The Appleton Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 1) (4 page)

“How nice,” he
replied.
 
“I’d invite you in for a
cuppa
, but I’m just on my way out to the shops.
 
Promise you’ll come back and visit
another time?”

“Of course we
will,” Janet said quickly.
 
“And you
must come and visit us once we’re settled in.
 
Joan is wonderful at baking.
 
You must come for tea.”

“I’d like
that,” he replied.
 
“Oh, I’m Michael
Donaldson.
 
I nearly forgot to
mention that.”

The sisters
introduced themselves and then Michael excused himself to finish getting ready
to go out.

“Well, he
seemed very nice,”
Janet
said as the pair walked down
the short path from his door to number two.

“He did
indeed,” Joan murmured.
 
She knocked
on the door at number two and after a moment it swung open.

“Ah, the
ladies from yesterday,” Stuart Long said.
 
“Do come in and meet the wife, won’t you?”

The sisters
followed him down a short corridor and into a large sitting room.
 

“Mary, we have
guests,” Stuart said.

The woman who
was sitting on one of the couches looked up and frowned.
 
“The house is a mess,” she protested.

“It’s fine,”
Stuart said.
 
“These are the women
who are buying
Doveby
House.”

“Oh,
really?
 
In spite
of all that trouble with the Appleton lad?
 
I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side,
I can tell you,” Mary said.
 

She stood up
and Janet studied her as she took a step towards them.
 
Mary Long looked to be a few years
younger than her husband.
 
She was
about the same height as the sisters, and slender with grey hair and brown
eyes.
 
When she’d taken a few steps,
she held out her hand.

“I’m Mary
Long.
 
It’s lovely to meet you,” she
said to Janet.
 

Janet shook
her hand and supplied her own name.
 
Joan did the same in turn.

“Welcome to
the
neighbourhood
, I guess,” Mary said after
insisting that the sisters sit down.
 

“Stuart, why
don’t you fix the ladies some tea?” she suggested.

“Oh, we’re
fine,” Joan assured her.
 
“We just
wanted to ask a few questions about the area and that sort of thing.”

Mary
nodded.
 
“Very sensible,” she
said.
 
“Always better to know what
you’re getting yourself into.”

“So, how much
of a worry is Gavin Appleton?” Joan asked.

The couple exchanged
looks.

“Robert is on
top of it, I think,” Stuart said after an awkward pause.
 
“Gavin never visited his mum, so I can’t
imagine what she had over there that he’s after.”

“He told us he
was looking for some letters,” Janet said.

“I find that
hard to believe,” Mary said.
 
“He
doesn’t seem like the type to write letters to his mother.”

“I’m not sure
why he’d bother.
 
He lived in the
same town, after all,” Joan interjected.

“He hardly
ever visited her, though.
 
Maybe he
sent her some threatening letters and he’s eager to get them back before the
police see them,” Stuart offered.

“He’d have
visited more if he’d known she was going to die so suddenly,” Mary said.
 
“He’d have wanted to make sure of his
inheritance, if he’d known.”

“What happened
to Mrs. Appleton?” Janet asked.

Again the
couple exchanged looks and Janet was desperate to know what they were thinking
while they did so.

“No one seems
to sure about that,” Stuart said eventually.
 
“You could ask young Robert, I suppose.”

“Only she
wasn’t technically Mrs. Appleton anymore,” Mary added.
 
“She may never have actually been Mrs.
Appleton, for that matter.”

“What do you
mean?” Janet asked.

“She was
married a couple of times during the years she was here.
 
Her husbands were both much older men
who left her a good deal of money when they passed on.
 
I gather she had a different husband
before she moved here.
 
It was him
that left her the money for
Doveby
House,” Mary told
them.

“So what was
her proper name?” Joan asked.

Mary
shrugged.
 
“She had everyone call
her Mrs. Appleton, or Maggie.
 
She
said it was easier to have the same name as her son, and she never managed to
be married long enough to bother getting everything changed.”

Now the sisters
exchanged looks.
 
Janet shook her
head.
 
Sometimes other people’s
behaviour
still surprised her.

