Peridale Cafe Mystery 21 - Profiteroles and Poison

by Agatha Frost

  “Was it full of excuses?” Stacey asked.

  “No.” Julia shook her head, drying her cheeks with her sleeve. “It felt honest. She knows what she did, and she’s not expecting forgiveness.”

  “Good.” Stacey’s foot tapped, eyes on the letter. “She’ll never get it.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to—”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Julia looked down at the letter, uncomfortable that she’d been the one to see Debra’s soul laid bare. “I know you said you weren’t hungry, but you know you need to keep your strength up. If not for yourself, for the baby. Breakfast at The Plough, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  Julia didn’t have much of an appetite after the shock of the letter. Still, she worked through the traditional English breakfast in solidarity. Stacey picked at hers, each mouthful clearly a chore, but she ate enough to satisfy Julia.

  “You can come to my place,” Julia offered when the server took their plates away. “Have a hot bath, get your head down?”

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I’m not staying. Ben took Jack up to Sheffield yesterday. He has family up there and thought it would be best to be away from everything going on. He said if I wanted to, I could join them whenever I felt like it.” She looked at the letter on the table, her fingers drumming. “I need to get away. Knowing she’s in that hospital is tormenting me. I need to be with my family.”

  “Is there still a chance for you and Ben?”

  “I hope so.” She rested her hand on her midriff. “We talked on the phone last night when they arrived. He said everything that’s happened has put things into perspective. He’s a good guy. I should never have done what I did.” Her eyes darted to the letter again. “All that time thinking my dad was missing messed with me. We kept arguing over little things. Silly things. He said he needed a break, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I shouldn’t have gone out drinking, but I just wanted to be anyone but the woman whose dad had disappeared. It had taken over every aspect of my life. I never thought for a minute it would lead to this. But he’s right. It puts things into perspective. Despite how it came to be, I can’t run away from the fact I’ll have a baby to look after.”

  “Do you think you’ll come back?”

  Stacey looked around the pub.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied, eyes fixed on the letter. “If we make things work, maybe we’ll just stay in Sheffield. Jack has always got along with his cousins, and I actually like Ben’s mum. He used to say we should move there. I didn’t want to leave my dad. If I had just forced him to come with us, none of this would have—”

  Tears came, and she scrubbed them away with a napkin.

  “You can’t think like that,” Julia said, resting a hand on Stacey’s. “This isn’t your fault. None of it.”

  “Thank you, Julia.” Stacey smiled through her tears. “You’ve been a good friend to me. It’s a shame I won’t be around when your little one comes. Promise you’ll send lots of pictures and keep me updated about how things go.”

  “Without a doubt.” Julia winked. “Why don’t I take you home? Might be time to squeeze in a nap before you have to pack?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Nature calls first.”

  Leaving the letter on the table, Julia went into the bathroom. She really did need to use the facilities, but the extra ten minutes on the closed toilet seat were for another reason altogether. When she returned, she looked at the letter again, almost certain it had moved several inches to the right.

  “Ready?”

  Stacey nodded but didn’t say a word. Instead of waiting for Julia to pick up the envelope, she pocketed it and left. The drive to Stacey’s cottage on the edge of the village was a quiet one, and their parting was brief. They hugged and promised to keep in touch, but Stacey seemed eager to get inside.

  Julia didn’t ask, but she was sure she’d read the letter.

  Leaving Stacey to pack for her second chance at life, Julia climbed into her car, ready to go home and, quite possibly, back to bed. As she reached the end of the road, the towers of Fern Moore came into view.

  Had anyone called Mavis to let her know what had happened? She’d said the Peridale gossip didn’t always make its way that far out, though something as big as a fire and a confirmed murderer must have?

  Julia had promised to keep Mavis updated.

  Ditching the plans for a nap, she drove to the Fern Moore estate and parked in the small car park. Though the day was gloomy, the courtyard was alive with a Saturday morning buzz. Music came from all directions, ironically less loud during the day. Parents played with their children on the wooden playpark while teens rode their bikes in circles. The simply decorated café was packed, as was the supermarket next door.

