Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) (5 page)

“Oh.” Penny let her breath out in a long exhale. Things
weren’t looking too good for the young arts graduate. “Has there been any
progress on Alec’s cause of death?”

“Not yet,” Cath said. “But I hope to have more news when I
come round tonight. I expect a bottle of wine to be chilling in the fridge.”

“It’s proportional to how much information you bring me,”
Penny informed her. “You might have to make do with a flat lemonade…”

* * * *

The rest of Monday was a strange, unsettled sort of day.
Penny had resolved to talk with Francine about her plans, but when she got
home, Francine was out. She’d left a short note about “following her heart”
which Penny took to mean that she was browsing around the pleasant shops of the
cathedral city of Lincoln, which lay to the north of Upper Glenfield. Penny
felt relief and also let down, as she had steeled herself for the expected
confrontation.

Instead, she applied herself to her website. There were
some enquiries to respond to, and some new images to upload. This was only
semi
-retirement,
after all.

Then she prepared some watercolour paper for painting on
later. She soaked the large, thick sheets in the sink and laid them on flat
wooden boards, sticking the edges down with brown gum tape. As the paper dried,
it would shrink and tighten, creating a perfectly level surface that was ideal
for a watercolour wash.

She kept glancing at the clock and then the door, willing
Francine to come home so she could get it all off her chest. Kali picked up on
her jumpiness and walked in circles in the kitchen, getting underfoot and
looking concerned. Eventually Penny had to go into the back garden and play
fetch for a while, and it was more for Penny’s own sake than Kali’s.

When she returned to the kitchen, she saw on her phone that
she had missed a call from Drew, and she felt even more annoyed. She called him
back right away but it went to voicemail. She tried to leave a message but it
ended up being a garbled “Yeah hi, I was in the garden sorry, call me, if you
can, whenever, hope you’re all right.”

She hadn’t seen Drew for a while. He had been so busy and
she was starting to realise that his priority was his work. She didn’t want to
be second fiddle to anyone.

Yet all through her working life, she hadn’t put her own relationships
first. Men had had to fit around her schedule, and mostly, they grew tired of
waiting for commitment, and drifted away. Now the boot was on the other foot,
and she didn’t particularly like it.

I have got to make an effort if this is important to me
,
she thought,
but he has to meet me halfway on this. But I need to tell him
so.

Penny started chopping the vegetables for the stew, and she
still felt out of sorts.

So much for my gentle early retirement,
she thought.
Are people designed to operate at a certain level of stress? Am I making all
this hassle up, just for my brain to have something to fret about?

* * * *

Francine didn’t return to the cottage until early evening.
She bounced into the kitchen, and declared that the smell of the stew was “the
finest thing I have ever smelled!”

“I thought we might have it with some fresh bread,” Penny
said. “Are you ready to eat?”

“You don’t need to cook for me,” Francine said, taking a
seat at the table expectantly.

“While you’re a guest in my house, I will,” Penny said.
“But you can get up and lay the table. You know where the cutlery is.”

“Of course!” If Francine noticed Penny’s snippy tone, she
gave no sign of it. She leaped to her feet and began to dig around in the
drawers. “I’ll butter the bread, too, if you want.”

“Sure. That would be helpful.”

They moved around the room in a careful dance, and Francine
chattered about her day. It wasn’t until they had sat down to eat that Francine
paused for long enough that Penny could say, “Er, Francine, so what
are
your plans?”

“Tonight? I don’t think there’s anything on telly. Do you
want to go out to the cinema?”

“No, I didn’t mean tonight. You’ve been here a week or so,
now. Actually, two weeks. Have you really given up your job in London?”

“I have. My heart hadn’t been in it for a while. Um …” She
tailed off and stirred her spoon around the bowl. “This stew is ace, by the
way. Really good. Um. And when you left London, I realised that we all get
stuck in the same old routines just out of habit, you know? Work wasn’t going
as well as it could have done. You know … And I did some soul searching and I
picked up some amazing books and I started to learn about how we can ask the
universe for what we want and as long as our intentions are good, we’ll get
what we ask for!”

