Paths to otherwhere, p.31
Death in an English Village, page 31
part #7 of A Cressida Fawcett Mystery Series
DEATH IN AN ENGLISH VILLAGE
A TOTALLY UNPUTDOWNABLE HISTORICAL MURDER MYSTERY
FLISS CHESTER
BOOKS BY FLISS CHESTER
The Cressida Fawcett Mysteries Series
1. Death Among the Diamonds
2. Death by a Cornish Cove
3. Death in the Highlands
4. Death on the Scotland Express
5. Death in the Crypt
6. Death in the Mayfair Hotel
7. Death in an English Village
The Fen Churche Mysteries
1. A Dangerous Goodbye
2. Night Train to Paris
3. The Moonlit Murders
Available in Audio
The Cressida Fawcett Mysteries Series
1. Death Among the Diamonds (Available in the UK and the US)
2. Death by a Cornish Cove (Available in the UK and the US)
3. Death in the Highlands (Available in the UK and the US)
4. Death on the Scotland Express (Available in the UK and the US)
5. Death in the Crypt (Available in the UK and the US)
6. Death in the Mayfair Hotel (Available in the UK and the US)
The Fen Churche Mysteries
1. A Dangerous Goodbye (Available in the UK and the US)
2. Night Train to Paris (Available in the UK and the US)
3. The Moonlit Murders (Available in the UK and the US)
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
A Dangerous Goodbye
One
Two
Hear More from Fliss Chester
Books by Fliss Chester
A Letter from Fliss
Death Among the Diamonds
Death by a Cornish Cove
Death in the Highlands
Death on the Scotland Express
Death in the Crypt
Death in the Mayfair Hotel
Night Train to Paris
The Moonlit Murders
Author’s Note
Publishing Team
Supporting Young Readers
To my family
What ho!
1
Croquet was meant to be a genteel sort of sport, at least that’s what the Honourable Cressida Fawcett had always thought. But as she drummed her fingers on her hips, standing on the edge of the croquet lawn of her parents’ rambling Jacobean manor house, Mydenhurst Place, she could see only chaos. She caught her breath and raised a hand to her brow to shield her from the bright spring sunlight and tried once again to take stock of the scene in front of her. There were puppies everywhere. They were careering across the grass, through the hoops, tumbling over the heavy, coloured balls and pegging themselves out on the multi-striped stick in the middle of the lawn. She’d not seen such pandemonium on the croquet lawn since her cousin Jolyon had that unfortunate incident with the thirty bantam hens.
The puppies – five currently croqueting each other in front of her, though she was sure there were six in total – were the offspring of her adorable and adored pug, Ruby. Ruby had surprised Cressida at Christmas time with a bulging belly and then, at the end of January had given birth to six perfect little pups. Yes, six. She was sure of it, as she scanned the podgy balls of fur scampering across the lawn, peeling and rolling themselves through the hoops. They were porgis, or perhaps cogs, she wasn’t sure what the official name might be; but she did know they were here thanks to an autumn dalliance between Ruby and one of Lord Totteridge’s Welsh corgis.
‘Speaking of Ruby,’ Cressida murmured to herself. ‘Where is she? And Suki?’ She counted the small balls of energy that were rebounding off the croquet hoops. The month had been so dry, her father had asked Bob the gardener to fetch the croquet set out of the summer pavilion that was situated just to one side of the lawn, away from the house, and measure out the pitch in expectation of summer. Today, however, the only game that would be played between the hoops and pegs would be puppy catching, not croquet.
Cressida readied herself for another dash across the lawn as she called over to her mother, who was trying to keep two pups from running off into the rose bushes.
‘I’m worried about Ruby and Suki. I think they went behind the pavilion, Mama.’ Cressida pointed, pulling her cashmere cardigan around her. It was sunny, but there was still a chill in the air. A pair of red kites circled high above the trees behind the pavilion. A small puppy would be the perfect morsel for them, she thought, and shivered as a breeze tickled the back of her neck. She wished she’d thought to bring her scarf outside.
‘There’s not much there. Bob leaves the rotavator behind there sometimes, otherwise—’
‘It’s the back way down to the stream, though, isn’t it?’ Cressida replied, identifying another danger to the tiny pooches. She unclamped a small canine from her trouser leg and passed the pup over to Molly, one of the Mydenhurst maids, who was dressed in a smart black woollen dress with a white pinafore over it. It matched her white frilled headband, an item of her uniform that was working particularly hard today in keeping her russet curls off her lightly freckled face.
Smiling in thanks to the maid, Cressida ran over to the smartly painted, clapboard building on the far edge of the lawn. Reaching the pavilion in no time, she picked her way over the less formal ground around the side of it, glad she was in her sensible tweed slacks and brogues. Her mother, who had decided to follow her, much to the detriment of her rose beds no doubt, moved less nimbly, being in a skirt and twinset, and much smarter shoes. Cressida let her fall behind as she pushed away branches that grew up close to the wooden building and were having the annoying habit of getting caught up in her newly shingled and cut blonde bob.
