by Kim M Watt
“Oh, hello, DI Adams,” Gert said. “You just missed the yoga.”
DI Adams was staring at the front of her hoody, which was liberally splattered with the contents of her coffee cup. “I just put this on,” she complained.
“Oh, we’ll get that out,” Rosemary said. “A little white vinegar and it’ll be good as new.”
“Glycerine,” Carlotta said.
Rosemary frowned at her, agreement of a moment ago forgotten. “Oh? Just carrying that around with you, are you?”
“Any decent household will have some.”
“Only if they’re in the mining business.”
DI Adams sighed, and finished the remains of her cup. “I was enjoying that coffee, too.”
“Welcome to the manor house, detective inspector,” Alice said. “I’m so glad you decided to join us.”
“Yes,” DI Adams said, rather unenthusiastically.
With all the fuss over stolen lamb shoulders, afternoon tea appeared to have been forgotten, and they’d skipped straight to glasses of sparkling wine on the terrace, served with plates of mysterious pastries and bite-size pieces of fish and meat on mini-skewers. Miriam was trying not to eat too many of them in case dinner was just as good, but it was hard. DI Adams seemed to have resigned her hoody to whatever fate Rosemary and Carlotta had in store for it, and was ensconced in one of the deep chairs on the terrace with a blanket bundled around her as the sky turned pink and apricot and the shadows under the trees deepened. She had a glass of red wine in one hand, and was watching Beaufort sitting on a dangerously sagging sunlounger, drinking a pint of bitter with evident enjoyment.
“Is he sure about this?” the inspector asked. “I mean, he’s very obvious out there.”
“I can’t even look,” Mortimer said. He was curled up next to Miriam’s chair, entirely hidden under a blanket from which his paw would appear at regular intervals to retrieve cheese pastries.
“I think it’s giving me a headache,” DI Adams said.
“Beaufort is completely confident that no one will see them,” Miriam said, not feeling at all confident herself. She wanted to pat the inspector on the arm reassuringly, but wasn’t quite sure if that was the sort of thing you did to police officers.
“Hmm.” DI Adams sipped her wine.
Alice settled a throw more comfortably around her shoulders and said, “It’s very nice to see you off-duty, Inspector.”
“It’s nice to be off-duty,” she said, not sounding entirely convincing.
“And what should we call you when you’re off-duty?”
“DI Adams is just fine.”
Miriam felt she’d made the right decision about the arm-patting.
Alice smiled and nodded at the three birdwatchers, who were waving various pieces of electronic equipment around the base of one of the topiary pots. Beaufort watched them with interest, interspersing sips of beer with generous helpings of sausage rolls, which he shared with the peacock who paced around him bu-kurk-ing in a friendly sort of way.
“They’re an odd lot, aren’t they?” Alice said. “Never seen birdwatchers with so much equipment before.”
“It’s for tracking night birds, apparently,” Rose said. “I asked them about it, because in my day all we needed was a notepad and binoculars. And that was for work, not a hobby.”
“It’s not a hobby,” the nearest man said, and frowned at them. “This is serious stuff, this is. We’re hoping to identify a new species.”
“Shh, Saul,” one of the others said. “Don’t give it all away.”
Saul looked alarmed, and turned the collar of his coat up before he went to join the other two men fussing around the tree.
“Rubbish,” Rose said rather loudly, and gave the men a sweet smile when they turned around. DI Adams made a sound that sounded quite a lot like a snort of laughter.
“So precious,” Priya said, and clinked her glass off Rose’s. The men looked like they were fairly sure they were being insulted, but couldn’t quite understand how.
“Does anyone need any more drinks?” Maddie asked, appearing next to Miriam with her hair clipped into some semblance of order. “Appetisers?”
“Maddie, do relax,” Alice said. “It’s only us, and the boys over there chasing butterflies or what have you.”
“New species,” the tall one called back. “Just wait until we have a moth named after us.”
“Phsst,” Rose said, swinging her legs in her chair. “I’ve got two bacterium and an amoeba named after me.”
The men stared at her uncertainly, then went back to what they were doing, talking a little more quietly.
Miriam reached out and tugged her sister’s arm. “Mads, come sit down. Take a breather for a moment.”
