The Marmalade Murders

by Elizabeth J Duncan

  “Have you ever thought about joining? I’d have thought with your domestic skills, they’d be lucky to have you.”

  Mrs. Lloyd’s eyes narrowed slightly, and as Florence caught a glimpse of her, a sly smile formed at the corners of her lips. Before she could reply to Penny’s question, though, a pinging in Penny’s pocket indicated an incoming text. She pulled it out, glanced at it, and then said, “It’s Gareth. Maybe he’s got news.”

  “You’d better read it to us, then,” said Mrs. Lloyd eagerly.

  Penny’s eyes flickered over the small screen. “He says the body has been identified and it is indeed Gaynor Lewis’s.”

  They reflected on this, and then Mrs. Lloyd said, “Well, we’re not surprised. We’d got that far ourselves. We were almost sure that’s who it was, weren’t we?”

  Penny nodded. “He says she was stabbed with a long blade.”

  “A long blade,” mused Victoria. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think that refers to something like a bread knife,” said Florence, holding her hands about a foot apart, “compared to, say”—she brought her hands close together—“a paring knife, which I guess would be considered a short blade. At least that’s how I would interpret it.”

  “Yes, that makes sense,” said Penny, leaning forward as she placed her empty glass on the coffee table. She caught Victoria’s eye and added, “Well, as Florence said, it’s been a long, eventful day, and it certainly didn’t end the way we expected it to. But it’s time Victoria and I were on our way, so we’ll leave you to your supper.”

  “We’re just going to have a bit of cold ham and salad,” said Florence. “There’s plenty, and you’d be more than welcome to stay and share it with it us.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Lloyd enthusiastically, “indeed you would.”

  “That’s a kind invitation, and another time I’d love to,” said Penny, “but I really must get home to feed Harrison. When I’m late with his dinner, I hear about it.”

  “Of course,” said Florence. “When you don’t have a pet, you don’t think about things like that.

  “What you were saying before,” said Florence as they all got to their feet, “about the Women’s Guild. Besides the jam, which they made to help with the food supplies during the war, I’m not sure exactly what the WG does nowadays. I was thinking when I saw all the wonderful baked goods and preserves at the show that I might like to attend a WG meeting, just to learn a little more about it.”

  “I think that would be an excellent idea,” said Penny. “I’d go myself, but I have to work, so perhaps you could let me know what you find out.” She placed a slight emphasis on the last four words, and Florence gave a slight nod.

  “I’ll go, too,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “I used to belong to the WG—although many years ago that was—and for some reason I stopped going. Can’t think why now.”

  As Penny and Victoria were leaving, Florence ducked into the kitchen and returned with a jar in each hand. She held up a jar of marmalade in her right hand, and in her left, a jar of raspberry.

  “You choose,” she said to her delighted guests. After a quick, consolidating glance at each other, Penny reached for the jam and Victoria went home happy with the marmalade.

  When their guests had left, Florence set about preparing supper while Mrs. Lloyd watched the evening news on television.

  Over their evening meal, Florence and Mrs. Lloyd discussed the events of the day until they’d squeezed the topic dry and had reached no conclusions.

  “We must have Penny and Victoria over for supper one of these evenings,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “That would be fun.”

  “I agree,” said Florence. “I’d like that.” She passed Mrs. Lloyd the basket of bread rolls. “You know, Evelyn, what Penny said about having to get home to feed her cat got me thinking. I’ve never had a pet. Never been in a position where I could keep one, but now I’d rather like to have a cat myself. What do you think?”

  “Well, we could get a cat, I suppose. After all, the prime minister has one. But it would have to be the right kind of cat, mind. Not some awful creature keeping me awake all night with its yowling because it wants to go outside. Or the kind that sharpens its claws on the furniture and hangs off the curtains.”

  “No, of course we wouldn’t want a cat like that. We’ll find a nice genteel cat. A well-behaved kind of cat. I believe Penny got hers from Emyr Gruffydd.”

  “Oh, well then,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “That would be the right sort of cat. We won’t do better than that.”

