Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) (15 page)

“I don’t think information
that we pressed out of her would have been reliable,” Cath said. “Yes, she’s
hiding something. But what we need to do now is to find the loose threads. We
need to tweak the ends of what she’s hiding, and then go back to her. If we
know more than we do at the moment, we have something to bargain with.”

“We do know more,” Penny
argued. “We know she did ten years in prison! She didn’t tell us that, did
she?”

“Of course not. Who would?
And she certainly alluded to it, with saying she’s moved on. Knowing what we
know, we could read between the lines there.”

“I still think we’ve missed
something.”

“I
know
we have,”
Cath said crossly, “but we can’t just blunder forward without thinking it
over.”

“But that’s what I’m best
at! I’m great at blundering. It’s my top skill.”

Cath rolled her eyes. “And
don’t we know it.” She sighed and opened her car door, and ferreted about for a
bottle of water. She grimaced as she took a swig. “Warm water. Lovely. Did anything
else strike you as odd, though?”

“Yes, absolutely. Carl
Fredericks told us yesterday that he had no contact with Mandy and he didn’t
have her address or phone number.”

“He said much the same to
us. He certainly didn’t mention any phone call. I wonder what he was ‘warning’
her about?”

“You see!” Penny said. “We
should have stayed and asked more!”

“She was clamming up and she
was getting upset. She would have said anything. Let’s go gently and gain her
trust. I am also going to ask around the local gamblers’ help groups. They are
anonymous, and I would not break that sanctity, but I can do a little careful
poking.”

“And the other thing,” Penny
said, pulled her helmet out of the back seat of Cath’s car. “I wonder what she
meant when she said she’d
forgiven
Alec?”

Penny took the direct route
home that Monday afternoon. She didn’t realise that she was eager to get back
and talk to Francine until she barged into her own hallway and found the
cottage empty, and felt a strange and sinking disappointment that took her
quite by surprise.

Kali was sunning herself in
the front room, wriggling over a few inches every half hour to stay in the last
patch of sunlight as it tracked across the floor. She looked up as Penny
entered, and thumped her tail on the floor, but didn’t relinquish her
sunbathing. Penny shook her head at her, and knelt down for a quick fuss.

Her knees protested almost
immediately. With a groan she staggered up and went to make a cup of tea.

* * * *

She devoted Tuesday to work.
She was woefully behind on her arts and crafts, and only broke off to walk the
dog in the morning. She had emails to answer, her website to monitor, and a
handful of sales from her online shop that needed parcelling and posting.

She spent the afternoon
gradually relaxing back into her old routine of experimentation and hard graft.
She had picked up some floral fabric many weeks previously. She was a sucker
for anything fabric or fibre related, and had to ration herself to how much she
could spend in a haberdashery. She had avoided a yarn shop that day, but ended
up in a charity shop instead, and impulsively bought a large cotton sheet with
an old-fashioned paisley pattern on it. Since then, it had lingered in her
stash with all the other guilt-inducing purchases.

Now she tried a little
complementary embroidery in metallic thread that wove around the printed
tendrils. In her head, it looked great.

In practise, less so.

However, she was absorbed in
the work, even though she spent as much time ripping it out and starting again.
It had been too long since she had lost herself in craft, she reflected. It was
like an active meditation and the hours flew by.

Francine had gone out, and
then returned, passing through the kitchen to grab a drink before sitting out
in the back garden with a book. Kali wandered through from time to time. With
the kitchen door propped open, Penny could hear a distant radio, and an
occasional aeroplane passed over to temporarily mute the bees in the flowers.

If this wasn’t peace, then it
was certainly pretty close to it.

* * * *

Francine seemed quiet and
didn’t want to accompany Penny to the progress meeting for the Sculpture Trail
that Tuesday evening. She murmured something about a headache, and took herself
off to her room.

Her room!
Penny smiled to herself. She wanted Francine to
leave, but she knew now that she was going to miss her when she went.

The community hall was
packed, even more so than the previous meeting. Perhaps people were hoping for
more shock announcements, but Penny hoped fervently that they were to be
disappointed. She stepped into the throng and was immediately beset from all
sides.

“Who did it, then?” was the
general question. “You’re in cahoots with the police. Who’s a suspect?” This
was invariably followed by the questioner’s list of potential murderers, which
in one case included the prime minister and a random milkman in Lincoln.

Penny smiled and waved them
all away, trying to listen to the hints and clues in what people offered. But
how could she tell what was gold-class information, and what was the product of
a fevered imagination, too many mystery novels, and a grudge against a
neighbour who once had a bonfire while their washing was on the line?

The only member from the
town council present was the short, loud butcher, Shaun Kapowski. He stood at
the table on the raised platform, next to Steve. In spite of being a good foot shorter
than Steve, the council leader looked larger.
It was the confident way he
stood,
Penny thought.
Anyone who wrestled dead cows and large knives for
a living was bound to stand with confidence.

Shaun’s booming voice called
the audience to take their seats. There weren’t enough chairs, and people stood
in ranks along the sides of the hall. Eventually the chatter died down, and
every pair of eyes in the place was fixed on the two figures.

Penny had managed to get a
seat next to a man she didn’t know, but a few rows in front she could see
Agatha’s wobbling black beehive. Someone else prodded her between the shoulder
blades, and she turned to see Sheila and her husband from the Post Office. She
nodded hi, and returned her attention to the silent pair on the dais.

In contrast to Shaun’s easy
assurance, poor Steve looked like a terrified sheep. He hunched his shoulders,
making him look more like a teenager with his lank hair hanging loose. He
shifted from foot to foot.

