A Murder to Die For

by Stevyn Colgan

  ‘Best I get off home then,’ said Shunter, slapping his copy of Dalí Plays Golf on the bar. ‘Here, you can add Shirley Pomerance to the pub library. I’m admitting defeat.’

  ‘G’night, Frank. Safe walk home.’

  ‘G’night, Vic.’

  As Shunter left the pub, the now empty coach drove past him, noisily clunking into a kerbside pothole and soaking his shoes and socks with rainwater. He cursed the pothole and then the coach driver as he pulled his jacket collar up to offer some protection from the elements. And as he set off on the short squelching walk home, he mused upon the nature of obsession. What compelled people to become fixated upon a particular author or series of books? he wondered. Perhaps it was something deep and primeval; a need to belong, to be part of a tribe. He’d read that loneliness had become an epidemic in the twenty-first century as families fragmented and people migrated to the cities in search of work. It was possible to feel completely alone and isolated within a large population because you were surrounded by millions of strangers. Finding people who shared your passions, whether they focused on a particular movie franchise, or a boy band, or a sports team, or even the novels of a murder-mystery writer, meant that you were once again part of a tribe, which was infinitely better than being alone. That said, tribalism had its dark side too. As an outside observer, Shunter had difficulty understanding why the members of the many and various Agnes Crabbe-related fan clubs and societies always seemed to be at odds with each other. Surely if they all liked her books they had more in common than they had differences? It made no sense.

  The rain became heavier again and he quickened his pace, thankful for the lack of hills. One reason why Nasely and the villages surrounding it were favourite retirement spots was the flatness of the countryside. It was perfect for the slower driver, the older car, the wheelchair user and the tipsy retired detective making his way home. It was not so good for mobile phone reception though, as there were lots of trees and scant high spots on which to erect transmitters. Nor were there any telecommunication masts, thanks to an older generation of influential not-in-my-backyard campaigners. It was a shame they hadn’t been so vocal when the planning application for the Empire Hotel was first made public, he thought to himself.

  He reached his cottage and, noting with some degree of relief that all the lights were off, opened the front door quietly and went inside.

  Helen Greeley, jetlagged and impressively tipsy for ten in the morning, lifted the microphone to her mouth and then winced as a jarring shriek of feedback ripped through the peaceful stillness outside the Agnes Crabbe Cottage Museum. Below the platform on which she stood, the several hundred festival-goers who had come to watch the opening ceremony recoiled in horror. After the respectful minute of silence they’d just held for Denise Hatman-Temples and Gaynor Nithercott, the hideous blast of noise had come as a sudden and painfully unpleasant shock.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Greeley. ‘But thank you all for that silent tribute to those poor ladies who died last night. So sad. Isn’t it, though? And both were fan-club presidents too. It’s a real tragedy. But I know that both Bernice and Gaynor wouldn’t want us to be sad. No. They’d want us all to be happy. Well, not so sad anyway. They would want us to enjoy the festival just as they would have done if they were still alive and not dead. So that’s what we’re going to do, okay? We’re going to have a great time. Aren’t we? Yes?’

  The audience cheered and applauded.

  ‘It’s Denise, not Bernice,’ grumbled Esme Handibode.

  ‘Yes, we are going to have a great festival!’ said Greeley. ‘So I now declare the thirteenth annual Agnes Crabbe Festival of Murder-Mystery . . . er, Festival officially open!’

  She fired the ceremonial starting pistol into the air and grimaced at the sudden noise. This was the signal for the town band from nearby Bowcester to strike up with a stirring rendition of ‘Jerusalem’ to honour the fact that both of the crash victims had been very active within the Women’s Institute. The crowd sang along lustily.

  ‘“And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green—”’

  Standing deep inside the crowd and made anonymous by the fact that they were wearing almost exactly the same outfits as everyone else, Mrs Handibode and Miss Wilderspin applauded as the song came to an end. The crowd began to disperse and Mrs Handibode tutted loudly.

  ‘Why people dote on her I have no idea. She is clearly what the unkinder corners of the media refer to as a bimbo. Pretty and stupid. And, I suspect, drunk.’

