Murder on the Village Green: A Diane Dimbleby Cozy Mystery (5 page)

“Maybe that means he just died of—what do they say on them copper shows—natural causes…” says Alfie

Diane does not acknowledge Alfie’s optimistic statement. Instead she tells them she is looking for something “unrelated to the case” that she had dropped the day before, and that she is checking the village green to see if it had been dropped here. Now this is a blatant lie of course, but it might help disguise the fact that Diane is actually seeking clues to help solve the mystery of Paul Tucker’s murder

Approaching the oak tree, Diane does not bother to put on booties or gloves. Although she would like to maintain investigative integrity, right now that would raise too many eyebrows.

Diane begins circling the old tree, and is startled to find, and nearly bumps into, Reverend Harvey, whose head is bowed in prayer. The vicar looks up and says, “Diane, you’ve arrived just in time.”

“In time for what?” she asks.

“For a little impromptu service we’re holding for the poor soul found here yesterday. We don’t know who he is, or where he’s come from, or whether he’s a family man or single, or anything about him… we don’t know how he died, whether he was brutally taken from this world, whether it was an accident, whether he was murdered… whether it was the result of a heated argument… whether he was caught in a love triangle… whether he’s passed away from natural causes…”

Diane smiles politely, conscious of not divulging anything, not even the smallest of mannerisms.

“But,” continues the Reverend, “we shall celebrate his life just the same and pray his soul is at peace now and forevermore.”

The vicar nods his head, inviting the small group of villagers behind him to approach the oak tree. As Apple Mews’ honorary barbershop quartet sings “Abide with Me” in four-part harmony, Diane slyly scans the grounds upon which they are huddled. She will want to mourn this stranger, oh yes, but after his murderers are stopped from doing this to anybody else and are locked away.

Once Reverend Harvey finally concludes his eulogy—an impressively long one considering he did not know the deceased—the small crowd departs, finally leaving Diane alone to investigate. She stares across the green. For the first time since dawn, she is the only person she can tell is on the common, or anywhere in the vicinity for that matter. It strikes Diane as ominous as if suddenly she is the one who is ignorant of the facts, not the other villagers.

She quickly lets these anxious thoughts float away from her mind and starts examining the scene. This time, Diane starts at the very base of the tree and gets down on her hands and knees so that her eyes and nose are almost touching the ground. She feels the area where she had found the keycard—the burrow she had dug earlier. Her eyes and fingers seek out any items immediately adjacent to the hole.

Now up on her feet again, Diane slowly walks back and forth, following a strict grid system she has mentally drawn on the ground on all four sides of the tree. Something sparkles and Diane bends down. Picking it up, she determines it to be a silver sequin bead. If she were a woman who liked to gamble, she would bet the sequin had fallen off the bow tie of one of the barbershop singers.

At the same time as Diane picks up the sequin, a woman is finishing her afternoon run. She ends the workout with a final sprint through a section the green, then stops about 30 yards away from the scene Diane is investigating. She removes a water bottle from her waist pack and takes a long drink. Facing Diane’s direction, she replaces the water bottle and stretches her calf muscles, one at a time, followed by each of her arms.

She slowly walks towards the closest bench without taking her eyes off the grey-haired woman who seems to be attentively staring at the ground while slowly pacing.

Suddenly an ominous feeling comes over Diane again. Her shoulders clench, her backbone shudders and she has that familiar, uncanny feeling she is being watched.

She turns around to see she
is
being watched. A young woman, maybe in her mid-to-late 20s, with long black hair, is staring right at her.

Calm down Diane, she thinks. It’s obvious this woman has just gone for a run. Her face is flush, she’s wearing a stylish pair of running tights with a matching T-shirt and she’s stretching. Judging by her athletic and trim figure, running must be an important part of her regular routine. The young woman is probably just wondering what an older lady is doing alone, pacing, scrutinizing the lawn, analysing each blade of grass.

What a fool she must think I am!

Diane attempts to resume her land survey, but she feels conscious. She looks up again to see the young woman still fixated on her. Diane decides she had better leave this scene. The degree to which this woman is staring seems to go well beyond innocent curiosity. And Diane does not think she has ever seen this person ever before. Another stranger, the second one she’s seen in 24 hours, in Apple Mews. This cannot be a coincidence. Non-locals only tended to visit Apple Mews during July and August or during the annual village festival.

