A Village Murder Read online

  ‘Why not? It was my job for years.’

  ‘You’re not like most police officers.’

  ‘Because I’m not tall enough?’

  She had the grace to blush. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Come on, now, what did I just say? You have to tell the truth. Anyway, Hercule Poirot was short and he was a detective.’

  ‘Hercule Poirot was fictional.’

  ‘Good point,’ he acknowledged.

  ‘It’s not about height, or being tough,’ Imogen said, slowly. ‘I think it’s because you’re so cheerful. You smile a lot, and everyone likes you. All the hotel staff say you’ve cheered the village since you arrived. Mrs Topsham positively drooled when I mentioned you in the shop.’

  Adam took off his spectacles and polished them vigorously, suddenly hot with embarrassment. He spoke slowly, ‘I’ve learned, over a lifetime, to look on the bright side. I’m short and fat, I can’t see beyond the end of my nose, and I’m going bald. I’m not clever, or funny, but I’m an optimist. My glass stays half full. I believe, against all the odds, that my toast will usually land butter side up.’

  Imogen sat in silence. ‘I wish…’

  ‘You wish you felt that way?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Keep working at it, that’s my advice.’

  Mentally he added, I have to.

  ‘Now,’ said Adam, to turn the conversation away from himself. ‘We have two mysteries here. One is your husband’s probable murder and the other, your father’s possibly shady business with plants, which involves this Daniel from your past. Let’s put that to one side for a moment.’ He went on, ‘I’ll trace Greg’s movements since the two of you parted company. Where do you think he went? Who would he visit?’

  She tapped the spoon on the back of her right hand.

  Left-handed, Adam noted. Not that it made any difference.

  ‘Actually,’ she confessed, ‘about a month ago, he got back in touch with me, saying he’d made a mistake and he wanted to see me. He said he’d broken up with the woman, whoever she was, and realised he missed me.’

  Adam prompted, ‘And you said…?’

  She looked up and laughed. ‘I told him I never wanted to see him or hear from him again, and left. I may have raised my voice a little.’ She dropped the spoon back into the saucer and leaned back, eyes glinting. ‘It was one of my finest moments. If he thought I would let him come crawling back after that, he was crazy. I was glad to see the back of him.’ She gave a short laugh. ‘But if that doesn’t make me sound like I wanted to kill him; I can’t imagine what would.’

  ‘How did he contact you?’ Adam asked. ‘Did he come to your flat?’

  ‘No chance of that, I’d changed the locks the day after he left. He rang and I agreed to meet him in a coffee shop.’

  ‘I’ll ask you to write down the date and the details in a minute, but first, tell me more. How was he? Pleading, sad, confident?’

  Another pause.

  ‘It sounds daft, but the word I’d use to describe him was shifty. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been living, or if he was with friends. I suppose he thought I might make a fuss.’

  ‘Would you have done that?’

  She grinned. ‘Possibly, if I’m honest. All he’d say was that he thought he’d had a bit of a midlife crisis, and he was over it, and he’d like to come back, please. Actually, I decided he was just missing a decent meal. He liked to be looked after, did Greg.’

  Adam rubbed his chin with his knuckles. ‘Not too much to go on, but give me the date and place you met and I’ll visit, see if anyone remembers your meeting. Not,’ he added, ‘that it points to innocence or guilt, but there may be something useful. Anyway, it’s a start. Any objections?’

  She shrugged. ‘None at all.’

  ‘And while you’re giving me addresses, make a note of anyone you think Greg may have visited after your break-up.’

  13

  Oswald

  Imogen met Emily halfway up the stairs. ‘We are totally full to bursting,’ the manager enthused. ‘The phones have hardly stopped ringing, and I’ve had to put Alex on to full-time email duty.’ Alex was Emily’s assistant.

  ‘Well, they say no publicity is bad publicity,’ said Imogen. ‘By the way, I shall be out most of today and tomorrow. Are we properly staffed to keep things going?’

