The Marmalade Murders
Page 21
Twenty-eight
First thing Monday morning, carrying a plastic bag, Penny entered the Llanelen police station and asked to speak to Inspector Bethan Morgan. She was shown into an interview room and told that Bethan would be with her soon. After several minutes, Bethan entered the room and closed the door quietly behind her.
“Penny. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve come to share my theory with you, and if I’m right, you could be making an arrest before lunchtime.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” said Bethan as she took the chair opposite Penny.
“But first, let’s get something out of the way,” said Penny. “Andrea Devlin had nothing to do with either murder. I heard she’d been brought in for questioning. Mrs. Lloyd was worried about her. You didn’t find anything, did you?”
“No. She wasn’t at Speke Hall on the day Barbara Vickers died, and the mate she’s staying with in Betws said she was at home on the Friday evening Gaynor Lewis died, from eight o’clock onward. She’s in the clear. But we wanted to talk to her again about something Gaynor Lewis said to her during that conversation they in the café. So now that you’re reassured on that score, tell me what you think happened.”
“The chain of events started when someone took Florence’s marmalade by mistake, and after that, everything got out of hand. I never knew entering cakes and jam in an agricultural show could be so competitive and cutthroat, but apparently it is.”
“Only not usually to this extreme.”
“We thought an insecure rival wanted Florence’s marmalade out of the competition, but it wasn’t that at all. You see, Florence’s marmalade was taken by mistake—Elin Spears wanted Gaynor Lewis’s marmalade out of the competition but was unable to get it. So she rang her partner, Carwyn, who had gone home to fetch the cake stand set that she’d forgotten, and asked him to get Gaynor’s marmalade for her. ‘The jar will have a red-and-white top,’ Elin told him. But what she didn’t know was that Florence’s jar had a red-and-white gingham fabric topper, whereas Gaynor’s was just a red-and-white metal screw-on lid.
“When Carwyn got to the tent, Joyce and Barbara had just left, but his former wife, Gaynor, who’d arrived late with her entry, was still there. I don’t know what she was doing, but probably she was looking at the entries. She wouldn’t have known which entries belonged to the members of the Women’s Guild, but she would have wanted to have a good look at them anyway.”
“Hold it there, Penny,” said Bethan. “I’m just going to switch on the recorder.”
On Bethan’s signal, Penny continued.
“So while she’s stood there looking at the entries, in comes Carwyn with the Women’s Guild cake stand, server, and knife that Elin had asked him to fetch from home. She’d won the Best in Show award for baking the year before, so she got to keep the silver set for a year, and then had to return it for this year’s show.
“Gaynor and Carwyn had a hard breakup. Gaynor hated him, and Elin and Gaynor hated each other. Even after all these years, there was a lot of bitterness festering among all three of them. And I believe Carwyn and Gaynor got into a terrible argument because Gaynor was about to take away the most precious thing in Carwyn’s life.”
“Which was?”
“At first, I thought the murder might have something to do with his chickens, which he loved so much, and then I realized it was something more precious.”
Bethan’s eyes widened.
“Macy. His granddaughter, whom he loves more than anything. Gaynor and Michelle were planning to move to Spain, and naturally they’d take Macy with them.”
“So Carwyn and Gaynor get into a violent argument,” Bethan said, picking up the narrative. “He begs her not to take Macy away. She taunts him, and as she turns to walk away, he snaps, grabs the Women’s Guild cake knife off the table, and stabs her.”
“And now, of course, he’s panicked,” said Penny. “He’s horrified by what he’s done. He’s got to do something with the body, and quick. Joyce could return at any minute to lock up. So he stuffs the body under the table and tries to hide it, along with Florence’s cake, which Gaynor had put her hand in when she grabbed at the table as she collapsed.”
“Yes,” Bethan said. “That matches the forensics.”
“And then Carwyn grabs the jar of marmalade with the red-and-white top that Elin told him to get, and he legs it. He can’t get out of there fast enough. But he’s grabbed Florence’s marmalade by mistake, not Gaynor’s,” said Penny. “Because when Joyce accepted Gaynor’s marmalade into the competition, she didn’t put it with the others. She told Victoria and me that she left it at the end of the table. Maybe she intended to put it with the others later, when she locked up, and maybe she did, and that’s where the judges found it in the morning.”
“So Carwyn took a jar of marmalade with a red-and-white top home to Elin, just as she’d asked him to do,” said Bethan.
“Right. And as soon as she saw it she knew it was the wrong jar. You can imagine how annoyed she must have been after all the trouble she’d gone to, that Carwyn had taken the wrong jar, and at the show the next day, Elin discovers that Gaynor has won after all. And instead of throwing the jar out, as she probably should have, she’s too thrifty and can’t bear waste, as she said at Macy’s party, so she gives the marmalade to Barbara as a little gift, passing it off as her own,” explained Penny.
