THE SUPPER CLUB MURDERS a gripping murder mystery packed with twists (Smart Woman's Mystery Book 3)
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THE
SUPPER CLUB
MURDERS
A gripping murder mystery packed with twists
VICTORIA DOWD
Smart Woman’s Mystery Book 3
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2021
© Victoria Dowd
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Victoria Dowd to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover art by Nick Castle
ISBN: 978-1-78931-931-6
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: INVITING TROUBLE
CHAPTER 2: THE MOOR
CHAPTER 3: THE CASTLE
CHAPTER 4: INSTRUMENTS OF TORTURE
CHAPTER 5: RESURRECTION
CHAPTER 6: THE PLAN
CHAPTER 7: THE SAD AND THE DEAD
CHAPTER 8: THIS CASTLE HAS A GHOST
CHAPTER 9: NEVER CAGE YOUR GUESTS
CHAPTER 10: TO CAPTURE THE CASTLE
CHAPTER 11: HOW TO ESCAPE FROM JAIL
CHAPTER 12: THE VICARAGE
CHAPTER 13: THE HOUSE OF MAGIC
CHAPTER 14: INACCURATE HISTORIES
CHAPTER 15: LAST RITES
CHAPTER 16: THE MIDNIGHT GUN
CHAPTER 17: A LORDLY DISH
CHAPTER 18: TELLING VERITY
CHAPTER 19: BLACKBALLED
CHAPTER 20: THE OPENING OF ALL HEARTS
CHAPTER 21: THE WIDOW
CHAPTER 22: THE SISTER
CHAPTER 23: AFTER DEATH
CHAPTER 24: AN ASTRAL HOLE
CHAPTER 25: NEVER CROSS A WITCH WITH RUNNING WATER
CHAPTER 26: THE MISSING VICAR
CHAPTER 27: THE KEY TO IT ALL
CHAPTER 28: THE MAN WHO SAW NOTHING
CHAPTER 29: PRIEST HUNTER
CHAPTER 30: INCIDENTS IN THE SITTING ROOM
CHAPTER 31: THE TRICK OF IT
CHAPTER 32: ANNOUNCING A MURDERER
CHAPTER 33: REVELATIONS
CHAPTER 34: THE ART OF FRAMING A LADY
CHAPTER 35: WE FALL INTO SHADOWS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ALSO BY VICTORIA DOWD
FREE KINDLE BOOKS
A SELECTION OF BOOKS YOU MAY ENJOY
GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH USAGE FOR US READERS
For K, D, J & S
CHAPTER 1: INVITING TROUBLE
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I acquired a taste for secrets from a very young age. The thing about secrets is that each has its own distinct flavour, no two are the same. Some can be thrilling, others even poisonous. Your secrets will always taste different to other people’s — sometimes they can be used in ways you never quite imagined.
I suppose my rather secretive nature does encourage suspicion. That and the fact that I seem to attract death. I’ve been accused of seeing more than my fair share of dead bodies, as if that is a crime in itself. In my experience, death is never fair. Perhaps I have seen more than most, but, as Mother always says, it’s less than an undertaker. Mother doesn’t do tact.
Maybe it’s more the manner of the deaths circling above my name, in every article little black words like slaughter, stabbed, poisoned, drowned, impaled. They do tend to give the impression that I invite death.
But, until we visited Greystone, I’d never seen anyone killed by a cannonball, nor a body wedged in a priest hole, and I’d definitely never seen medieval waterboarding before. It’s the nature of the death that brings it notoriety, or so Mother explained to me when she wrote a gruesome article about each of the deaths we experienced on this fateful trip to Black Towers, or ‘The Tower of Death’, as she renamed it. But as Mother never tires of reminding me, death sells. And to be fair to her, she wrote our friend’s obituary first and that broke all our hearts a little bit.
It’s the details, the moment of death, the motives and mystery that I find captivating. Which does, I realise, make me sound a little too fascinated by death to be healthy or well-adjusted. But those are two things I’ve never been accused of.
The picturesque village of Greystone is like any other quintessential English village that is about to play host to murder. Behind the chocolate-box beauty and seeming tranquillity simmers a pot full of jealousies, resentments and greed. But most of all, those drystone walls and country cottage gardens hide secrets. All manner of secrets — some darker than others, some long since forgotten, some that refuse to die.
When Mother discovered she had been invited to a weekend at Lady Marsha Black’s, she almost died right there and then. It was to be a weekend at their castle on Dartmoor, which looked down on everyone else in Greystone. Perfect for Mother. The ‘save the date’ email came months in advance, affording Mother plenty of time to tell everyone she knew and spend vast sums of money we didn’t have on buying outfits for every occasion. She was like a child about to embark on their first residential trip, packing all manner of unnecessary paraphernalia in anticipation of a multitude of conceivable and inconceivable situations. There were to be many of both on this trip — sadly Mother didn’t have a suitable outfit for any of them. But then I’m not sure exactly what an outfit would look like that was designed for multiple murders. Wipe clean, perhaps.
