Driven to murder, p.10
Driven to Murder, page 10
‘And did Norman return on your bus? Have you seen him since?’
I shook my head. ‘Not that I’d usually cross paths with him. I’m even less likely to now, after our run-in over the shelves. He’ll probably go out of his way to avoid me until the embarrassment fades.’
At that moment, the shop door creaked open. I glanced at my watch. It was the eleven o’clock Billy, on the dot as usual.
‘Morning, Bill,’ said Hector, looking more than usually pleased to see him. ‘Tell me, were you at The Bluebird last night at all?’
Billy frowned and tapped his cheek with a forefinger, then he stuffed his hands abruptly in his jacket pockets. ‘Course I was, boy. Ain’t I always on a Friday night? Darts night.’
Hector’s face brightened. ‘Norman Arch plays darts, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, but not on my team, praise be, because his aim is rubbish. I often play against him. But not last night I didn’t. Because he weren’t there to play. Done a bunk, rumour has it. Upped and offed from his mum’s on Friday taking all his worldly goods with him.’
‘What?’ I dropped the keys to Hector’s flat on the floor and bent to pick them up again.
‘Well, that’s my theory, anyway,’ said Billy. ‘You upset him over those shelves, boy.’
‘If those were all his worldly goods in that old bag he was carrying on the bus, he didn’t have many of them.’
Billy shrugged and trudged towards his favourite table. ‘How am I to know? That’s just what folks is saying. For all I know, it could have been full of banknotes. He could have been stashing his wages under the floorboards for years, and just put them all in his bag for the journey to wherever he’s running away to. Probably planning to buy everything he needs new when he gets there. Come to think of it, he had to ask Carol to change a tenner for coins before he joined the bus queue. I’m just guessing. Don’t listen to an old man if you don’t want to.’
I laid Hector’s flat key on his desk and strolled over to rustle up Billy’s cappuccino. Although making inconsequential small talk with him as I did so, I was thinking all the while that he could be onto something. If that bag was full of money, it would be a good disguise – the holdall looked cheap and tatty, and no one would ever believe it contained anything of value. But where might he get that much cash? And what did that have to do – if anything – with Janice’s sudden death?
As I set Billy’s cappuccino in front of him, he startled me by appearing to have developed the power of clairvoyance.
‘I wouldn’t go blaming old Norman for what happened to Janice Boggins, though,’ he said out of the blue. ‘No, I’d wager it’s Maggie Burton, seeking revenge for poisoning one of her cats. An eye for an eye, like the good book says.’
‘The good book might say that, but a British court of law doesn’t. Besides, I wouldn’t consider the life of Janice Boggins as equivalent to Maggie’s cat. It’s a lot longer, for a start.’
Billy put his hands over his ears in mock horror. ‘Don’t you let your little cat Blossom hear you talk like that. Anyway, I’m not justifying Maggie Burton poisoning Janice. I’m just reminding you that not so long ago, she said she’d like to do it. You’re not the only one round here who can play the sleuth, Sophie Sayers.’
He was right. Maggie Burton’s words echoed in my ears: ‘I’d like to give her a taste of her own medicine.’ But how could she have administered poison to Janice if she wasn’t on the bus?
Too many theories were buzzing in my head all afternoon. That included taking into account the many other passengers who had boarded the bus at other stops along the way, before and after Wendlebury. It might have been someone from a neighbouring village who had decided to murder Janice Boggins. But how, and who?
I was more than ready to shut up shop at closing time and retreat to Hector’s flat to consider the facts away from the hubbub of our customers. While Hector set to work cooking us a delicious fish pie, I did the next best thing to playing Sherlock Holmes’ violin to help me think. I sat down at the piano, put my fingers on the keys and waited for Beethoven to work his magic on my subconscious.
18
THE NEW RING
Just as Hector had donned the oven gloves to take the fish pie out of the oven, a rapid rat-a-tat-tat sounded at the flat’s front door. I stopped playing the piano mid-tune, resting my hands in my lap as I gave Hector a quizzical look, and he just shrugged.
‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ he replied, replacing the oven gloves over the rail of the cooker and turning the control knob to reduce the temperature.
‘Let’s hope it’s not that police officer back again,’ I remarked. ‘I’m hungry.’
Hector trotted down the stairs to the front door, and I strained my ears for clues as to the caller. A loud but unmistakeably feminine sigh of relief mixed with distress tipped me off straight away: to my surprise, it was Carol. I’d never known her to call on either of us at home before. Although I considered her a close friend, we conducted our relationship entirely in public places, such as her shop. Seeing her follow Hector up the stairs now and sit in one of his fireside chairs felt oddly intrusive. As Hector fetched a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge and three wine glasses, clutching all three stems in one hand like a fragile bouquet, I wondered what occasioned her unprecedented home visit.
Her demeanour suggested it wasn’t just a social call. Dried tears streaked her face, and it took her a minute to get her breath back.
‘Is everything all right, Carol?’ I asked as Hector poured the first glass of wine for her. ‘It’s lovely to see you, of course, but I’m assuming something has happened for you to call round at this time on a Saturday.’
She sniffed, presumably to clear her airways, but she can’t have failed to notice the delicious aroma of our fish pie.
‘Have you eaten yet this evening, Carol?’ asked Hector. ‘If not, you’re welcome to stay and have supper with us. There’s plenty to go round.’
Carol put her hands on the arms of the chair to launch herself to her feet. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Hector, I’ve come at a bad time for you. It’s just that Ted’s gone back to his house for the evening, and I had to see you without his knowledge. Please don’t let me spoil your romantic dîner à deux.’
She pronounced the last word as ‘ducks’.
Hector set the wine bottle on the coffee table and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be silly. You won’t spoil our evening at all. We’d love you to have supper with us, wouldn’t we, Sophie?’
‘Do stay, Carol,’ I added. ‘I can see you’ve got something you need to talk to us about. And Hector’s fish pie is delicious.’
Carol sniffed the air again, this time in appreciation. ‘Well, if you’re sure…’
Hector immediately went to the cutlery drawer to set a third place at the breakfast bar. He doesn’t have space for a dining table in his flat, giving priority to his large, comfy easy chairs and many, many bookshelves. His entire living room is essentially a reading nook which just happens to include a kitchenette and breakfast bar. It occurred to me that Carol might find it easier to talk to us if we all sat alongside each other at the breakfast bar, rather than facing us across the coffee table, like a suspect being interrogated by police. One always confides in another more readily when travelling side-by-side in a car than when face-to-face.
Noting she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring, I feared she’d had a row with Ted. My heart sank. As I’d been instrumental in getting them together, it was a blow to me as well as to Carol if it hadn’t worked out. But I felt selfish for even thinking of my pride. Ted was Carol’s world.
Carol and I made small talk about the weather until Hector was ready to serve up steaming plates of fish pie, juicy chunks of pink, white and yellow basking in a creamy sauce beneath mashed potato as light as a cloud. Carol savoured the first mouthful before telling us the reason for her visit.
‘It’s my engagement ring.’
Hector and I both glanced involuntarily at where it should have been on her left hand.
‘I’ve lost it,’ she added.
I laid down my knife and fork and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank goodness! I thought you were going to tell us you and Ted had split up.’
A fleeting smile passed across her face.
‘Oh no, Sophie, nothing like that. Except…’ Her face crumpled as she stared at her plate. ‘Except when he finds out I’ve been so careless with something so valuable, he may call it off in disgust.’
I laid a hand on her arm to comfort her. ‘I’m sure he’d never do that. Your Ted’s a keeper, and he thinks you are too. Don’t worry, I expect it’ll turn up. You’ve probably just put it down somewhere and forgotten it. Do you take it off to do the washing up? Have you checked by your kitchen sink? I’m forever losing earrings, but they generally turn up again in the flat or the shop or my cottage unless it’s when I’m out and about. And you don’t go out as much as I do, do you, Carol?’
