A Scone To Die For (Oxford Tearoom Mysteries ~ Book 1) (6 page)

I crossed the village high street and walked the few hundred yards down to the Little Stables Tearoom, feeling the same rush of pride as I did every morning when I saw the sign hanging above the front door. I was looking forward to another busy day. And it seemed that customers were arriving already. As I approached the entrance of the tearoom courtyard, I saw someone sitting at one of the outdoor tables, facing away from me.
Blimey, they’re early.
The tearoom didn’t officially open until nine o’clock—nearly another thirty minutes—but I decided I didn’t mind starting a bit earlier to keep a customer happy.

“Be with you in a minute!” I called.

I glanced at the figure again as I walked past and my heart sank as I recognised those heavy-set shoulders and square-shaped head with the large, prominent ears. It was the American from yesterday. I had been hoping that he would have changed his mind about coming back here for breakfast. Still, a customer was a customer.

I hurried into the tearoom and bustled about, putting on my apron, pulling back the curtains, re-arranging some tables and chairs. Fletcher wasn’t in yet, which was a bit odd. Normally, he would be here already to get an early start on the day’s baking, Never mind, I could offer the American some coffee while he was waiting. Grabbing a menu, I let myself out the back door and into the courtyard.

“You can come and sit inside the tearoom now, if you like, sir. It’s a bit chilly out here.…”

I trailed off as I walked around his chair and turned to face him.

The American was leaning back, his eyes staring and his face a strange mottled colour. There was something wedged in his mouth—a scone, I realised—and his face was contorted painfully around it, with crumbs littering the front of his shirt.

My first thought was: “Oh my God, he’s choking!” and I sprang forward to help him, even as my brain finally made sense of what I was seeing. My fingers brushed the clammy skin of his neck and I jerked back.

He wasn’t choking.

He was dead.

I don’t remember much of what happened afterwards. It was as if I was moving in a blur. Somehow I had stumbled back into the tearoom and picked up the phone to dial 999, then I sank down at one of the tables and sat quietly, staring at my hands. They were shaking.

I tried not to think of the man sitting out there in my courtyard. He had still been slightly warm when I touched him. I shuddered. It seemed like an eternity before the police arrived, though it was probably no more than ten minutes. I heard cars pulling up outside, the brief wail of sirens, but when I got up to open the door it was Cassie who rushed in, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Gemma! What on earth is going on? Why are the police here?”

Before I could answer, two police constables bustled into the room. I led them wordlessly out into the courtyard and stood there numbly, watching as they looked at the body and talked in low tones. One of them hurried off—presumably to radio for reinforcements—but the other one stayed on the scene, carefully examining the table at which the American had been sitting but not touching anything. The knapsack I remembered from yesterday was on the chair next to him and a familiar paper bag half filled with scones was on the table.

“Is this how you found him?”

I nodded.

“Touch anything?”

I shook my head. Then I remembered. “Well, I did touch him briefly… You know, to make sure that he was…” I broke off, swallowing back a sudden wave of nausea.

He nodded understandingly. “You can go back in to wait inside if you like, ma’am. We’ve contacted Oxfordshire CID and the detectives should be here any moment.”

I nodded but, instead of going in through the back door, I walked out of the courtyard and onto the street, going the long way so that I would re-enter the tearoom from the front. I wanted a bit of time to recover my composure and a little longer in the fresh air. As I approached the front door, I bumped into a tall figure hurrying up. It was Fletcher, looking harried and flustered.

“Oh, Gemma! I am sorry! I missed my alarm and I overslept! And then I was looking for Muesli and I—”

“It’s all right, Fletcher,” I said. In fact, I was thinking that it was a blessing he had overslept. If he had come early and been the one to find the body…

“Listen, Fletcher…” I said cautiously. “The police are here—”

“The police? Why?”

“Um… Well, you remember the American tourist who was here yesterday?”

His face darkened. I could see that he still hadn’t forgiven the man for kicking Muesli.

“He’s… He’s had a bit of an accident and… well, he’s dead. The police are with him now.”

Fletcher stared at me. “Dead?” he said. “Why?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It looks like he might have choked on a scone—or rather, someone tried to force a scone down his throat and he choked… Anyway, don’t worry—the police are here now and I’m sure they’ll catch who did it.”

I propelled him towards the kitchen and we found Cassie sitting at the big wooden table inside. She had been sketching something on her drawing pad but she looked up as we came in.

