Murder At The Fete: A Lady Margaret Turnbull Culinary Cozy Mystery (Culinary Mystery Books Book 1)

by C T Mitchell

  The old woman pointed to her right with a shaky hand.

  Tom spoke loud enough for the entire tent to hear. “No one touches that table, you understand? Don’t even pick up your purse. Leave it there; I don’t care if it’s inconvenient. Don’t touch it.” There were a few grumbles, but everyone stayed away from it.

  Constable Greenaway trotted into the tent, and Tom gave him some sort of signal to manage the crowd, which he did.

  “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he said only loud enough to be heard. “You heard the man. Stay back.”

  Tom opened his mobile phone and dialed the only funeral parlor driver in town. Carmichael’s Funerals had been a part of Bangalow since 1949, a family run business now in its third generation. Since the town was small, it didn’t have its own autopsy facility or morgue, so Mrs. Davies would have to be transported to Lismore, some thirty kilometers away, for evaluation. Tom was pretty certain he was dealing with an elderly woman that had choked on her food but needed to be sure.

  It was very sad, but hardly the reason to make people wait any longer than they had to. He would take some snapshots and get a few statements and let everyone get back to the event if that’s what they wanted. The crowd was already growing restless.

  ****

  It wasn’t twenty seconds before Tom’s eye was twitching. The body had only been gone a few minutes, and already he saw Maggie set into motion. The woman was a dear soul, but nothing irked him more than having her know things first. Tom didn’t want to be shown up again by Lady Margaret Turnbull, Bangalow’s would be amateur sleuth, over a highly trained, academy graduated detective.

  “Stay here if you want, dear. I’m going to talk to Mrs. Grant. That woman’s up to something.” Maggie patted her nephew on the shoulder and rushed away, but not before the Detective Inspector grabbed her gently by the forearm.

  “Leave it alone, Maggie. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s Lady Margaret Turnbull to you, Detective. And I’m just going to talk to someone. It’s nothing.” She winked at him and hurried away. Detective Sullivan sighed in frustration knowing that anything involving Lady Maggie wasn’t just about nothing. She was acting on one of her hunches again and they are usually right, much to the displeasure of the Detective.

  “Aunt Maggie!” It was Simon, trotting toward her, looking as though he was saddling up to say something brave. “Don’t go,” he suggested, taking her by the hand. “I know you like to help the police, but can’t you just sit this one out?” Simon knew his aunt had a reputation for getting caught up in police matters, and it didn’t matter if she figured things out first or not, she was still a bit of a nuisance to the police force.

  Maggie kissed him on the nose and walked briskly to the other side of the food tent, sliding in and out of mini crowds that had formed and making her way through them easily. She was in pretty good shape for being in her fifties; he had to hand it to her. Simon watched her briskly stride out from under the tent; she really was cut out for her favorite hobby.

  Mrs. Grant was startled when Maggie sat forcefully into the chair next to her. “Hey there!” Maggie said loudly, patting the woman on the leg. I heard what you said back there, why was that? What made you say “This can’t be?”

  The color drained from Mrs. Grant’s round face. “I have no idea…did I say that? Probably something I mumbled from shock.”

  Maggie didn’t buy it. There was still plenty of time left in the day to have a cup of tea with the woman and sort things out, so she suggested just that, recommending a little trip home to Mrs. Grant’s house to help her deal with her shock. Surprisingly, Mrs. Grant agreed, and the two women walked arm in arm right past Tom Sullivan on their way to the parking lot.

  He stood up and looked at them, eyeing his nemesis as though it would change the fact that she was taking a witness home with her. If he tried to stop her, she would only cause enough of a fuss to delay his entire day, so he let her go and returned to questioning witnesses at the table closest to the crime scene. It didn’t seem to be going well; all the people at the table could say was how shocked they were that anyone would want to kill Mrs. Davies.

  Chapter 3

  The Detective Inspector wouldn’t be going home tonight. Everyone else would probably stay at the fete in order to shell out their money to happily give funds to the children’s shelter. Tom, however, tossed the keys to his wife and rented a hotel room at the Bangalow Gardens Motel, on the edge of town. Thankfully they had a room for him.

  “I find it strange,” Maggie said on the phone with Tom once he’d reached his room for the evening, “that Mrs. Davies was poisoned in the food tent.”

  Tom sighed; he was going to have to hear her out, one way or another. And after all, she had helped him on quite a few cases, so the woman at least deserved a hearing. “Why is that, Mrs. Turnbull? A food tent seems like a perfectly normal place to poison someone to me.” He pressed his eyebrows together with his forefinger and thumb and sat down in the desk chair in the motel room. It felt like it was going to be a long night.

  “Poisoning someone is a private affair, Detective,” she said plainly. “One never randomly poisons somebody. It’s usually targeted and personal.”

  Tom waited for a minute, processing his response. He didn’t want to blow her off or seem ungrateful for her assistance but once again she was meddling in police business. And he didn’t want to make it seem like this was news to him, but he had to admit, she had a good point. She went on to talk some sort of nonsense about Mrs. Grant mumbling a phrase under her breath at the crime scene. Maggie seemed to think that Mrs. Grant assumed she, herself, would be the victim. The idea struck Tom as the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard, but he nicely mentioned that it was “far-fetched” at best and promised to appease her and keep her posted.