“And Barbara realized the marmalade wasn’t Elin’s, probably because it was better,” said Bethan. “And poor Barbara was starting to realize what had happened, and Elin overheard her telling you on the way to Speke Hall that she had noticed something odd, and she realized Barbara was on her way to working out what had happened, because Elin had given her Florence’s marmalade—so either Elin or Carwyn had been in the tent after the deadline closed. And all it would take would be a conversation with Joyce and she and Barbara would work out what must have happened.”
“Exactly. So Elin alerted Carwyn, who followed Barbara into Speke Hall, confronted her, and tried to kill her to keep her quiet,” Penny concluded.
“The scene set up at Speke Hall bothered me,” said Bethan. “It seemed cumbersome that the killer would attack Barbara, grab the cordon and ‘Wet Paint’ sign, set all that up, then risk being seen while he escaped. But after talking to Merseyside, we discovered there’s a simple explanation, as there almost always is.”
“Let me guess: He set up the cordon and ‘Wet Paint’ sign before he attacked Barbara,” said Penny, “thinking it would keep people out and he wouldn’t be disturbed. And how did he get away? He used the ladder beside the chimney flue. His hobby is rock climbing. Scrambling up that thing would have been easy for a fit person like him.”
“So how did you put all this together?”
“Well, the thing that struck me about both murders is that they weren’t planned. You can just imagine the killer panicking, trying to hide the bodies, and knowing they’d soon be discovered. So I thought about who could pull off something like that.”
“The second murder,” said Bethan, “was one murder too many. It was really sloppy. When killers are trying to think on the fly, they always make mistakes. Mistakes that cost them dearly.”
“And there’s something else,” said Penny. “Something that might connect Carwyn to the Gaynor Lewis murder. On the morning of the show, he wasn’t wearing his green puffy vest that he always wears. I think he couldn’t wear it because there was blood on it from when he killed his wife the night before.”
“He probably got rid of it,” said Bethan. “Too bad.”
“But he didn’t get rid of everything,” said Penny. “It had little pins attached to it. Farming pins and chickens. I’ll bet if you were to have them tested—”
“Gaynor’s DNA!” exclaimed Bethan, interrupting Penny.
“Yes,” said Penny. “But I don’t have anything that actually places Carwyn in the marquee at the time of the murder.”
“Maybe you don’t have to.”
“We have something. A piece of evidence we held back from the public. When we analyzed the carrot cake Gaynor Lewis took down with her, we found a feather stuck in the cake. Could be a chicken feather.”
Penny opened the bag she had brought with her and removed a rolled-up white towel. She carefully unrolled it and pointed to the fluffy white feather with a dab of pink nail varnish on it.
“Did it look like this, by any chance?”
Bethan grinned. “Where did you get that?”
“I did a birthday manicure for Macy Lewis, and she touched her granddad’s vest and got this feather stuck in her nail varnish. It was still tacky.”
“Well, I can’t use that one—there’s an issue with chain of custody—but I will send someone to his farm to collect feathers from his chickens and we’ll DNA them. And once he’s been fingerprinted, we can see if his prints are a match to the sets Merseyside were able to recover from the bedroom at Speke Hall. The handle of the cake knife had been wiped. Even the most amateur of murderers would know to do that.”
“I’m sure you interviewed Carwyn Lewis about his whereabouts at the time Gaynor was killed.”
Bethan sighed. “Of course we did. He lied to us. But that’s not unusual. Everybody lies to us.”
“And Elin?”
“Quite likely an accomplice. We’ll dig deeper to see if she assisted in the cover-ups. We’ll be bringing both of them back for questioning, and as you said, we could very well be charging the pair of them by lunchtime. Or by this evening at the latest.”
Carwyn Lewis was arrested that afternoon and charged the next morning with the murders of Gaynor Lewis and Barbara Vickers, and Elin Spears was arreseted on suspicion of being an accessory in the murder of Barbara Vickers.
“Why couldn’t Gaynor have left us in peace?” Carwyn said. “All we wanted was to be happy. She should have just stepped aside and let us be happy.”
Twenty-nine
“Remember that time we went to see puppies at Joyce Devlin’s kennels and how adorable they were?” Penny said to Victoria a few days later over lunch.
“I certainly remember seeing the puppies, but I think the real point of the visit was so you could do a bit of sleuthing,” Victoria replied.
“Well, how would you like to go and see some kittens this afternoon? With no sleuthing involved.”
“Kittens! What do you want with another cat?” Victoria took a sip of wine. “Maybe I should get a cat.”
“Maybe you should! Everybody should have a cat! Because Florence is about to get one.”
“She is?”
“Mrs. Lloyd rang to say Florence’s birthday is coming up and Florence has been pining for a cat for the longest time. But Mrs. Lloyd insists it must be a better class of cat, like my Harrison, and she’s asked me to find one.”
