An extremely unlikely de.., p.7
An Extremely Unlikely Death, page 7
‘Gosh, what’s got into him?’ Tilly asked, taking a step back. Vanessa raised her eyebrows at the sight of the dog – Margery thought she must have been wondering where he had come from.
‘I don’t know,’ Rose said, scooping Jason up into her arms, and giving him a concerned look. He went back to his meek self immediately, but when Tilly took another step forward again, he growled, even louder than the first time.
Rose quickly took the bag from Tilly’s hand and took a quick step back, Jason vibrating like an alarm clock under her arm.
‘Is he yours?’ Tilly asked, gasping at the loud growls still coming from the tiny dog.
‘Sort of,’ Rose said at the same time as Margery said, ‘Yes.’
They looked at each other and then back to Vanessa, who was eyeing them all very warily.
‘He’s my assistance dog,’ Rose said, her cheeks flushing red. It was interesting to watch; Margery had never seen her so flustered. Not even the time Seren had insisted on showing the entire dinner lady team the photograph of them both on Oblivion at Alton Towers. ‘He assists me. Mr Barrow authorised it when he was headmaster.’
‘Right,’ Vanessa said, the tone of her voice telling Margery she didn’t believe that in the slightest. ‘And what does he assist you with? He seems much too old to be a guide dog.’
‘Well, we’d better go,’ Rose said, not even trying to answer the question. ‘Lots of marking to do, you know how it is!’
She excused herself, taking Jason with her, who stopped growling the moment they left the office. Vanessa shrugged and went back to her crochet and Margery and Clementine made their leave as well.
‘What was all that about?’ Clementine hissed as soon as they were out of earshot of the office.
‘I’m not sure,’ Margery said. ‘It was as if Jason didn’t like Tilly. I’ve never seen him act like that.’
He was usually a very polite little dog – Margery had never known him to bark or growl at anyone, although Mr Fitzgerald had been with him constantly, so perhaps it was because he missed his owner. But he seemed to be getting on okay with them and with Rose. And to be honest, with everyone else that they had crossed paths with over the day. Everyone except for Tilly.
‘Neither have I,’ Rose whispered, making Margery jump as she appeared behind them. ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly usually.’
‘Where have you been hiding?’ Clementine demanded to know. ‘Sneaking around the place like a spider!’
Rose rolled her eyes so ferociously that Margery worried for a second that they would be lost inside her head forever, never to return the right way up.
‘There’s something going on here at the school,’ she whispered, her voice so low Margery and Clementine both had to lean in to hear her. ‘And I’m going to find out what it is. Jason has never been rude to anyone. He’s been coming to governors’ meetings for years and he’s never so much as barked. And now his owner’s dead, the very same week James’s replacement takes over, and a few weeks after all those emails started circulating… it’s all too coincidental.’
‘What emails?’ Margery asked.
Rose didn’t answer at first, but then she finally drew herself up with a shake of her head. ‘A few members of the governing board received some libellous emails. You really didn’t know about them? It’s all the staff room’s been gossiping about.’
‘We don’t really use the staff room,’ Margery said, with a shrug. ‘It’s more for the teachers, isn’t it?’
‘Well, you should,’ Rose said. ‘Especially now that this place has turned upside down. No reason for us all to be segregated any further. Anyway, I can’t hang around. I’ve got things to sort out.’
‘What are you suggesting?’ Clementine asked in the same hushed tones.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ Rose said, looking suddenly exhausted. Margery noticed that her hair was not as neat as it usually was – her sleek bob was fraying at the edges. ‘But I’m going to find out.’
‘Well, that’s cryptic,’ Clementine scoffed, ‘even for you. The queen of cryptic nonsense!’
‘I’m surprised that you aren’t more concerned about all this.’ Rose looked between them both, her brow furrowed. ‘You’re usually the first pair to jump on an investigation.’
‘It’s all been quite sudden,’ Margery said meekly. Clementine just nodded.
‘Just… let me get all my information together,’ Rose said. ‘Then I can tell you what I think is going on.’