  ‘She is very pretty, though, isn’t she?’ said Miss Wilderspin. ‘And so brave.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ said Mrs Handibode in mild irritation. ‘But good looks butter no parsnips, Molly, brave or otherwise.’

  ‘I do like your outfit,’ said Miss Wilderspin, changing the subject. ‘I can never wear green. It doesn’t suit me at all.’

  Esme Handibode glanced down at her lime-green summer dress, complete with golden tasselled hem. It was set off by a long string of pearls, a gold handbag and a green cloche hat decorated with silk daffodils.

  ‘That’s because of your blood pressure, Molly,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Green would clash horribly with the pinky purple colour in your cheeks.’

  ‘And I’d look like a tennis ball. I have put on quite a few pounds in the last year or two.’

  ‘But your outfit is nice,’ said Mrs Handibode, appraising her rotund friend’s cocktail dress. ‘Though I’d have chosen a colour other than white. It can be a dirt magnet.’

  ‘It was the only outfit in the fancy dress shop that fitted me,’ said Miss Wilderspin.

  ‘Then let’s hope you don’t get too grubby,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘Now, here is my plan for today’s—’

  ‘Do you think we might have a look at the museum?’ interrupted Miss Wilderspin. ‘I mean, as we’re right here outside. I’ve always wanted to visit.’

  ‘Everyone does that on the first day and it will be a frightful crush,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘Mark my words, we’ll be better off leaving that until last thing tomorrow when it will be practically empty.’

  ‘Oh but—’

  ‘Now. I’ve designed an itinerary that will maximise the benefit we get from today,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘We’ll start at the western edge of the village at the Dunksbury Road canal bridge. As you rightly mentioned last night, there’s a spot on the towpath there that equates to where the village blacksmith was murdered. Come along.’

  ‘Yes, Esme,’ said Miss Wilderspin with a silent sigh and a last longing look at Helen Greeley signing autographs outside Agnes Crabbe’s cottage.

  Frank Shunter mouthed ‘good morning’ to a brace of older ladies and wondered whether he’d already said hello to them today. It was so hard to tell. The streets were full of Millies, as the fans liked to call themselves, all dressed as Agnes Crabbe’s detective heroine Millicent Cutter. Flapper-style summer dresses, cloche hats and strings of pearls proliferated, which made identification of individuals difficult unless there was something particularly striking about the wearer. So far this morning he’d seen a couple who were very tall and several who were excessively overweight. He’d also seen a pair of African-Caribbean Millies, a Japanese Milly, some wheelchair-using Millies and a Muslim Milly, who’d been wearing a hijab under her hat. Many were wearing wigs that mimicked Miss Cutter’s fashionable short bob, and some of the younger fans, most of whom were boarders from Harpax Grange, had opted for a sexier look with shorter skirts. But, for the most part, the Millies were middle-aged Caucasian women in 1920s dress, pretty much indistinguishable from each other. Those few men he’d spotted were also mostly dressed as Millicent Cutter, although some had come dressed as Agnes Crabbe’s other, less popular detective, Colonel Trayhorn Borwick. A handful were cosplaying as Miss Cutter’s nemesis and on-off love interest, Dr Florian Belfrage, and rumour had it that their choice of outfit was a coded message that these were men on the lookout for a festival romance.

  Ove
rnight, the entire feel of the village had changed from sleepy rural retreat to bustling convention site. Shunter had come into the village to catch the opening ceremony but, despite being told how many attendees there were likely to be, he still hadn’t been quite prepared for the size of the crowds. Sheer weight of numbers made it difficult to even walk along the High Street and he now understood why it had been so necessary to remove Savidge’s burger van and any other vehicles. A morris side was performing outside the Masonic Hall, their clacking sticks, stomping feet and jingling bells almost drowning out the wheezing accordion music that accompanied them. Shunter watched them capering for a short while and tapped his foot to the tune, a curiously popular local folk song about divine retribution called ‘Go to Hell!’, and then pushed his way through the crowds towards the village hall to buy a ticket for an event at 12 p.m. A criminologist from Oxford was due to give a talk titled ‘Homicide as a Spectator Sport’, and he strangely felt compelled to go and watch. Based on the title alone, he was pretty sure that he was going to hate it.