“Gemma, why are the police he—?” she broke off as her eyes narrowed on Fletcher. “Hey Fletcher—is something wrong?”

“It’s Muesli,” he said miserably. “She’s gone!”

I looked around, suddenly realising that he didn’t have the cat carrier with him. In all the excitement with the police, I hadn’t even noticed.

“What do you mean ‘gone’?”

“She’s gone. Run away.” Fletcher’s lips quivered.

“What happened? Did something go wrong when you were putting her in the carrier this morning?”

He shook his head. “She ran off last night. Didn’t come when I called. I went out and I called and called… but she never came back. I couldn’t sleep. I tried to search again this morning but I couldn’t find her.”

I reached out to pat his hand. “Don’t worry, Fletcher. I’m sure Muesli will come back. She’s probably just decided to have an adventure in the woods behind your house. Cats often go off for days, don’t they?”

He shook his head again. “Not Muesli. She always comes back. For bedtime. I give her a treat, see? It’s shaped like a fish. I put it in her bed. Every night.”

I looked helplessly at Cassie, then gave him another reassuring pat. “Well… maybe she’s just being a bit naughty. I’m sure when you get home today, you’ll find her waiting on the front doorstep for you.”

My confidence seemed to reassure him. Putting on his apron, he went over to the giant industrial fridge and began taking out the ingredients for making a Victoria sponge cake. Cassie dragged me back out to the dining room. 

“Gemma, what on earth is going on? The constable told me not to go outside.”

Quickly I told her what had happened—how I’d found the American when I arrived. Cassie stared at me disbelievingly.

“Dead? Do you think he choked on the scone?”

“I… I don’t know what to think… He had the whole thing in his mouth. That’s a weird way for somebody to eat a scone. I mean, you’d normally take a bite, not cram the whole thing in your mouth, wouldn’t you? No, it looked as if someone had forced it down his throat and held it there until he…” I shuddered.

“Bloody hell.” Cassie looked stunned.

The sound of a car pulling up outside distracted us. I drifted over to the window to see who had arrived. There were two cars, actually—one produced a middle-aged man in white overalls, whom I guessed to be the forensic pathologist. The other was an unmarked car but something told me that this was Oxfordshire CID. A sandy-haired young man climbed out of the driver’s seat. I guessed him to be the junior officer—maybe the detective sergeant. No one who had been in that job for a while could look so cocky and smug. Then another man got out of the front passenger seat and I caught my breath.

“No…” I whispered.

There was no way he could have heard me through the glass, but he looked up, straight at me. My heart gave a kick in my chest as I met that steely blue gaze. Time seemed to shift. Suddenly I was back at Oxford again… eight years ago… a wide-eyed Fresher… falling in love for the first time in my life.

He held my gaze for moment longer, then he turned and followed his sergeant and the pathologist around the corner into the courtyard. I struggled to take a breath. It felt as if there was suddenly a lot less air in the room.

What was he doing here? Surely he couldn’t be a CID detective?

I paced the room, questions whirling in my head. Cassie looked at me curiously, but for once I didn’t feel that I could confide in my best friend. In any case, she got her answer soon enough when the front door opened fifteen minutes later and a tall man stepped into the room. The years fell away as he approached me. I remembered the very first time he had walked across the college quadrangle towards me. His hair had been long then, swept back in a dark, leonine mane, which hung down to his shoulders. It was cut short now, although that lock of hair still hung down rakishly over one eye. The chiselled cheekbones were the same too, as well as the hard, sensual mouth, but most of all, there was no mistaking that intense blue gaze.

He introduced himself and took out his warrant. Even as my eyes read the words: “Detective Inspector Devlin O’Connor, Oxfordshire CID”, my brain still refused to process it. For one thing, he didn’t
look
like a detective. Okay, so I don’t know much about the usual detective inspector’s working wardrobe but I had a feeling that it didn’t include classic grey suits from Saville Row, Italian silk ties, and stylish leather brogues. He looked more like a model for
GQ Magazine
than a member of Oxfordshire’s Criminal Investigation Department.

“Miss Gemma Rose?” he said.

You know my name
, I wanted to shout at him. Instead I nodded and said, “Yes. I’m Gemma Rose.”

“I understand that this is your establishment? And that you found the body?”

I nodded again.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

His manner was cold and distant, with no hint of the passion that had once flared between us. It was like a slap across the face and it helped me pull myself together. I raised my chin and gave a cool look to match his.

