Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) (9 page)

“Have you got news?”

“The lab says that Alec had ingested an alkaloid poison in
a level that was very, very unlikely to have been an accident.”

“Murder, then?”

“There are no signs that point to suicide. Yes, at this
stage, we are now considering it a murder investigation.”

“Oh.” She paused, and spared a thought for the dead man.
“But who? Have you found any family yet?” She hated the idea that he might be
alone and unloved.

“We haven’t, no. He was never married, never active
socially, nothing. He was sixty years old and he’d lived alone in Upper
Glenfield, in that house, for a good twenty years or so.”

“Right. Do you have any suspects?”

“We were rather hoping you’d have something for us,” Cath
said. “I’m on my way down later. Do you want to meet at Alec’s house?”

“Sure. Name the time.”

* * * *

Penny went on foot. When she reached the driveway entrance
to Alec’s house, Cath was standing by the blue and white tape, her phone held
to her ear.

“Of course,” she was saying. “That sounds great. I can come
to yours, Mr Bailey. I’m in Glenfield right now, not far away … yes, that’s
right. Oh, okay … you don’t have to …”

The phone call tailed off and Cath shoved the phone into
her smart jacket pocket. “Reg Bailey does like his own way, doesn’t he? I wish
he wouldn’t call me a ‘lady police woman.’ I know he’s polite, but it makes me
feel I ought to be wearing more pink.”

“That’s a terrible thought.”

“What, me in pink?”

“No, you being considered a lady.”

Cath looked as if she were about to make a rude hand
gesture at Penny, but she thought better of it. “Anyway. Hi, nice to see you
too. So, Reg has some information, apparently, and he’s on his way down here to
show me.”

Penny felt a frisson of excitement at being in the right
place at the right time. They didn’t have long to wait, and while they stood by
the cordon, Penny filled Cath in on the stuff she’d learned about Alec’s online
activities, which felt woefully little.

“Hmm. I had Steve pegged as a suspect,” Cath said, “but
this Carl chap sounds worth looking into.”

“We might be in luck, then. Here comes Reg.”

The Jaguar purred to a stop, and Reg emerged, a vision of
dapper Englishness. He even wore a white hat, which he tipped in their
direction. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

“Hi, Mr Bailey.” Penny thought it was so typical of dealing
with him that she called him “Reg” in her head and “Mr Bailey” to his face.

Cath was obviously of the same mind. “Hello, Mr Bailey.
Thank you for coming down.”

He was clutching a sheaf of papers and he fanned himself
with them. Cath glanced at the police officer on guard, who nodded.

“Come on, we’ll get out of the heat.”

“You can’t go in the kitchen,” the officer said. “Boris
will bite your arm off if you go in there. You know what he’s like.”

“Of course. We’ll be in the studio at the back.”

Penny and Reg followed Cath around. Penny hung back, trying
to peer in through the kitchen window to see if Boris was a police dog or an
officer, but she couldn’t be sure.

As a sun room, the poorly-named conservatory was rubbish.
It faced north, and was cool and shady. As a studio, however, it was ideal, and
it was the perfect place to stand when in the grip of a heatwave.

Reg’s facial expression quivered and his lip curled when he
saw some of the paintings that Alec had been working on.

“What do you think to his work?” Penny couldn’t resist
asking.

“Each to their own,” he said stiffly. “He’s not here now to
explain his work.”

She felt chastened by his reluctance to speak ill of the
dead. “Of course. Yes.”

He flapped the sheaf of paper at Cath. “Now, young lady.
You are sure to laugh but I have discovered something new that I can do on a
computer and I’m very proud of it!”

“What is this?” Cath asked. Although Reg was waving the
papers at her, when Cath reached out to take them, he seemed reluctant to let
go. Instead he fanned them out.

“Did you know that every website you’ve looked it gets
stored in a list on your computer?” he said.

“Yes,” Cath said. “Although we in the police often find
that our dozier criminals don’t know it.”

“You’ll be telling me you can see what people are doing in
their own homes, right from the police station, next!”

