The Chalmers Case
Authors: Diana Xarissa
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #British Detectives, #Cozy, #Traditional Detectives
The Chalmers Case
A Markham Sisters
Cozy
Mystery Novella
Diana
Xarissa
Text Copyright
©
2015 Diana
Xarissa
All Rights Reserved
For David and
Catherine,
because
everything I do
is for them, really.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the many
people who work with me on my stories.
Denise, my editor, who
has better things to do than edit my books, but does it anyway.
Charlene and Janice,
my beta readers, who manage to find time to fit in extra reading when I send
them yet another manuscript.
My readers, who make
what I do so worth it.
Please get
in touch.
I’d love to hear from
you.
(Contact details are in the
back of the book.)
Table
of Contents
Author’s Note
I wasn’t
planning to write a third story in this series until some time in 2016, but
ideas just kept nagging at me until I did it anyway!
As always, I suggest you read the
stories in order (they run alphabetically), but you don’t have to; each story
can be read on its own.
If you haven’t
read the others, you should know that the Markham sisters first appeared in
Aunt Bessie Decides,
book four in my
Isle of Man Cozy Mysteries series.
Janet
has stayed in touch with Bessie, and I use parts of her letters to Bessie to
open and close each novella.
The
letters have nothing to do with the Bessie series, and you don’t have to read
that series to enjoy this one.
I have used
English spellings and terms and provided a glossary and some notes in the back
of the book to help readers outside the UK with anything that might be
unfamiliar.
The longer I remain in
the US, the greater the likelihood of Americanisms sneaking into the text,
although I do try to eliminate them.
This is a work
of fiction and all of the characters are fictional creations.
Any resemblance that they may share with
any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The sisters live in a fictional village
in Derbyshire.
Although some shops
or business may bear some resemblance to real-life businesses, that is also
coincidental.
Please feel
free to get in touch with any comments, questions, or concerns.
I have a monthly newsletter that
provides updates on new releases.
All of the information about subscribing or getting in touch is
available on the About the Author page at the back of the book.
15
October
1998
Dearest Bessie,
What an exciting, albeit stressful, life you
lead.
I can’t imagine what it must
be like to find a dead body.
I know
that I invite you to visit in every letter, but it really does seem as if you
could use a holiday.
We’ve finally started taking in a few paying
guests, after having our first so unexpectedly last month.
I do think Joan is in her element
cooking for other people, but I do find it odd having strangers in the house.
I’m not sure Joan is as eager to have
guests as she once was, though.
You see, having guests led to our own little
bit of excitement earlier this month.
No one got murdered, but the police were
involved anyway.
It all started
when Joan and I decided to do some shopping that we’d been putting off.
Chapter
One
“How are you
getting on?”
Janet dropped
the book she was holding and spun around.
“I didn’t hear you coming,” she exclaimed.
“Clearly not,
or you would have put the book down and at least pretended to be working,” Joan
retorted.
Janet
flushed.
She hated to admit it,
even to herself, but her older sister was right.
If she’d heard Joan coming towards the
small library in the back of their house, she would have stopped reading and
returned to work.
As it was, Joan
had caught her doing what she loved best, rather than doing what she was meant
to be doing.
“I’m getting
there,” she said defensively.
“It’s
a huge job, cleaning and
reorganising
our library.”
“And it will
take much longer if you stop to read every book,” Joan pointed out.
“I’m not
trying to read them all,” Janet said.
“That one just caught my eye, that’s all.”
Joan picked up
the book from the floor.
“
The Missing Picture
,” she read off the
garish cover.
“Not a very
interesting title.”
Janet shook
her head.
“It is rather dull,
especially compared to the cover,” she replied.
“I’ve only read the first chapter, but
it’s all about art forgery and theft.
I’m not sure what the knife dripping with blood on the cover has to do
with the story, at least not yet.”
“Is he a
popular author?” Joan asked.
“I don’t think
so,” Janet replied with a shrug.
“From
what I can tell, the book was printed by a local printer here in
Doveby
Dale back in the fifties.
I doubt they printed many copies.”
“Is it any
good?”
“It is,
actually, in spite of the boring title and the rather horrible cover.
I was quite absorbed in it when you came
in.”
“Yes, I
noticed,”
Joan
said dryly.
Janet flushed
again.
