The Slay of the Land (The Heathervale Mysteries Book 1)

by Matilda Swift

  The Slay of the Land

  The Heathervale Mysteries, Volume 1

  Matilda Swift

  Published by Matilda Swift, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE SLAY OF THE LAND

  First edition. October 9, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 Matilda Swift.

  Written by Matilda Swift.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication and Notes

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  The Heathervale Mysteries

  Rotten to the Marrow (Book #0) – available here

  Dying over Spilled Milk (Book #2) – coming November 2019

  Sneak Peek: The Heathervale Mysteries Book 0: Rotten to the Marrow

  Dedication and Notes

  For Amy Harris, who always keeps me swimming.

  For Lianne Slavin, who suffered through all my teenage scribblings.

  ***

  Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?

  John Steinbeck

  ***

  Note: This book is written in British English. In Heathervale, people eat biscuits not cookies, wear trousers not pants, say got instead of gotten, and use all manner of charming spellings which should help you feel more at home in this book’s cosy English setting.

  1

  Arrina Fenn’s smile was threatening to get away from her. She was trying to constrain it to a small, engaged show of interest. But the smile kept tugging at its corners and threatening to widen into a full, satisfied grin at what Gillian DeViers was saying.

  Gillian had objected strenuously to the new college when they’d built it five years earlier. She’d been quoted in the local papers as saying that she’d ‘no complaint about the erection of a further education facility, in principle.’ Meaning, of course, that she had. ‘But this is a small, traditional village,’ she’d gone on to say. ‘It’s recorded in the Domesday Book!’ As though this meant that everything ought to stay as it had been in 1086.

  But five years later, there she sat, in the office of Arrina Fenn, the head of Heathervale College, asking in an extremely roundabout manner if she might, perhaps, possibly, in some sort of way, arrange to work there.

  ‘It just came to me,’ Gillian said, clasping densely ringed fingers together in the lap of her heavy tweed skirt. ‘I’ve so much to offer the younger generation. All of this experience that I’m sure would be invaluable to them. It seems selfish, really, not to share it.’

  Arrina wished there were other teachers around to overhear Gillian’s newfound enthusiasm for the college. But it was a week before the new school year, and there was nobody in the building besides herself.

  Even the college security guard, Sampson Morgan, was out running an errand, although that was perhaps for the best—any mention of Gillian DeViers set Sampson off on a rambling rant about a decades-long disagreement between the two of them that Arrina did not understand.

  Everyone in Heathervale had a grudge against someone. That was what happened in villages like this one—so small and packed so tightly with intertwined histories that nobody’s actions could go unnoticed.

  Recent news about Gillian, for example, had been spread with particular glee. The older woman’s money worries—her very messy divorce, the sale of her ponies, and the replacing of her jewellery with copies in paste—had been grist for the gossip mill of the Horse and Hound for several months by then. Arrina knew every embarrassing detail. Not that she would say anything to Gillian.

  Instead, she asked, ‘What subject did you see yourself specialising in?’

  Arrina then cocked her head to one side, as though she really was very interested. Her straight, russet-coloured fringe swept heavily across her forehead as she did so. She reached up to brush it away.

  A break-up at the end of last year had inspired a drastic haircut. The new style flattered Arrina’s strong cheekbones and made her feel younger and more daring than she had done in years—‘I am young,’ she often had to remind herself. She was not yet forty, though some days she felt about twice that.

  The problem with her hairstyle, though, was that it needed cutting regularly to keep its edges looking neat. Her hectic job as head teacher to a thousand students meant that even during school holidays, she struggled to find time for a trim. As she sat opposite Gillian DeViers, Arrina was forced to tuck and retuck her hair behind her ears, which she knew made her look nervy and weak. She thought through her plans for the next few days and wondered when she could fit a haircut in.

  ‘I would have thought that were obvious,’ Gillian said, leaning forwards and eyeing Arrina sharply across the desk.

  Arrina panicked as she realised she’d been thinking about her hair and had completely forgotten what she asked Gillian a moment earlier. Then she remembered—Arrina had asked Gillian what she thought she would teach.

  They ran a wide range of courses at Heathervale College, from the usual A-levels and BTECs for the sixth formers of local villages to vocation and access courses for adults. They even received regular enquiries from Americans asking about their degree programmes. Arrina had developed a form reply that apologised for the confusing use of the word college in the UK, which could mean either a subdivision of Oxford or Cambridge university, or an institution somewhere between secondary school and university itself. The college that she ran was, in fact, the latter, and so there were no degree programmes available.

  Even with the liberal spread of subjects that were covered at Heathervale College, it was impossible to imagine what Gillian DeViers could teach.