Among Mother’s extraordinary weekend wardrobe was a riding-themed outfit (she can’t ride but likes an ‘equestrian look’), a shooting-themed outfit (again, she doesn’t shoot but likes a ‘field sports look’) and several evening dinner outfits (she doesn’t eat dinner but more than compensates for it with wine, although a ‘boozer’s look’ isn’t something she really aspires to). Essentially, Mother had contrived to look like an extra on Downton Abbey.
So it was a great disappointment to Mother when the actual invitation finally arrived. There was to be no shooting, riding or any of the other pursuits Mother has never done before. There wasn’t even going to be a sumptuous dinner with multiple courses and shocking announcements. It was, in fact, billed as a ‘safari supper party’. The image in my mind of Lady Marsha Black also changed when I saw the quick biro-scrawled note on the back. ‘Bring sturdy boots and something warm. All very casual. Will be fun!’
It had the ring of a command to it.
‘Safari supper?’ Mother looked as if something dirty had landed on the breakfast table — like food. Neither of us does breakfast. Just coffee. But we can’t sit at the coffee table, as it’s covered in aspirational lifestyle magazines and cookery books. ‘Sounds like something that dreadful Cameron man would do with a load of filthy animals.’
She hadn’t looked this disappointed since she’d been told the Marmadukes hadn’t invited her to their boat party. It’s well known that the Marmadukes have a visitor book on their boat which isn’t for guests to just sign after a visit but is where they are aske
d to write their recommendations for potential invitees. It’s based on all the things they recognise as extremely desirable in a guest — wealth, a desire to ingratiate themselves with anyone they see as remotely important and a large number of Instagram followers, so they can show the boat to as many people as possible with a variety of filters.
Mother does in fact have quite a lot of ‘friends’ — virtual ones, of course. She doesn’t do real friends anymore. But this new-found fondness for ‘likes’ is all based on her profile being that of someone personally involved in multiple murders rather than anyone’s need to invite her to their rapacious social climber parties. Which is a shame, really, because the one thing Mother does do is obsequiousness, especially around people she sees as important (rich). She’s more what you’d call an ‘ingratiator’ than an ‘influencer’. Unfortunately, her humble bragging, virtue signalling and Coachella vibe is slightly overshadowed by the body count attached to her name.
She now attracts those who inhabit the shadier borders of the internet as a result of her ‘true crime blog’. It’s called Death Smarts. She, Pandora Smart, writes about various situations where we, the Smarts, have been involved in near-death experiences. She makes some money from adverts that appear on the blog about stain remover, high-powered room spray, kitchen knives and rat poison. Alongside that, she sells salacious stories to anyone who’ll pay, documenting our time in the Slaughter House, where four people were murdered, our trip to an Outer Hebridean Island that also resulted in four deaths and, when she wants to give them a bit of emotion and ‘show a more human face’ — difficult given the amount of filler — she writes about her husband dying. It seems hard to believe, especially if you know my mother, that she had no hand in any of these deaths. But that part is true. She was actually an innocent bystander, if ‘innocent’ is the correct word for someone who sells the stories afterwards to make money.
Mother and I have, improbably, survived two horrific near-death experiences and the loss of Dad. When I thought I’d found someone in the wreckage of our last trip, we managed to navigate our way through him abandoning me. But even Mother doesn’t write about Spear. Not yet, anyway.
Some people might be brought closer together, but so much drama can actually ‘stultify emotional growth’, as Bob the Therapist used to say. I should say that Bob the Therapist isn’t dead, he just needed to take a break last year from hearing about the various murders we’d seen. The last we heard, he was in a Peruvian jungle experimenting with legal highs. Mother was appalled that he’d chosen to be somewhere with no phone signal, given that she used to speak to him roughly six times a day and more at night. He’d suggested many times that she should become more dependent on the voice in her own head. But Mother placed a gagging order on that years ago.
Mother was even less impressed when Aunt Charlotte appeared at our house later that day, clutching a similar invitation to the one we’d received from Lady Black.
‘Why the hell would she invite you?’ Mother squinted at the invite distrustfully as if she was examining a possible forgery. She has some knowledge in this area. Fake invites have worked for her a couple of times, most notably Ann Widdecombe’s book launch. Sadly though, not for Meghan and Harry’s wedding, where, if you look very carefully, you can see her in the bottom section of one photograph being forcibly ejected from Windsor Castle.
Aunt Charlotte stood proudly holding out her invite. ‘It was me who introduced Marsha to book club in the first place, if you remember.’
Book club was killed off after that weekend away at the Slaughter House ended in four body bags, one of which in fact contained an actual member of book club. But she deserved an untimely end. Which may sound callous or even a little like I murdered her. But I didn’t. Someone else got there first. I thought about it, but no one ever went to jail for imagining someone’s death. After Dad died, I imagined murdering a lot of people, but so far that’s just been a bit of a mindful distraction.
Mother did that quick head-and-shoulder shake she does when she needs to shake off everyone else’s opinion, like a dog shaking itself dry. ‘Marsha only came to a couple of book clubs. You put her off with all your talk about Gone Girl.’
‘That was nothing to do with me!’ Aunt Charlotte drew her chin back and tried to look insulted. She very rarely is. ‘She lost interest in book club after she married Lord Elzevir, that was all.’