“Sorry,” she said
sheepishly.
“I’ll put it to one
side and read later, after I’ve done some more cleaning.
Feel free to help,” she added as she
took the book from her sister and set it on the desk.
“I’m trying to
get lunch ready,” Joan replied.
“I
just came down to ask you if you would prefer to have sandwiches for lunch and
shepherd’s pie for dinner or have them the other way around.”
Janet thought
for a minute.
“I suppose sandwiches
for lunch,” she said eventually.
“That won’t take very long, so I can get even more work done in here
before dinner.”
“Actually, I
thought we might go out after lunch,” Joan told her.
“I’d like to do some shopping.”
Janet
frowned.
What was her sister
planning now?
“I didn’t know we needed
anything,” she said, avoiding questioning her sister outright.
“It’s high
time we found some artwork for the guest rooms.
WTC Antiques and Collectibles
is
having their grand opening today.
I heard an advert on the radio while I
was tidying the kitchen.”
“I don’t know
that I want to shop there,” Janet said thoughtfully.
“I really don’t like William
Chalmers.
I’m not sure I want to
help support his new business.
I
think I’d rather he moved away.”
The sisters
had met William Chalmers, the owner of the new village antique shop, some weeks
earlier when he’d come to ask them to sell him some books for his store.
He’d been rude and obnoxious each time
they’d seen him since and had developed a reputation in the village for being
demanding and difficult.
“I don’t like
the man, either, but
Doveby
Dale is a small village,
and I think that as owners of the only bed and breakfast here, we have to
support our fellow business owners, even if they are disagreeable.”
“I suppose
you’re right.” Janet sighed.
“Apparently the entire store is on sale
because of the grand opening,” Joan added.
“We could use a bargain.”
Janet
nodded.
The pair had used a small
inheritance and the proceeds from the sale of their previous home to purchase
Doveby
House several months earlier.
Although they’d both always been frugal,
they’d spent a great deal of their savings on painting and redecorating the
seventeenth-century manor house.
While they both agreed that a few pictures would enhance the décor in
the guest rooms, neither sister wanted to spend much money on acquiring them.
“Okay, I’ll
work really hard all morning and then, after lunch, we can go and see what Mr.
Chalmers has on offer,” Janet said.
“Excellent,”
Joan replied.
“Maybe I’ll be able
to see some progress by the time I come back to tell you when lunch is ready.”
Janet waited
until her sister was out of sight before she stuck out her tongue.
She sighed.
Joan was eager to get the library
finished.
It was the last thing
standing in the way of their opening for business.
Janet was less enthusiastic about
welcoming strangers into their home.
Buying a bed
and breakfast had been Joan’s idea.
The sisters had both retired as schoolteachers from the same primary
school in the past year.
They’d
lived together their entire lives, both enjoying working with children, but
neither interested in starting a family of her own.
Usually it was Janet who suggested their
doing out of the ordinary things, and she had been dumbfounded when Joan
suddenly began talking about buying
Doveby
House and
starting their own business.
Now, a few
months into owning the house, Janet was running out of excuses to keep Joan
from taking in guests.
The last bit
of the house that needed finishing was the library, and Janet had insisted that
she be allowed to do all of the work herself.
Joan had agreed, but now she was pushing
Janet to get the job done.
Janet was
starting by removing the books shelf by shelf and then cleaning each
shelf.
Then she was dusting all of
the books before returning them to their original position.
After working intermittently for the
past fortnight, she had two walls of shelves finished and two to go.
It was tiring work and she was starting
to think that maybe she ought to just dust the books in situ and worry about
deeper cleaning another time.
After
the cleaning was done, she’d start sorting the books into categories and seeing
exactly what they had.
Janet was
looking forward to that part.
Resisting the
temptation to sigh again, she carefully slid several books off the next
shelf.
It took a while to remove
them all and she had to fight hard against the urge to at least glance at the
titles as she stacked them on the desk.
Joan was right; if she stopped to read every single book, she’d never
get the library done.
“And then we
wouldn’t have to have guests,” she muttered to herself.
The previous
month, the sisters had found themselves with an unexpected first guest.
He’d paid very well for just a few
nights and Janet had found herself being romanced by the handsome visitor who
may or may not have been some sort of spy.