Cath and Penny exchanged a look, and Penny smiled. “If you
have nothing to hide…”

Reg thinned his lips. “An Englishman’s home is his castle!
Now look. That Alec chap, Mr Goodwin, God rest his soul, came to see me last
week because he wanted to find out about two people that he used to know. I
told Miss May here all about that. Carl and Amanda Fredericks, their names were.
I helped him out, and left him alone with the laptop to do his searching.”

“Oh! So this is his browsing history,” Cath said, her eyes
lighting up. “That is wonderful. Please, may we see?” She was finally able to
prise it from his grasp.

Penny elbowed her way close up to Cath’s side, and peered
at the sheets of paper. Reg had mastered taking a screen shot, but not yet
worked out how to crop it down to the relevant part of the screen, so there was
an awful lot of unnecessary stuff including a half-covered game of solitaire in
progress.

“Oh …” Penny said at the same time as Cath said, “Ahh.”

“I’ve got internet on my phone,” Cath said. “Let’s look
this up.”

Alec had been searching for combinations of Carl Fredericks
and Amanda Fredericks, and “court case” and “Lincoln Crown Court” and
“robbery.”

“He was a court artist, wasn’t he?” Penny said, as she took
the paper from Cath. Cath fished around for her mobile.

“He was. So this is very interesting.”

“I remembered that he did say they were friends,” Reg
offered. “It’s funny how memory works when you get older. I am not making excuses,
you know. It is just how it is. I can tell you all about my primary school but
not a lot about last Tuesday. Anyway. So Alec Goodwin said that Carl and Amanda
were old friends of his, you see. It came to me on the way over.”

“I wonder why he suddenly wanted to get in touch with them
now?” Penny mused as Cath tapped away on her phone. “What had changed in his
life?”

“There isn’t a lot of information on the sites he looked
at,” Cath said, squinting, her fingers pinching and darting to enlarge the data
on the screen. “It was too long ago. I think this calls for a trip to the
microfiche at the library. We’re going to have to go old-school.”

“I did print out one thing that was interesting,” Reg said.
“It’s at the bottom. The court case wasn’t anything to do with Carl Fredericks,
you see.”

“Then who?” Penny flicked through as Cath tucked her phone
away.

“That’s Francine,” Cath said immediately.

Penny stared, her belly feeling cold. The photograph was
faded and grainy, and printed out badly to boot. It seemed to have been scanned
into the website that looked at notorious crimes that had happened in the East
Midlands.

Even so, after the multiple layers of change and process,
the woman in the photograph had a familiar air. Her hair was short and dark,
and her nose was long and narrow, and her eyes were slitted.

“Francine…” Penny breathed.

Then she looked closer and deciphered the smudgy caption.
“No. This was twenty years ago, and this is Amanda Fredericks on the day she
was sentenced to ten years in prison.”

Penny was halfway back to her cottage when Drew rang,
offering her a meal at the rather posh gastro-pub that lay on the southern edge
of town. It had a large car park, menus with curly gold writing, and something
called “ambience” which meant they could charge more for their chips.

She agreed. He told her that he’d collect her at seven, and
that he already had a table booked. She laughed at his presumption, but he
dismissed it.

“If not you,” he said, “I would have found someone else to
take.”

“Charming.”

“Pragmatic. Anyway. I’m glad it’s you and not my neighbour
Terry. He talks about stamps a lot. See you later. Also, I have news…”

He rang off before she could ask him to expand on that, and
she could hear the laughter in his voice.

Francine was delighted to hear that Penny had a date, and
insisted on helping her to decide what to wear. Even Kali got over-excited and
bounced around as Francine spread all of Penny’s make-up out on the bed, and
began to peer critically at the bottles and plastic containers.

“But this is all the sort of boring, corporate stuff you
were wearing when you were working in television,” Francine said. “Why did you
keep buying it?”

“I didn’t. It is
literally
the same stuff. I’ve
never bought any more.”

“Everything is so beige,” Francine complained. “It doesn’t
really match your new funky hair or your motorbike or your attitude or
anything.”

“You’re right.” Penny stared at it all glumly. “And it’s
getting old now, too, so it’s probably crawling with germs. I never thought
about mascara having a best-before date till I saw this photo on Facebook which
made me gip.”