She plonked Jason into Margery’s arms and spun on her heels, marching quickly the other way. Jason whined as she left. Margery wondered what the emails could possibly contain that would lead someone to punch a fellow governor.
Chapter Eight
They decided to take Jason for a long walk down into the high street and to Mr Fitzgerald’s building. Maybe he would feel a bit more himself if he was in familiar surroundings. He trotted meekly in between them as they marched down Dewstow Hill to the town centre. Margery wondered what on earth Rose had planned and then decided to try not to worry about it too much. As her mother always used to say, worrying gave little things big shadows. She had also used to say, ‘Everything in moderation including moderation,’ but that was neither here nor there.
‘I just can’t get over him wanting us to have the building,’ Margery said as they tramped down the hill. ‘Of course we were friends, but surely someone on the council or the board of governors would have been more suited? Or even Mr Tamble himself?’
‘I always thought he said his plan was to donate it to the school,’ Clementine said agreeably. ‘I’m not sure what the school would use a booby-trapped death shop for, but I’m certain that was his plan.’
‘Yes,’ Margery said, furrowing her brow as her brain searched for the recollection of a fleeting conversation. ‘I’m sure he did say that once… maybe even a few times. This is why I think I agree with Mr Tamble…’
‘Do you really think he left us the shop for a reason?’ Clementine said, looking down at Jason.
‘Yes,’ Margery said with a nod. ‘That’s why I want to find the camera footage. Mr Fitzgerald had CCTV of everything. He must have footage of his own death, or at least the shop front. We can see any comings or goings from the day he died.’
Clementine nodded back, but she didn’t look entirely convinced.
‘What if he knew he was about to die?’ Margery asked. ‘Surely he’d want us to know what had happened? What if he left us the shop so we can solve his murder?’
‘It’s not completely unreasonable to think that,’ Clementine said. ‘But do you really think there was something untoward about it? People die all the time: sudden heart attacks, strokes… all sorts of horrible things, really. Don’t they? It doesn’t mean he was murdered.’
‘Yes, I agree with that,’ Margery said with a sigh. ‘And Ms Cooper said he died peacefully, and the police don’t seem overly concerned, do they? I can’t imagine we’d be able to step a single foot on the premises if they thought anything untoward had happened. Mr Tamble wouldn’t have been able to sign it over to us at all. Unless…’
‘Unless what?’ Clementine asked.
‘Unless they aren’t investigating for a reason,’ Margery said out loud for the first time, aware that she must sound mad. ‘We know Mr Fitzgerald had his finger in all sorts of things he shouldn’t have. His secret CCTV room, for one. I keep thinking that he might have seen something on the cameras that he shouldn’t have. What if that caused his death?’
‘Yes,’ Clementine agreed, ‘that’s true, actually. Gosh, maybe there is something more to all of this.’
They reached the shop finally and Margery took it all in while Clementine fought with the ring of keys Mr Tamble had given them. The building looked awfully quiet from the outside. The windows were dark and grimy as though they hadn’t been cleaned in some time. Margery knew that was nothing new, but the very idea that Mr Fitzgerald was gone seemed to make them look dirtier. The outside light that usually illuminated the old painted sign that said Fitzgerald’s Antiques was off. It threw the street into gloom even in the last little bit of summer afternoon air. Margery had never noticed how badly cracked and faded the paint and woodwork was, had never paid any of it more than a second’s notice.
‘Gosh, what on earth are all these doors glued together with? And why are there five locks for one door!’ Clementine groaned as she tried another key. ‘This is impossible. I bet he cemented them all shut every night before he left and then pickaxed his way in every morning; that seems like a very Mr Fitzgerald thing to do.’
‘He lived here,’ Margery said. ‘Though I’m not sure where in the building; I’ve certainly never seen a bedroom.’
‘Probably in a hammock in the attic, next to a painting of himself that’s about nine hundred years old,’ Clementine scoffed. She tried another key, which jammed in the lock and stuck fast. She wrenched it free and tried another.
