The Bennett Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

“I do hope you
had a nice shopping trip this morning,” he told Janet.

She forced
herself to smile back at him.
 
“It
was fine,” she muttered.
 
A moment
later the door swung open again.
 
This time it was Joan, and she looked even less happy than she had when
she’d walked out.
 
Behind her,
Michael entered the room, and behind him was another man of a similar age who
smiled faintly as he crossed the threshold.
 

Michael was
only a few inches taller than Janet.
 
She considered him quite handsome, with his
bald head
and his intelligent brown eyes.
 
The
man with him was no taller than Janet herself, and considerably heavier.
 
He had a bulbous nose and a handful of
stray hairs that had been carefully arranged around his head to try to fool
people into thinking he wasn’t bald.
 
Janet took an instant and irrational
dislike to him before she even knew
who
he was.

“Ah, Janet,
this is my old school friend, Leonard Simmons.
 
He’s just up from London for a few
days,” Michael said.
 
“I thought
maybe the four of us could have dinner together somewhere tonight.”

Chapter
Four

Janet stared
at Michael, unable to come up with a suitable reply.
 
While Leonard was probably a lovely man,
she really didn’t want to have dinner with him, not even if Joan and Michael
came along.

“Ah, what a
shame.”
 
It was Edward who broke the
awkward silence.
 
“Janet just this
minute agreed to have dinner with me tonight,” he told them.
 

Janet turned
her stare towards him and he winked at her.
 

“Oh, that is a
shame,” Michael said.
 
“I hope Joan
won’t be too bored, listening to us talk about our school days all night.”

“Maybe I
should just stay home and let you two go out on your own,” Joan said stiffly.

“If you’re
sure you wouldn’t mind, that would be great,” Michael replied, clearly not
understanding Joan’s tone.

“I haven’t set
nearly enough places for lunch,” Janet said, eager to stop the argument that
was brewing.
 
“But the table in here
only seats four.
 
Let’s move lunch
into the dining room.”

Joan frowned,
but Janet didn’t give her a chance to speak.
 
“If everyone gives me a hand, we can
have the table set up in there in no time,” she told the men.
 
Janet left her sister standing in the
middle of the kitchen with an angry look on her face.
 
With the men’s help, it only took a few
minutes to set the table in the dining room.

“Sit down and
introduce yourselves all around,” Janet suggested.
 
“I’ll go and help Joan with the food.”

“I’m happy to
help as well, if you’d like,” Edward replied.

“No, no, I’m
sure you’ll find plenty to talk about,” Janet replied.
 
She was pretty sure Joan was about to
explode in the kitchen, and she didn’t want their paying guest to witness the
fireworks.

Janet rushed
back to the kitchen as the men began to settle in around the table.

“What can I do
to help?” she asked Joan, who didn’t appear to have moved in her sister’s
absence.

“Tell them all
to get out of my house,” Joan suggested.

“It’s my
house, too,” Janet replied.
 
She
could tell that Joan was feeling hurt by Michael’s
behaviour
.
 
Clearly he hadn’t bothered to mention
that he had a friend coming to visit.
 
If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d made no effort to hide the fact that
he’d rather have dinner with his friend than with Joan.
 

“We can’t
throw anyone out,” Janet said, giving her sister a hug.
 
“You promised them all lunch.”

“I invited
Michael,” Joan retorted.

“And Edward,”
Janet reminded her.

“Yes, but I
certainly didn’t invite Leonard,” Joan grumbled.

“You would
have invited him if Michael told you about him, though,” Janet said.
 
“Anyway, it’s no good complaining.
 
He’s here now and we have to give him
and the others lunch.”

Joan sighed
deeply and then opened the oven.
 
A
gorgeous
lasagne
was bubbling away inside it.

“That looks
wonderful,” Janet said happily.

“I suppose you
can take the salad through,” Joan replied.
 
“I’ll bring the
lasagne
and the garlic bread
in a few minutes.”

“You are going
to come and have some salad, though, right?” Janet demanded.
 
“You aren’t going to leave me with the
three of them on my own.”

