Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) (20 page)

“Hello, Mary. How are you?”

“Fair to middling. Not so dusty. Come in, come in.”

Penny stepped into a pristine living room, the front door opening
directly from the street. It was a large, low-ceilinged, square room, with
plain magnolia-yellow walls and a beige three-piece suite with dark red
cushions. There were no bookshelves, a fact which always made Penny shudder in
other people’s houses.

“Would you like a drink?” Mary asked. She looked like she
was standing in the wrong house, dressed in her layers of velvet with her
jangling bangles and fringed shawl.

“No, thank you. I’m afraid I’m here with some difficult
questions. Um.” Penny fiddled with her bag and pulled out the envelope. She
decided it was in no one’s interest to mess around. “I received this letter
this morning and I wondered if it was similar to the ones you had got.”

Mary’s face tensed and she took half a step backwards, her
hands raised in front of her, and her fingers flexing at nothing. She stared at
the letter in Penny’s hand. “Can I see?” she whispered.

Penny unfolded it and began to pass it over, but Mary could
see the words printed there and she waved it away. “Oh, oh,” she said. “Yes.
Wait. I’ll get mine.”

Penny would have found Mary’s reaction comical if she
hadn’t, herself, received a letter. When it actually happened to you, she
reflected, it was a whole new thing, and quite sickening.

Mary went through the door at the far end of the room, and
returned a moment later with two sheets of paper. “These are the last few I
got,” she said, and thrust them at Penny with a trembling hand.

LEAVE TOWN NOW said one, and GET OUT OR ELSE said the
other, with an added unpleasant profane insult scrawled at the bottom of the
sheet. It was the same handwriting, the same paper, and the same style of
envelope.

“Was yours addressed to you?” Mary asked.

“Yes. To Miss Penny May. I am actually a Ms.,” she added.
“And yours?”

“Miss Mary Radcliffe. I
am
a Miss.”

“We need to tell the police,” Penny said.

“No, no, no,” Mary moaned. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Penny, I
just can’t, duck. I’ve never spoken to them. Never.”

“The police are there to help us,” Penny said, as if
lecturing a small child.

Mary began to pace around her room, crossing to the
mantelpiece over the gas fire and moving one of the delicate china ornaments a
micro-millimetre to the left, and then back to the right. “No, no. They will
ask questions and I’ll get flustered and it’s all my own fault. It’s all my
fault. Me, you see. Just a silly old woman who can’t keep her mouth shut. But
I’m learning, see, my duck, I’m learning.” She turned and faced Penny with a
set, hard face. “So I shan’t talk to the police.”

Silence fell between them. Penny didn’t feel right in
trying to put pressure on an already fragile woman.

There was nothing for Penny to do but to leave, and return
home, thoughtful.

Mary had said it was all her fault: what else had she to be
sorry for?

Penny found herself moping around for two days. Francine
did call back, and Penny filled her in, but made light of it all, and
Francine’s reaction was one of shared excitement. Penny realised that to
Francine, she was simply watching a thrilling film, divorced from the reality
that Penny was actually living through.

In truth, the letter had deeply unsettled her but she
decided not to tell anyone in Upper Glenfield about it. Instead, she waited to
see if she would receive another, but the post on Wednesday and Thursday
brought her nothing but junk mail and a bank statement.

The bank statement wasn’t sobering, exactly, but it
reminded her that she had to think more about her future here in Upper Glenfield.
She could tighten her belt a little, and manage perfectly well, but life would
be small and constrained. Penny had never wanted to live a small, constrained
life. She had earned the right to splash out on nice food now and then, she
thought. Her plans to go to craft fairs resurfaced.

So she spent some long hours curled on her sofa with her
sketchbook, and even more hours out with Kali and her cheap digital camera,
snapping reference shots to play about with on the computer later on. She was
not getting used to the lack of internet and she dreaded to imagine how many
emails she’d find when the engineer finally came out to put the necessary boxes
in place for a phone line.

