The Marmalade Murders

by Elizabeth J Duncan

  Penny admitted her theory didn’t really allow for how Joyce and Dev could be implicated in Barbara Vickers’s death, though, but that didn’t matter now. And then, as she had another thought, Penny couldn’t resist a little smile. Bethan Morgan had been wrong when she said farm financing was complicated. This transaction had been remarkably simple, and farmers had probably been doing the very same thing for centuries.

  As Penny finished her wine, the door opened and a group of farmers burst in. One or two headed for the bar to get their drinks in while the rest made for Haydn’s table.

  Penny picked up her handbag, and after thanking Haydn for the drink, she nodded to his friends, then returned to the Spa.

  * * *

  “Well, we can cross Joyce and Dev off our list,” Penny said to Victoria after she’d explained that the Devlins had sold a parcel of land to Haydn to raise money for the kennels. “We thought money might be a motive, but it isn’t.”

  “No,” agreed Victoria, “the money motive seems to have disappeared, but can we be sure Joyce didn’t kill Gaynor Lewis for some other reason? After all, they were in the tent together on the Friday night and she must be one of the last people to have seen Gaynor alive.”

  “True enough,” said Penny. “But I don’t see how she could have been involved in the Barbara Vickers killing. She isn’t a member of the Women’s Guild and she wasn’t on the outing. We just can’t get around that.”

  “Could there be two killers?” Victoria asked. “What if the killings are unrelated?’

  “There could be two killers, I suppose.” Penny hesitated. “But that makes everything so complicated. Probably better to keep things simple, assume there’s one killer, and see where that gets us. And besides, we’ve got lots to link the two murders.”

  “Such as?”

  “Everybody who was on the coach trip, and everybody who was at the show ground, after, say, eight o’clock.” She was interrupted by the ringing of her phone. She glanced at the screen, then frowned. “It’s Florence. She wouldn’t be ringing if it weren’t important.”

  “Better see what she wants, then.” Victoria prepared to return to her office, but Penny gestured with her free hand, urging her to sit. Penny listened for a moment, then ended the call.

  “There’s been a development, of sorts. Andrea Devlin was over at Mrs. Lloyd’s, painting the dining room, and while she was there, the police rang to ask Andrea to come to the police station to help them with their inquiries. Mrs. Lloyd’s upset. She’s afraid Andrea is going to be arrested for the murder of Gaynor Lewis.”

  “What does she want you to do?” asked Victoria. “I hope they don’t think you should go over to the police station and try to help. If the police are questioning Andrea, it sounds as if she needs a solicitor, not you.”

  “You’re right,” said Penny. “I can’t do anything to help Andrea, but speaking of Florence, there is a bit of unfinished business to sort out. Let’s get the marmalade issue settled once and for all.”

  Twenty-five

  The address jotted on a scrap of paper led Penny to a small, beige pebble-dash house, optimistically called Cornell Manor, on Watling Street, just across from the bus stop. She knocked and waited. A moment later from inside the house came the sound of footsteps, then the click of the lock being turned.

  “Yes?” Delyth Powell peered suspiciously around the side of the door.

  “Well, hello, pet,” said Penny. “I’m Penny Brannigan. Our paths crossed briefly at the Women’s Guild meeting, at the banquet, and then again on the Speke Hall excursion, but we haven’t really been properly introduced.”

  Delyth frowned and pursed her lips as a glimmer of recognition flashed across her face.

  “Oh, yes. I remember you now. You’d better come in, then.” She led the way into a sitting room of unrelieved brown: sofa, chairs, carpet, curtains, cushions. A popular teatime quiz show blasted from a giant flat screen television. She picked up the remote control and muted the program, closed the door to the hall, gestured to a chair, and waited.

  “I’ll get right to the point so that you can get back to your program,” Penny said. “Did you call Florence Semble and tell her to bring her agricultural show entries to the marquee on the Saturday morning, rather than the Friday evening?”