  It was Dan George, making an early start with his milk round, who discovered the body under the bridge. In recent months, Dan had come to believe that the visions of Armageddon that had once plagued his nights were behind him, but the sight of the blacksmith’s corpse, sprawled in an ungainly posture, the mutilated chest opened up like a gory flower, resurrected those images of horror that had tormented him, befuddling a brain that was still attempting to recover from drumfire. The constant crash echoing inside his head became suddenly louder and louder still and he was unable to stop the tears rolling down his reddened cheeks. Bottles tumbled from his nerveless quivering fingers and shattered on the ground.

  ‘Stretcher bearers!’ he yelled, his voice reverberating among the arches. ‘Stretcher bearers!’

  Mrs Handibode was reading aloud from a well-thumbed and heavily annotated copy of Swords into Ploughshares in order to work out exactly where Agnes Crabbe must have been standing when she’d described the grisly murder by scythe of blacksmith Maynard Grader. One peculiar and particular aspect of Esme Handibode’s obsession was the need to stand in places where the great writer had herself once stood, as if she could absorb some kind of echo of her past presence. Every year, the festival gave her the perfect opportunity to research the genesis of a particular novel and, this year, she had decided to work on Crabbe’s most celebrated work. Even outside of Crabbe fandom, Swords into Ploughshares was considered by many to be one of the finest murder mysteries ever written. As Mrs Handibode moved about, looking at the scene from various angles and taking the occasional photograph, Molly Wilderspin lay supine on a blanket, portraying the unfortunate smithy.

  ‘Can I get up now?’ she said miserably. ‘I think there’s an ant in my ear. I’m worried I may be lying on a nest.’

  ‘Yes, yes, please do,’ said Mrs Handibode, distractedly scribbling a note in her paperback. ‘I think we’re done here.’

  ‘In that case, I quite fancy that midday talk at the village hall,’ said Miss Wilderspin, getting to her feet clumsily and frowning at some dirty marks on her white dress. ‘It’s by an Oxford professor and it’s all about the psychology of crime fiction. If we head off now we’ll only miss the first few minutes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t enjoy it,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘No, we’ll go on to Mountebank Farm next. That’s where much of the novel was set. There are at least four locations on the site that I want to visit. There’s the cottage where Primrose Pengelly has her breakdown after the birth of—’

  ‘A farm? But I’m dressed in white,’ said Miss Wilderspin. ‘And it takes us even further out of the village. I would like to see some of the presentations, Esme. This is my first festival.’

  ‘There are talks all weekend,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘And we are going to the Andrew Tremens’s talk at four, aren’t we? That’s the important one, mark my words. And there’s a dance afterwards with a live jazz band, if you like that sort of thing.’

  ‘But that’s hours away. Surely we’re not going to be traipsing around a farm for all that time?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Oh thank goodness.’

  ‘No, we have Handcock’s Alley and The Butts to visit too,’ said Mrs Handibode with a smile. ‘Now come along. You’ll never be a proper Agnes Crabbe scholar if you don’t put in the legwork, Molly. So many murder scenes, so little time! Chop chop!’

  ‘Yes, Esme,’ said Miss Wilderspin with a sigh of resignation. Her feet hurt terribly in her patent leather shoes and she had begun to think murderous chop-chop thoughts of her own.

  Some people believed that Stingray Troy Phones Marina Savidge’s anger management issues stemmed from his loutish adoptive father’s insensitive decision to name him after his second favourite TV show and its primary characters. It had, after all, meant years of remorseless childhood bullying and even occasional insensitive sniggers from his teachers. Others suspected that his rage stemmed from a sense of abandonment; his birth mother had given him away and had never made any effort to contact him in later life, so it was entirely possible that this too was a contributory factor to his condition. However, the psychologists who had examined him as a child believed that his outbursts were rooted in something much deeper, some personality disorder or chemical imbalance of the brain that Mr and Mrs Savidge couldn’t have known about when they had first adopted him. Mrs Savidge often said that he had arrived on their doorstep wearing nothing but a nappy and a scowl, and that even if they’d named him Harry Happiness it wouldn’t have made any difference. He had rarely smiled as a baby and had grown into a stroppy boy, and then a resentful teenager, and finally an angry man whose patience was as thin as graphene. Medication helped to take the edge off his anger and, on the rare occasions he saw her, his adoptive mother nagged him to take it. She would also point out that, despite having similar psychological problems, and having endured an identical troubled childhood, his brother Thunderbirds Jeff Scott John Virgil Gordon Alan Parker Lady Penelope Savidge had grown up to become a jolly and gentle soul, a Christian missionary and a Church of England vicar to boot. Savidge would then remind his mother that it was self-medication with alcohol that had turned his brother into the man he was today and that the Reverend Thunderbirds’s situation was nowhere near as idyllic as she chose to paint it.