Diane walks away from the oak tree towards the centre of the green, trying to present a leisurely pace. She is unsure of where she is retreating to. She passes the bench where the stranger is sitting, maintaining a large distance between the woman and herself.

Once several yards past, Diane looks back, only through the corner of her eye, to see the young woman stand. Diane quickens her pace, only slightly at first. She looks back, more obviously this time, to see the woman following her.

Diane begins to double her pace and stride and then breaks out into a jog. Sweat droplets begin to trickle into her eyes. Her breath quickens, not from physical exertion but from the panic that is starting to overcome her.

As Diane is about to reach the other end of the green, the black-haired woman steps right in front of her. She must have caught up and passed her by a few yards, and circled back to stop Diane from leaving the area.

Diane stops, nearly tumbling into the woman. She takes two deep breaths and asks, as calmly as she can muster, “Can I help you?”

“I am just curious,” says the woman. “You looked like you were searching for something very important. Did you find what you were looking for?”

Diane takes a step back. She eyes the woman she came close to knocking to the ground— or rather who came close to knocking her to the ground—for at least five long breaths.

When the woman had asked her ‘Did you find what you were looking for,’ Diane could have sworn there was a distinguishable timbre to her voice. She recognized an English accent certainly, but with some underlying characteristics—Eastern European perhaps?

“Important? I’m not sure what you mean,” says Diane trying to sound as cheery as can be. “I dropped a receipt the other day. I thought I might have done so while walking home through the green. But it’s not important—just an old lady fussing about keeping all her records in order.”

The black-haired woman looks Diane straight in the eyes in a way suggesting that she does not believe her story. She smiles all the same.

“I’m Sergeant Benedek,” she says, reaching out her hand. Diane takes the palm in hers to be met with a firm grip.

“Pleased to meet you,” says Diane, not sure she really is ‘pleased’.

“I’m working with Inspector Crothers on the case,” says Sergeant Benedek, nodding her head in the direction of the oak tree, where she had just been watching Diane look for her ‘missing receipt’. “He asked me to follow up with you… just a few questions. Would you mind if we grab a quick coffee?”

This is odd, thinks Diane. Why would Darrell send someone else to ask her questions? That wasn’t his style. He liked to be out doing much of the investigative legwork himself. Plus, he rarely asked Diane
questions
. Their conversations were usually casual, at least on the surface, not a question-and-answer scenario. Deep down they were an exchange of ideas, a brainstorming session if you will, where each was goaded towards whodunit theories.

And who would go for a jog while they were on duty like this woman had just done? Unless running around a village is a technique this Sergeant Benedek uses whilst investigating the people who live close to a disposal site.

Still, Diane senses something is wrong with this picture. However, she makes sure to try and hide any sign of feeling distrustful.

“We can certainly have a coffee together,” says Diane, “although I may have a cuppa. We can go to Helen’s right over there.”

As they walk towards Helen Bell’s café on Apple Mews’ main drag, Diane feels for her phone which is luckily inside her jumper pocket—lucky because she often forgets to bring the device with her, still favouring face-to-face conversations when she’s out and about.

Although Diane rarely talks on her mobile, she frequently uses its recording function, which comes in handy during research sessions or when a story idea jumps into her head. For fear of her creative ideas flying away, she will often say them out loud and preserve them as an audio file.

Surreptitiously, Diane taps on the recording icon and presses the record button. She feels in her gut that any conversation with this so-called Sergeant Benedek must also be preserved. In short, Diane smells a rat.

Seeing Diane approach, Helen Bell throws down her piping bag, nearly knocking the cupcakes she’s icing off the counter, and rushes to the door. She swings the door open and pulls Diane inside and into a hug.

“Well if it isn’t Diane Dimbleby! It’s been donkey’s years since I’ve seen ye!”

True, Diane hasn’t been to Helen’s café in quite some time, never mind the fact they wave to each other at least twice a week while each is going here and there around the village.

“It’s lovely to see you too Helen,” says Diane, warmly, but not quite as warmly as her usual self.