  ‘Well, business studies, of course,’ Gillian said. ‘I assume you have a vacancy now that Barbara is leaving.’

  Arrina barely contained an eye roll over this. Barbara’s retirement was supposed to be confidential. In Heathervale, though, confidentiality didn’t exactly exist.

  ‘Business studies?’ Arrina echoed, mostly to stall. She could not think of a sufficiently delicate response to Gillian’s suggestion.

  ‘Well, naturally, with my experience at the helm of Heathervale Feed and Farm Supplies, I’m really rather overqualified for a position such as this.’ This was decidedly untrue. The vacancy was for a business mentor with practical experience. Everybody in the village knew that it was Colette, Gillian’s younger sister, who had run the company since their parents passed away. ‘It will be a wrench to s
tep away from the business, but I sincerely believe that it’s important to give back to one’s community.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Arrina said. She clenched her teeth tightly as she smiled.

  In her head, she told Gillian to take a long walk off a short cliff, but out loud, she spoke to the older woman in depth about the role of business mentor at the college, trying gently to make it clear that Gillian was in no way suited for it.

  Gillian DeViers, even in her presently reduced circumstances, was a force to be reckoned with. She sat on several influential committees in Heathervale, most significantly, the Parish Council.

  The council was currently blocking Arrina’s application to have a direct access road built to connect the college to the bypass nearby. As much as it made Arrina’s stomach squirm to do it, she needed to be polite to the woman in the hopes of getting Gillian’s yes for Friday’s vote on the issue.

  Arrina kept a close eye on her watch though. Once she judged she’d given Gillian enough time to keep her happy, Arrina made up the details of an important phone call and escorted Gillian to the door of the office.

  In fact, Arrina was planning a phone call as soon as Gillian left, but it wasn’t work related. Arrina was intending to call Julie Wen, her best friend and baker extraordinaire. Julie would be busy with her work at Do-Re-Mi, the popular café in the centre of the village, but she was sure to make time to hear how Gillian DeViers had come to the college, asking for a job. Julie was not going to believe it.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Gillian said before she left.

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ Arrina said with an upward note at the end, which she hoped sounded more friendly than impatient.

  ‘Could you point me in the direction of the ladies? I need to powder my nose before heading home.’ Gillian said this as though it was a journey that required preparation. However, even if she got stuck behind the slowest of slow-moving tractors, the drive to her house on the other side of Heathervale would take no more than twenty minutes.

  ‘Right along this corridor and to the left,’ Arrina said with a broad smile. ‘You can’t miss it.’

  Then Arrina closed her office door and dropped down onto the sofa beside it. Dealing with Gillian was exhausting. Arrina was sure that she’d used up several lifetimes’ worth of tact already in her years as the college’s head. She was planning to return in her next life as a cat. Her own silver tom, Tinsel, certainly never worried about showing exactly how he felt.

  Arrina just hoped that she’d done enough to keep Gillian on her side until at least that Friday’s Parish Council vote. Surely, she’d been her politest and most respectful self.

  Only then did Arrina look down and realise she was wearing her hiking boots. They were brown, chunky, and streaked with dirt from her walk down the hill to her car that morning. She’d forgotten to switch into the heels in her bottom drawer. Gillian was certain to have noticed. Arrina slumped heavily into the back of the sofa and sighed.

  ‘Oh cripes,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Roll on Christmas.’

  The new school year was still almost a week away and already Arrina felt like she needed a break. Christmas was Arrina’s favourite time of year. Christmas was her happy place. She let her mind be filled for a minute with mulled wine, a crackling fire, and warm mince pies. Arrina smiled at the thought of this perfect midwinter scene.

  She smiled, too, at the fact that she already had a new business mentor lined up for the college, and so she could soon tell Gillian DeViers that there was not a vacancy for her to fill.

  Arrina couldn’t say anything yet though. Aside from the matter of the upcoming Parish Council vote, there was the fact that the new mentor, Hugo Hayes, had not made it public that he was stepping away from his current role.

  Hugo came from a prominent local farming family, but his real success was as a property developer—his jaunty Hayes Homes signs could be seen throughout the Peak District. He even had one painted on the back of his classic green Land Rover. It would come as a shock to the whole community that instead of retiring, as he might be expected to do at his age, he was leaving his company and coming to work at the college. The place was still, even after five years, an unwelcome presence in the village, and Hugo’s move there would easily knock Gillian DeViers’s divorce off the top spot for gossip.

