by Alice Castle
Copyright © 2018 by Alice Castle
Design: soqoqo
Editor: Christine McPherson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.
First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2018
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To William, Ella and Connie, with love
Acknowledgements
Thank you so much to my dog-walking and artworld friends, Bel Howard, Helen Housley and Clare Nicholson, who have helped me to bring this story to life.
I owe such a huge debt of thanks to everyone who has enjoyed the first four books in this series, Death in Dulwich, The Girl in the Gallery and Calamity in Camberwell. Special thanks to Clive Freeman for the inspiration for this story and to my mother, Anita Freeman. I’m very grateful to Christine McPherson, my wonderful editor. And thank you, as always, to Laurence and Steph at Crooked Cat, for making it all possible.
Alice Castle
About the Author
Before turning to crime, Alice Castle was a UK newspaper journalist for The Daily Express, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Her first book, Hot Chocolate, set in Brussels and London, was a European hit and sold out in two weeks.
Death in Dulwich was published in September 2017 and has been a number one best-seller in the UK, US, France, Spain and Germany. A sequel, The Girl in the Gallery was published in December 2017 to critical acclaim. Calamity in Camberwell, the third book in the London Murder Mystery series, was published this summer, with Homicide in Herne Hill following in October 2018. Alice is currently working on the sixth London Murder Mystery adventure. Once again, it will feature Beth Haldane and DI Harry York.
Alice is also a top mummy blogger and book reviewer via her website: https://www.alicecastleauthor.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/alicecastleauthor/
Twitter: twitter.com/DDsDiary
Links to buy books:
http://www.MyBook.to/GirlintheGallery
http://www.myBook.to/1DeathinDulwich,
http://www.myBook.to/HotChocolate
She lives in south London and is married with two children, two step-children and two cats.
Revenge on the Rye
The Fifth London Murder Mystery
From the same series:
1. Death in Dulwich
2. The Girl in the Gallery
3. Calamity in Camberwell
4. Homicide in Herne Hill
5. Revenge on the Rye
Chapter One
‘Magpie, you’re a bad, bad cat,’ said Beth crossly. Magpie, looking up from washing her paws after a delicious extra breakfast, gave Beth a mildly affronted glance before continuing her ablutions. Feathers really did stick in the teeth.
‘Listen, I’ll stay and, er, clear up. You get off. You’ll be late for work,’ said York.
Beth knew when she was onto a good thing. Risking a quick look at the kill zone, and wishing she hadn’t, she scooped up her bag, phone, and keys from the kitchen table. Ben had already left for school, walking himself the very short distance to the Village Primary in an experiment that had started, at his insistence, at the beginning of this new term. Beth had initially been fearful and resistant – sometimes she thought it was her default position since becoming a parent – but she had shelved her doubts and, with York’s gentle encouragement, had allowed Ben this first taste of independence.
For the first week, obviously, she had tailed him at a discreet distance. But now, in week two, the new was becoming routine and she’d barely given his perilous journey down the road a thought, thanks to Magpie’s killing spree.
Closing the door after a lingering kiss on the doorstep – the least York deserved as a reward for his services as an impromptu undertaker – Beth mused at how quickly things could change. And she had a spring in her step as she passed the gingerbread brick buildings and neatly painted gates of the little Village Primary. The playground stood quiet and empty, the children already safely tucked inside. Even the straggle of sixth formers dawdling towards Wyatt’s School had slowed to a trickle. But, instead of following the last of them up to the splendid wrought iron gates of that august establishment, Beth veered off and headed down Court Lane instead.
She’d somehow neglected to mention it to York, but her first appointment of the day was not with her groaning in-tray in the archives department at Wyatt’s, but with Katie, her great friend, who’d just acquired a puppy. Beth knew she’d been somewhat economical with the truth, but it really hadn’t seemed quite the moment to correct his assumption that she was off to toil. As it was, she had a half-day’s leave from her already extremely flexible job. There was a Senior School open day today, which meant the place would be overrun with nervous parents, and children who’d either absorbed that stress or were deflecting it in any way they could. Definitely a good moment to give the place a wide berth.
As she walked, she enjoyed the few flickers of weak sunshine – a mild suggestion that better weather might be hiding somewhere around the corner after a miserably cold autumn, and a winter which had strewn Dulwich with drifts of snow.
Christmas was done and dusted for another year, thank goodness, and the decorations, much to Ben’s chagrin, had been stowed as far out of sight as possible. Beth didn’t like to think of herself as Scrooge-like, but the season had not been designed with overstretched single mothers in mind. She just about had time to cover the bases in the normal run of events. Extra shopping, cooking and wrapping, all to be performed with a merry smile on her face, made her curse everyone from the Angel Gabriel downwards. The new spring term brought its own stresses, though, and that was why Beth was so keen to get out and about with Katie. They had scheduled a serious debriefing session on the Wyatt’s Year 7 interviews.