She hoped the local jays and magpies could make use of the tufts of pure cashmere that she was losing to the brambles, too, but she bore on. Sure enough, she soon came to an opening in the undergrowth behind the pavilion that led through to a well-trodden woodland pathway. A haze of lilac bluebells either side of the path made her feel like Moses parting the waves, and she wished she had time to stop and pick a few for her mother as she always had as a girl. But her worries over Ruby and Suki’s whereabouts were more pressing and she hurried along the pretty woodland path, calling back to her mother to let her know which way she’d gone. Then she called Ruby’s name several times. Being almost three years old, Ruby had half a chance of remembering her name, though Cressida knew all too well that recall wasn’t one of her strong suits.
A thought flashed across Cressida’s mind; if Ruby wasn’t great at coming to her name, Suki, being only six weeks old, would be one hundred times worse. Cressida hurried as she ran along the pathway, which wound its way through the small wood. She knew all the paths and all the fields, every tree and every shrub like the back of her own hand, having played among them all her childhood. She ducked under a low branch she knew instinctively would be there and as she did so, she noticed a chewed sock, one of hers, on the path and knew that she was on the right track. She’d mourned the loss of that very pair only last night as she’d seen Suki chew its partner to an untimely end in front of the fire.
‘Ruby!’ she called again, catching her breath as she slowed to a trot. The path had emerged in an open field full of long grasses, and Cressida knew that just beyond it was the stream. A shadow appeared overhead and Cressida looked up; the kites were still circling.
Picking up her pace again, Cressida ran along the path that now skirted the field and led down to the stream, known to the villagers as Hell’s Ditch. She kept an eye on the hovering birds of prey, hoping she was the only one on the hunt for a delicious little puppy. As she saw one of the large birds swoop, she heard yapping and started to wave her hands above her head, warning off the bird as much as she could. Desperation flooded her heart. Just as it was about to hit the ground it banked and flew up past her. Cressida felt relief wash over her as she watched it fly back into the copse of trees along with its mate. But as she neared the old stone bridge that carried the path over the water, that relief turned to shock, and then to revulsion, and finally horror.
For what she saw in the stream was not what she had first feared. And, in fact, her darling dog Ruby came bounding up to her as soon as she’d cleared the long grasses, Suki in tow, yapping away. But what they’d run from, the terrible thing that must have attracted them in the first place, was a man. Lying face down in the stream, his woollen jacket floating out around him, a white, bloated hand still holding the remnants of what looked like a sandwich. A san dwich that may well have been his last meal.
For the man in the stream was most decidedly dead.
2
‘Oh no, oh, Ruby!’ Cressida scooped up her darling dog, who rewarded her with several licks to the face as she leaned down once again to pick up the much smaller Suki. Holding both dogs securely she edged closer towards the stream.
‘Darling,’ Lady Fawcett called, finally having emerged from the long grasses to the clearing at the edge of the water. ‘Did you find Ruby and Suki? Oh… dear me!’
‘Mama, stay back.’ Cressida turned away from the body and rushed over to where her mother stood, wide-eyed, staring past her to the stream. ‘Please, Mama, don’t look any further. It’s horrible,’ she said, passing both dogs to her mother as if that would distract her.
‘Don’t be silly, darling. I’m your mother. Who is it? Are they dead?’ She handed Ruby back to Cressida, keeping Suki in the nook of her arm.
Cressida shrugged. ‘I haven’t had a chance to see…’
‘Come on then.’ Lady Rosamund Fawcett showed her mettle, and all but pushed past her protective daughter, striding to the stream.
‘And I wonder where I get it from,’ Cressida whispered to Ruby as she caught up with her mother who had stopped just yards from the edge of the water.
Now they were closer Cressida could take in more of the scene. The body wasn’t floating as such, the stream wasn’t deep enough for that, but it – he – was face down in the shingle and stones, his arms splayed out beside him, his legs being buffeted by the water as it rushed over a small drop in the rocks. His feet were barely visible, being just that bit further under the shadow cast by the old stone bridge that spanned the stream. It wasn’t a large bridge, but back in the day it would have been wide enough for a drover and his flock of geese or several sheep on their way to market. Now it was only used by the Fawcett family and their staff and tenant farmers.
Cressida turned to her mother, who was tutting and shaking her head. ‘Do you know who it is? He looks familiar, that coat…’ Cressida racked her brains.
‘It’s Bob Pringle. Our gardener,’ Lady Fawcett said, her voice quiet and her face pale.
‘Bob. Oh no.’ Cressida knew why she recognised that old tweed jacket now. Bob had worn it almost every day for the last however many years. Bob, who had been their gardener and such a familiar face since she’d been a girl. A man she remembered fondly leaning on his spade as a robin made merry with the worms he dug up in the rose bed. She turned back to look at her mother, who was still shaking her head, her face blanched from its usual rosiness. Lady Fawcett pointed at the bridge and then spoke.