  Whether it was something the government had done (or not done) or despondency over the performance of the Nasely First XI, Savidge could always find something to get worked up about. His acquaintances had learned the hard way that there were certain dates when he was to be avoided at all costs, such as Halloween, when his extreme displeasure with Trick or Treating had caused more than one parent to complain to the police about a ‘red-faced man’ who had made their children watch as he’d eaten all of their sweets in front of them. It was also a good idea to give him a wide berth during local and general elections, and the one week when it was definitely in everyone’s best interests to avoid him was during the run-up to the Agnes Crabbe Murder-Mystery Festival. This year the event was celebrating the author’s one hundred and twentieth birthday, and was predicted to be the biggest to date. It was also anticipated that Savidge would achieve startling new levels of indignation.

  Despite having been open for business for less than an hour, he was already snapping at his clientele. The problem wasn’t a lack of customers; the queue for his van was substantial and he was one of only a handful of hot food stalls on the village green. The problem was that these were not his usual customers. The Saturday afternoon sports fans, or tipsy drinkers returning home from the Happy Onion that he met most evenings, weren’t that fussy about what they put into their bodies, but his festival queue was formed of more discerning eaters. Possessed of medical issues ranging from irritable bowel syndrome and coeliac disease to Crohn’s and diabetes, and living with a diversity of allergies that took in pretty much every ingredient he used, each customer had insisted upon asking long and involved questions before deciding whether to buy or, in
most cases, not to buy his food. Did he have gluten-free buns? Was there a reduced-sugar ketchup option? Did he use vegetarian cheese on his veggie burgers? Could he guarantee a total absence of nuts? He’d been asked to provide the provenance for the beef and whether the eggs in his mayonnaise were free-range and, with each and every interrogation, Savidge’s blood pressure had climbed a little higher and his replies had become considerably snippier. Meanwhile, the line of increasingly grumpy Miss Cutter look-alikes got longer and longer and, as the sun grew warmer, more irritated and inclined to drink a great deal more liquor.

  Savidge reached into his pocket and took out a bottle of pills.

  ‘When Aristotle said that “Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities”, he was, of course, articulating the idea that we may create worlds that don’t exist, but the denizens of those worlds must abide by the rules set by their creator if that world is to have integrity. For example, as readers, we can accept that Gandalf can do magic within the worlds of Middle-earth. But were he to do something jarringly out of place such as buying a sports car, or joining a reggae band, perhaps . . .’

  The audience tittered and guffawed at such ludicrous ideas. The speaker continued.

  ‘Middle-earth has its own reality and, consequently, if one of Tolkien’s characters were to do something that is quite possible in our world but highly improbable within the context of his world, our suspension of disbelief would collapse and it would destroy the character’s illusion of reality. And we can see the same effect in crime fiction. As Agnes Crabbe herself once said: “Great novelists persuade you to believe their lies.” Even the most outrageous plot device can be accepted by the reader as long as it follows the rules that the author has established. Let’s take the classic country house murder-mystery, for example. By that I mean stories like Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None or Agnes Crabbe’s Brood of Vipers. Both feature a “closed circle of suspects”: a group of people isolated from the outside world while a murder investigation takes place. It’s a situation that almost never occurs in the real world. It’s fantasy. It’s Cluedo for grown-ups. But it’s now such a staple of detective fiction that we don’t question its veracity. We accept it and, by doing so, it has become a common trope. And why not? It’s fun to guess whodunnit, which is why we prefer detective fiction to real life; the lie is preferable to the truth because the truth isn’t entertaining or intriguing enough. Ask any policeman and he’ll tell you that the real business of murder investigation is dull by comparison because the rules by which the game is played are the rules of our mundane reality.’