  “Bring her entries in Saturday morning? To the agricultural show?” Penny recognized repeating the question as a classic stalling technique to buy a few more seconds for a whirling brain to come up with some kind of answer.

  “Yes. That’s what I’m asking you,” Penny said.

  “Now why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just asking if you did.”

  Delyth’s chest rose and fell rapidly, but before she could reply, there came the sound of the front door opening, followed by footsteps in the hall. “Only me,” a woman’s voice called out. The door to the sitting room opened, and Mari Jones entered. Penny was struck once again by how much the two retired schoolteachers resembled each other, and she wondered if they had deliberately adopted the same look, or if they had just grown to look alike over the years, the way long-married couples are sometimes said to do. She also wondered how it was that, with their strikingly similar looks, she hadn’t noticed them out and about in the town. It must be, she thought, that we just move in different circles.

  “Oh, Mari, pet. I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve landed myself in a bit of a pickle, I think.”

  “Why? Whatever’s happened?” Mari set down two carrier bags filled with groceries, slid onto the sofa beside her friend, and, after giving Penny a cold glance, fixed concerned eyes on Delyth and asked, “Has she said something to upset you?”

  “I did something rather foolish, I’m afraid, and she found out.” Delyth glanced at Penny, who gave her a nod of encouragement. “I rang Florence Semble and I told her to bring her entries for the agricultural show to the marquee on the Saturday morning.”

  “Oh, Delyth, why did you do that? How many years have we been entering in the competition? You know the entries have to be brought to the tent on the Friday night.”

  “Because others at the Women’s Guild meeting had been talking about how good Florence’s baking is, even before she joined our group, and I thought if she didn’t have a cake in the competition, you might be in with a chance. You work so hard on your cakes and never win. It hardly seems fair, and I thought winning might boost your confidence.”

  “How did you get Florence’s phone number?” Penny asked.

  “I saw the notice in the village hall about the cooking classes she gives to new mothers, and her phone number’s on it.”

  “I see.”

  “I realize what I did was wrong, pet, but after all, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal, is it?” said Delyth. “I mean, really, when you think about it, what harm was done? She did get her entries in on time, and one of them, if I remember correctly, came in first.”

  Bloody hell, thought Penny. This must be the third time I’ve heard someone say it doesn’t really matter that Florence almost didn’t get her entries into the competition, because it all got sorted in the end, so where’s the harm? What kind of thinking is that? And it didn’t all come right in the end, because Florence was denied entry into two categories, which she very well might have won.

  “Yes, her raspberry jam came in first,” said Penny in a tone almost as sharp as Florence’s jam, “but her marmalade didn’t make it into the judging, for some reason. And her cake was ruined and didn’t make it into the judging, either, so as you can imagine, she was upset and disappointed. And who can blame her?”

  Delyth looked at her hands in her lap and Mari did not reply.

  “All right,” said Penny. “You didn’t want her entering a cake in the competition. I don’t suppose you know anything about her marmalade, do you?”

  “No, we don’t,” said Mari. “After we dropped off my entries, we went home, and we didn’t go anywhere near that marquee un
til the next day.”

  “But, that’s not—” Delyth began, but Mari stopped her with a thunderous look.

  “And even if we had gone back to the tent,” Mari continued, “how would Delyth have known which entries were Florence’s? The judging’s supposed to be anonymous, isn’t it? Isn’t that the whole point? And you were right there checking them in, so how would we have got past you?”

  “I think you wanted to say something, Delyth,” Penny said, as if Mari hadn’t spoken. “Please finish what you started to say.”

  Delyth did not reply, so Penny prompted her. “‘That’s not right? That’s not how I remember it? That’s not how it happened?’ Were you about to say something like that? Is that what you wanted to say?” She held her breath and waited.

  “She was going to say, ‘But that’s not quite right,’” said Mari, “because I did go back to meet someone.”