“Anyway, Gavin
was her only child.
 
No doubt he
expected to inherit everything,” Stuart said.

“But she left
everything to the
Doveby
Trust instead, as I
understand it,” Joan replied.

“Yes, well, I
gather she and Gavin had a disagreement about something a while back and she
was just angry enough to change her will.
 
She may well have changed it back again once they’d made up, but she
didn’t get the chance.”

“How
unfortunate for young Gavin,” Janet murmured.

“But fortunate
for you,” Mary pointed out.

They chatted
about the
neighbourhood
and the location of the
closest grocery stores and other shops for a few minutes before Joan glanced at
her watch.
 

“My goodness,
we really have taken up far too much of your time,” she said to the
couple.
 
“And we have an appointment
with our solicitor to get to.
 
Thank
you so much for talking with us.”

“It was our
pleasure,” Stuart said.
 
“We’re both
retired, so guests are always welcome.”

“You must come
and visit with us once we’re settled in,” Janet said as she rose to follow her
sister from the room.

“We’d like
that,” Mary said.
 

The pair
walked to the door behind the sisters.

“Oh, yesterday
you said something about a ghost,” Janet said to Stuart.
 
“What ghost?”

Mary
laughed.
 
“You mustn’t listen to
that nonsense,” she told Janet firmly.
 
“Stuart has some crazy ideas sometimes, that’s all.”

Stuart opened
his mouth and then snapped it shut.
 

“We really
must go,” Joan reminded her sister.

Janet followed
Joan out reluctantly.
 
She really wanted
to hear about that ghost.
 

Chapter
Four

“I wanted to
hear about the ghost,” Janet complained as they drove back towards home.
 

“You know I
don’t believe in such things, really,” Joan told her.
 
“And clearly Mary didn’t want Stuart to
tell us anything.
 
We’ll have to get
Stuart alone and ask him.”

Janet shook
her head.
 
It seemed strange to hear
Joan planning such things.
 
It was
usually Janet who went chasing after ghost stories and other oddities.
 
Clearly retirement was bringing out a
different side in her big sister.

“What if Mrs.
Appleton is haunting the house?
 
Maybe Gavin murdered her and that’s why no one knows what happened to
her,” Janet suggested.

“Maybe you
have an overactive imagination,” Joan replied.
 
It wasn’t the first time she’d said such
a thing to her sister.

The next
fortnight flew past as the sisters put their cottage on the market and began to
pack their belongings for their move.
 
While they had lived in the cottage for more than twenty years, neither
was particularly sentimental about things, so besides books, they found they
had little to sort through.
 
Most of
their furniture they arranged to donate to a local charity that helped families
in crisis situations.
 
As
Doveby
House was fully furnished with good quality items,
they were happy to share their good fortune with others.

Their cottage
sold almost immediately and the new owners, who had just been transferred to
the area for work, were eager to move in quickly.
 
Doveby
Trust
was happy to agree to a quick sale as well, and by the middle of July the two
women found themselves the proud owners of their very own bed and breakfast.
 

Some old
friends threw a small party for them, with everyone promising to stay in
touch.
 
Doveby
Dale was less than an hour from their previous home, and both sisters hoped
that some of their friends would come and stay with them once they were
settled.

The sisters
hired professionals to paint every room in the house except for Janet’s lilac
bedroom, and once that was done, they moved in.
 
They had little to do besides arrive
with their suitcases, as all of the furniture was already in place.
 
They hired a man with a van to follow
them to
Doveby
House with the boxes and boxes of
books that the sisters had decided to keep.
 
Once he’d stacked the boxes in the
library for them to sort out later and left, Joan found the kettle in the
cupboard and made tea.
 
They’d
brought a small box of grocery items with them, little more than what they
needed for a first cup of tea in their new home.

“Welcome
home,” Joan said to Janet as the pair sipped tea in the conservatory a short
time later.

“I feel as if
I should pinch myself,” Janet said.
 
“It doesn’t quite feel real.”

“No, it really
doesn’t,”
Joan
laughed.
 