“Oh, no. I can’t. I’m half-scared to leave the kitchen too long in case Reid makes a nuisance of himself again, and we’ve more guests arriving any minute.”
“So what can we expect?” Gert asked. “Honeymooners? Ramblers?”
“Oh, no. Antique hunters, and a gentleman on his own. And a – a family.”
Miriam wondered why the family required a hesitation, but she was much too comfortable in the early evening light, savouring the indulgent thrill of a glass of sparkling wine, to worry about it too much. Maddie collected a couple of empty glasses and hurried off again, and Mortimer poked his nose out from under the blanket.
“More guests?”
“Yes, dear,” Miriam said, taking possession of a plate of salmon toasts and handing them to the dragon, who took six. “Try not to worry too much.” Mortimer hadn’t been any colour except anxious grey since he and Beaufort had arrived, padding down through the woodland trails and waiting expectantly for the Women’s Institute to appear.
“How can I not worry?” he demanded now. “What if one of them spots us? I mean, Beaufort’s just sitting out there in plain view!”
“Well, you did say he checked with … some Folk?” She glanced at the roof line behind her, but couldn’t see any lurking creatures.
“Oh, and they’re so reliable,” Mortimer muttered, taking four more toasts and retreating under the blanket again. She didn’t blame him. She felt a bit the same around strangers at times.
DI Adams tucked her blanket a little more tightly around her. “So Maddie’s your sister, Miriam?”
Miriam, who’d been concentrating on Mortimer, choked on a piece of toast, and Rose thumped her on the back a little too enthusiastically. She wheezed a couple of times, then nodded, wiping at her eyes.
“Miriam, do try to stop panicking every time the inspector talks to you,” Alice said. “She hasn’t arrested you once.”
Miriam decided not to point out that the inspector had arrested Alice, and just said, “Yes. She married Denis Etherington-Smythe, who was the last of the Etheringtons, but he died in a horrible accident with a squirrel.”
“A … squirrel?” the inspector said carefully.
“Nasty little critters,” Alice observed, and for a while no one said anything.
Then Rose said, “To be fair, it wasn’t the squirrel’s fault that he fell off the tractor.”
“The squirrel bit him,” Miriam said. “Though no one knows exactly why he was on a tractor with a shotgun chasing a squirrel at three in the morning.”
“I imagine the whisky had something to do with that,” Alice said.
“There’s eccentric and there’s just plain silly,” Rose remarked.
Everyone was tactfully quiet for a moment, then the inspector cleared her throat. “Right. So, Maddie runs the whole place, does she?”
“She does,” Miriam said. “All the kids help, though. Boyd takes care of the grounds, and Adele does the beauty treatments as well as the yoga, and—” she hesitated. “Well, Reid used to cook, but I think he does other stuff now.” She waved vaguely.
“Thank God for that,” Gert said, taking the last sausage roll. “Lucky we didn’t all get food poisoning.”
Miriam started to say, that’s not fair, b
ut stopped. It was fair, really. “Adele used to do foraging and plant identification, too, but there was a problem with some mushrooms a couple of years ago, so they don’t offer it anymore.”
“Problem?” DI Adams asked.
“Well, it depends on your point of view, I suppose. Some people rather hunt out that particular mushroom, I’ve heard.”
DI Adams choked on her wine, and hurriedly brushed some drops off the blanket. “Right.”
“They did have a lot of enquiries after the story was in the paper,” Alice said, and for a moment Miriam thought the inspector was going to start laughing. In the end, though, she just raised her eyebrows slightly and made a noise that might have been acknowledgement or might have been disbelief.
“They work very hard,” Miriam said. “Well, Maddie does. And this weekend’s so important. They had a terrible year last year, and apparently she’s got some guests staying who could really help out if everything goes well. If not, well, I don’t know what she’ll do. Have to sell, I suppose.”
“That would be awful,” Rose said. “Imagine if a developer bought it! They’d ruin everything.”
Miriam sighed, and looked at the woods easing into darkness, vast and wild and fragile. “They would,” she agreed.
Want to keep reading?
Grab your copy of A Manor of Life & Death!
* * *
Warring staff.
* * *
“Accidental” poisonings.
* * *
Topiary of dubious intent.