“And you found one?”
“I found six!”
Victoria laughed. “And where did you find these kittens?”
“Emyr’s cat had another litter and they’re ready for their new homes. He’s delighted Florence is going to take one.”
“I bet he is.”
* * *
Emyr Gruffydd’s home, Ty Brith Hall, was situated high above the town of Llanelen and offered stunning views over the valley to the Snowdonia range of mountains. Sometimes snowcapped, sometimes wreathed in mist and low-lying clouds, but always beautiful, the rugged mountains filled Penny with awe. She never tired of their majestic grandeur and never took them for granted. She stood for a moment in the afternoon sunlight admiring them, and then, when the sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel announced Emyr’s arrival, she and Victoria turned to greet him.
“Hello. Here for a kitten, are you? They’re in the greenhouse. Let’s go see them.”
He led the way around to the back of the house, past beautifully tended gardens, to a large greenhouse. He opened the door and about halfway down, beside a screened opening where one of the panes of glass had been removed for ventilation, sat a large shallow box. In it, a black mother cat fended off the playful advances of her frisky brood of five kittens, including a little grey one that looked like Penny’s Harrison, a black-and-white one, and a tabby.
“I thought there were six,” said Victoria.
“The first one left for her new home this morning,” said Emyr. “But I’m sure there’s one here for Florence. Does she want a girl or a boy?”
“I’m not sure,” said Penny, “and I don’t think it matters, because we know the one we’re taking, don’t we, Victoria?”
“We sure do,” said Victoria, pointing to one. Emyr picked it up and handed it to her. “It’s a little girl.”
Victoria cuddled it, rubbing her chin on its soft round head. “This’ll do for today,” she said, “but I may be back to get one for myself.”
“I’ll give you a little box to put her in,” said Emyr.
Penny held the box on her lap as they drove to Rosemary Lane.
“Is Florence expecting you?” Victoria asked.
“Mrs. Lloyd is, but Florence isn’t. It’s meant to be a surprise.”
Penny cradled the box as they walked up the path to the front door.
“I’ll get it, Florence,” Mrs. Lloyd called out in response to their knocking. A moment later, the door opened, and Mrs. Lloyd stood there, her blue eyes twinkling as she rubbed her hands together.
“Oh, girls, have you got it? Come in, do!” she said, leading the way to the sitting room. “Have a seat. I’ll just get Florence.” She bustled out of the room, and a moment later her voice carried into the sitting room. “No, never mind that right now, Florence; it can wait. Penny and Victoria are here and they’ve got something to show you.”
Florence entered the sitting room and smiled a cheerful hello. “Sit yourself down, Florence,” Mrs. Lloyd said, gesturing at the sofa. “You’re going to want to be sitting down for this.” Florence did as she was told, and Penny placed the little brown box on her lap. “Go on,” Mrs. Lloyd urged, barely able to contain her excitement. “Open it.”
Florence pulled the flaps apart, peered into the box, and gasped. She reached into the box, and as she lifted out a marmalade kitten, Victoria leapt up and pulled the box away. The marmalade kitten crouched on Florence’s lap as she steadied it with one hand and stroked it gently with the other. “It’s a female,” said Victoria.
“What do you think you might call her?” Mrs. Lloyd asked.
“Oh, I really have no idea, but thank you all so much.” Florence’s blue eyes glistened with unshed tears and the contours of her face, softened with love, and the uplifted corners of her mouth made her look twenty years younger. She cradled the kitten and, holding it high on her chest, rubbed her cheek against its soft striped orange-and-white fur. “Oh, she’s adorable.” She admired the kitten’s front paws, then looked at Mrs. Lloyd, then at Penny, then at Victoria. “Are we keeping her? Is she really mine?”
“She is,” said Mrs. Lloyd, dabbing her eyes. “Goodness me, Florence, if I’d known how happy this was going to make you, I would have got you a wee cat ages ago. She’ll make you a lovely little pet.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Florence. “Let’s call her Pet!”
ALSO BY ELIZABETH J. DUNCAN
PENNY BRANNIGAN MYSTERY SERIES
Murder Is for Keeps
Murder on the Hour
Slated for Death
Never Laugh as a Hearse Goes By
A Small Hill to Die On
A Killer’s Christmas in Wales
A Brush with Death
The Cold Light of Mourning
SHAKESPEARE IN THE CATSKILLS MYSTERY SERIES
Ill Met by Murder
Untimely Death
Much Ado about Murde
About the Author
Elizabeth J. Duncan is a two-time winner of the Bloody Words Best Light Mystery Award and has been a finalist for the Agatha and Arthur Ellis Awards. She has worked as a writer and ed
itor for some of Canada’s largest newspapers, including the Ottawa Citizen and The Hamilton Spectator. She lives in Toronto, Canada, and enjoys spending time each year in North Wales. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Also by Elizabeth J. Duncan
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.