Helen jabbers on about her grandchildren’s loose teeth and how she finally took the plunge and ordered a cardie on
the
Internet,
and how she is experimenting with brighter-coloured icings… all the while moving her head back and forth, looking pleasantly at Diane, and somewhat curiously, or skittishly, at the strange companion.

“Diane, you haven’t introduced me to your… friend?” says Helen, her smile now fully disappeared.

“I’m Sergeant Benedek,” says the young woman before Diane can answer. “And I’d like to order one coffee and one tea please.”

Sergeant Benedek walks directly to the till to pay. It takes a moment for Helen to process what Benedek has demanded. Her easy-going café is not so customized to the sequence or style of this customer’s requests. After a pause, Helen hurries behind the counter to accept the woman’s note, taking a few moments to marvel at her straight and shiny black hair, before giving her the appropriate change.

Meanwhile, when the sergeant’s back is turned, Diane quickly takes out her mobile and takes a picture of the young woman—she coughs to cover up the shutter sound effect. Diane sends the picture to Inspector Crothers. Walking as far away from the counter as she can in the cosy café, Diane dials his number.

“Darrell, hello,” whispers Diane. “I sent you a picture… the woman in the picture, is she your sergeant?”

Before Diane can hear the inspector’s answer, she feels a hand on her shoulder. Both her shoulders suddenly tense as she turns around.

“Shall we sit down?” says Sergeant Benedek with a chilly smile.

“Oh yes,” laughs Diane nervously.

They sit at a round table covered with a purple lilac cloth. Helen hurries over with their hot drinks. Normally she would have pulled up a chair to join them, but she isn’t exactly getting the warm and fuzzies from this Sergeant Benedek. She goes back to icing her cupcakes, but is quite capable of multitasking; her ears are ready to tune into her customers’ conversation.

“Who were you talking to on the phone?” asks the sergeant, rather bluntly.

Most people with any common decency would not ask an acquaintance, let alone someone they just met, a question like that. Diane does not remember asking anybody that type of question, except maybe her late husband David. Now she might playfully ask Albert if somebody were to call him, but probably no one else.

The fact that this woman had the nerve to ask—even though the phone call did in fact concern her—confirms Diane’s suspicions. This Benedek woman is no sergeant at all. Diane has the sinking feeling that she has fallen into a nasty trap. A passing thought enters her mind—
will I be able to escape?

“Oh, that was just my son,” says Diane, attempting nonchalance. “He wants to pop in tonight. He wanted to make sure I’d be home, that’s all.”

Benedek lets out a nasty titter. “Now Diane, I know you don’t have a son.”

Diane looks down, not quite sure of what to say or do next. It occurs to her that this is the first time this woman has called her by her name. It seems that Benedek knows for a certainty that Diane has no son or any children at all. What else does she know about her?

This could be worse than Diane’s misgivings had originally imagined. She thought perhaps this imposter was a newspaper reporter pretending to be a police officer in order to get undisclosed information for her next story. Or perhaps even one of Paul Tucker’s family members.

But this woman knew some of Diane’s personal details. Diane could be caught in an even more sinister snare, and she isn’t sure how to free her foot—or her neck—from its wire noose.

Diane looks up to see Benedek’s eyes searching outside as if she is expecting someone or something. Otherwise, why would she and Diane be sitting here in Helen Bell’s café, as if they were two friends catching up?

“Lovely day isn’t it… those dark clouds I saw earlier, I was sure it was bound to rain, but it’s not too bad today,” Helen says after noting a lull in conversation—silence is uncustomary in her café.

Diane and Benedek nod their heads without saying a word. They each take a sip from their cups. Benedek takes her eyes away from the window and turns back to Diane.

“So you’re the one that found the body,” she says in a low voice so Helen cannot hear. She attempts a look of empathy, but Diane is not fooled.

“Yes, I found him, poor fellow,” says Diane. “I thought he was just having a nap…”

Intentionally Diane does not reveal much more, especially nothing about the keycard she had discovered embedded in the ground next to the oak tree, nor the information Darrell had shared with her. She is determined not to tell Benedek, if that’s her real name, that Paul Tucker’s organs were ripped from his body and stolen away… although she is beginning to think that Benedek already knows this.