* * *
Throw in the full complement of the Toot Hansell Women’s Institute and dragons doing yoga on the terrace, and DI Adams is starting to wonder if she might have made a small misjudgement signing up for this particular spa weekend in the country.
* * *
And that’s before the dead body in the sauna and the storm that cuts them off from the rest of the world.
* * *
Now she’s dealing with a houseful of guests (and staff) who’re looking more suspicious by the moment, fending off protesters wielding table condiments, and trying to keep everyone safe as the storm closes in. She needs to find the killer, keep the dragons hidden, stop the W.I. forming some sort of pearl-and-twinset posse, and try to resist the urge to arrest everyone.
* * *
And that’s even before she addresses the problem of the invisible dog.
* * *
Sure. It’s going to be a wonderful weekend…
* * *
Head to your favourite retailer or my book page at kmwatt.com/my-books/ to find A Manor of Life & Death in ebook and paperback.
* * *
Read on, lovely people!
Acknowledgments
To you, lovely readers. For reading, for commenting, for sharing, for making Beaufort something more than just a strange conversation with my dad. You are all entirely wonderful.
* * *
To my dad, without whom Beaufort would never have come about. Thank you for giving me a sense of the ridiculous, and teaching me to appreciate silliness. And for passing on the odd imagination. I could have done without inheriting your weird feet, though.
* * *
To Lynda Dietz at Easy Reader Editing, who is responsible for all the correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling in this book. The mistakes are all mine. She’s also responsible for making me really, really look forward to the editing process. Thank you for making what could have been the hardest part fun, easy, and entertaining.
* * *
To all my wonderful writer friends. You know who you are. Thank you so much. You’re responsible for making me believe in this writing lark. Especially Alison and Anna, who I met at different points, but exactly when I needed to. You are truly amazing, and I kind of want to make a cheesy A-Team joke, but I’ll restrain myself.
* * *
To Sylvie, Sophie, and my other non-writer friends who manage to not only resist glazing over when I start talking about dragons and tea, but who actually encourage me.
* * *
And, of course, to you, new reader who has just taken a gamble on a book about tea-drinking, mystery-solving dragons. You are entirely awesome.
About the Author
Hi. I’m Kim, and in addition to the Beaufort Scales stories I write other funny, magical books that offer a little escape from the serious stuff in the world and hopefully leave you a wee bit happier than you were when you started. Because happiness, like friendship, matters.
I write about baking-obsessed reapers setting up baby ghoul petting cafes, and ladies of a certain age joining the Apocalypse on their Vespas. I write about friendship, and loyalty, and lifting each other up, and the importance of tea and cake.
And mostly I write about how wonderful people (of all species) can really be.
You can find me doing bloggy things at www.kmwatt.com, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
Read on!
Your Free Book is Waiting!
Grab your free book now!
* * *
Beaufort Scales, High Lord of the Cloverly dragons, is rather tired of being a High Lord, and quite fancies a quiet retirement in front of a warm fire, with the odd rabbit for tea.
* * *
Then came the barbecues.
* * *
And the bauble market, because if one has barbecues one needs money to buy gas bottles.
* * *
And then the Toot Hansell Women's Institute, some most wonderful cake, and some very new friendships.
* * *
Beaufort Scales is crashing into the modern world, ready or not (the world, that is. He's very ready, and very, very interested...)
* * *
A Toot Hansell short story collection, starting where it all began — with one very shiny barbecue ...
* * *
Grab your free book today at www.subscribepage.com/talesofbeaufortscales
Also by Kim M. Watt
The Beaufort Scales Series (cozy mysteries with dragons):
Baking Bad (Book 1)
Yule Be Sorry (Book 2)
A Manor of Life & Death (Book 3)
Game of Scones (Book 4)
The Beaufort Scales Collection (Books 1 - 4, e-book only)
A Toot Hansell Christmas Cracker - a festive short story & recipe collection
Book 5 coming Summer 2021!
* * *
The Gobbelino London, PI series:
A Scourge of Pleasantries (Book 1)
A Contagion of Zombies (Book 2)
A Complication of Unicorns (Book 3)
A Melee of Mages (Book 4)
* * *
Head to kmwatt.com/my-books for details!