‘Do you think the police have found his secret CCTV room, though?’ Clementine asked, her face becoming serious as she tried yet another key on the next lock.
‘We’re about to find out,’ Margery told her, as that final key unlocked the latch with a click. ‘I don’t think they can have, or we wouldn’t be standing here right now. I can’t imagine they’d have let Mr Tamble sign the building over.’
Inside, the shop was exactly the same as when Margery had last seen it – bar the physical presence of Mr Fitzgerald himself. Though it still felt as though he was here, Margery thought. The essence of him still was, at the very least. She could feel him still sitting at the desk on his chair with Jason on his lap. Jason sat quietly next to her feet, and she bent down to pat his head, soothing her fingers over his smooth brow. The walls and ceiling were stacked with items, some normal, some decidedly not. Margery was sure that the taxidermy squirrel wearing a tiny top hat and playing a violin was still on sale for a reason.
‘What should we do first?’ Clementine asked.
‘Well, let’s go up and see if the police found the cameras.’ Margery suggested. Clementine nodded.
They had been surprised and slightly appalled to have been told about Mr Fitzgerald’s bizarre closed-circuit cameras logging day-to-day town business earlier in the year. At the time they hadn’t said much about it; it had helped them solve another mystery, after all. But since then, they had often talked about it in hushed whispers, even in the safety of the closed doors of their home. They had reasoned between themselves that as long as it was only in Mr Fitzgerald’s hands and no one else’s, then it could be seen as merely an extension of his peculiarities and eagerness to help Dewstow town’s traffic warden. In the wrong hands, it could tell a much darker story.
They made their way upstairs, up the stone steps that were so worn with age they curved down in the middle of each one. Margery was certain that she would slip no matter how many steps she conquered, although Mr Fitzgerald had never had any issue with them. She remembered him showing them upstairs earlier in the year – sauntering up them as gracefully and as quickly as a squirrel climbing a tree, his long limbs flailing away.
It seemed amazing to Margery that he’d fallen anywhere in the shop. She wondered for a second how he could have. Maybe Mr Fitzgerald had decided not to bother turning on the stairway light, so confident that he knew each step like the back of his own hand, and then slipped on his way down. The more Margery thought about it, the more things pointed to something being amiss; she was sure about it now. She just needed to convince Clementine that something was suspicious about Mr Fitzgerald’s death and find out why the police had given up so easily.
Jason plodded up the stairs behind them, taking each step as carefully as Margery, one at a time.
The room at the top of the stairs didn’t have as much junk as it had the first time they’d seen it, but still it was quite full. Books and paintings littered the shelves and floor. A thick layer of dust covered everything. Margery was sure she saw a mouse run along the bottom of the skirting and disappear into a hole in the opposite wall. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her thin summer cardigan closer to her chest. Even in the summer heat it felt cold and damp inside the shop, especially up in the attic. She was sure that if they scraped back the paint, they would find layers of mould underneath.
Clementine went over to where the CCTV room had been hidden behind a bookshelf and found an empty space. The bookshelf was nowhere to be found. Instead, the small space contained a single, rickety-looking camp bed. A long clothes rack sat against the wall behind it, all of Mr Fitzgerald’s shirts and trousers hanging from it. Never to be worn again. The thought made her shiver – a line of electricity ran down her spine and up her arms.
‘Did the police take the CCTV?’ Clementine asked, looking around in surprise.
‘They can’t have,’ Margery said. ‘I’m sure we’d have heard something about an illegal set of security cameras – Nigel would have told us at the very least. This is what I’m talking about, Clem: it’s strange. At the very least, I don’t think they’d have okayed the handover of the shop.’ Margery gestured to the room.
There was a little kitchenette unit against the back wall, which looked tidy but well used, in a way that reminded Margery of their own washing-up that needed doing. The sink still contained a bowl; a glass still sat on the counter next to the tap. There was a small wooden table just in front of the old gas oven, with a single chair. It was all set up for dinner, with two sets of dinnerware and glasses. On the top of the stove sat a saucepan, which was clean, and looked as though it was waiting to be put away.