“Certainly,” I said in my best BBC voice. My mother would have been proud of me. I waved a hand around the room. “Any table you like.”

He gave me a sardonic look, then led me to a corner table whilst his sergeant escorted Cassie back into the kitchen. We sat down and he began firing rapid questions at me:

When had I arrived at the tearoom? Had everything looked the same as normal? Had I seen anyone loitering in the area? When did I notice the body in the courtyard? Did I know the deceased? When was the last time I had seen him alive? Had I recognised the item in his mouth?

“Of course I recognised it,” I said impatiently. “It was a scone!”

“One of yours?” Devlin said.

“I don’t know. It’s not like they come with a logo on them, is it?” I snapped.

He raised an eyebrow at my tone but didn’t comment.

I felt slightly ashamed and added grudgingly, “He did buy a bag of scones to take away when he left yesterday. It looks like the bag that’s on the table with him.”

“We’ll take one of your scones for analysis and comparison. Now, you say you arrived slightly later than normal—any reason for that?”

“Because I had to get the bus. I don’t normally—I usually cycle—but I had a flat tyre this morning. Besides, I thought it would be nice to have a break from routine.”

Devlin didn’t say anything, but again he raised that mocking eyebrow. I bristled. His implication was obvious—that he didn’t think I could break from routine. I remembered all our arguments of old; him accusing me of never being able to be spontaneous or do anything without meticulous planning and total control of the situation. Looking back now, I wondered how we could have ever been together. We were such opposites in every way.

Devlin’s eyes met mine briefly and I had an uncomfortable feeling that he knew exactly what I was thinking. To cover my discomfort, I launched into a rambling account of the American’s rude behaviour in the tearoom yesterday but, to my irritation, he cut me off, asking me instead to tell him about the incident last night at the Blue Boar again.

“But I don’t think Mike Bailey did it,” I said when I had repeated the story. “I think this is something to do with the University. I think you need to check the American’s—”

“Thank you, Miss Rose, I know how to do my job. I don’t need you to think about what I need to do—I just need you to answer my questions.”

Devlin O’Connor had never spoken to me in that tone of voice before. I stopped and stared at him. For the first time, I realised that this was not the boy I used to know—this was a cold, hard man who was a stranger to me. I hadn’t had a chance yet to tell him about the American’s unusual knowledge of Oxford or his abnormally aggressive reaction yesterday, but now faced with Devlin’s curt attitude, I decided that I wouldn’t bother. If Devlin wanted any more information from me, he could bloody well ask for it! I wasn’t going to volunteer anything else!

“Can I go now?”

He nodded. “I may have some other questions, but for now… yes.”

I stood up stiffly and went into the kitchen, where I could hear raised voices. I opened the door to see the young sergeant sitting on the wooden table, leaning menacingly over Fletcher, in his best imitation of a hard-boiled detective from one of the American TV crime dramas. My poor chef looked like a nervous wreck as he stammered to answer the questions being fired at him. Cassie was sitting on the other side of the table, flushed and angry as she watched helplessly.

“You say you normally arrive at the tearoom a couple of hours before it opens—so why were you so late this morning?” The sergeant’s voice was harsh and accusatory.

Fletcher seemed to shrink into himself. “B-b-because I was sleeping. The alarm w-went off but I didn’t hear it.”

“And why were you so flustered? I see that you’re sweating—you look like you’ve been running. Care to explain why?”

Fletcher looked at him in bewilderment. “B-b-because I was late! I’m supposed to start making the scones really early, otherwise they won’t be ready.”

The sergeant leaned into his face. “So where were you running from?”

“Oh for God’s sake!” Cassie burst out. “Are you stupid? He overslept and was late, so he was running from his house, which is on the other side of the village!”

Fletcher looked at Cassie in distress. “Don’t say ‘stupid’. It’s not nice to call someone that,” he said, wringing his hands.

The sergeant gave Cassie a cold stare. “I’d thank you to let me question the suspect in peace, or I may have you for police obstruction, miss.”

Cassie sprang to her feet, her face red. “You—!”

“Whoa!” I said quickly, stepping into the kitchen.

Fletcher looked up gratefully. “You tell him, Gemma! You saw me come! I was late because I didn’t hear my alarm!”

I glared at the sergeant, feeling a wave of dislike for him. I knew that he was probably just doing his job but he was a bit too cocky for his own good.