  After locking her car, Julia headed to the lift. The graffiti had snuck back into the lift, and one of the mirrors was smashed. The doors shuddered open a few inches below the top floor walkway, but at least it was still working.

  The cacophony of Saturday morning television of all varieties competed as she walked across the open concrete walkway to Mavis’s large corner flat. Hers was the loudest television of all. She recognised the programme as Saturday Kitchen Live, one of Julia’s maternity leave favourites.

  She knocked as hard as she could, but the television drowned out the sound.

  “Mavis?” she called through the door, trying to compete. “It’s Julia.”

  “Oh, Julia!” she heard from inside the flat. “I’m not feeling too well. Could you come back another time, dear?”

  “It’s about Lynn.” She paused, uneasy about shouting her news through a door. “I just wanted to know if anyone has told you they’ve found the person who poisoned her.”

  When no response came, Julia wondered if she should knock again. She lifted her knuckles to the wood but stopped. The silence said a lot. Mavis couldn’t have found any of this easy.

  As Julia walked away from the door, she heard a series of locks and chains from inside. The door opened, and Mavis’s face appeared through the cracks, her hair once again in rollers.

  “They’ve charged someone?” she asked.

  “As good as.” She walked back to the door. “You probably heard about the bookshop fire?”

  “Saw the smoke from here.”

  “It belonged to Debra Trotter,” she explained, wincing as the pain in her back worsened suddenly. “She was part of the book club. A lot of disturbing things have come out about her.”

  “Really?” Mavis opened the door fully. “Why don’t you come in and get that weight off your feet. You can tell me all about it.”

  “Thank you.”

  Julia’s foot skimmed a large plastic bag by the door as she walked into the flat. She looked down, and counted four lined up, bursting with clothes.

  “Been having a good clear out,” she called over the deafening volume. “I thought it was better to do it this side of Christmas. Please, take a seat.”

  Mavis pulled out a chair at the dining room table before crossing to the sitting room area. She picked up the remote control. Though Julia was sure Mavis would turn the television off – or at least lower the volume – she cranked the sound even higher.

  “Disturbing things, you say?”

  “Debra murdered her husband months ago, and Lynn knew about it,” Julia revealed as she lowered herself carefully into the seat. “Seems she couldn’t take the blackmail anymore.”

  “Well, I never.” Mavis hurried over to the table and took the seat next to Julia. “And she’s confessed?”

  “She’s still not come around after the fire.”

  “And she’ll live?”

  “It’s too early to say.”

  “But they have enough to charge her?” Mavis urged, clutching Julia’s hand. “They must have something on her to think that?”

  Julia looked down at her hand; the grip had begun to hurt. Mavis seemed to realise this, jerking her hand away before dabbing at her n
ose with a tissue retrieved from her cardigan’s sleeve.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” she said, looking into the tissue as she folded it. “It’s been a funny old week. I’m just relieved they’ve finally found out who poisoned poor—”

  A dull thud cut Mavis off, and they both looked towards the source of the noise. It seemed to have come from within Lynn’s bedroom.

  “My son’s come to stay,” she cried over the telly. “Spending some time with his mother over Christmas.”

  There was another bang, but Julia couldn’t focus on it. The pain in her back was excruciating, like someone was twisting a knife through her spine. Closing her eyes, she tried to focus on her breathing as a pressure she’d never felt before started to build.

  “Are you alright, dear?”

  “I don’t—”

  Julia cried out as the heaviness suddenly tightened, lighting up every nerve in her body as if nine months of built-up cramps were hitting all at once. She prayed for the pressure to release, but it only worsened, dragging out for an eternity.

  And then it eased, but something felt different.

  “I-I had Braxton Hicks a few days ago,” she said as she forced herself upright. “It’ll pass.”