‘Was this his entire house?’ Clementine asked, her mouth falling into a grim line. Margery had been wondering the same. For someone who had been so vocal in town policies, and who seemingly knew everyone in and everything about Dewstow, it seemed dreadfully lonely.
There was a scratching to her left and Margery realised that Jason was sniffing at the bottom of the wall that the mouse had run under the skirting of, next to a huge mirror that took up most of it.
‘Clem,’ she called, ‘do you think there’s something over here?’
Clementine rushed to join her, and they considered the mirror together. Clementine reached out a hand and tried to move it. It didn’t budge for a moment; then it swung open, revealing a locked door.
‘Ooh!’ Clementine and Margery both said in unison, sharing a grin.
‘What a tricksy little man he was,’ Clementine exclaimed, rooting around in her bag for the keys. ‘What do you think he was hiding?’
‘All sorts, I expect,’ Margery said. ‘The longer we stand here, the more I’m expecting something to jump out at us.’
Clementine finally found the keys, pulling them out and beginning to try the lock. After several minutes they realised that their triumph was to end early. Most of the keys didn’t fit into the lock, and the ones that did squash their way inside didn’t turn at all.
‘We can’t have the key,’ Margery whispered after Clementine had given them all a go, twice. ‘Do you think he kept it somewhere else?’
‘I’d imagine so.’ Clementine nodded, took a step back and considered the door again. ‘The police can’t have found this; they’d have wrenched the door off if they didn’t have the key. I wonder what’s inside? Do you think his CCTV is in here? We should really destroy it, Margery; I don’t like the idea of us being found with it. Even if it is all just footage of townspeople picking their noses.’
‘We need to find it,’ Margery said. ‘I don’t like the cameras either, but what if they can prove how Mr Fitzgerald died? Anyway, I don’t like the idea of it falling into the wrong hands. We don’t know what’s on the footage.’
‘I agree,’ Clementine said, ‘but I’m not sure where to start. Maybe we should come back again tomorrow?’
‘Oh!’ Margery cried, a thought suddenly occurring to her. ‘What if one of the keys that were posted through our letterbox unlocks it? Do we have them with us?’
She began to rummage in her handbag, but as she did so she remembered putting them into the drawer of the coffee table. Margery cursed herself and took one last longing look at the door before they closed it all up again, shutting the mirror back over it tightly. They gathered their bags and were about to make a careful journey down the stairs again, when there was a crash from the shop below.
Margery and Clementine exchanged a frightened look.
‘What was that?’ Margery hissed.
Clementine had turned her head to the side like it might help her hear better. They both stood for a minute in silence, listening for any more noise. Jason began to growl quietly, his small body vibrating with the force of it.
‘We should go and see what it is,’ Clementine said, making her way to the door, ‘but if it’s a ghost we’ll run past it out of the fire escape.’
There was another crash.
‘I don’t think ghosts break things,’ Margery hissed under her breath.
Clementine looked as puzzled as she had the day they’d confused their homemade strawberry jam for Sharon’s homemade chilli one.
This was a bit more frightening than weird-tasting scones, though, Margery thought to herself. She didn’t know what to do. They couldn’t go back downstairs without confronting the source of the noise, and they couldn’t stay upstairs without being trapped by whatever was causing it.
Finally, Clementine decided for them. She crept to the stairs and carefully made her way down them one by one. Margery followed cautiously, putting Jason down on the floor so she could hold on to the old metal banister that ran down the stairway. Jason ran off after Clementine before Margery could stop him, barrelling past them both into the main shop.
‘Argh!’ There was a scream from downstairs.
Margery rushed down towards it behind Clementine.
‘Bloody hell! You scared me, you stupid dog!’ the voice said, sounding croaky and well used.
Margery pushed the door open and entered the shop floor. She saw Clementine staring in confusion at whoever had screamed, but noticed that she didn’t seem particularly worried.