I snorted. ‘Lord Elzevir bought his lordship.’
‘What does that matter?’ Mother flicked her hand, swatting away the idea like a fly. ‘He’s a lord and bloody Marsha Mould is now Lady Marsha Black.’
I laughed. ‘Shame she didn’t go for the double-barrelled.’
They let their eyes come to rest on me, watching me with their usual confusion, trying to figure me out.
‘Marsha had a lot on with the castle renovations, that’s all. How could she carry on with book club? There’s no time for books when you’ve got an ancient library to demolish.’ I couldn’t tell if Mother was intending irony.
‘Well, she certainly expects us all to be there. Look—’ Aunt Charlotte held out the invitation — ‘it says quite clearly that I should make sure all the old book club gang are together and that my lovely niece Ursula comes, and her mother too if she wants to tag along.’
Mother’s face puckered up like the ready-meal film she always forgets to remove before cooking. She looked down at her invite, which wasn’t her invite at all. I could clearly see my name on the top-right corner with ‘plus one’ written next to it. Mother turned the envelope over in her hands. It was addressed to Miss U. R. Smart. She shot me The Look.
I widened my eyes as if to say, ‘Don’t blame me.’ I am to blame though. I’ve spent a lot of time liking Marsha’s renovation pictures, even the one of the library being ripped apart to house a gym. I can be morally ambiguous sometimes too. I’m just quieter about it than Mother.
‘I don’t believe this.’ Mother closed her eyes.
‘Breathe, Pandora. Have you been doing your mindful colouring?’ Aunt Charlotte slung an unwelcome arm around Mother’s shoulder. ‘We’re all going on a little holiday.’
‘Fun and murder for me and you?’ I tilted my head to the side, searching Mother’s face for a reaction. I counted it off on my fingers. ‘Number one, the Slaughter House. Number two, the Isle of Death. What next, Castle Kill?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mother sighed. ‘Tower of Death sounds much better.’
‘Ursula!’ Aunt Charlotte looked shocked. ‘Don’t invite trouble!’
‘Invite trouble? People don’t start killing just because I’m there.’
‘It has been suggested a few times on my blog.’ Mother folded her arms.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Yes. If you ever bothered to read it, you’d know. It was a piece called “Murderous Magnetism — do some people attract killers?” I did a little case study on you. I kept your name out of it though.’
‘What?’ I let the word out letter by letter.
‘It got a lot of likes. I mean a lot. I got the Oxy Power Booster cleaning ad out of it.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve written about the horrors I’ve endured.’
‘Yes, you can, Ursula,’ Aunt Charlotte said distractedly. ‘We’re all grist to your mother’s mill. She did a piece on sibling rivalry last month entitled “How to cope if your sister is an emotional vampire.” I’d only asked her if I could borrow the Vax.’
Mother looked defiant. ‘You can’t blame me for embroidering on my tatty relatives. I need to market the blog. It needs sensational, clickbait titles.’
‘Oh, you mean,’ Aunt Charlotte leaned in conspiratorially, ‘young men.’
I frowned. ‘No, Aunt Charlotte, that’s jailbait.’
She didn’t have the look of someone who understood the difference.
‘Mother, all these catchy little murder names, interviews and articles are denigrating what we went through. And let’s not forget the endearing memes you
put out for Mothers’ Day, with our police photos and shots from the papers with the lovely line, “Who said a weekend away with Mother would be dull?”’
Mother cast me a nonchalant look. ‘Well, your so-called Tragedy Poetry isn’t going to put food on the table or clothes on our backs.’
‘Not if you always insist on wearing Chanel and St Laurent.’
Aunt Charlotte nodded. ‘I’m afraid I agree with Pandora, darling. I do like their clothes. They’re so durable, and with a casual fit.’
‘That’s St Michael, Aunt Charlotte, and M&S haven’t used that name in years.’
‘Charlotte hasn’t bought any clothes in years.’ Mother sipped her coffee. ‘I don’t know how you hope to fit in with the country set.’
Aunt Charlotte looked confused in tweed, a signature look. Her shirt was crumpled and her hat battered as if she’d been on a 1930s expedition and travelled back in her trunk. She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I shall fit in like nuts in a squirrel’s pouch, my dear.’
Mother laughed. ‘You may well be aiming to look like a rodent’s nuts, but Lady Marsha is renowned for her fabulous style.’
Aunt Charlotte sighed deeply. ‘I know how she feels. It can be a terrible burden.’
Mother put the coffee cup down with a decided crack on the glass table. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this weekend for months.’ She watched Aunt Charlotte’s face begin to fall. ‘I love you but . . .’
Three of the best words in the English language instantly transformed by the simple addition of ‘but’.
Fortunately, Aunt Charlotte doesn’t care to examine the finer nuances of Mother. ‘That’s settled then. Greystone here we come! Now, Pandora, you’ll have to decide whose plus one you want to be.’
Mother’s eyes fired. ‘I am not, nor will I ever be known as “plus one”. That term is reserved for partners no one wants to name.’