Through all her wandering and moping and sketching, she
didn’t pursue the murder case any longer in her thoughts, in spite of
Francine’s urging. She was fed up of it. The letter bothered her but she was
afraid to think it might be linked – though it had to be. She had annoyed
Eleanor and Thomas; she could quite imagine that the letter came from them. Why
would one of them have sent threats to Mary, though? Mary was still hiding
something, and she was still a suspect, in Penny’s mind.

But it was not her case, Penny told herself sternly.
Restrain yourself, woman. Know your place and all that. Listen to Drew, not
Francine.

She started to avoid phone calls from Francine again.

* * * *

It was mid-afternoon on Thursday when it all changed. Penny
was sitting at her kitchen table with her sketchbook, armed with some glue and
a pair of scissors, feeling like she was back at art school again as she
chopped and rearranged some drawings of foliage that she had made. The shapes
were suggesting some repeating pattern that would look good stencilled onto
plain linen and perhaps turned into a simple tote bag.

Kali knew someone was at the door before the knock, as usual,
but her bark was a happy, short one rather than the “get off my property you
vile postman” tirade. Penny expected to see Cath, or even Mary, but she was
surprised.

It was Drew, holding a small posy of flowers and looking
very contrite.

“Hi, I’m an idiot,” he said, shuffling his feet.

“Hi, yes you are. Come on in.” Penny’s first feeling was
one of pleasure and warmth, but tinged then with surprise and suspicion. If he
was going to tell her what to do, he could leave right now. But she decided to
hear what he had to say. It was always nice when people brought you flowers,
after all.

He trailed after her to the kitchen and stopped when he saw
her artistic efforts, the sheets of paper spread out on the table. “I like
that,” he said, pointing to the uppermost sketch. “It’s goosegrass. I think
it’s a very underrated plant.”

“Goosegrass?”

“This one,” he said, pointing at the sketch of the leggy,
trailing weed with its sticky round balls. “You can eat it, but it’s not great
raw.”

“I can’t imagine it’s a culinary delight even when it’s
cooked. We called it cleavers as kids. Because it, er, cleaves, I suppose. We
used to stick it to each other’s backs.”

“Well, there’s no cleavers or goosegrass in this,” he said,
thrusting the posy forward. “It’s garden grown. I don’t go picking wild
flowers.”

“I’m glad to hear it. How lovely! Thank you. I’ll get a jam
jar. I didn’t bother bringing any vases when I moved.”

He looked awkward and out of place, standing in her
kitchen. He was too big for houses – not physically, but just the way he seemed
to want to leap out of doors and escape. She had a flash of inspiration. “Shall
we go for a walk? I want to show you how good Kali’s being with the head-collar.”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

And so they found themselves rambling west out of town,
along the river, under the bridge and out into the hillier land. The weather
was warm but the sky was grey and overcast, with a muggy tint to the air. To
Penny’s delight, Kali did, indeed, behave impeccably.

“It’s good the way she checks in with you as she walks,”
Drew observed. “See how she is always looking back to see where you are. You
should reward her with a treat now and then, for that. You’re bonding.”

Penny felt a warmth surge from her belly. A bond? After
everything, and all her doubts especially in the first few days, it was lovely
to think that she had done the right thing after all. “Thank you. That means a
lot to me.” Of course that jinxed it. “Oh – Kali, no. No! The nettles! Leave
it. Come here!” She enticed the dog out of the tempting patch of stinging weeds
and they continued along the dry path.

“You know stuff,” she said to Drew. “So tell me. What’s the
point of nettles? They’re just horrible.”

“They are tasty in spring,” he said. “In the hungry gap,
they’re really useful as a source of iron.”

“Ouch. Tingly, too! I think I’d rather have a go at eating
cleavers.”

“They don’t sting when you eat them. They make a good
soup.”

“So what’s the hungry gap?” she asked.

“We’re coming out of it now. At the end of winter, and into
spring, the food stores are running low, traditionally. But new growth isn’t
coming through much yet. So although the countryside gets all lush and verdant,
actually, there’s a very real danger of starvation. Historically speaking.”