Beth had hardly dared to hope that her little Ben might get this far. The exam had not seemed promising at all. He’d already ploughed through the grammar school entrance tests by the time it came to sit the Wyatt’s papers, missing out most of the maths and cheerfully admitting he hadn’t a clue what non-verbal reasoning was, even after trudging through the exam. Trooping along to the dauntingly huge hall at Wyatt’s, sitting in serried ranks with what seemed like every smart kid in London and the Home Counties – not to mention a heavy contingent of boys who had been flown in specially for the occasion – Beth had been shaking in her boots, never mind Ben. He’d emerged a few hours later, a little pale and a lot more interested in finding out what was for his supper than in discussing the afternoon.
After that, Beth had done her best to consign her long-held hopes and dreams to the dustbin of history, and had started to research the other, really very good, alternative schools in the area. So what, if her own brother had gone to Wyatt’s in his day? And her grandfather, too? So what, if there were Haldanes writ large on the school’s honours boards, and even inscribed on the memorial to those who’d given their lives in the two great wars of the last century? Her father hadn’t actually gone to the school, and he’d done fine – right up until the moment when he’d succumbed to a heart attack in his mid-fifties. Her late husband, James, hadn’t set foot in the place either, and had been absolutely none the worse for it – until he, too, had died unexpectedly. Oh dear, was she seeing an unfortunate pattern here? She hoped not.
Because it looked as though Ben would not be going to Wyatt’s.
For someone who made her living delving into and protecting the past, Beth had been doing her level best to put a brave face on this new leaf which seemed to have been forcibly turned. But when an envelope had swished onto the mat last week with the famous school’s crest in the upper left-hand corner, the breath had nearly stopped in her body. At one level, she’d known it would just be the polite rejection she’d braced every cell of her body for… and yet, and yet…
Opening that letter, while Ben was safely out on a playdate, had been an out-of-body experience. She’d read the words on the flimsy slip of paper with the flourishing signature of the school’s inspiring head, Dr Grover, at the bottom, but they hadn’t made any sense. Indeed, they seemed to be swimming gently all over the page. She’d been expecting a terse, ‘not today, thank you,’ possibly softened by a kind word or two from lovely Dr G, as he now knew her so well. But to her astonishment, the first line seemed to read, ‘I’m delighted to invite your son, Ben…’
He’d only gone and got an interview!
Beth had astonished herself by bursting into noisy tears. She rarely cried, and then only if something really bad had happened… like a friend getting murdered. Good news deserved a smile, not this storm of emotion. But a lot had happened in Dulwich in the past year. Maybe she was permitted a tiny wobble, she’d thought, as she blew her nose half an hour later and threw cold water on cheeks blotched with tears. Magpie had threaded anxiously through her legs as she’d sat hunched at the kitchen table, clutching an Earl Grey tea as though her life depended on it. This was only the interview stage. She had to hold it together, for Ben. What if he didn’t get a place, after this? And what if he did? In a way, her worries would only just be beginning if he pulled off the seemingly impossible feat, as there was no way her meagre salary – grateful for it though she was – would actually stretch to cover school and food. Not to mention anything else, like lighting, heating, shoes…
‘Oh, Magpie, you wouldn’t be happy if your supply of extra-special Purina cat food dried up, would you?’ Beth picked up the hefty cat and sniffled into her luxuriant black and white fur.
But that had all been a week ago. Beth had just about managed to get a grip since then. As usual, Ben had been her salvation. She’d needed to treat the interview with airy unconcern, in front of him, anyway, so that he wouldn’t build it up in his head to be the massive, potentially life-changing ordeal that Beth, and all the rest of Dulwich, knew it was. Beth comforted herself that Katie, who’d got the self-same letter for her son, Charlie, who was Ben’s best friend, had reacted in a much more extreme way. She’d promptly gone out and bought her boy a brand-new puppy.
Beth, whose musings had by now brought her to the door of Katie’s huge Court Lane house, rang the bell and then jumped anxiously as a volley of yaps greeted her. The puppy was already making its presence felt. The creature must have been just behind the door. Either that, or it could run terrifyingly fast. Beth took another step backwards. Then there was the sound of a scuffle, with a lot of shouts of, ‘no!’ and ‘bad dog’ and a frantic scrabbling as Katie finally got the door open. Her blonde hair was all over her face, and she was using both hands to restrain a tiny ball of silky black fluff on the end of a thick lead.
‘Beth, meet Teddy,’ Katie said breathlessly. She whipped round as Teddy scampered for the door and flung himself towards the oblong of daylight like a lifer attempting a jail break, winding his lead through her yoga-honed, enviably long limbs and Beth’s own short stumps. Katie yanked him back at the last moment and he flopped onto the marble tiles, slobbering all over them as he panted like a marathon runner.
‘Do you want me to shut this?’ said Beth, hanging onto the front door as Teddy suddenly picked himself up, shook himself like a small black mop, and hurled himself towards freedom again.
‘No, better out than in. He needs exercise, then he’ll calm down. A bit. We’ll have to get him in the car, though.’ Katie was flushed.