  Nine

  Shortly after ten the next morning, Penny went downstairs, opened her front door, picked up the Sunday newspaper, and then retreated inside to make her breakfast. She glanced at the headlines while she made coffee. As she waited for a frozen croissant to warm, she put a pat of butter in a small white dipping bowl, and a generous dollop of Florence’s raspberry jam in another. She loaded a tray with her breakfast and carried it to the table.

  She poured a cup of coffee, then tore off a piece of flaky croissant and spread it with a little butter and a lot of Florence’s jam.

  It was just as Mrs. Lloyd had described it: sharp and sweet. No wonder it had won first place in the competition. She picked up the little bowl and contemplated the jam as unanswered questions danced around in her head. How had Gaynor Lewis’s jar of marmalade made it into the competition? And what had happened to Florence’s marmalade?

  And even more important, what had happened to Gaynor Lewis?

  She opened the newspaper to the arts section, and after reading the same paragraph three times, she gave up and folded up the newspaper. She took a sip of coffee while she thought about what Mrs. Lloyd had said last night. “If you want to know more about Gaynor Lewis, the person you should be speaking to is her sister-in-law, Joyce Devlin.” Penny got up from the table and walked to the cupboard. She pulled a business card out of the jacket she’d worn to the agricultural show and reached for her phone, and when she’d completed her first call, she rang Victoria.

  “How would you like to go and see some Labrador puppies after lunch?”

  * * *

  The drive to the Devlins’ farm took them down winding roads, past endless lush pastures and vibrant green fields in a lovely configuration of timeless landscape. It was a beautiful afternoon and the late-summer sun warmed the hedgerows and stone walls that flanked the narrow road.

  “This is it,” said Penny, pointing to a newly painted sign that announced DEVLIN LABRADORS AND BOARDING KENNELS in bold letters under a picture of a black Labrador’s friendly face. They turned off at the gate and drove up the rutted lane until they reached a grey stone farmhouse. The door had once been a proud, dark green, but weather had taken its toll and it was now a faded, lacklustre grey-green. Victoria grasped the black ring door knocker and struck it twice on the matching plate. A banging noise resonated within the house, and a few minutes later, with Billie at her side, Joyce appeared, wearing a faded pinafore over a shapeless navy blue dress. It took a moment for her to recognize her callers, and then a wary but resigned look flashed across her face.

  “Hello, Joyce,” said Penny. “Thank you so much for seeing us today. We know you’re busy, and, well, after the way the show ended, I’m sure you had a long night.”

  “I’m a bit tired, yes. The police were here this morning asking questions, and there’re always dogs in the kennel that need attending to. I can’t give you very long, but come in.”

  She stepped aside to allow Penny and Victoria to enter. Jackets and waterproof overcoats lined each side of the whitewashed entryway. Beneath the coats, several pairs of Wellingtons were neatly arranged, and above them hung four faded Cries of London prints in dusty frames.

  “Go on through,” said Joyce, gesturing toward the rear of the house. They entered a large room, with the whitewashed walls, exposed wooden ceiling beams, and slate floors typical of Welsh farmhouse kitchens. An Aga cooker stood against one wall, beside an inglenook fireplace.


  A tall, sturdy man who appeared to be in his early fifties—about the same age as Joyce—wearing a plaid shirt and a rough pair of trousers held up by ancient braces, set an empty mug on the table and stood up as the women entered. He looked blankly at Penny and Victoria, then his eyes settled on Joyce.

  “My husband’s just going out to the kennels to check on the dogs,” Joyce explained to Penny and Victoria. “I won’t be long, Dev,” she said to her departing husband’s back. “You get started, and I’ll be out to help you soon as I can.” She turned her attention back to her visitors. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the table. “Now, you wanted to discuss the marmalade, and that’s fine with me, because I want to get this business cleared up, so we can put it behind us and all move on.”

  “Well, first, we want to say we’re very sorry for your loss,” said Victoria. “We understand Gaynor Lewis was your sister-in-law.”