  Remembering what Stacey had said about moving around, she walked across the flat until her foot struck something heavy and plastic. As she leaned against the back of the sofa, desperate to stretch out some of the knotted tension, she gazed down at Lynn’s cleaning caddy. For a moment, the sight of a shiny red ten-pound note poking through the side of the caddy made her forget about the pain.

  Another bang came from behind Lynn’s door. Even through Julia’s discomfort, the sound jogged something loose in her memory.

  Something Mavis had said on her first visit.

  “We never had kids. That was a mistake I see you’ve not made.”

  Julia looked to the dining table, but Mavis had moved to the kitchen. Clutching the counter, she looked as though she was staring out at Peridale in the distance.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Julia couldn’t ignore it. She pushed away from the sofa and walked the best she could over to the door, one eye on Mavis the whole time. She still wasn’t moving. Could she even hear it over the TV? Julia twisted the doorknob and pushed the door inwards.

  It wasn’t Mavis’s son.

  “Jade,” she gasped.

  Duct tape covered her mouth, leather belts bound her hands to the bedpost, and rope confined her outstretched legs. She gave the chest of drawers another weak kick, and the stack of DVDs bounced closer to the edge. Head lolling, she peered up at Julia. Her eyes widened, and deep in her throat behind the tape, she attempted to scream.

  The look in her eyes knocked Julia sick.

  Terror.

  Begging.

  Help me!

  Behind her, even above the thunderous noise coming from the TV speakers, Julia heard the very distinct sound of locks clicking into place. She turned, time slowing as though the nightmare scenario couldn’t possibly be real.

  “I should have known you’d be trouble from the moment you turned up,” Mavis said, still turned away as she slid the final chain across. “Coming from your perfect little village, sticking your nose into our problems like you have any idea what it’s like to live here. To survive here. If it wouldn’t have blown my cover, I’d have poisoned your peppermint tea then and there.”

  “Mavis, I—”

  “Do you know how long I’ve been planning this?” she shrieked as she turned around, a knife clenched in her fist. “Yeeaarrs. I waited for the perfect opportunity, the exact moment, so it could never be traced back to me. I’ve been so patient. I pretended to care, listening to Lynn arrogantly droning on about her silly games. Bragging about all the money she was making so she could finally get out of a place like this.” She snarled, all semblance of a sweet old woman gone. “The simpleton thought she was some master manipulator, living out one of her pathetic mobster films. Oh, she had no idea who she was spilling all her secrets to; she was as stupid as all the marks she was blackmailing. I used to run this place. The name Mavis Morgan used to mean something on this estate.”

  “Mavis, please—”

  “Do you think your silly little book club was the first?” Mavis took a step forward, led by the knife. “People like you don’t want to see people like us. How do you think she got the dirt on everyone? We’re nothing to you, and as stupid as she was, she recognised that and learned how to use it at an incredibly young age. When she told me about the woman who murdered her husband, the girl with the illegitimate baby, the snob about to lose it all . . . this was the jackpot. Finally, enough people wanted Lynn dead.”

  Mavis advanced, forcing Julia to back away as Jade’s screams grew to compete with the TV. She bumped into the sofa, diverting herself towards the kitchen. She dared to look behind her, but there were no other exits.

  “I’ve been gathering medication for yeeaarrs to concoct the perfect cocktail,” she said with a wicked smile. “A pill here, a pill there. Nothing anyone could trace back to me. I waited while Lynn collected my money, saving every penny. Then she told me about our very own Fern Moore prescription pusher, the most desperate mark of them all. Poor Jade wanted Lynn gone as much as I did, so we struck a deal. The fool believed it would all be over if she did what I said.” Her eyes lit up. “Did you think I was going to turn down such an opportunity? The police weren’t looking into me, and there was so much money to be made right here on my doorstep. I had enough dirt on her to force her to keep her mouth shut, and the money started flowing just like it used to in my heyday.”

  Mavis turned her gaze to the bedroom as Jade thrashed and kicked.