‘Why? What’s wrong with the park?’ Beth looked down the road towards the entrance, only a few metres away. This was one of the many reasons why Katie’s house was so perfect – for once, an estate agent wouldn’t be lying through their teeth by describing it as right on Dulwich Park’s doorstep, round the corner from the Village’s coffee shops, and within easy walking distance of the best schools. As Beth watched, a mother with a pushchair was trundling in through the park gates, nodding good morning to a jogger in wall-to-wall Lycra, doing stretches so complicated they looked like origami. A professional dog walker, being towed by a brace of pugs, a cockapoo and a retriever, whisked past next. Was it Beth’s imagination, or did he glance sharply in the direction of Katie’s house?
‘I can’t take Teddy there again,’ said her friend with a shudder. ‘I’ll explain when we’ve got him in.’ She wrapped the puppy’s lead round her wrist several times, picked up a roll of plastic bags, a tin of dog treats, a squeaky duck toy, a ball, a long plastic throwing stick, and a spare lead, and tried to jam them all into her minimalist handbag. Beth wordlessly took the dog treats, duck, and stick. Katie squared her shoulders, locked her front door, and took a breath. ‘Right. Let’s go,’ she said.
Her estate car was parked on the street right outside, but the trip from doorstep to boot seemed to take forever. Beth was forcibly reminded of their days with Ben and Charlie as toddlers. The amount of kit you needed to sustain these tiny lives was incredible. And the endless prevarication and circumlocutions a child was capable of!
She thought she’d seen it all, until Teddy stopped and attempted to pee on every single one of Katie’s precious spring bulbs. The poor things had only just started to pierce the wintry earth, now they were greeted by enthusiastic streams of dog widdle. Luckily, Teddy ran out long before Katie’s planting scheme did, but that didn’t stop him from going laboriously through the motions as though still in full spate. When he wasn’t weeing, he was snuffling in the shrubs and around the rose bushes as though dozens of sausages were hiding behind every leaf.
‘Is he part-hound?’ wondered Beth.
Katie rolled her eyes and started to drag on the lead. Teddy, who’d found a promising smell under a rhododendron bush, refused to budge. So she picked him up bodily, whereupon he squirmed like a furry black eel. ‘Nope. I’m beginning to think he’s at least half Tasmanian Devil. But I bought him as a cavapoo,’ she said, passing her car keys to Beth as she fought to contain Teddy’s struggles.
Beth clicked the boot of Katie’s enormous estate open and they bundled the fluffy creature inside, just managing to get the door shut again without trapping any of Teddy’s busy limbs or even his questing head. Both paused for a moment.
‘Does he calm down at all?’ Beth asked tentatively. She didn’t want to sound too negative about her friend’s new acquisition, but on a purely selfish note she could see that Teddy might seriously put a crimp into the quiet coffees with Katie that she so relied on.
‘Thank goodness, he does. He crashes out like a light. I definitely like him best when he’s asleep.’ Katie peered carefully through the window into the back of the car. ‘Look at him now. Butter wouldn’t melt,’ she said, with the sort of gooey eyes that a mother reserves for her child.
Teddy, chewing heartily on one of Charlie’s trainers – not even a particularly old one, by the looks of it – put his head on one side and panted at Katie, and she put a hand to her heart. ‘Bless him. He’s settled now. We can get in,’ she said confidently.
Beth cracked open her car door gingerly, in case Teddy went nuts again and tried to escape. Apart from the odd growl as he disembowelled the shoe, he was quite peaceful, and once they were driving down Court Lane, he started to snore.
‘Aw, listen to that,’ said Katie, smiling at Beth.
‘Tell me though, why a dog? Why now? Was it just because of the interviews?’ Beth knew it wasn’t really her place to cross-question her friend, but she wanted to understand t
he thought process that had led to young Teddy’s arrival. It was quite a major shift in thinking. Katie was extremely house-proud – on the outside at least; Beth knew that her cupboards hid a multitude of sins – and she had suffered, rather than enjoyed, Charlie’s brief enthusiasm for hamster ownership. Of all the people suddenly to acquire a dog, Beth would have put Katie reasonably far down the list, after even herself. And she was never getting one.
‘Oh, well, Charlie did do so brilliantly, getting through the exam. They both did, didn’t they?’ she said, glancing over at Beth, who nodded enthusiastically, reliving her thrilling moment with the envelope again. ‘And he’s wanted a dog forever. You know that,’ said Katie, negotiating the junction with Lordship Lane with a slight frown. ‘Remember that PowerPoint they did ages ago?’
Beth couldn’t help smiling. Three or so years ago, the boys had taken a brief break from PlayStation – in itself quite a momentous occurrence – and concocted a presentation on why both mothers should cave in and immediately buy them puppies. Plucking the cutest possible images of cuddly dogs from the Internet and interspersing them with slogans like, ‘a boy’s best friend’, it had been hilarious and touching – but had ultimately failed. Or so Beth had thought.
A child couldn’t possibly know how much time and responsibility went into dog ownership. As far as Beth was concerned, single stewardship of a small human life was tricky enough. Magpie, she could just about manage. The cat was pretty self-sufficient and could even, at a pinch, feed herself with unwary visitors to the garden, if today’s grisly scenes were anything to go by. Not that Beth wanted to encourage that. But a puppy was about as much work as a baby, everyone said so. And Katie had always had her heart set on a yoga empire.