“I don’t believe that for one minute. I spent my entire
teenage years asking to be two inches taller. The universe completely ignored
me.”

Francine waved a hunk of bread in the air. “Oh, we don’t
always get exactly what we think we want but we do always get what we need!
Anyway it’s just the start of this journey for me. You prompted me to begin it.
Who knows where I’ll end up?”

Penny swallowed her sarcastic reply of “far away from here,
and soon.” Instead, she said, “I am delighted for you, but you can’t just jump
into decisions like this. I planned my retirement and my move for ages. I
carefully considered where I was going to live, and how my budget would
stretch.”

Francine looked quizzical, her narrow eyes even thinner as
she pondered. “I thought you came up here because you were trying to reconnect
with your impulsive, freer younger self?”

“Well, yes. But in a calm and rational way.”

“But–”

Penny knew that Francine’s argument would probably be
justified, and she was grateful when someone knocked at the front door. Kali
launched herself from her spot under the table. She’d been hoping for stray
crumbs to fall, but the potential excitement of a visitor trumped even the pull
of food, and she hurled herself at the front door, her tail wagging so much
that her hindquarters were making circles.

“Back! Sit.”

If Kali was able to sit quietly while Penny opened the
door, she would be rewarded by being allowed to greet the visitor. Kali knew
this, but her impulse control was a work in progress. She managed to stay in
the sit position for about four seconds before the sight of Cath was too much
for her, and she lunged past Penny.

“Oh, gerroffme,” Cath laughed as she tickled Kali’s ears.

“She thinks her name is ‘gerroffme’ because that’s what
everyone says when they see her. Come on through. We’re just finishing our
dinner.”

“Tea.”

“Dinner. I still have my southern standards. I’ll make you
a cup of tea, though.”

“Don’t worry. You finish up, and I’ll get the kettle on
myself,” Cath said. “Ah – hi, there.”

“Francine, this is Cath. Cath, Francine.”

Francine grinned brightly. “You’re the police woman! I’ve
heard about you. It’s so nice to see you.”

“I’m a detective constable,” Cath said.

Francine didn’t register the correction. She got to her
feet and scooped up a tray from the worktop. “I’ll take my dinner through to
the other room and let you two chat,” she said. “I’m under Penny’s feet far too
much as it is.”

She disappeared, and the door shut firmly behind her. Cath
busied herself at the sink while Penny finished her stew. She hadn’t expected
Francine to be so understanding. She thought she’d be prising the woman out of
the conversation.

Unless she was listening at the door.

But she dismissed the thought. Francine was in-your-face
honest. She wouldn’t hide behind doors.

Unlike Penny. She acknowledged that in many respects,
Francine was annoying her just because she was the sort of nice person that
Penny thought she herself
ought
to be … but wasn’t.

“What’s up?” Cath said. “You’re miles away. I thought you’d
be wall to wall questions at me.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just…” Penny nodded in the direction Francine
had gone. “You know.”

“She seems perfectly nice,” Cath said in a low voice.

“She is. But she won’t
go.
”

Cath flared her nostrils. Penny knew that she, like the
anonymous man in the Sculpture Trail meeting, thought she ought to simply tell
Francine to leave. Cath was a capable and solid mother of two and had a
demanding career; she couldn’t run her life and her household effectively if
she pranced around, avoiding issues, like Penny did.

“Right,” said Penny decisively. She stood up.

“You’re going to tell her right now?”

“No, I’m going to put my bowl in the sink and then slice up
a cake.”

“Oh, right. Shop-bought or…”

“Don’t panic,” Penny assured her. “I didn’t try to make it.
I do learn from my mistakes. I bought it.”

“Great. Okay, so I do have stuff to tell you,” Cath went
on. “Our science folks are really on something at the moment. Maybe they don’t
have a lot else to do in the lab. I imagine when they’re bored, they make up
stink bombs and stuff. I would. Anyway, so they came back with the preliminary
results for Alec Goodwin’s death.”

“Don’t leave me hanging! Murder?”

Cath sighed. “Maybe and maybe not. He died of poisoning.”