“Oh, right.”

He bent and grabbed a nettle by the root, making Penny
wince as he squeezed tightly and wrenched it free from the soil. “And the
fibres inside can be spun or made into ropes,” he continued. “You know that
folk tale about the woman who had to spin fine shirts for the swans to turn
them back into men again, but she had to use nettles? It’s possible.” He pulled
a pocket knife out and split the long stem, revealing the white stringy mass
within.

Penny was fascinated. “Wow. Real nettle shirts. Okay. So nettles
might have a purpose.”

“They tell us about the landscape, too.” Drew was alight
with enthusiasm now. “They need a lot of phosphate in the ground to grow and
get all nice and deep green. That’s likely along the edges of fields that have
had fertilisers added, but also wherever humans have lived in the past too.
It’s a clue to the history of a place.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Penny could see why he
was running courses now.

He shrugged and cast the nettle stem back into the patch.
“I’ve picked it up over the years. I talk to old folks, I like poking around in
old bookshops, and I spend a lot of time out and about, observing stuff.”

“I bet your courses are amazing,” she said.

He laughed. “They are fun.”

They were silent for a little while, then as they reached
the top of a ridge, he spoke again.

“There’s one big thing we haven’t talked about.”

Her heart thudded twice and her mouth went dry.

“This murder case,” he went on, before she could speak and
make an utter fool of herself.

“Oh – oh yes. I’ve left it alone. Honestly.”

“Really?” He didn’t sound convinced but when she stole a
sideways glance at him, he was smiling very slightly.

“Mm.”

“What happened?” he asked her. “They haven’t found the
killer, have they? It would have been hot news if they had. Even I would have
heard about it.”

“No, they’ve not been found. It’s just…”

They stood side by side, looking out over a Lincolnshire
panorama of rolling hills that fell away to the flat Fenlands in the far
distance, the atmosphere blurring the green fields into blue. Upper Glenfield
nestled below them, a pretty town with the western bypass curling like a grey
snake between the houses and the spot where they stood up on the ridge. It was
easier to talk to someone when you didn’t face them directly, Penny thought.
That was how so many of her love affairs and relationships had ended; the
painful conversations had taken place in cars, for some reason, with both
parties staring dead ahead through the glass.

She plunged into a summary of events. “So, I went to talk
to Eleanor and she threatened me and then I went to see Thomas but he chased me
away and then they told the police, obviously, so an officer came around to
tell me off but I sort of accidentally poisoned him with a biscuit and then I
got a letter telling me to get out of town and that’s it, really.”

There was an extended silence.

“Start again,” said Drew eventually. “But with more gaps.
And, you know, some actual explanation.”

* * * *

Drew, like Francine, tried to convince her that she had to
tell the police about the letter. He spent the whole return journey persuading
her that it was not only in her own interests, but also that of Mary’s, and
anyone else who had had received such threats. Eventually, she was convinced,
and agreed to speak to Cath as soon as she could.

When they were at the bottom of River Street, Penny invited
him to her cottage for a coffee, but he refused.

“I’ve got some thinking and planning to do,” he said. “I
can’t keep on running two businesses. I need to make a choice between the
smithing, and the field-craft. Everyone I’ve spoken to has told me to stay with
a solid craft and ignore the flighty field-craft courses. But…”

“Ahh. You need to follow what makes you happy, as much as
the money.”

“I know. But it’s hard. Anyway, with running my own
businesses, it’s about control as much as it’s about money, for me.”

“That’s why a lot of people go self-employed.”

“Yeah. So anyway. I think I’m going to go against the
gossips and well-meaning meddlers of Glenfield and do my own thing. And as for
you … speak to Cath!” he added as she turned to go.

“I will!”

* * * *

But as soon as she got home, she unclipped Kali from the
head-collar and stood in the kitchen, frozen in thought, halfway through the
act of putting the kettle on.

Drew’s words stuck in her head.

Not the nettles thing, though that was interesting, or even
the new plans that he had for his future.

“It’s about control as much as it’s about money.”

Control. Not money.