It had been a strange first experience with a paying guest and Janet
wasn’t encouraged to try the whole thing again.
She sprayed
polish on the now cleared shelf and carefully wiped away the years of accumulated
dust and grime.
It seemed likely
that no one had ever taken down the books from the shelves for cleaning
purposes and Janet frowned as she cleared away a dried up spider corpse.
The poor thing must have been living behind
the books for many years and simply died of old age.
The walls were
completely covered in bookshelves, but the shelves were in sections of six feet
each, rather than running continuously along the entire wall.
Now, as Janet started to dust each book
and return it to its place, she noticed that there was something odd about the
shelf itself.
She was working her
way down along the shelving unit along the wall.
The top three shelves had been exactly
like all of the others, but this one was different.
Where the side
of the shelf met the wall, instead of solid wood, there was a small panel of a
different sort of wood.
Janet ran
her fingers along it.
She could
feel a small gap all the way around the panel.
When she tapped on it, she could hear
what she fancied was a hollow sound.
She rapped on the wood around the panel and was instantly pleased to
find that it sounded different.
Pulling a few books off the next shelf down, Janet was disappointed that
there was only the ordinary shelf behind them.
She knocked on it as well, hearing the
same sort of sound she’d heard from the wood around the panel.
“What on earth
is all that banging?” Joan asked from the doorway.
“I seem to
have found some sort of sliding panel or something,” Janet said excitedly.
“Come and see.”
Joan took a couple
of steps towards her sister and glanced at the wall.
“It’s probably a removable section to
access a plug socket behind it or something,” she said dismissively.
Janet
frowned.
Her sister was probably
right.
They’d already found a wall
safe, hidden behind a small picture that neither of them had even noticed
initially among the sea of books.
It was highly unlikely that this was another hiding place.
She tapped on it again and then tried to
slide it sideways.
When it didn’t
move in either direction, she tried going up and down with it, but that wasn’t
any more successful.
“It won’t
move,” she told her sister.
“As we don’t
need to plug anything in, I can’t see what difference it makes,” Joan said with
a shrug.
“Lunch will be ready in
about an hour.
Maybe you can finish
that set of shelves before midday?”
Janet nodded,
but she was only half listening.
She really wanted to get the small panel open.
“Maybe there’s a button somewhere that
makes it slide,” she muttered to herself.
“Maybe, if
we’ve just fallen into a James Bond film,” Joan said tartly.
“There must be
a way to get it open,” Janet said.
“Perhaps we
should just hire someone to come in and sort out the library,” Joan said in a
thoughtful tone.
“Although I’m not
sure we can afford to do that as we are rather broke.”
“We aren’t
broke,” Janet said firmly.
“We both
have our pensions and they are more than adequate to cover our expenses, as
long as we’re careful.”
“But if we had
paying guests, we wouldn’t have to be as careful,” Joan pointed out.
“As if you’re
suddenly going to start being extravagant,” Janet said with a laugh.
“You just want to have lots of people
tell you what a wonderful cook you are, that’s all.”
Now it was
Joan’s cheeks that reddened.
“Is
that what you think this is all about?” she demanded.
“I don’t know
what this is all about,” Janet replied.
“One day we were enjoying our retirement and talking about travelling
more and the next day we bought a bed and breakfast.
You never did offer me any explanation.”
“Do you remember
the year we stayed in that little bed and breakfast in Wales?” Joan asked
her.
“It was a tiny little house
almost right on the beach, with only one guest room that we had to share with
Mum and Dad.”
“With mum and
dad?” Janet asked.
“How old were
you?”
“Oh, maybe
eight or nine,” Joan replied.
“So I was six
or seven,” Janet said.
“I’m sorry,
but I really don’t remember.
That
was over fifty years ago.
Why?”
“It was the
best holiday I’ve ever had,” Joan told her.
“The woman who ran the place was an excellent
cook, and as it rained pretty much the entire fortnight we were there, we spent
a lot of time in the house.
She let
me help out in the kitchen and taught me just about everything I know about
baking.”
“I didn’t know
that.
I mean
,
I know mum wasn’t much for baking, but I didn’t
realise
you learned to bake from a Welsh woman who ran a bed and breakfast.”
“She was very
kind, and I told mum and dad that when I grew up I wanted to have a bed and
breakfast just like hers,” Joan said.