been before? Is it fun?’

  Again Sylvia pursed her mean little mouth. ‘I suppose it’s better than being stuck here all day with this lot,’ she began, casting her eyes about the dining room disdainfully. ‘Though I think the fete is just an excuse for the toffs at the hall to lord it over us peasants,’ she added.

  ‘Toffs?’ dared Althea.

  Sylvia leaned in. ‘The dowager, and her son, the duke. They say she was a dancer when she managed to get the old duke to marry her.’ She leaned in further. ‘What sort of dancer, nobody knows.’ She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows to convey exactly what sort of dancer she imagined the dowager to have been. ‘Common as muck, in any case, I heard. And the son was off swanning around the world pretending to be an artist when his father died. Chellingworth Hall itself is falling to pieces, they say. All her fault, I should think. Not born to it, see. Not up to the job.’

  Althea gritted her teeth and ventured, ‘Really? Do you know her well?’

  Sylvia gave the matter some thought. ‘Not well but, you know, to say hello to. I hear the new duchess is the daughter of some sort of used car dealer, so it sounds like the duke’s new wife is like his mother: a gold-digger.’

  Althea tried her best to sound vague when she replied, ‘I heard the duchess’s father was a lumber merchant, but, maybe those two things are much the same.’

  ‘Cars. Wood. What does it matter? Probably a spiv of some sort. I wonder if she’ll shunt the older one out of the picture now? I hear she’s about ninety.’

  Althea couldn’t resist. ‘I thought you said you knew the dowager. Does she look ninety?’

  Sylvia had the good grace to blush as she replied, ‘Hard to tell with women once they reach a certain age, isn’t it? She should be pretty well-kept really. Probably not done much her whole life, you know, being waited on hand and foot.’

  Althea wanted to get up and leave, but dug deep and pushed on. ‘Daisy didn’t wear well, I understand. Someone told me she’d broken her neck, poor thing. Lucky she could walk at all, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, if a person will go riding around on horses, what can they expect? She managed well enough. Always moaning, though. Some do. Some of us just put up with it. If she’d only had my headaches to contend with – now that’s something I never mention, my headaches.’

  Althea didn’t bite. ‘She died in hospital, you say. Do you recall when that was by any chance?’

  Sylvia’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Want to crow about outliving her? That’s a common enough pastime hereabouts.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ replied Althea smoothly. ‘I wondered if I could find out where she was laid to rest so I could pay my respects, if I’m able.’

  ‘No idea where she ended up. Died on January 13th this year. I remember because it was my late husband’s birthday.’

  Althea was delighted to get some concrete information. ‘Well maybe I can look it up somewhere then. If I at least know Daisy Davies died on January 13th at a hospital in Powys, I should be able to track her down.’

  ‘Well, you won’t find her as Daisy, will you?’ Sylvia looked even more smug than she had before. Althea was surprised, because she hadn’t thought it possible. ‘I thought you said you knew her. Can’t have known her very well if you didn’t even know her proper name.’

  Althea was puzzled. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Daisy wasn’t her real name. Not even one of her middle names. Honoria she was. Now let me think about the whole thing for a minute – a lot of names she had.’ Althea watched with as much patience as she could summon. Finally Sylvia looked triumphant. ‘Honoria Estella Sophronia Dickens was her full birth name. We talked about it – seems her father was nuts about Charles Dickens, which I suppose is understandable. I’ve never understood what everyone saw in his books, myself. They’re all so depressing. Full of the most horrible, unwashed people with wretched lives. All her real first names were from his characters. Daisy was what she was nick-named as a baby, and it stuck, she said.’ Sylvia looked triumphant.

  Althea smiled. ‘It could have been worse; they might have named her Fagin or Fezziwig, I suppose.’ Sylvia’s face suggested it wouldn’t have been much worse. ‘I had no idea about Daisy’s given names. How interesting. Thank you. That should help with my enquiries.’

  ‘Enquiries? You sound like someone who’s plodding through a detective novel,’ said Sylvia, pushing away the bowl which had contained a satisfying beef stew.

  Althea laughed off the jibe, and quickly turned the conversation to the topic of food, which she felt would be a useful diversion; if she tipped her hand to Sylvia, she might not get much more out of the woman. Indeed, she noticed Sylvia was already giving her some odd looks, but quickly worked out it was because her wig was slipping down her forehead, so she pulled it back into place as surreptitiously as possible.

  As she listened to the odious woman opposite her moan on about a litany of sleights she felt she’d been dealt by various other residents, Althea wondered how she might be able to squeeze any more information out of Sylvia. She tried to not glaze
over as Sylvia took the chance of a break between courses to show off photos of her grandchildren in a thick little wallet full of pictures she produced from her handbag. Eventually Althea realized the woman was so self-absorbed she’d be unlikely to notice a direct query, so she simply asked, ‘The woman you speak of, I’d like to be sure she was my Daisy. Do you happen to have a photograph of her?’

  ‘I think I might have one of her and me together.’ Sylvia flicked little plastic pages. ‘Here we are. I think we’d been taking tea together.’

  Althea looked at the photograph of a wizened creature she found it hard to recognize as the youthful, vibrant Daisy Dickens, but spotted something about the eyes that meant she knew it was the same person. And Althea fairly fizzed with joy when she saw what was on the bookshelves behind the woman’s head – an entire row of large picture books about Swansea through the ages. ‘Was this taken in your room?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Oh no, I never entertain. That would have been at Daisy’s.’

  Althea’s heart skipped a beat with excitement. ‘Would you mind if I took a photo of this with my telephone’s camera? I’d be ever so grateful,’ said Althea in her sweetest voice. ‘Something to remember her by – and you, of course – when I leave.’

  ‘But of course,’ said Sylvia, clearly flattered.

  With dinner finally finished, Sylvia stood and took her leave. Althea thought it was high time to go back to her own room for a bit of peace and quiet. She admitted to herself she was missing McFli terribly, and realized she hadn’t seen any pets about the place. If she needed any reason for never returning to Mountain Ash House after her undercover operation was concluded, that would be it – no pets allowed, and her not able to leave her beloved McFli. She remained at the empty table long enough to send the photo she’d just taken and Daisy’s full name to Carol, then she pulled herself to her feet and waved her farewells to the folks still enjoying after-dinner chats in the dining room.