Joan sighed
again, even more dramatically.
 
Janet just looked at her.

“If I must,”
Joan said after a moment.

“You really
must,” Janet said emphatically.

Grabbing the
salad bowl, which was full of an assortment of mixed greens, tomatoes and
cucumber tossed in a light dressing, Janet headed back into the dining
room.
 
She could hear Joan sliding
the
lasagne
out of the oven behind her.

“Here we are,”
she said brightly, setting the salad in the middle of the table.
 
“Everyone help yourselves.
 
I’ll get some drinks.
 
What can I get you all?”

She headed
back towards the kitchen with the drinks requests, nearly knocking Joan over as
she went.

“We need to
get everyone drinks,” Joan hissed.

“I’m working
on that,” Janet answered her.
 
“You
go and sit down and have some salad.
 
I’ll bring the drinks.”

Joan clearly
wanted to argue, but as they were standing in the dining room doorway in full
view of the others, she refrained.
 
Janet continued on to the kitchen and quickly collected the cold drinks
that had been requested.
 
She added
a cup of tea for her sister and a cold drink for herself to a small tray and
then carried it all back through.
 
Joan was sitting at the head of the table, between Michael and Leonard,
but she jumped up to help Janet serve.

“Now you sit
down and have some salad,” Joan said.
 
“I’ll finish up in the kitchen.”

Janet sank
into a chair next to Edward and used the salad tongs to put some salad on her
plate.
 
Michael and Leonard were
talking loudly about their university days, so Janet nibbled at her food
quietly.
 
Every so often Michael
would say something about being sorry for excluding others from their
conversation, but neither he nor Leonard seemed willing to actually change the
subject.

“Aren’t you
glad you’re having dinner with me?” Edward whispered to Janet during one
particularly long anecdote about some party that had taken place forty years
earlier.

Janet quickly
took a drink to avoid having to answer the question.
 
The truth was, she wasn’t sure how she
felt about having dinner with the man.

Joan carried
in the
lasagne
and then a plate full of garlic
bread.
 
The men all murmured
appreciatively, which at least earned a tiny smile from Joan.
 
Leonard reached for the spatula to start
serving himself, but Michael interrupted.

“Ladies
first,” he said, smiling at Joan.
 

Janet relaxed
slightly when Joan gave him a slightly larger grin before she helped herself to
lunch.

Michael
appeared, throughout lunch, to try to include everyone in the conversation, but
Leonard seemed to have a one-track mind.
 
Janet was quite happy to just sit back and let the boorish man
monopolise
the conversation, even though nothing he said
was even remotely interesting.
 
The
food was wonderful and she didn’t really have anything to say to any of their
guests, anyway.

Joan served
tea and biscuits for pudding.
 
Janet
was sure she’d seen a Victoria sponge on the kitchen counter and could only
assume that Joan had decided to save that for another day.
 
Perhaps one when Leonard would be
absent.

“We ought to
stay and help with the washing up,” Michael said, his tone apologetic.
 
“But I promised Leonard a trip into
Derby.”

“Have fun,”
Joan said flatly.

Michael looked
as if he wanted to say more, but Leonard grabbed his arm.

“Let’s get
going, shall we?” he asked.
 
“Lots
to do.”

Michael
shrugged and followed the man from the room.
 
Joan busied herself with clearing the
table, so Janet followed the two men to the door.

“Tell her I’m
really sorry,” Michael whispered to Janet at the door.
 
“He just showed up out of the blue and I
couldn’t think of a polite way to get rid of him.”

A few ideas
sprang to Janet’s mind, but the two men were disappearing down the pavement
before she could reply.
 
She watched
them cross the road back to Michael’s home before she shut the door.

In the
kitchen, Joan was loading all of the dishes into the dishwasher.

“Are you sure
that’s wise?” Janet asked.
 
The
machine had come with the house, but they hadn’t actually tried it yet.

“I’m not doing
all that washing up by hand,” Joan said crossly.

“Let me help,”
Edward said from the dining room doorway.
 
He was carrying a stack of dishes and he quickly crossed to Joan.
 