She shook her head. ‘No, but I know where I was when I lost it.’
‘Then surely it’s not lost?’ said Hector, spearing a prawn.
He didn’t seem to understand how precious Carol’s long-awaited engagement ring might be for its significance rather than its material value.
Carol took a large swig of wine before continuing. ‘But that’s exactly it. It shouldn’t have been able to get lost. I was in the shop, and I set it down on the counter for Janice Boggins to try on – all my friends have been wanting to try it on, as it’s so fancy – and then Norman Arch tried to queue-jump to get change for the bus, and I had to check his fifty-pound note with my special pen for counterparts—’
‘Counterfeits,’ I translated for Hector.
‘Then when I put his change on the counter, half the coins rolled onto the floor by my feet, and I had to crawl about on my hands and knees to pick them all up again. Don’t you remember, Sophie?’
She turned to me for verification, and I gave an encouraging nod. ‘Yes, I was starting to get worried that Norman’s interruption was going to make us all miss the bus.’
‘Then, just as I was getting up from the floor, a stranger came in asking for directions to Maggie Burton’s house, saying he was lost. It was only when I’d sorted him out, and made the two takeaway coffees he wanted, and the bus was just pulling away from the bus stop, that I realised my left hand felt funny, and I looked down and there the ring wasn’t.’
‘You think Norman waltzed off with it?’ asked Hector. I knew he was still smarting from his row with Norman over the shelves, but that was no reason to brand him a thief.
‘Innocent until proven guilty,’ I reproved him.
‘I don’t know what to think,’ replied Carol. ‘I suppose he could have swept it up along with the coins I’d just given him and slipped it into his trouser pocket while I was under the counter.’
‘Surely Janice Boggins would have stopped him from doing that?’
I didn’t much like Janice, but I couldn’t picture her as Norman Arch’s partner-in-crime.
‘Hang on, I thought Janice was trying the ring on,’ said Hector.
‘I doubt he’d have wrestled it off her hand,’ I remarked.
Carol laid down her knife and fork, rested her elbows on the breakfast bar and put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was cracking. ‘I just don’t know anything any more. I’m just a foolish old woman. I don’t know what Ted sees in me. I don’t deserve him and his beautiful ring.’
I slipped my arm around her quaking shoulders. ‘Now come off it, Carol. For a start, you’re not the least bit old, and anyone with half a brain can see Ted adores you. Besides, the ring can’t have vanished into thin air. Goodness knows, the gemstone was big enough to be unmissable. Are you sure it didn’t fall on the floor along with Norman’s loose change? If it fell at the same time as a load of coins, you wouldn’t have heard it fall. It’s probably just rolled under the counter and is sitting there waiting for you to find it.’
‘What a treasure that would be for a Borrower to find,’ mused Hector.
I frowned at him. ‘What are you on about?’
He was not exactly being helpful.
Carol lifted her face and gave a watery smile. ‘Oh, you know, Sophie, those tiny people in Mary Norton’s books for children. They live behind the wainscoting and sneak people’s darning needles and other little things they might find useful when we’re not looking. I know I can never find a darning needle when I want one.’
I didn’t know anyone still did darning.
I waved aside his diversion. ‘Anyway, I suggest you take a long knitting needle and run it under the counter and into every nook and cranny about the floor. Or might it have fallen into those big baskets of apples beside the counter? Have you tipped them all out to check?’ An alarming thought struck me. ‘Goodness, you haven’t put them onto your compost heaps, have you? I wouldn’t blame you if you had. They were starting to go over when I was last in the shop.’
Carol was staring into the distance.
‘I knew I should never have persuaded Mum to let Norman off when she caught him pinching KitKats,’ she said. Carol’s parents, who had run the shop before she had, died many years before. ‘He was only little then, of course, when Mum was still alive. But he was always a bit light-fingered, as some kids are, but she thought a second chance and forgiveness would do more good than telling his mum, who would have just whacked him. He was a frail, skinny boy at that stage, so he might not have got enough to eat at home. You wouldn’t think it to look at him now, nor his brother, neither.’