  ‘Definitely. I’ve done a list of everything that’s going on in the hotel, so you don’t need to worry at all. It’s all in hand.’

  Imogen resisted the temptation to nitpick as she ran her finger down the lists of room occupation, taxis, meals, and workmen. She couldn’t fault Emily’s efficiency, but she wasn’t happy. Did Emily know the hotel was in trouble, and if so, why hadn’t she mentioned it? ‘Have you got a minute?’ She led the way into the small office behind reception where the two could sit perched on hard chairs, elbows leaning against a pair of wooden desks.

  Emily’s desk was covered in neat piles of paperwork, each held down by a Caithness paperweight.

  Imogen sat at the spare desk, wishing she felt less like an interloper and more like the owner.

  ‘Emily, you worked with my father for two years, so you must have known a good deal about his business.’

  Emily blushed bright red. Her eyes flickered round the room, looking anywhere except for Imogen’s face. ‘Well, I only really knew about the hotel. The councillor had other businesses that were nothing to do with me.’

  Imogen persisted. ‘But I’m sure you took phone calls and saw emails that were sent to the hotel?’

  Emily cleared her throat. ‘There were plenty of communications. The staff dealt with anything they could, and if they were unsure, they would print out emails and give them to me. I’d check them over for hotel business and send them to the councillor if they were… more private.’

  Imogen leaned forward. ‘I’m sure you behaved impeccably. Unfortunately, the hotel’s not as profitable as it should be. I’ve looked through my father’s papers. I’m concerned at the year-on-year losses, despite healthy revenue. We need to consider our costs.’

  Emily blinked, as though Imogen’s grasp of the business surprised her. She sat a little straighter.

  Imogen continued, ‘I’d like you to go through the accounts for discrepancies. I shall do the same. I’ve already printed out all the information we have for the past five years, but I’ll let you make your own copies.’

  And that will stop you fiddling the books. If that’s what you’ve been doing.

  Imogen made her way up to her own small suite of bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and office, to change into gardening clothes. The sun had come out, and perhaps the garden was dry enough for her to trim back overgrown hedges and pull a few weeds from the borders.

  Outside, she found Oswald, her father’s long-serving gardener, far away from the orangery, clearing brambles. Oswald had worked at the hotel since Imogen was a child, a source of warmth, company, and a hot cup of tea when Imogen found life with her father too difficult to manage.

  ‘Miss Imogen.’

  The familiar Somerset burr was music to Imogen’s ears. Hot tears rose to her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry I haven’t seen you since father’s funeral. The flowers you arranged were perfect. Thank you. I should have told you before.’

  ‘Now, don’t you go worrying about that, Miss Imogen. You’ve had a lot on your hands, what with your husband’s body and everything.’ He raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘That husband of yours, causing trouble.’

  Imogen gasped. ‘Really, Oswald.’

  ‘I speak as I find, as you well know. I bet you rue the day you married that man.’

  ‘It’s not his fault someone killed him.’

  ‘Had it coming, he did. Only a matter of time. Never trust a man who buys a leather jacket in middle age.’

  Imogen had bought the jacket for Greg.

  ‘Oswald, you’re going to stay and help me with the garden, aren’t you?’

  The elderl
y man dug his fork into the ground and leaned on the handle. ‘Well, miss, I thought you might not need me around now. What with you being a proper landscape gardener and all, I thought you’d bring in a new team.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I learned more from you than from any university course. Anyway, I’m going to be away at times, overseeing the work at Haselbury House, and I’ve got plans for this garden – I’ll need your help with those.’

  The old man’s lips curled in a slow smile.

  ‘For the moment, I wanted to ask you about the old days. Do you remember the painters who came to paint the garden? It was a good few years ago, when I was a teenager.’

  ‘And I was a younger man, in those days. Married to Sylvia, with a couple of young ones driving us crazy, and no aches in my bones.’

  ‘And how are your family?’ She should have asked before.

  ‘All quite well, miss, although Sylvia’s getting on a bit. She’s been nagging, lately, wanting me to work less and spend a bit more time at home. Especially now the boys have children of their own.’