“It’s best to put them in this way,” he
explained, loading plates and then glasses and mugs onto the various
racks.
 
Within minutes he had
everything tucked up inside the machine.
 
Joan handed him the box
labelled
“dishwasher
tablets” that had come with the house.
 
He showed her where to put the tablet and then shut the machine’s door
and switched it on.

“It should
take about an hour,” he said.
 
“And
everything will be quite hot when it’s finished.”

“Thank you,”
Joan said.
 
“And thank you for
helping to clear everything up as well.”

“I’m always happy
to help,” the man replied.
 
“And
now, if you ladies will excuse me, I have a few errands to run.”
 
He bowed to them both and then headed
towards the kitchen door.

“I’ll make a
dinner booking for seven,” he told Janet on his way past her.
 
“If you can be ready for half six?”

“Fine,” Janet
muttered, thinking this was the perfect opportunity to cancel their date, but
failing to do so.

“Good.”

The sisters were
quiet as they heard him moving around the house for a few minutes before they
heard the front door open and close.
 
Janet blew out a breath she hadn’t
realised
she was holding.

“You didn’t
tell me that you and Edward were dating,” Joan said as she tidied up the
kitchen.

“We aren’t,”
Janet replied.
 
“I don’t even like
the man.”

“And yet
you’re having dinner with him tonight,” Joan replied.

“Apparently,”
Janet muttered.

A knock on the
front door disrupted their chat.
 
Janet rushed to open it, happy with the interruption.

“Constable
Parsons, this is a surprise,” Janet said to the young man on the doorstep.

They’d met the
town’s only policeman before they’d even purchased the house, after an
altercation with the previous owner’s son.
 
Although he was only in his mid-twenties, Robert Parsons was responsible
for policing both
Doveby
Dale and
neighbouring
Little Burton.
 
As nothing much
happened in either small town, he usually managed the job easily.
 
Today his brown hair looked in need of a
cut and his brown eyes looked tired.
 
He was, as always when Janet had seen him, neatly dressed in ordinary
clothes rather than a police uniform.

“Can I come in
for just a minute?” he asked politely.

“Of course you
can,” Janet said.
 
“Would you like
some tea and a biscuit?” she added as she showed him into the sitting room.

“I’m afraid I
haven’t much time,” the man replied, looking disappointed.
 

“What can we
do for you, then?” Joan asked from the doorway.

“I just wanted
to warn you that we’ve had a report of a possible fugitive in the area,” he
told them.
 

“What sort of
fugitive?” Janet asked.
 
“Are we in
great danger?”

“I don’t think
so,” was the vague reply.
 
“The man
in question is called Peter Smith, but that won’t be the name he’s using.
 
He’s a con artist who was in prison in
London, but, through a series of unusual circumstances, managed to escape or
get let out.
 
I’m not clear on the
details and that’s all still being investigated at that end.
 
Anyway, he’s known to have ties in the
Derbyshire area, so we’ve all been put on alert.
 
It seems unlikely that he’ll come here,
but anything is possible.
 
As you
run a small guesthouse, even if you aren’t taking guests at the moment, I
wanted to let you know.
 
It’s just
possible he might turn up here looking for a place to stay.”

“Do you have a
photograph?” Joan asked.

“I have
several, but I don’t know that they’ll do you much good,” Robert told
them.
 
He reached into his coat,
pulled out a small envelope, and handed it to Joan.

She flipped
through the contents.
 
“But these
are all different men,” she protested.
 
“Which one is the man you’re looking for?”

“That’s the
problem,” Robert told her.
 
“They’re
all the same man.
 
He’s excellent at
disguising his appearance.”

Janet looked
through the photos herself.
 
Joan
was right; they looked like several different men.
 
At the same time, there was nothing
particularly noticeable about any of them.
 
They all looked like average men of around sixty.

“We have a
guest right now,” Joan told Robert.
 
“He arrived yesterday.”

“I’m sure
Edward isn’t an escaped fugitive,” Janet said hastily.
 
“He’s an old friend of Maggie’s after
all.”