  “All you had to do was keep your mouth shut,” Mavis screamed, pointing the knife at the captive girl. “But no, you felt guilty.”

  She turned to Julia again and continued her advance.

  “She wanted to confess, and she made the idiotic mistake of coming here to tell me first. I couldn’t let her leave, could I? Even with you and your ex-pig husband sniffing around, nobody suspected sweet, frail, old Mavis, left behind lonely and useless.” She fluttered her lids with a down-turned mocking lip. “You ate it out of the palm of my hand. I showed you exactly what you wanted to see.”

  Julia backed into the kitchen counter. She reached behind herself and felt around for something, anything. Her fingers closed around a handle, and she brandished a rolling pin in front of her.

  “I played the player,” she hissed, her twisted grin widening. “Do you know how great that feels? At my age? If Lynn moved around like a shadow, I might as well have been invisible. And now, I’ve got my money, my alibi, and I’m sorry Julia, but I can’t let you—”

  Mavis’s eyes widened as her foot struck Lynn’s cleaning caddy. The caddy toppled, and the top tray full of products bounced out. Thousands of colourful banknotes spewed onto the kitchen linoleum.

  “H-help,” Mavis stuttered.

  As sharp as Mavis’s cunning mind remained, her body knew its age. She stumbled sideways at increasing speed in a way only the very young and the elderly seemed to. Balance lost, she tripped, her free hand flailing for purchase and finding nothing.

  Her head struck the edge of the kitchen counter.

  The knife flew from her hand.

  Julia didn’t think about anything she’d just heard or the pressure and pain growing at an alarming rate within her. She snatched up the knife and hobbled over to the dimly lit bedroom. Jade screamed and screamed as Julia cut her bindings, terrified tears streaming down her face. Jade ripped off the duct tape and dragged herself up. Like Mavis, she stumbled around the bedroom like her legs weren’t her own.

  But that didn’t stop her.

  Jade charged out of the room and launched herself at the front door. She fumbled with the locks, looking back at Mavis groaning on the kitchen floor.

  “Jade, wait,” Julia begged, clutching her belly as she struggled acros
s the flat to the door. “I think . . . I think my contractions have started.”

  Jade flung the door open and looked back at Julia, eyes full of apology. For a brief second, Julia thought Jade would leave her, but she ran back, wrapped her arm around Julia’s waist, and guided her from the flat.

  Once on the walkway, Jade didn’t linger. She set off at a sprint and vanished down the stairwell.

  Julia couldn’t focus on Jade.

  She needed to get away from Mavis.

  But the pain.

  Pain like she’d never experienced.

  Clutching the cold concrete balcony, she groaned as what she now knew had to be a contraction engulfed her like a wave. Heads turned to stare in her direction as her growl echoed around the courtyard and back at her.

  “Barker?” she panted down the phone as she hobbled along the walkway to the lift. “Fern Moore. Now. It’s happening. The baby’s coming.”

  16

  BARKER

  Waking up on the sofa with a stiff neck and no memory of falling asleep there was never pleasant. To do so to a phone call from his wife saying the one thing he’d been dreading for weeks was the closest Barker had got to wondering if he was even awake at all.

  There was no need to pinch himself.

  The panic in Julia’s voice hit him like an adrenaline shot straight to the heart.

  He didn’t think about changing from the clothes he’d slept in, brushing his teeth, or even flattening his inevitably cocked-up-on-one-side hair. One of the well-prepared emergency duffel bags he’d long since tucked away in the airing cupboard might as well not have existed, and he was halfway out the door before he remembered his shoes and keys.

  Only one thing mattered.

  The way he bombed through the village would have initiated a chase if there were police cars about, and it certainly would have added points to his licence if the village had more than a few broken speed cameras.

  Only one thing mattered.

  Tyres screeched and smoked as he braked without bothering to park in any of the spaces. He saw Julia’s car but didn’t stop to think about why she was there.