  ‘So you’re a grandfather? How wonderful.’ Imogen gulped. She had no children, so she’d never enjoy any visits from her own grandchildren.

  ‘That’s right. Noisy little blighters they are too, a couple of girls and a boy. They like to come and help in the garden from time to time, which I hope you won’t mind, miss. That Emily doesn’t like it, but the councillor never stopped me, so she has to put up with it.’

  Imogen hid a grin of unworthy triumph. Emily’s efficiency hadn’t made her popular.

  ‘Your grandchildren are more than welcome.’

  He nodded in the measured way he did everything. ‘You were asking, miss, about that time the artists came. That David, he spent weeks here.’ He squinted, thinking. ‘No, not David – Daniel, that was the name. You and he got on like a house on fire. Thought you might marry him.’

  ‘I married Greg instead.’ There was an edge to Imogen’s voice. ‘We were already engaged when Daniel came. Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about. He painted some plants that I can’t find in the garden.’ She tried to sound casual. ‘Unusual flowers. Orchids, for one. I wondered about them. I mean, if we’d been growing rare orchids, we surely would have propagated them, grown more and sold them on.’

  Oswald shifted from one leg to the other. ‘Ah,’ he said, and his mouth snapped shut.

  ‘Come on, Oswald,’ she coaxed. ‘Nothing happened in this garden without your knowledge. Were you growing rare plants?’

  The old man narrowed his eyes, brushed a lump of mud from the shaft of his spade, and looked away towards the stream. ‘Well, it was like this. I didn’t know how your father got hold of those plants. He liked unusual flowers, see. He brought them to me, from time to time, and I grew them on, in the orangery. At least, most of them – the tender ones. We had to boost the heating. Your dad told me they came from the tropics.’ He took an enormous handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. There were beads of sweat on his neck. ‘I was away, one day, showing some of the vegetables at the local show, and when I came back, your father had sold them on. A van had come to pick them up and that was the end of that.’

  ‘You never grew them again?’

  The old man rolled his head from side to side. ‘Not so far as I know.’

  That could mean anything. Imogen wondered if she was making too much of it. Keen gardeners often tried and failed to grow exotic specimens.

  She left Oswald with his wheelbarrow and spent an hour tidying, watching this year’s blossom bursting into life among bright green foliage. On her knees, hands deep in the rich red soil, the smell of earth filling her nostrils, she managed to forget about her father and his suspect activities.

  14

  Steph

  Adam stared at the address of the cafe where Imogen had met with her husband: The Copper Kettle, Camilton. She’d added a mobile phone number and another address. ‘I think Steph Aldred might be back in Camilton, or her parents, at least. This is their address. Greg and I knew Steph at school. I haven’t seen her since, but Greg was often away on business…’

  The Copper Kettle could wait until later. Adam wanted to know where the murder victim had lived after leaving his wife, and this was the only lead he had. Perhaps Steph might know.

  He drew his car to a halt in a quiet street near the station. Stepping out, he leaned on the wall overlooking the railway lines, remembering how badly he’d wanted to become a train driver when he was five.

  He snorted. There were lots of things he’d wanted when he was young. For one thing, he’d ached to grow as tall as his friends.

  Adam tore himself away from the railway just as a train clattered through. He turned up a side road.

  Number fifteen turned out to be a small, semi-detached house with a neat garden and a gate that clicked cheerfully when he closed it. Somewhere, a piano played some kind of jazz or ragtime – Adam had no idea what it might be.

  He rang the bell, the music stopped, and a short, dark-haired woman opened the door.

  About the same age as Imogen, she wore joggers with a casual grey cable jumper. She had no make-up, but high cheekbones and large brown eyes.

  ‘I’m hoping you know someone called Gregory Bishop.’ Adam fidgeted slightly, uncomfortable. He missed his police badge and the right to ask personal questions.

  The woman took a step back. ‘I-I don’t know him.’

  ‘May I come in a moment?’ Adam offered his warmest smile.