“Most poisonings are accidents, aren’t they? I would have
thought it’s a tricky way to kill someone. If you want to be absolutely sure
that someone’s dead, there are more effective ways.”

“You’ve thought too much about that,” Cath said.

“Yeah. I have. I didn’t always get on with my work
colleagues.”

Cath grinned. “Okay. I will confess that sometimes, when
I’m interviewing a suspect and they admit to doing some crime or another, that
I often think ‘I would have done that differently…’”

Penny sat back in her chair. “What poisoned him? Do you
know that yet?”

“The boffins need to grow stuff in dishes, I think, before
they will confirm anything. I don’t know why. They did say it looked like an
alkaloid of some kind, a bitter substance, and there was a lot of it. They
suggested without being totally certain that it was
unlikely
to be an
accident.”

“Suicide?”

“Maybe…”

Penny thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so, and I
can tell from your face that you don’t think so, either. It would be an
impractical way to kill yourself.”

“And a painful one. I won’t give you the details, but he
didn’t die … well.”

Penny shuddered. “The poor man. Does it sound strange to
say that I hope it’s a tragic accident? I don’t want to think about the sort of
person who would do that to another human being, that’s all.”

“I understand,” Cath said. “Don’t let it prey on your mind.
You don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to be.”

“My information was useful before.”

“Yes, but not at the expense of your mental health.”

“Thanks.” Penny nodded. “More cake. Cake makes everything
all right.”

“Bring it on.”

They had another small slice, and Cath groaned. “I should
have said no.”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“Where?”

“You already know where.” Penny opened the door to the
living room. As she suspected, Francine was peacefully sitting at the far end
of the room, pointedly not eavesdropping. “Francine, there’s some cake in here.
Help yourself. We’re going for a wander.”

“How lovely! Thanks!”

* * * *

“You want to go poking around Alec’s house, don’t you?”
Cath said as they walked through the sultry evening. It seemed like most of
Upper Glenfield was out on the streets, and the persistent hot weather was
making tempers fray. They could hear arguments as well as laughter, and the
lingering smell of barbecues and the slow cremation of sausages plagued them
all the way out of town.

“I do,” Penny admitted. “Come on, please, can I? I didn’t
get to look around before.”

“We’ll see who’s on duty down there. If it’s PC Patel,
please don’t terrorise him.”

“He can handle himself, I’m sure.”

“He’s scared of you,” Cath said.

Penny was quietly pleased, but she said, “Sorry. I don’t
mean to terrify anyone. It just happens.”

It wouldn’t be dark for another two hours yet. They walked
on, and Cath asked if Penny had unearthed any interesting gossip yet.

“No,” Penny said. “Alec Goodwin was such a recluse that
everything seems to be mere speculation. Mary from the craft group thought he
was strapped for cash and that was why he took on the Sculpture Trail. She also
says that ‘everyone’ says he was murdered, but people do like to say stuff like
that.”

“Yeah, people can be horrible,” Cath said. “They forget
it’s a real person involved. On the other hand, if he was murdered, someone
somewhere will know something and often that’s how rumours start. So it’s worth
keeping your ears open. If something strange keeps getting repeated, we want to
know.”

“Oh, there’s more,” Penny said as they grew closer to
Alec’s house. She could see a police officer standing by the gate. “The town
council or whoever it is who are responsible for the Sculpture Trail grant went
and asked Ginni to take over from Alec.”

“Ginni’s not a sculptor, is she?”

“No, I don’t think so. And anyway, she said no. Because she
thought it should have been Steve.”

“Maybe it should have. If you’re thinking foul play …” Cath
said.

“…then maybe Ginni is on the list, not her nephew.”

Cath ran her hand through her hair and sighed. “I really,
really don’t want to consider Ginni as a potential murderer. She’s a local
stalwart.”

“I know.”

The police officer on duty that night was a tall, rangy
woman who waved them through with a grin. Cath led Penny to the front door, and
pulled out two pairs of latex gloves from her pocket. “Don’t touch a thing,”
she warned. “But just in case you do, wear these.”