  Arrina had only met Hugo a couple of months earlier. Although she’d known him by sight ever since she’d moved to Heathervale, he was a good twenty years older than she was and had his own close friends in the village. The two of them could have gone their whole lives on nodding terms if it weren’t for what had happened two months earlier, just before the start of the summer holidays.

  Arrina was glad that the events of that day had led to her meeting Hugo, but she still felt a shiver of fright run down her spine at the memory of everything else that had happened that day.

  2

  It had all started with the yellow suns and their mysterious message of #ScarecrowSelfie.

  The suns had appeared from nowhere on the last Thursday of the school year. Without warning, the college was full of the things—there had to be a hundred of them at least. The yellow paper suns were each the size of a bike wheel. They were neatly cut out and hung by fishing wire throughout every corridor of the building and from the high ceiling of the canteen.

  At lunch that day, everyone was talking about the mysterious suns and wondering what #ScarecrowSelfie could mean. The students all agreed it would definitely be something fun, but the staff had enough experience with end-of-term stunts to be suspicious. Of course, this had to come in the week when Sampson Morgan, the head of the college security team, was out for mandatory fire-safety training. If he’d been on site, he’d have nipped the whole thing in the bud without Arrina knowing about it. But now the huge suns dangled throughout the building, and Arrina simply prayed that they weren’t going to lead to anything awful.

  Arrina was keeping one ear casually open to the talk of suns and scarecrows while she poked at the salad on her plate. But she couldn’t let herself be entirely distracted by the gossip. She had a far bigger problem than a peculiar student prank. She had a crisis on her hands, which threatened the very future of the college itself, and not a single idea of how to fix it.

  The crisis was over something almost laughably stupid—a footpath—a two-foot wide track that connected the back of the college to the train station over the hill.

  The footpath cut through farmland owned by the Hayes family: Hugo, his wife, Fiona, and Hugo’s younger brother, Rory. That morning, Arrina had received a letter, which announced that the Hayes family was going to block the path off before the start of the next school year. They said her students were damaging the farm with their heavy foot traffic and the litter they dropped as they walked.

  The journey to the train station took fifteen minutes across that path, and a good third of her students came to college that way. The only other route was an hour-long walk along the edges of busy main roads. Without the footpath, the commute would be too long and dangerous for those students to make, and if the college lost a third of its students, it would soon close down entirely.

  Arrina really needed to notify the Board of Governors about the situation. But the board—the group of parents and villagers who controlled the college’s budget, rules, and contracts—was easily displeased. The make-up of the board had changed significantly over the five years of the college’s existence, and the current governors found fault with everything Arrina did. They were sure to blame her for the closure of the footpath.

  She wanted to come up with a plan to fix the situation before she informed the Board of Governors about the letter she’d received.

  At lunch that Thursday though, as she sat in the canteen, with a paper sun hanging above her head, a metaphorical cloud hung up there as well. She prodded her food and hoped that an idea would suddenly come to her. She nudged strands of grated carrot into a footpath across the landscape of her sorry-looking lettuce. Her mind was enti
rely blank.

  Just then, the double doors at the far end of the canteen were flung open.

  Someone in a scarecrow costume burst through them. Bright-yellow straw poked out from the padded blue suit the scarecrow wore. A flour sack covered the face of the person underneath, with holes cut out for the eyes and mouth.

  Everyone in the canteen turned to look. The students picked up their phones, suddenly understanding the message on the paper suns: #ScarecrowSelfie.

  Then the person dressed as a scarecrow reached inside their shirt and pulled something out. They threw it into the air. Five-pound notes drifted and twirled to the ground. A voice from inside the costume shouted, ‘Snag a scarecrow selfie and win the money inside!’ Then the scarecrow ran from the room.

  The students stampeded. They knocked food trays to the ground, tipping the remnants of vegetable stew and lasagne to the linoleum. They chased after the scarecrow and the money that dropped from its costume.

  Sensing how quickly things could get out of control, Arrina followed, too, forgetting for the time being about the footpath issue.

  A huge group of students chased after the person in the costume, tripping over each other in their efforts to catch the five-pound notes that fell from its shirt. Arrina was almost certain this wasn’t going to end well, but the hoots and cheers of the students around her made it seem, for a moment, that it might.

  Then the scarecrow burst out of the back entrance of the college and ran into the car park. It jumped onto a motorbike and continued shedding money for the chasers to catch. Arrina’s heart sank as she guessed what the motorcyclist was going to do. It was the last thing she needed right then.

  The scarecrow wound the bike between the parked cars. It squeezed through the small gap at the back of the college and sped onto the footpath that crossed the Hayes family’s land—the very path that was going to be blocked soon because the students were too destructive.

  ‘Stop!’ Arrina shouted. ‘Stop!’