  Joyce acknowledged her condolences with a tiny nod but did not reply.

  “Yes, we did want to talk to you about the marmalade,” Penny began. “As we see it, there are two issues: Florence Semble’s marmalade, which was entered properly in the show, never made it to the judging stage.”

  “And Gaynor Lewis’s entry,” Victoria added, “which we hadn’t checked in by the deadline, somehow not only made it into the show but won the category. That seems very unfair to Florence.”

  Joyce massaged her forehead with a work-roughened hand dappled with sunspots. The skin was loose, and her nails looked brittle and uncared for.

  “If you remember, there were two entry sheets left over when entries closed at eight o’clock, both Gaynor’s,” said Penny. “You were very clear in your instructions that we were not to accept entries after the deadline. But the thing is, Gaynor hadn’t arrived by the time we left, so maybe the best place to start would be to ask you if you know why Gaynor’s entries were allowed.”

  Joyce let out a small sigh heavily laced with exasperation of long standing. “Bloody woman. Even though she’s dead, she’s still causing problems.” She stood up. “I need a coffee. Would you like one?”

  “Well, if you’re making it anyway, yes, please,” said Penny.

  Joyce picked up a teaspoon off the worktop, added measures of instant coffee to three mugs, poured in previously boiled water from the kettle, added a splash of milk, gave them all a good stir, and plunked the mugs on the table. Victoria, who normally took sugar, said nothing. Joyce sat down and took a deep breath. She cupped her hands around her mug and leaned forward slightly.

  “Right. Let’s get to it. Here’s what happened on the Friday night,” said Joyce. “Gaynor rang me just before eight o’clock, just as Barbara and I were on our way to the marquee to see you, actually.” Her eyes tracked from Penny to Victoria, then to a spot somewhere near the ceiling. “Gaynor said she wasn’t far away but was caught in slow traffic. She knew I was still on-site, and she asked if I could just give her a few minutes’ grace until she got there with her entries. Because she’d called to let me know she was almost at the show grounds, I agreed, albeit with some reluctance. I told her she’d have to look sharp, as I still had a lot to do and I couldn’t hang about waiting for her to turn up. And then Barbara and I arrived at the marquee and met up with you. And you know what happened then. We wrapped things up, and you left. Shortly after that, Gaynor came rushing into the marquee, I accepted her entries, and I set them down at the end of the table, ready for the judging in the morning.

  “Then I got called away to an incident in the livestock area. There was something going on with the horse people.” She made a vague palm-up hand gesture. “Many exhibitors choose to spend the Friday night before the show camping on the grounds because they don’t want to leave their livestock unattended, see. And of course, there’s always something happening in the run-up to the show. A crisis every five minutes, it seems like. Barbara and I practically spent the whole time running from one disaster to the next, putting out fires.” She took a sip of coffee. “Not literally, of course. And not with you two. Everything went quite smoothly there. For the most part. Unless, of course, you count what happened to Gaynor, but that wasn’t anything to do with you. I meant the logistics.”

  “So you left the marquee. Did Barbara leave with you?” Penny asked.

  “She did.”

  “And Gaynor was still there when you left?” asked Penny.

  “She was. But since her jam and marmalade had been accepted, I reckoned she’d be leaving, too. It was getting late. And besides, what reason would she have had for sticking around?”

  “Well, that’s a very good question,” said Penny. “And it could be key to solving her murder, because she must have met up with someone after you left, and therefore you could be the second-to-last person to see her alive.”

  The only sound in the room was Joyce’s sharp intake of breath.

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Did you see anyone when you left the tent?” Penny asked.

  “I saw lots of people. There were lots of folk about, and all sorts of things going on,” said Joyce. “It was still light, so people were setting things up, working on exhibits, moving their animals in, ready for the judging in the morning. All the last-minute things. The police officer who was in charge of security was there, keeping an eye on things.” Joyce’s eyes narrowed. “You’re asking a lot of questions. I went over all this with the police, but I must say, I’m not sure they were quite as probing as you.”