  “No need, dear. I’ll figure it out.” And she hung up. Tom sat back in his chair, shoulders slumped thinking to himself, ‘here we go again.’ He looked to the ceiling of his room, sipped his tea and grimaced at the thought of Lady Margaret not only being involved but right.

  The next day, Tom decided to investigate Maggie’s hunch and take a trip to Mrs. Davies’ cottage. Yet, before he had the chance, the forensic science team from Lismore called him stating that they’d found a threatening letter in her study desk. He wondered if Mrs. Grant had received a similar sort of letter, and told them to wait for him at the cottage.

  Chapter 4

  Maggie called the Inspector from her house at eight o’clock that following morning, having already put several more hours in on the case, and she felt more energized than she had in months. Maggie was an early riser most mornings preparing breakfast for her guests, taking delivery of Melissa’s pastries and pottering around re-arranging the fresh flowers that adorned the lounge and hallways in the house. But sinking her teeth into a case, invited or not, gave her an extra spring in her step.

  “You see, Detective, I went straight to Mrs. Grant’s house yesterday after the festival. I knew you’d trust me with her, and you were right to do so.” She loved rubbing it in the Detective’s face that he pretty much let her have her way with things, and she waited for him to respond to her jab.

  “And?” he asked impatiently, letting out another sigh; something he would do often around Lady Margaret. It sounded like he was traveling somewhere, and she didn’t want to actually waste the man’s time, so she hurried through the account of the previous night.

  “When we got there…I told her I just wanted to have tea with her and would buy some of her delectable scones, hoping the idiocy of the timing would catch her off guard. It worked, of course, and she let me in. We weren’t five minutes into the tea and pastries before she started to shake. I really am good, eh?”

  “Oh yes, the best Lady Turnbull. Can you tell me why she was shaking or are you just going to leave the story at ‘I made an old woman shake’?”

  “Now listen here you little smarty, she isn’t much older than me, so watch your tone. And of
course there’s more. She fetched an odd letter from a stack of papers in her kitchen and let me read it. It just said ‘Lying is a mortal sin.’ What do you make of that, Detective Sullivan?”

  “I’ve no idea.” She could hear him put his rackety car in park and shut the door, and was sure he’d hang up soon, so she blurted out the rest.

  “The only other thing she asked me was what kind of poison was used to kill Mrs. Davies. Since I’m not privy to autopsy reports…yet…I told her I thought it was probably arsenic. A few drops in her tea would have sufficed, don’t you think? Anyway, before I left, Tom…she said something strange.”

  She just said “There were three of us… Mrs. Grant immediately looked as though she’d regretted saying anything at all, but when I turned around to ask her what she meant, she merely crumbled into my arms in a sobbing heap. I couldn’t really make out much more of what she said.”

  Tom was quiet for a moment.

  “You might want to get it from her before she destroys it. She’s a bit off her rocker at the moment. And you may want to visit Mrs. Carrington, as well. She’s a cantankerous old bat who probably won’t let you in the door, of course, so I would be more than happy to accompany you if you like?”

  “Mrs. Carrington?” he asked, sounding out of breath.

  There was a knock on Maggie’s door, so she switched the mobile phone to her other ear and straightened her blouse. It felt good to be this active in the morning. She opened the door just as Tom was flipping his mobile phone closed. He slipped it into his pocket and gestured toward the inside of the house, asking to come inside.

  “Well I never! Come in, Detective. Anyhow, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Carrington testified to a crime some years ago; carrying the conversation on now face to face. Before you and I were ever in this area. Whatever the old case was, the suspect that was accused didn’t commit the crime. Mrs. Grant refreshed my memory, but that’s really all she’d tell me.”

  “Isn’t she an invalid or something? My wife visits her for church, I think.” He followed Maggie through the foyer of the bed and breakfast and she poured him some tea. They adjourned to the verandah and took in the view of the grassy valley to the distant mountains, where they discussed their next move; Lady Margaret now firmly entrenched in the case regrettably accepted by Detective Sullivan.

  “We need to get over to Mrs. Carrington’s place” Tom exclaimed finishing his tea and retracting his attention from the engulfing view and re-focusing back on the job at hand. “Let’s see if she has received a letter also?”

  Chapter 5

  After ringing the doorbell at Mrs. Carrington’s house for the third time, the Detective shot Maggie a knowing look and walked quickly toward the back of the house to check the other door. “Wait here,” he instructed. And, as she sometimes did, she did as she was told. Before long he opened the front door and informed her that Mrs. Carrington had, indeed, met her Maker. Maggie was aghast.

  “Was it poison?!” She yelled, pushing past him and searching for the kitchen.

  “No, no,” he replied.

  “Are you sure? How can you be certain?”

  “I know for a fact it wasn’t poison because she was stabbed with a letter opener.”