‘If Norman hadn’t done his disappearing act, the sensible thing would have been for you just to ask him if he’d seen the ring,’ said Hector. ‘If he had stolen it, you would have given him the opportunity to own up and return it and save himself from getting into trouble. You might even have allowed him to pretend he scooped it up by accident along with his change. That way you’d have given him a second chance, same as your mum would have done. And if he pretended to know nothing about it, you’d have had reasonable grounds to report your suspicions to the police for them to investigate.’
The simplicity of this solution was genius. I was glad for the reminder of Hector’s essential kindness, after Norman had brought out his less generous side.
Carol gazed into her glass for a moment. ‘You know, I’d quite geared myself up to report him to the police when they came to ask me for any information I might have about Janice’s death. I was sure they would want to talk to me, given that I’ve got such a good view of the bus stop, and that I was there all day when Janice was going back and forth on the bus. But they haven’t. But when they passed me by, I took that as a sign that I shouldn’t tell them about my missing ring. Everything happens for a reason, my mum always used to say.’
Hector topped up our wine glasses. ‘You don’t need to correlate the two incidents – Janice’s death and the loss of your ring. I very much doubt they’re related. Besides, the police officer who was gathering evidence for Janice’s murder will only be interested in anything related to her death.’
‘God rest her soul,’ said Carol, raising her glass.
‘The police won’t have time to look for lost property,’ Hector continued.
‘No matter how valuable,’ I added, anxious not to shatter Carol’s illusion that the ring was a real diamond. ‘If you like, you could report it as a separate crime, which you’ll need to do to get a crime reference number, if that makes you feel better.’
Hector gave me a warning glance, reminding me that the truth about the ring’s low value would have to come out if she made an insurance claim.
Carol held the cool bowl of her wine glass against her flushed cheek. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Hector, although I don’t know whether I’ve left it too late now. He might have pawned it or sold it by now. It could be miles away. As it seems Norman Arch is now, too.’
‘I don’t want to seem callous,’ said Hector, once Carol had gone home, and we were sitting comfortably in the fireside chairs enjoying an after-dinner coffee. ‘But isn’t this a lot of fuss about not very much? I mean, the ring’s only cubic zirconia. It’s probably only worth about fifty quid.’
I lifted a bare foot to prod his knee reprovingly. ‘The money’s not the issue. I’m more worried about Carol having to tell Ted she’s lost her valuable diamond ring, only for him to tell her it was a cheap imitation. Still, their relationship is probably strong enough to withstand it.’
‘If Norman has stolen it for his own gain, I’d like to see his face when he takes it to a dealer only to be told it’s cheap costume jewellery.’ Hector chuckled.
‘Well, before Carol does anything else, she needs to go home and turn the shop upside down looking for it before she accuses anybody to their face. She has no real evidence that Norman stole it. It might just as easily have been Janice, or even the stranger who came in asking for directions to Maggie Burton’s house.’
‘Or even you,’ said Hector, diluting the sting of his accusation with a wink. ‘After all, you were in the shop when all this was going on.’
My mouth fell open in surprise. I’d just cast myself in the role of omniscient observer. It had never occurred to me that someone might consider me a suspect.
His eyes twinkling in mischief, Hector turned sideways on his bar stool, leaned forward and put his hands on my knees. ‘Actually, perhaps her visit just now was a subtle ploy to give you the chance to confess and return the ring.’
I slapped his hand. ‘Yes, you’ve rumbled me. Any minute now I’m going to produce the ring from my pocket and propose.’
Even joking about the prospect made my heart race. I was playing with fire.
Hector stayed my hand in mid-air and gave it an affectionate squeeze. ‘I think we’ve got enough trouble on our hands with one new engagement in the village, don’t you?’