  “We’ve gone this far, we might as well tell her everything,” Delyth said with a resigned sigh.

  “All right,” said Mari. “I met up with Elin Spears. She wanted to find a way to get someone’s entry out of the competition. She thought if we could get into the tent and take the entry, we could make it look as if someone—Joyce Devlin or Barbara Vickers, or maybe even you”—she flicked a hand in Penny’s direction—“had dropped one of the jars. And if it didn’t break on its own, we would have helped it along.”

  And then Penny understood. “It was you and Elin I heard talking at the marquee on the Friday night, just after eight, when the entries closed. I’d gone back to get something, and I overheard two women talking about not wanting someone to win. So Elin wanted Florence out of the competition, too.”

  Mari looked puzzled. “Florence? No, not Florence,” she said with a touch of impatience. “Elin wanted Gaynor’s entries out of the competition.”

  “Gaynor! So Florence wasn’t the target, then?”

  “No, Elin would have been happy if Florence had won. She didn’t care. Anyone but that cow Gaynor, really.”

  “So then it was you who took Florence’s marmalade?”

  “No, because when we got inside the tent, we could see Joyce and Barbara over in the tea area, so we gave it up as a bad job and left before they spotted us.”

  “And if you had been successful, how would you have known which jar was Gaynor’s?” Penny asked.

  “Because she always enters hers with those daft red-and-white metal lids. They’re allowed. You can buy those jars at the local kitchen-supply store, so they’re quite common. But no one else uses them.”

  “And did you see Gaynor Lewis while all this was going on?” Penny asked.

  “No,” Mari replied. “I didn’t.”

  “And have you told this to the police?” Penny asked.

  “No. Why would we tell them that we tried to steal Gaynor’s marmalade?”

  Now it was Penny’s turn to show impatience. “It’s not about the marmalade! You need to tell them you were at the marquee after eight o’clock on the Friday night. Gaynor Lewis died that night. You might have seen or heard something important, something that you don’t even know is important. Tell the police everything you did, and saw, and heard, and they’ll decide. You might have the one key piece of information that could help them find a killer.” She let the words hang in the air, and when Delyth lobbed a fearful glance in Mari’s direction, which she returned, Penny knew her words had done their work.

  “And did you see Elin Spears leave the show grounds?” Penny asked.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Mari. “She was planning to meet Carwyn somewhere, maybe over by his chickens, and they’d go home together. Or maybe she was going to go home and he was going to stop the night there with his blessed chickens, like the rest of the farming community. Anyway, she was waiting for him to come back.”

  “What do you mean, ‘come back’?”

  “Oh, she’d forgotten something important that was needed for the show, and he’d gone home to fetch it for her,” said Mari.

  “And what was that?”

  Delyth laughed. “She’d only gone and forgotten the Women’s Guild cake set! The cake stand and server for the Best in Show cake display. The winner takes it home every year, and is supposed to bring it back the next year. Elin had it because she’d won the previous year. Only she’d forgotten it, and it has to be returned the night before so that the judges can put the winning cake on it the next morning.”

  “And Carwyn went home to get it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suggest you tell that to the police, too,” Penny said. She sighed. “Well, thank you. I appreciate your clearing up part of the mystery, anyway. At least we know now who made the telephone call to Florence.” Now all we have to do is find out who removed Florence’s marmalade from the tent and how it ended up in Barbara Vickers’s kitchen, she added to herself.

  Delyth and Mari exchanged worried looks. “What is it?” Penny asked. “If you know something, please tell me.”

  “Are you going to tell her?” Delyth asked. “Florence Semble, I mean. Are you going to tell her it was me who rang her and told her to bring her entries on Saturday morning?”