  She licked her lips and looked Adam up and down. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Imogen Bishop – Imogen Jones, she used to be.’

  She gave a little gasp. For a second, Adam feared she was about to shut the door in his face, but after a moment, she stood back and waved him through to a small, cheerfully furnished room. A bright Indian throw lay across the sofa. Scatter cushions in jewel colours decorated a pair of armchairs and an orange footstool stood near the fireplace.

  The woman gestured vaguely at one of the chairs and sat on the sofa, gathering herself neatly together, with crossed legs and folded arms.

  She would be giving nothing away if she could avoid it.

  ‘I can see you know the names,’ Adam said. ‘Let’s not play games.’

  ‘I knew them a little, if that’s what you mean. We were—’ she stopped herself.

  ‘You were friends in the past?’ Adam suggested.

  She nodded. ‘Who are you?’

  Adam opened his arms wide in a non-threatening gesture. ‘My name’s Adam Hennessy.

  ‘Steph—’ again she pulled herself up short, frowned for a second, appeared to decide she was no match for her visitor and said, the words tumbling together, ‘I’m Steph Aldred. I haven’t seen Greg for a long time, but I read in the paper that he died. I haven’t seen Imogen for years.’ She rubbed her nose. Was she telling the truth?

  ‘It’s not that he died, so much, as that he was murdered, and the police suspect Imogen.’ Adam added, in a conversational tone, ‘I take it you didn’t murder him.’

  The woman’s hands flew to her cheeks. ‘Of course not – why would you think – I never – I mean, I hardly know him these days.’

  ‘These days?’

  Another torrent of words. ‘I knew him years ago, when we were at school, he wasn’t in my school, of course, because it was girls only, but the boys’ school was nearby. My parents could hardly afford the fees, but they were keen on a good education.’

  Adam nodded solemnly, letting her talk.

  ‘Greg was at the boys’ school. They kept us all apart in those days, of course, but we were allowed to meet up for after-school activities.’ She blushed. ‘By after-school activities, I mean clubs and societies. Although, we did pair up from time to time. That’s only natural, isn’t it?’

  Things, Adam reflected, were different in those days.

  ‘I expect you mean dramatic societies and choirs, and suchlike? We had similar ac
tivities when I was young.’

  The woman’s lips twitched. Was she struggling to imagine her visitor looking young?

  Adam looked round the room, searching for signs of male occupation, but saw nothing; no jacket slung carelessly over a chair, or games console.

  Steph said, ‘Greg and I were in a combined orchestra. I played the flute, not particularly well, and he played the trumpet. He was even worse.’ She’d relaxed a little. ‘Once, he played a different piece of music to everyone else. The conductor didn’t even seem to notice. We were that bad.’

  Adam’s next question, ‘When did you last see him?’ wiped the smile off her face.

  She rose and, agitated, walked round the room plumping cushions, moving ornaments, straightening a curtain.

  Adam waited.

  At last, she turned.

  ‘He came here at the beginning of February; I think it was. He didn’t stay long. Not overnight, or anything like that. He came because he was upset. He’d broken up with his wife, Imogen, and he wanted to talk about it.’

  Steph’s face softened at the memory. Adam wondered whether she was lonely. Perhaps that explained why she’d let him, a stranger, into her home so readily.

  He took a chance with a personal question. ‘Do you have a partner – a husband or something?’

  She gave a little shake of her head. ‘I’m divorced. I have a daughter, Rose, but she’s away, at university. This place is a bit of an empty nest at the moment.’

  Adam ignored the sympathy he felt. He was here to help Imogen. He knew better than to believe a witness, just because he found her attractive.

  ‘Where did Greg go after he left you?’

  ‘We talked about people he knew in the area. You see, this is a small city. Many live here all their lives. Only the brave ones go off to London after university. The rest of us like it here in Camilton. It’s comfortable.’

  ‘Quaint?’

  She smiled. ‘I suppose you could say that. We sound boring.’

  ‘Not everyone stayed in the area, did they? Your friends, I mean.’