“It all happened rather very quickly,
didn’t it?”

“Yes, perhaps
too quickly.
 
I’m sure I shall get
lost on my way to the loo in the middle of the night tonight.”

Joan laughed
again.
 
“Just don’t tumble down the
stairs,” she cautioned.

“That’s
another good thing about my bedroom,” Janet told her.
 
“It’s quite far from the stairs,
really.”

“So what shall
we do first?” Joan asked after she’d refilled their cups.

“You should
start baking,” Janet told her.
 
“You
haven’t baked any biscuits or treats in weeks.
 
I know we’ve been busy, but I can’t go
much longer without some shortbread or at least a flapjack.”

“I suppose we
need to find the nearest grocery store, then,” Joan replied.

They finished
their tea and headed out.
 
When
they’d talked with Stuart and Mary several weeks ago, the couple gave the
sisters directions to the
centre
of
Doveby
Dale where there was a small grocery store.
 
The sisters decided that that would do for
today.
 
They’d need to find the
larger store eventually, to do their larger weekly shop, but for today they
didn’t need much.
 

Janet drove as
they both tried to remember exactly what Stuart had said.
 
The road was straight and he’d told them
to simply follow it.
 
A small
single-story building that was completely lacking in any architectural style
appeared alongside the road as they drove.
 

“
Doveby
Dale Garage,” Janet read off the sign that was
hanging at an awkward angle from a bent post.

“So that’s
where Gavin Appleton works,” Joan said in a thoughtful tone.
 
“Interesting.”

“I always
thought garages sold petrol,” Janet said.
 

“All I saw
were three garage doors in a row,” Joan told her.
 
“They were all shut, so I guess the
garage isn’t open.”

“It’s the
middle of the day, why would it be closed?”

“Maybe he
doesn’t have any business,” Joan suggested.

“Well, he’s
not likely to get any if he’s shut up when customers come calling, is he?”

Just around
the next bend was the small main street of
Doveby
Dale, with shops and cafés dotted along it.
 
At the far end of the street was the
grocery store they were looking for.
 
The prices in the store were higher than they would have been at a
larger chain store, but the sisters knew they were paying for convenience.
 
The closest big name grocery store was
several miles further down the road in a somewhat busier area.
 
They practically had this store to
themselves as they filled a shopping trolley with far more than they’d intended
to purchase.

“We shouldn’t
shop when we’re hungry,” Joan said as they watched all their shopping adding up
at the tills.

“But we have
nothing to eat at the house,” Janet countered.
 
“I suppose we could have stopped and had
lunch at a pub somewhere and then come shopping.”

Joan wrinkled
her nose.
 
“I suppose we’ll get
through all this food eventually,” she said as they loaded the bags into the
car.

“Of course we
will,” Janet agreed.
 
“I intend to
get through a good deal of it today, even.”

As they drove
back past Gavin’s garage, the rolling overhead door in the
centre
of the building began to rise.
 
A
very new-looking dark-
coloured
sedan pulled out of
the garage and turned in the opposite direction.
 
The sisters could see a man pulling the
door back down behind the car.

“Gavin was
driving that very fancy car,” Joan told her sister.

“He must be
repairing it,” Janet said.
 
“That
isn’t what he was driving the last time we saw him.”

“I certainly
can’t see him owning something that luxurious,” Joan agreed.

Back at home
the sisters had a light snack before Joan began to bake.
 
Janet left her sister doing what she
loved best, deciding that this was the perfect time to do some exploring around
their new home.
 
She needed to do
something while she waited for some delicious treat to be ready.

After
pretending to consider looking around the guest rooms, Janet headed straight
for the library.
 
The boxes of books
that they’d brought with them caught her eye, but she ignored them for the
moment.
 
Unpacking was boring, even
if it needed to be done.

She started at
the door and worked her way slowly around the room, pulling odd books from the
shelf, curious as to what exactly they’d purchased with their new home.
 
All of the books were hardcovers and
most were in excellent condition.
 
The more Janet looked around, the less she could understand how the
books were arranged, however.