As he was about to speak,
there was a murmur from the back of the hall, and a few people turned around.
Steve’s mouth opened and closed.

“It’s Ginni,” someone said,
and Penny craned her neck around too. She could just make out the tall figure
of the local florist standing at the back.

“We are here to discuss the
progress of the Sculpture Trail.” Shaun’s voice brought everyone’s attention
back once more. “Since the sad and untimely death of our Alec Goodwin, Steve
Llewellyn has most kindly stepped forward to continue his legacy and ensure
that our town can unveil the Trail at our August Fair.”

That was a matter of weeks
away. Penny folded her arms and studied Steve. He did not look comfortable.

Shaun reached up with his
hand and clapped Steve on the upper arm. “And Steve is here to tell us all about
how it’s going! Over to you, young man. You’re doing a sterling job. Well
done.”

If Penny closed her eyes,
Shaun’s voice put her in mind of a retired Colonel from a 1950’s film. Who said
“sterling” these days? When she opened her eyes again, Shaun had sat down, and
Steve was left floundering, alone.

He stared at the table in
front of him, and mumbled, “Hi everyone. Yeah. So we’re doing some tiles for
the poles and it will be finished by the fair.”

There was a pause.

And then everyone in the
hall wanted to ask a question. Hands waved, and people shouted things out. In
the midst of the cacophony, Shaun rose to his feet and yelled for quiet. Then
he began taking questions one by one.

The first questioner asked, “Why
aren’t you doing what Alec planned? He was having carved wooden poles, none of
this tiles business.”

Steve’s voice was rough and
cracked. He coughed to clear his throat but it didn’t help. “I thought we
should do something a bit different. I didn’t want to take another artist’s
vision. Felt a bit wrong, didn’t it? And I am good in clay and that.”

“How many are you making?”

“There will be twelve in
total. I done about five.”

“Are these clay tiles?”

Penny recognised Mary’s
voice. It was a sensible question, and one she herself had worried about since
she heard of Steve’s plans.

“Yeah, they are.”

“But won’t they get
weathered?” More than one person spoke at a time, and there was a murmur of
consternation.

“It’s kiln-fired stoneware,
isn’t it,” Steve said, flatly, not as a question. “And you can put a sealer on
the inside and paint the outside with acrylic and it will be all right, so…”

“Nah,” a man shouted out
without Shaun’s intervention. “Water will still get in, and then it will
freeze, and the ice expands and boom! It all shatters. Happened to my
terracotta pots. I had them on my patio one winter. They–”

“This
isn’t
terracotta,”
Steve said, his voice louder now. “I told you. It’s
stoneware
. All
right?”

“Don’t you get shirty with
me, young man!” the questioner retorted, getting to his feet.

“Yeah but you don’t
understand pottery, do you?”

More people shouted out, and
a few others started to stand up. It unleashed a wave of people having to move
to retain their view of the platform. “So what’s on the designs of these tiles,
then?” someone called out.

Steve tried to answer but
someone else was speaking now. “Carved poles, that’s what we want. It’s
tactile.”

“We need to see your
designs. Come on, where are your designs?”

Shaun was frantically
calling for quiet. Steve, however, jumped onto a chair and then up onto the
table, and the audience was shocked enough to finally shut up. Everyone was
standing now, even Penny, who had moved to the side for a better view.

“I’m the artist, all right?”

Oh goodness, oh no,
Penny thought. She pleaded internally with Steve.
Don’t
do this. Don’t go on like I think you’re going to go on…

But he did.

“Stoneware is weather proof!
I can’t use Alec Goodwin’s designs! I got asked to do this! And I’m doing it!
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Which is why YOU are not doing it!”

His tirade was aimed at that
one questioner, and everyone else in the room. His face was red and sweaty and
he had balled his fists, swinging his long arms menacingly.

“Get down!” Shaun reached up
and pulled at the leg of Steve’s jeans, but he shook the little butcher away.
“Get down, lad!”

“I am the
artist!
”
Steve shouted, focusing on Shaun this time. “Don’t you people understand?”

Penny was cringing openly by
this point.
Shut up, shut up, you fool,
she thought, trying to will some
psychic connection to open up between her and the irrational idiot on the
table.

The hall was erupting now.

“Us?”

“You people?”

“What are you on, boy?”

“I know about terracotta, I
do!”

“Arrogant little–”

Penny thought she couldn’t
get any more embarrassed for Steve, but then Shaun climbed onto a chair to get
a better grip on Steve to haul him down. With the butcher’s great strength,
Steve was bound to come off worse. It was turning into a farce.

Steve flung his arm out to the
side, knocking Shaun backwards, so he had to jump off the chair to retain his
balance. Then Steve leaped to the floor. Without looking at anyone, he simply
ran out of the hall, shouting, “I’m the artist! You’re all the same. Just like
uni. I–”

And he was gone.

For a moment, one bare brief
second, there was a silence, taut and charged with the coming explosion.

And then, as one, everyone
turned to their neighbour and began to dissect everything they had just
witnessed.

Poor, poor Steve,
Penny thought.
What a complete numpty.
But
then, maybe Shaun should not have put such a young and immature man under the
spotlight so publically.

She felt so acutely bad for
the spectacle that Steve had displayed that she wanted to get out of the hall.
People were gossiping and analysing and speculating and it made her feel
uncomfortable. She caught, out of the corner of her eye, the sight of Agatha
milling around and decided she needed to leave before she was cornered.