Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) (7 page)

So on Thursday she put some low classical music on, and got
to work with a vengeance, trying to ignore the nagging sense of fear at the
back of her mind.

Rain began to lash against the windows. Kali curled up
under the kitchen table, gnawing away at a marrow-filled beef bone. Penny
printed off reams of customer address labels, and set about with the wrapping
paper and scissors until her kitchen was like a snow-globe of activity.

Both Penny and Kali were startled by the front door opening
suddenly.

“Hiya! Anyone home?”

Penny went through to the hall. Ariadne was standing by the
door, her waterproof clothing glistening with rain. A small puddle was forming
around her boots.
There is something about seeing someone who’s been out in
the rain
, Penny thought,
that makes them look the utter picture of
dejection.

Before Penny could offer her sister any word of greeting,
Ariadne launched into an epic rant.

“People! I am
done
with people! Honestly. So here I
am, doing my job, just, you know, getting on with it. Do I complain when I have
to walk other people’s dogs in the rain? No, I do not. Do I whinge? No. I put
my big-girl-panties on, and a decent coat, and I get on with it.”

“Er, well done.”

Ariadne unzipped her coat and glared at Penny. “I’m not
finished. I’ve been walking dogs all day, and for what?”

Penny waited, unwilling to interrupt.

“Eh?” Ariadne prompted. “For what?”

“Money?”

“Ha!” Ariadne spluttered, leaving Penny confused as to
whether she’d given the right answer or not.

Ariadne took her coat off and shook it. “Because I took the
dogs back to their respective owners and what happens? I get it in the neck
because their dogs are – get this – wet!”

Penny frowned. “Hang on. People are complaining because
you’ve walked their dogs in the rain?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re employed by them as a dog walker.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s raining.”

Ariadne looked ready to explode. “Exactly! Have you got the
kettle on yet?”

“Tea?” Penny said. “I was going to offer you brandy. Come
on through.”

Ariadne squelched toward the kitchen but stayed in the
doorway when she saw the chaos that Penny had created. “Busy?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Tell me what’s happening with this murder thing,” Ariadne
said. She leaned against the doorframe and looked sympathetic. “You do seem to
attract more than your fair share of crazy.”

“Oh, tell me about it!” Penny said. “So. It’s like this…”

She had spoken with her sister on the phone, but this was
their first chance to have a proper catch up, and it took nearly two cups of
tea to get through the whole story. They ended up in the front room, and
Ariadne listened closely.

She summed up when Penny had finished.

“You’re all suspects, aren’t you?”

Penny nodded glumly.

“But who is the most suspicious?” Ariadne continued.
“There’s Clive’s sister, Linda. She sounds like a nasty piece of work. No
alibi. There’s Haydn who’s already made a name for himself as being
argumentative and also volatile when drunk, from what you say. There’s Jared,
but I don’t quite get it. Why was he questioned? He didn’t seem to have argued
as much as Linda or Haydn. And then there’s you. Again, you haven’t argued as
much …”

“But I left the ladder out. It is probably an accident, but
I am to blame.”

“You might be partly responsible. Perhaps he went up the
ladder to sabotage the lights, and then someone came along to argue with him,
and he fell.”

“Or was pushed,” Penny said.

“And that will be why the police are looking into it.”

“So even if I didn’t do the pushing, or the arguing, I am
partly responsible.”

“Yes,” Ariadne said. Penny glowered.

“Thanks.”

Ariadne shrugged. “I’m just being honest. Look, I’ve been
in your position, remember? I know what it’s like to be a suspect.”

And you’re also my sister
, Penny thought.
So you
don’t have to be nice.
But she knew that Ariadne did care, underneath.
“Yeah, okay. Let me tell you about Jared, though. He’s always been friendly and
helpful.”

“Yeah, he was helping you with photos, wasn’t he?”

“Yup. But get this…” Penny explained the recent awkward
situation, and Ariadne laughed.

“Oh, the poor guy. Ouch. And you didn’t even let him down
gently!”

“I tried, but I didn’t want him to get any mixed messages.
There’s no point letting a man think there’s some hope when there definitely is
not.”