They were
clearly not alphabetical, either by title or author, and they didn’t seem to be
arranged by subject matter, either.
 
After an hour of trying to work out a pattern, she decided that, for
some strange reason, the books had been shelved entirely at random.

“Well, that
will never do,” she said out loud.
 
One of her
favourite
jobs as a teacher at
their small village school had been running the tiny school library.
 
Now she sat down at the small desk in
one corner to think about how she’d like to arrange her new
favourite
place in the world.

After a while,
she decided she needed to start taking notes.
 
Joan would probably have her own ideas
as well, so Janet wanted to be sure she knew exactly what she wanted to do
before she talked to her sister.
 
She pulled open the top desk drawer and found a pen amid the pencils,
paper clips and other office supplies that were scattered inside.
 

The first side
drawer held sheets of plain white paper and Janet pulled one out and began to
make notes.
 
After several minutes,
she frowned.
 
She’d been so
distracted by all the glorious books that she hadn’t given any thought to being
nosy.
 
But what else was in this
desk?

She pulled
open the middle side drawer and laughed.
 
So much for being nosy, she thought as she stared at boxes of envelopes.
 
That left only one more drawer.
 
This is more like it, she thought as she
pulled a pile of file folders out of the drawer.

Margaret Appleton’s
solicitor had given them a few boxes of paperwork that related to the running
of the bed and breakfast.
 
Those
still needed to be gone though, but maybe that meant that this paperwork was
more personal.
 
Janet opened the
first folder eagerly.

Inside were
several letters from someone called “Jack,” who wrote of his undying love for
“his dear Maggie.”
 
Janet blushed
and stopped reading the first letter after a particularly racy section.
 
She shut the
folder,
surprised that no one had removed such personal correspondence from the house
before it was sold.
 
Perhaps this
was the sort of thing that Gavin was looking for?

Three more
folders were full of similar letters from “Simon,” “Edward,” and finally,
“Kenneth.”
 
Janet did no more than
skim the first letter in each pile, finding that they were all very
intimate.
 
Reading any more would
have felt too invasive of the dead woman’s privacy.

She opened the
last folder, expecting more of the same, but instead she found letters that
were all signed “Gavin.”
 
She began
to read the first one, dated some ten years earlier, with some interest.

“Mother, I’m fine and I think I’m going to
like living in Devon.
 
I don’t
suppose you’ll miss me all that much, as you’re rather busy with all of the men
in your life.
 
Let me know when the
next wedding is going to take place and I’ll send a card.
 
Gavin.”

Janet sat back
in the desk chair and closed her eyes.
 
These letters were far less personal than the others, but Janet still felt
that she really shouldn’t read them.
 
They must be the papers that Gavin wanted to collect, she thought.
 
Perhaps she and Janet ought to take them
to him.

“Dinner’s
ready,” Joan called from the kitchen.

Janet dumped
all of the files back in the bottom drawer and slid it shut.
 
She was surprised to find that the
entire afternoon had flown past.
 
But she’d worry about the letters another time.
 
The smells coming from the kitchen were
more important.

Joan had made
cottage pie with a rhubarb crumble for pudding.
 

“That was
delicious,” Janet said after she’d swallowed her last bite of crumble.
 
“Not as good as apple, but nearly.”

Joan
laughed.
 
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,”
she said.
 
“Tomorrow I plan to start
making biscuits and cakes and all the lovely things I usually make all the time
and have quite neglected in the last few weeks.”

“Oh, thank
heavens,” Janet told her.
 
“All of
my trousers are getting rather loose on me.
 
I’d hate to have to go clothes
shopping.”

Janet could
tell that her sister wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not, but she just smiled
at her.
 

“I found some
letters from Gavin to his mother in a drawer in the desk in the library,” she
said after they’d done the washing up.
 
The kitchen had a dishwasher, but neither sister was ready to try it out
just yet.
 
No doubt it would come in
handy if they ever had a house full of guests, though.

“You didn’t
read them, did you?” Joan asked.

“I just skimmed
through the first one,” Janet said defensively.
 
“Anyway, it was really short and didn’t
really say anything.”