  “She already knows it was you. Or at least she knows it was one of you. It was your calling her pet on the telephone that gave you away. And then we heard you say it again while we were having our coffee at the refreshment stop on the way to Speke Hall. But you were sitting behind us, so we weren’t exactly sure which one of you it was. We were curious about your use of the word pet, by the way. I’m not an expert on accents, by any means, but you don’t speak like someone from the North of England. I wondered why you use the word pet?”

  “Do I?” Delyth’s eyebrows shot up. Penny and Mari spoke at the same time, assuring her she did.

  “It must be something I picked up from my mother, then. She used to call everyone pet. She came from Newcastle upon Tyne.”

  “Well, you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about,” said Penny as she stood up. Delyth showed her to the door, and when she returned to the sitting room, Mari said, “Never mind the shopping for a minute. It’ll keep. Come here.” She patted the seat of the sofa beside her, and Delyth sat.

  “You do realize what you did was very wrong, don’t you?” Mari said. Delyth nodded miserably. “I know you did what you did because you wanted me to win, but if you think for one minute that I’d be happy knowing I’d won because of what you did, then you don’t know me.” As Delyth started to cry, Mari put her arms around her. “Don’t you see, if you have to cheat to win, you haven’t won at all?”

  Twenty-six

  On the walk back to the Spa following her conversation with Delyth and Mari, Penny reflected on what she’d heard. Her mind raced as she tried to put all the pieces together.

  The door to the Spa was unlocked, but Rhian, the receptionist, had left for the day and the remaining staff were tidying up and getting everything ready for the morning. Penny headed down the short corridor to Victoria’s office and slipped into the visitor’s chair.

  “You’re welcome to sit there as long as you like,” said Victoria, “but I’m leaving. If you’d like to come upstairs and have a glass of wine with me, let’s go.”

  They locked the main entrance behind Eirlys and Alberto, then headed back through the empty, silent space and upstairs to Victoria’s flat. Victoria poured each of them a glass of white wine and they moved to her sitting room. Penny took an appreciative sip as she glanced out the window.

  “It amazes me how fiercely competitive the women are who enter their preserves or baking in the agricultural show,” said Penny. “It’s all so confusing, who wanted who out of the competition and who wanted to win.”

  “Everybody wanted to win,” said Victoria. “That’s why they enter.”

  “Well, true. But it seems that some wanted to win more than others.”

  Penny explained what she’d learned during her visit with Delyth and Mari.

  “I’m so confused,” said
Victoria. “Tell me again about the jars. Help me get my head around it.”

  “Well-meaning but misguided Delyth rang Florence and told her to bring her entries on Saturday morning. She did this because she thought if Florence missed the deadline, her entries would be out of the competition, and her chum Mari’s cake would be in with a chance. But although Florence did get her entries in on time, her carrot cake didn’t make it into the competition because it ended up under the table with the body of Gaynor Lewis, and Elin Spears won the cake competition anyway, so poor Delyth’s scheme was all for nothing. And that’s the end of her involvement.

  “The voices I heard at the tent when I returned to get the program were those of Elin Spears and Mari Jones. Elin wanted Gaynor’s marmalade out of the competition. Are you with me? But when they saw Joyce and Barbara in the refreshment area of the marquee, they lost their nerve and beat a hasty retreat. And in fact, unbeknownst to them, Gaynor had arrived late, and at that point, I don’t think her marmalade had been accepted yet into the competition. That probably happened a few minutes later, after Elin and Mari had left, when Gaynor arrived at the tent, met up with Joyce Devlin, and Joyce allowed Gaynor’s entries into the competition. You know all about that because you were there when Joyce explained that bit. And Joyce and Barbara left, and at that point, Gaynor must have been alone in the tent and met the killer.”

  “And Florence’s marmalade disappeared.”

  “Right. Florence’s marmalade disappeared, and ended up in Barbara Vickers’s kitchen. So as I said to Bethan, it seems to me that what connects the two murders is Florence’s marmalade. It was in the tent, where the first victim died, and the police found it in the kitchen of the second victim. Or do you think that’s too much of a leap?”