Ariadne agreed. “I am sure he’ll find someone soon. He’s
clever, he’s kind, and he’s pretty sporty, isn’t he? I saw him earlier when I
was slogging along with two Jack Russells and an angry pug.”

“You saw him out in this rain?”

“Yeah, running. Well, limping. I caught up with him when he
had stopped to do those silly jogger exercises by a low wall. I asked if he was
okay, but he said it was just tendonitis. Then he splashed off. He didn’t look
happy, though.”

“I’m not surprised.”

They were interrupted by the postman knocking on the front
door. Kali was there first, as Penny had managed to condition the dog to
associate all delivery people with treats. As far as Kali was concerned,
strangers at the door were simply there to bring her a nice biscuit.

The postman handed a package to Penny, and a snack to Kali,
who wolfed it down in three seconds and looked very pleased with herself.

“What’s that?” Ariadne asked as Penny came back into the
front room. “Christmas presents?”

“No. Don’t mention presents. I haven’t started shopping
yet. No, I dropped my phone and I had to order a replacement, that’s all.”

Ariadne stood up and started to layer into her waterproofs
again. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said. “You’ll need three days just to
understand the new menus and what-not on it.”

“I know. This is the worst bit. I’m going to spend the rest
of the day tapping in all my new contacts.”

“If you hadn’t been so mean to Jared, I bet he could have
done that in ten minutes by some techie magic.”

“Get out,” Penny said.

“Love you too.”

* * * *

Penny walked back into the kitchen, took one look at the
mess she had left, grabbed her laptop and whirled away into the living room.
She was not ready to get back to work yet.

Instead she did an online search for “tendonitis” and
learned that it often afflicted new runners or runners who tried to do too
much, too soon. It seemed a silly thing for an experienced fitness freak like
Jared to get affected by.

Maybe he was so upset by things that he had taken to
marathon running unexpectedly, or something.

Penny strayed onto some social media sites, and was just
watching a video of a cat being scared by a cucumber, when her landline rang.

“Why aren’t you answering your mobile?” was the opening line
of the caller.

“Oh, hi, Cath,” Penny said. “And how are you?”

“Oh, yeah, fine. Sorry. Are you screening your calls or
something?”

“No, I broke my phone and I haven’t worked out how to turn
my new one on, yet.” In fact it was still sitting in its box.

“Oh, right. Are you okay? I mean, with the recent … I mean,
you got questioned … and no, I can’t tell you anything. But you can tell me
stuff.”

Cath was a police officer who lived in Upper Glenfield, and
she had been friends with Penny since Penny had moved to the area. Their
friendship had occasionally been strained by Cath’s professional obligations,
and by Penny’s alarming tendency to poke her nose in where it was not wanted.

But they remained close, and perhaps their relationship was
all the better for the storms that they had weathered.

“It’s been awful,” Penny confessed. “And I accept that I am
to blame for the dodgy ladder. I’m not responsible for health and safety at the
Christmas Planning Committee any longer. I do feel incredibly guilty.”

“Oh, mate, you shouldn’t. You didn’t force anyone up that
ladder … did you?”

“No!” Penny half-shouted in shock.

“Okay, okay, just checking. Look, me and you, we need a
good catch-up. I’m not officially on the case, so we can meet up and it will be
just like old times.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Great!” Cath said. “How about tomorrow night?”

“What did you have in mind?” Penny asked, imagining a
girlie night out in Lincoln.

“Er … well, it’s the Christmas play at my kids’ school. My
husband has to work, all of a sudden. I’ve got a spare ticket and I don’t think
I can cope with that many badly-played recorders on my own. Do you want to come
with me? And can you bring a hip-flask? Put something character-building in it,
like brandy.”

Penny rolled her eyes, but she agreed.

Penny had missed a carol concert practise because of
feeling ill, but they assured her that it was fine; various folks had been
struck by colds and flu. She worked out how to charge her phone, and entered
all the most important numbers first.

She even experimented until she could use it to make an
outbound call. She remembered her first smartphone; it had seemed impossible to
use. Now, with each upgrade, she picked up the tips and tricks a little more
quickly.