‘Was he sitting on the bridge eating his lunch and then fell, do you think?’
Cressida looked back at the scene. Her mother’s guess made sense. The way he was face down, his legs close to the bridge. His sandwich, soggy now, but made of good, solid farmhouse bread, still in his hand. Cressida looked around her at the grassy fields studded with oxeye daisies, the old drovers’ path lined by a hedgerow that looked positively bridal thanks to the soft white and pink hawthorn blossom. Then there was the small but ancient woodland that protected this wilder spot from the formality of the Jacobean house and gardens. It would be a glorious spot to sit and have one’s lunch, and it made perfect sense that Bob Pringle would be there, enjoying his sandwich. How tragic that one moment he might have been eating his lunch, and the next… she could barely process the thought. Cressida looked to her mother who was staring at the body in the stream.
‘I should try and help him,’ Cressida volunteered. ‘Just in case he’s not…’ She couldn’t quite bring herself to finish the sentence. As her mother nodded her assent, Cressida carefully put Ruby down and stepped towards the stream. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bloated hand and its soggy sandwich, which she could see now had been cheese and pickle, but she forged ahead, stepping gingerly into the shallow stream, wobbling as she found her footing on a slippery stone.
‘Careful, darling!’ Lady Fawcett called across to her.
‘I am being, Mama,’ Cressida answered, concentrating on not falling over. She reached the part of the stream in which Bob lay and cautiously placed a hand on his shoulder. His tweed jacket here was still dry, the water hadn’t even reached high enough over his shoulders to dampen it. Cressida laid her palm flat against the material and gently shook the gardener, while calling his name. But there was no response. Poor Bob, she thought, remembering the times he’d shaken a rake at her while she made mud pies in the flower beds or held his head in his hands as she’d kicked through the neat piles of leaves he swept up each autumn.
She stilled herself until all she could hear was the gentle trickle of the water and her own heartbeat. She rested her hand on his back. There was no movement, no breath. What little skin she could see was tinged with an icy blue. Without the strength to roll him over she couldn’t double-check, but she was sure – as she had been in that first moment that she’d seen him – that he was dead. Her mama was most likely right. He’d slipped and fallen face first into the stream. It wasn’t deep, but a fall might have knocked him out and the couple of inches of rapid flowing water pushed into his lungs would have done the rest. Cressida gently patted his back and braced herself to navigate her return to the dry bank, her shoes now sodden and her toes quite perishingly cold because of it.
But something on the other side of Bob’s body caught her eye. The soggy sandwich had been grasped in his left hand, the one closest to her, but his right hand, which had been harder to see at first, was clenched tightly shut. Balled into a fist, even.
Cressida thought it odd, since surely a man’s first instinct as he fell would have been to open his hands, splaying them to brace his fall? She could understand not wanting to lose a delicious sandwich, but why ball up his right hand? Unless it was holding something. Something he hadn’t wanted to let go of, come hell, or indeed, high water.
Cressida looked up at the bridge. There was no crumbling stone or loose mortar. If this was an accident, it wasn’t from Bob losing his seat on the solid square edge of it. Could he have suffered a heart attack or had some sort of blackout and just fallen in?
‘One more moment, Mama,’ Cressida called to her mother as she shuffled herself around the half-damp body to the other side.
‘What are you doing, Cressida?’ Lady Fawcett asked. ‘Don’t risk getting yourself all wet, darling. Poor Bob, seems there’s nothing we can do now except put a telephone call in to the coroner. Maybe Mr Botheridge at Downs Farm could help us. And your father, of course.’
Cressida let her mother’s thoughts go unanswered as she squatted down, feeling the water of the stream drag and catch around the hems of her trousers. She took a deep breath, then examined the closed fist of the dead man. Gently prising it open she wondered at the determination that had kept it so firmly closed. It soon became clear though – as she managed to straighten out one, two, then three of his fingers, the nails of which were rimmed with dirt, as one would expect from a gardener – what he had been holding onto so tightly. She gasped and rocked back slightly in shock.
‘What is it, darling?’ Lady Fawcett asked, raising her voice in concern from the dry bank of the stream.
Cressida ignored her mother for a moment. There was something else, not just in Bob’s hand, but written on his palm. Cressida prised the last finger open and slid the object away, keeping it safe in her own fist, and read what she could as the icy-cold water of the stream did its best to obscure the ink. The writing was large, but hard to make out. A capital ‘D’, then a squiggle – perhaps it was an ‘e’ – and another ‘D’. DeD… or perhaps dead?
‘Mama, you might need to telephone someone other than the coroner and Mr Botheridge,’ Cressida called up, taking in what she’d seen. ‘You might need to call the police.’
‘The police? For an accident?’ Lady Fawcett looked concerned. ‘I know you adore DCI Andrews, darling, but I don’t think we need Scotland Yard for an accident.’
‘I’m not so sure this was an accident, Mama,’ Cressida answered, holding the item that had been in Bob’s fist aloft. ‘I have a feeling this might have been murder.’