“Hang on.” Francine disappeared, and returned with a large
bag of her own stuff. “This is like being a teenage girl again!” She even
attempted to sit cross-legged on the bed, but soon gave that up as too painful
for middle-aged hips to enjoy.

As Francine messed around with eyeshadow and lip liner and
myriad other pots and potions of the feminine arts, she asked about the
progress with Alec Goodwin.

“It looks like murder,” Penny told her, and Francine
whooped, but caught herself with a horrified look.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. That was terrible of me.”

Penny smiled. “I understand.”

“Ugh.” Francine composed herself. “So who are the suspects?
That’s the important thing. The killer has to be found!”

“Yes, you’re right. Well, Steve – you know, Ginni’s nephew
– he is one.”

“You don’t look convinced,” Francine said.

“I’m not, and neither are the police. He had a motive, and
he was there, and he found the body. I just don’t think his motive is strong
enough. Who on earth would kill over the chance to make some sculptures?”

“It wasn’t that, though,” Francine pointed out. “It’s
money, isn’t it? A job. A first commission. Spring-boarding his career. People
will sink to a lot, to get started in the corporate world. Don’t you look back
and shudder at what you put up with? Ooh, perhaps he was in on it with his
aunt.”

Penny remembered Agatha’s assessment of Ginni. “Perhaps he
was. And I can imagine Ginni killing someone if she thought she had the right
reason. I can’t, however, imagine her killing for
this
reason. She’s an
old-school battle-axe. She’d go up against a gang of club-wielding thugs to
defend the weak and innocent. But this? No. But what do I know? People have layers,
don’t they?”

“They do,” Francine said, and turned away to fiddle in the
bag, looking for something. She didn’t find whatever it was.

“There might be some more people on the list of suspects.
Carl and Amanda Fredericks,” Penny said, and explained what Reg Bailey had told
them that day. Francine listened avidly.

“Have you spoken to them?”

“Cath’s on the case. I did look up the Carl guy, but there
wasn’t a lot about him online. He is the same age as Alec, so perhaps Reg was
right when he said they were friends that lost touch.”

“And they must be linked through the court work!”

“Yes, but don’t forget, Carl’s wife went to prison…”

Francine’s eyes widened. “There are so many possibilities!
Are they still married, Carl and Amanda?”

“I don’t know. Yet. Is that glitter you’re waving at me?”

“You need a little extra sparkle!”

“I do
not
.”

* * * *

The sparkle turned out to be inevitable. Francine was
insistent. Drew stared at her when she opened the door to his knock.

“You … you … er, you’ve had your hair done,” he said. “You
look different. I mean nice. You look
nice
.”

“Sparkly, you mean.”

“What?”

“It’s okay. Thank you. I’m ready to go.”

Drew grinned. “Great.”

He had parked at the far end of the street, where it was
easier to turn the car around, and she followed him. He was a tall, broad man,
and had thick wrists poking out from his turned-back shirt sleeves. Until
recently, he’d been a blacksmith, although he’d favoured ornamental ironwork
over shoeing horses and the like. Now, though, he was running field-craft and
bush-craft courses. A local hotel had expanded into a conference centre.
Apparently, what under-stimulated office workers really needed, was to learn
how to cook a mushroom in a fire pit.

He didn’t ask her about the case with Alec. Instead, they
chatted about inconsequential things as they drove to the pub, and then they
were caught up in trying to decipher the menu. The chef had had an attack of
French, it seemed.

“What’s a courgette flower beignet?” Drew asked.

“Deep fried in batter.”

“So can you order a chocolate bar beignet in Scottish chip
shops?”

“Almost certainly. Gosh, this menu is pretentious.” Penny
grinned. “I was in Latvia once, and they had tried to translate some of the
menu items. I was so very tempted to order ‘Naked Fleeing Swedish Mercenaries’
but I bottled out and went for chicken breast in the end.”

Drew put his menu down. “I’ve never even been to France.”

“Haven’t you?” It felt as though a gulf appeared between
them. Penny had travelled the world in the course of her career. Drew had been
born and raised in this handful of square miles of eastern England.