You can teach an old dog new tricks
, she thought.
You
just had to keep at it.

On Friday she had a short session of text-message-tennis
with Drew, and discovered her phone could add a whole new set of symbols and
pictures to the messages. She annoyed him for a little while, and then let him
go back to work.

He popped over after his afternoon at the emerging Forest
School, and gave her a pair of gloves with a matching hat. They appeared
hand-knitted, and had gone a little bobbly with age and wear, but they were a
nice colour of rusty brown and she wasn’t going to refuse. He left after a
short time, citing some research work he had to do about how to motivate
unwilling learners.

She, too, had work to do. She was looking forward to seeing
Cath, and this motivated her to get on with fulfilling the latest website
orders. She had some more prints that had arrived which needed framing and
mounting.

With Kali supervising, she pushed the murder out of her
mind, and got on with things.

* * * *

“Don’t laugh! Don’t laugh! Oh no, help, don’t let me laugh
either…” Cath whispered, her hand jammed over her mouth and muffling her
hiccupping giggles.

Penny was crammed onto a small and uncomfortable chair
beside her, in the centre of a packed school hall. Up on stage, one of Penny’s
boys was dressed as a sheep but he was not sticking to the script. He had
either forgotten his lines, or he was wilfully misbehaving.

“It’s not a star,” he was telling the confused shepherd
with the obligatory tea-towel head-dress. “I think it might be a plane.”

“It
is
a star,” the shepherd informed him loftily.
“It is a star of wonder. And we will sing about it.”

The sheep shrugged and then bent his head to pretend to eat
grass, ignoring everyone else around him.

At the side of the stage, one of the teachers was frantically
waving her arms. The shepherd glanced at her, and then looked to the audience
and announced, “We are going
this
way,” and strode across to the
opposite side of the stage, followed by his retinue of other shepherds who
gathered around him. Some of them produced recorders and one had a triangle.

Under the aural cover of a mangled version of “While
Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night”, Cath passed Penny some boiled sweets.

 “I didn’t find a hip flask to bring. Sorry,” Penny said.

“A large normal flask would have been fine.”

“Got any gin?”

“Back at my house. And we’re going to earn it…”

* * * *

“Yes,” Penny announced as she flopped into the wicker
furniture in Cath’s conservatory. “We have definitely earned our alcohol.”

Cath pulled the blinds down and put all the fan heaters on
full blast, and the small space quickly warmed up, in spite of the metres of
glass for windows. In the living room next to the conservatory, her children
were merrily arguing over a video game. Cath didn’t allow them to have computers
in their rooms, although each child did have their own phone. Cath pretended to
know far less about technology than she actually did; she kept a close eye on
what the boys were up to. As far as she could tell, they had not yet broken
through the parental controls she’d set up.

If they did
, Penny thought,
Cath would have to
arrange for them to get jobs in cyber-security. Ethical hackers, and the like.

“What’s on your mind?” Cath said. She unscrewed a cheap and
cheerful bottle of red wine and poured it out. “And don’t judge me. Yes, it was
less than a fiver. No, I’m not letting it breathe. And if you’re really lucky I
might have some slightly soft crackers and elderly cheese in the kitchen.”

“Just the wine will do. Fab, thanks.” Penny sniffed it and it
didn’t make her eyes water, so it was a good start. “What’s on my mind? What do
you think? I am a murderer, aren’t I?”

“No, no, no. At worst, it’s negligent manslaughter.”

“Now I feel tons better. Thanks for that.”

Cath sighed. “I am not on the case…”

“I know!”

“Hey, don’t get shirty. It’s a good thing. We can gossip
about it, like normal people.”

Penny took a large gulp of wine. It stung slightly. She
took another mouthful to help wash the burning sensation away. “What will
happen to me?” she asked mournfully.

“The police are concentrating on what happened once Clive
was up that ladder,” Cath said. “I honestly don’t think you’re going to be
scapegoated. It’s unlikely. You might be made an example of, but I can’t see
you going to prison. I really can’t. It’s a side issue. If you were a big
business, then you’re looking at corporate manslaughter, but that isn’t the
case here.”