  Maggie pulled to a stop before entering the kitchen. She didn’t need to see that to be helpful to the police force, so she turned to Tom.

  “Detective,” she said, adjusting her slacks. “Was it her letter or someone else’s? And did you find a strange letter, as well?”

  “I didn’t see one, no. I came to let you in. But I’d be willing to wager that we will. And as to whether it was her letter opener, well hopefully there are some fingerprints on it we can lift.”

  ****

  Tom Sullivan dropped Maggie off at her home, and she immediately phoned her friend at the Lismore’s Northern Star newspaper office. She was trying to obtain a copy of the article about the trial Mrs. Grant was speaking of. And even though she had little hope of the gentleman finding it anytime in the next few hours since it happened nearly thirty years ago, he mentioned that he knew the case quite well.

  It was apparently one of his first journalistic feats, and he even attended the trial, which he remembered clearly. On a year or two into his sentence, the person who was found guilty committed suicide, yet the story didn’t end there. A full twenty years later, the witness of the crime came forward and said that they hadn’t seen the criminal’s vehicle properly. The women—Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Carrington, and Mrs. Grant— were even charged with perjury.

  “Of course, they never went to jail,” her friend said. “But I’m pretty sure suffering their own conscience was punishment enough! That poor man that hung himself, it’s so tragic.”

  Maggie thanked her friend and hung up, walking to the window to think clearly. The day was clear, hardly a cloud in the sky. Momentarily Maggie’s mind drifted back to her days in the UK; dark, dreary, cold wet days and thanked her lucky stars she had made the decision to move to Australia where the sun and clear blue skies were in abundance. But back to the case in hand.

  Someone is making those women pay for wrongly accusing an innocent man, she thought. But who would do such a thing?

  She put her teacup and saucer in the sink and decided to go for a walk to clear her head. And a call to Detective Sullivan to update him was in order, as well. He took notes on everything she said, and meekly thanked her for her contribution. The two of them agreed that Mrs. Grant was next on the list, if they were worth their weight as detectives, at least one was officially, that she needed to be protected. He arranged for Constable Greenaway to stay with her until they could sort things out.

  “We’ll wait for the forensic report on the letter opener and go and catch our killer,” Tom said.

  “Awwww, Detective. You said we. I’m flattered.”

  “Alright, now. Don’t go getting a big head, Lady Maggie.” Tom mentally cursed to himself to be more careful when freely talking about the case using the collective ‘we’ in the conversation. But at the same time he did have to give Maggie her dues; once again.

  On the way home, she would pass the cemetery and decided to take a look at the headstones of the victims from thirty years ago. Maybe she could find some inspiration or direction there. It was all she could think to do while they waited for the report. Surely, something would come to her, it always did.

  As she walked past the graves, she poured over the names carefully, trying to remember details from stories she’d heard over the years about the case. Leaning against a tree, she took in the whole place for a moment. The cemetery had a commanding position in the town with many old tombstones of the districts early settlers and pioneers. That’s when she saw the fresh flowers. On one of the headstones, a bouquet of fresh flowers was arranged neatly on top of the stone. It caught her eye because she’d seen an identical bouquet of flowers at the fete the day before, though she couldn’t remember whose they were.

  Chapter 6

  “Melissa Shepherd!!” Maggie shouted into the air. Melissa Shepherd had received a bunch of flowers identical to this one! Daniel Greenaway had given them to her for winning the baking prize at the fete!

  When she approached the headstone that the bouquet was laying on, she exhaled sharply. The script was as plain as day.

  “Lying is a mortal sin and you never did, Sam Connors. May you rest in peace.”

  “Oh bless you, Simon, for this wretched mobile phone. I’ve used it more today than I ever thought I would!” She kissed her mobile phone held in her shaking hands and dialed Detective Sullivan’s number.

  “You can’t be serious, Mags—I’m sorry—Lady Maggie…I mean Lady Margaret. You can’t be serious.”

  Yes Maggie insisted that he get Constable Greenaway out of Mrs. Grant’s home immediately. He could tell from her breath that she was running somewhere and she seemed quite worked up about the Constable, so he decided to humor her. She hadn’t been wrong yet, though he couldn’t quite understand how the quiet Daniel Greenaway
could manage to kill as housefly, much less an entire human. Two humans, no less!”

  “Oh thank God!” Maggie leaned on the fencepost of Mrs. Grant’s house to catch her breath, more than relieved to see that Mrs. Grant was standing on the front porch with Detective Sullivan. “Where’s the Constable?” she demands immediately.

  “Oh he’s gone to get some milk at the store, dear. He’s such a sweetheart,” Mrs. Grant is as clueless as ever, yet here she was, standing there bragging about the kindness of a man who was going to kill her.

  She looked to Tom. “If he thinks he’s been found out, he’ll run.”

  “I still don’t underst….” as Tom was cut off by Maggie.

  “He’s our murderer, Detective. Mrs. Grant would have clearly been his third victim.”

  Mrs. Grant put her hand to her mouth to cover a gasp, though the news did not come as a complete shock to her. Seeing the look on Tom’s face, Maggie offered her explanation.