Diane finishes her cuppa and gets up to go to the bathroom. “Nature’s calling,” she says more light-heartedly. Although she does not trust Benedek, it’s possible that Benedek thinks Diane is a naïve old woman—that Diane has believed her story about being a sergeant. Maybe she’ll even decide to leave while Diane is in the bathroom, concluding that she knows nothing important about the murder.

Even now Diane is feeling quite jittery. She wonders if David had felt this way. She is still not exactly sure about the timing of his murder. Maybe he didn’t even expect he was going to be killed. Did the robber sneak up on him, or did David see him coming? Did it happen quickly or did the robber make him suffer? If Diane were to truly take the time to think about it, it’s probably all the questions that still surround her husband’s death that drive her to answer questions about other vicious crimes.

Oh, I dearly hope he wasn’t scared.

Inside the toilet stall she decides she better leave a message just in case. Luckily she still has her notebook and pen. She starts writing: 
To anyone who reads this…

When Diane exits the stall, Benedek is waiting next to the sink. Diane hadn’t even heard her come inside the toilet room.

“Wash your hands and then we’ll go,” says Benedek calmly but confidently, revealing a knife in her hand.

It looks like a boning knife, Diane thinks, before the immediate threat to her safety sinks in. Whatever kind of knife it may be, the shimmer of the blade suggests it is sharp. Diane’s mind drifts off to a scene where Benedek is engaging in a morning ritual of sharpening her knife collection as her coffee is brewing in the background. The daydream finally allows reality to set in. Diane’s heart skips two, maybe three beats, before she washes her hands as was demanded.

“Move,” Benedek whispers viciously as Diane dries her hands.

Benedek slips the knife handle up her sleeve and encloses the blade discreetly in her palm. She shoves Diane shoves towards the exit and follows close behind. Outside the toilet room, she orders Diane to walk to the café’s exit.

Diane looks around for Helen but cannot see her. She must be in the back kitchen. Benedek shoves Diane reminding her to
Move
!

The café door opens and closes abruptly, sending Helen out to see who has newly arrived. But she finds the café empty. That’s not like Diane to leave without saying goodbye, she thinks.

Helen scoots over to the window and sees Diane getting into the backseat of a stranger’s car. Rather, the young woman who was accompanying Diane is pushing her into the car!

“That doesn’t look right,” says Helen out loud. “Not right at all.”

The car screeches quickly away. Helen begins pacing back and forth wondering what to do. She doesn’t like to meddle into people’s affairs, but sometimes meddling is warranted, especially if a friend might be in trouble.

Helen suddenly remembers seeing Diane go to the toilet before she had gone into the kitchen to take the latest batch of cupcakes out of the oven. As if channelling some of Diane’s gumshoe skills, Helen scurries to the lavatory. She checks each of the stalls for what… she’s not quite sure.

“Diane, are you in trouble?” says Helen out loud, desperately pleading for an answer.

She mindlessly removes a piece of rubbish that is lodged between two of the stall doors. She throws it into the bin and heads back out to the café.
What to do? What to do?

Subconsciously still feeling the texture of that piece of trash in her hand, she suddenly clues in that it had been a folded piece. She scurries back into the toilet room and removes the item from the bin. Helen quickly unfolds the piece of paper to find an enclosed message:

To anyone who reads this,

I might be in serious danger. There is a woman who is pretending to be a police sergeant working for Inspector Darrell Crothers. She calls herself Sergeant Benedek. Please call Inspector Crothers at the Shrewsbury Police Station and tell him.

Sincerely, Diane Dimbleby

“Thank you Diane!” whoops Helen, scurrying again out of the toilet room.

She runs behind the counter, nearly knocking the fresh tray of cupcakes to the ground, and searches through her purse for her mobile.

“Operator, get me the Shrewsbury Police Station… hello, is this the Shrewsbury Police? I need to talk to Inspector Darrell Crothers please. It’s an emergency… hello Inspector Crothers? Oh thank goodness. Inspector, Diane Dimbleby is in trouble, grave trouble I fear! She was here in my café with a woman, a woman I don’t know, and now I think she’s been kidnapped. I saw that dreadful woman push her into a car, not the boot mind you, in the back seat, but she was being right forceful. No, drat, I didn’t get the license plate… Helen how stupid can you be… yes, I’ll wait here… come to Helen Bell’s café, Apple Mews…I won’t move a muscle… goodbye.”