  “Sorry,” said Penny. “It’s just that when we were talking about Gaynor, I was interested in what happened after we left.”

  “My friend here gets carried away sometimes,” said Victoria, throwing Penny an affectionate grin. And then, turning her attention back to Joyce, Victoria asked, “But Gaynor is, or was, I should say, your husband’s sister?”

  “That’s right. She’s the younger sister of my husband, Daffydd. Everybody just calls him Dev. You met him. Well, sort of met him. I should have introduced you, I suppose, but he was just on his way out. Anyway, yes, she was his sister and she’s been nothing but a right cow since the day we got married. Or before, truth be told.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Penny.

  “She didn’t want Dev to marry me. Said he was marrying beneath him. He could do better. You know the sort of thing. And it just got worse after we were married. She criticized everything Dev and I did.” She paused for a moment, and when she continued, her voice was slightly shrill, with an exaggerated, mimicking tone. “She didn’t like the way we were bringing up our children. We were spending too much money on our dogs. My housekeeping was terrible. I didn’t bake cakes from scratch.”

  “That must have been hard to live with,” remarked Penny.

  “Oh, it was. And besides the constant criticism, she was always on at me or Dev about some perceived slight. There was no pleasing her. We used to invite her to family dinners, and she always found some excuse not to come, and then when we gave up and stopped inviting her, she complained we never invited her to dinner! But gradually, I learned to tune out her negativity, if you know what I mean. I took no notice of her, in my personal life, and tried to be civil to her in public, or when I had to be. I reached the point where she just wasn’t worth one more minute of my time. I was done with her.”

  “I can certainly understand that,” said Penny. “But I’m curious as to why you allowed her late entries in the show? Doesn’t sound as if you owed her any favours, or had any particular reason to be nice to her.”

  “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? If she’d been a reasonable sort of person, I would have been able to say, ‘No, sorry, Gaynor, rules are rules and you missed the deadline, you daft mare, and maybe next year you’ll show up on time with your jam and marmalade like everybody else.’ And that would have been the end of it. Lesson learned. But I let her jam and marmalade in because if I hadn’t, she’d have kicked off, and her nastiness would have started up all over again, and I’d never have he
ard the end of it. And I really didn’t want her turning on Dev and having a go at him. He’s not well, and he doesn’t need her kind of stress in his life.”

  “So anything for a quiet life,” commented Victoria.

  “Yes, I suppose you could say that.” Joyce took a moment for her breathing to slow, then continued. “So yes, I did let her bally marmalade into the competition. But I didn’t judge it, and I had nothing to do with it winning.”

  “But what about Florence’s marmalade?” asked Penny. “Do you know why that didn’t make it into the competition?”

  Joyce, who had been taking slow sips of the now-tepid coffee after she finished her diatribe, shook her head and set down her cup. “That I do not know. But really, Gaynor is dead, and why can’t that be the end of it? Let her have her little posthumous bit of marmalade glory. What does it matter now?”

  “Well, Florence isn’t dead, and it matters to her,” said Penny, her voice rising slightly. She paused to take a calming breath, then continued. “She feels that for some reason, someone didn’t want her marmalade in the competition, and we”—she tipped her head in Victoria’s direction—“have to agree with her. It certainly looks that way. It’s important to Florence that we get to the bottom of this. And besides being completely unfair to her, the integrity and reputation of the show are at stake. If people think the judging is unfair, or, and I hate to use the word fixed, but to put it bluntly, if people think the competition is fixed, then next year no one will want to enter.”

  “And Mrs. Lloyd isn’t happy, either,” said Victoria. “You serve on the show’s organizing committee with her, so you must know what she’s like. In fact, she’s already tried to confront you herself about this, and her next step would probably be to bring the matter to the attention of the whole committee. We told her to leave it with us. To keep things, well, unofficial and contained, you might say, before it gets out of hand.”

  “And to try to keep it out of the newspaper,” said Penny. “If the Post got wind of it, which they could do very easily, since Mrs. Lloyd’s niece is the star reporter, and if she started asking questions—”