The Appleton Case (A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella Book 1) (10 page)

Gavin opened
and then closed his mouth.
 
He
glanced over at Janet and frowned.

“This is all
your fault,” he shouted.
 
He moved
towards her, but was held in place by another policeman.
 
“What were you doing at my garage,
anyway, you nosy old biddy?”

“I wanted to
ask you if you killed your mother,” Janet snapped at him, feeling brave because
they were surrounded by police officers.

Gavin began to
laugh.
 
After several minutes the
laugher trailed off and he shook his head.
 
“It isn’t funny, really,” he told her.
 
“But on the other hand, the accusation
is quite amusing.”

Janet looked
at her sister and shrugged.
 
After
everything that had taken place, they still didn’t know what had happened to
Margaret Appleton.

Chapter Ten

Robert Parsons
escorted Gavin to a waiting police car and then walked over to Janet, who was
standing next to her sister trying to look inconspicuous.

“I’ll be at
Doveby
House at nine tomorrow morning to get statements
from both of you,” he said to the sisters in a no-nonsense voice.
 
Before they could speak, he’d turned on
his heel and strode away.

“Why don’t we
head for home?” Michael suggested.

Janet smiled
at him.
 
“I’ll drive myself
home.
 
You two can finish your
date.
 
I’m awfully sorry I interrupted
it.”

“It’s fine,”
Michael assured her.
 
“At least I
got a front row seat for the most exciting thing that’s happened in
Doveby
Dale for years.”

Janet walked
over to her car and climbed in.
 
She
sat behind the wheel for a minute, gathering her thoughts.
 
It was all she could do to start the
engine and drive sedately away.
 
What she really wanted to do was open the boot and dig out her custard
creams.

Back at
Doveby
House, Janet carried her groceries into the kitchen
and unpacked the bags, suddenly grateful that she’d resisted the urge to add
that tub of ice cream to her selections.
 
Joan wouldn’t have
been understanding
if they’d
needed to clean up melted ice cream from the boot of their car.

Now that she
was so close to her treat, Janet dragged out the anticipation just a little bit
longer.
 
She fixed herself a cup of
tea and then sat down at the table with it and three biscuits on a plate.
 
Her first bite was interrupted by Joan’s
arrival.

“The kettle’s
just boiled,” she told Joan before her sister could speak.

“Lovely,” Joan
replied.
 
“And we appear to have
quite a few snacks to enjoy with the tea now.”

“That’s why I
went out,” Janet explained, hoping that her sister wasn’t as angry as she
seemed.
 
She hated when Joan was too
calm.
 
“I wanted some custard
creams, you see.”

“And you
didn’t think it was rather late to be out shopping for biscuits?”

“It was, but I
just couldn’t get them out of my mind,” Janet said.

Joan
nodded.
 
“Well, I hope Constable
Parsons likes that excuse when you talk to him tomorrow.”

Janet
frowned.
 
Maybe she’d better come up
with something better, she thought, even though it was the truth.
 

The sisters
sipped their tea and Janet ate her biscuits in silence.
 
Janet knew her sister was mad and she
didn’t really blame her.

“How was
dinner?” she asked as she ran the water for washing up.

“It was very
nice,” Joan replied.
 
“Michael is a
very nice man who was very understanding when our evening was so rudely
interrupted.”

“I’m glad,”
Janet said, blushing.
 
“And I’m very
sorry as well,” she added.

“We’ll talk
tomorrow,” Joan told her.
 
“I’m
tired and no doubt you are as well after your ordeal.”

Janet was sure
she could hear sarcasm in her sister’s tone, but before she could answer, Joan
left the room.
 
Janet finished the
washing up and headed to bed.
 

It was a much
later night than normal for both sisters and Janet found herself scrambling the
next morning in order to be ready when Robert Parsons arrived.
 
She barely had time to say much more
than “good morning” to her sister before she heard the knock on the door.

“Ah, good
morning,” the young policeman said tiredly when Janet opened the door.

“Do come in,”
Janet said.
 
“Would you like some
tea or coffee?”

“I’d love some
coffee if you have it,” the man replied.
 
“I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Joan already
had coffee brewing when Janet showed Robert into the kitchen.
 
She’d also put out a plate full of
biscuits and cakes, and the young man looked delighted when he saw it.
 
Joan handed him a small plate and he
quickly filled it with a little of everything.

“Sorry, I
didn’t get any breakfast, either.
 
Things are quite busy at the station this morning,” he explained.

Joan handed
him a cup full of coffee and he added a splash of milk before taking a
sip.
 

“Ah, that’s
wonderful,” he said with a sigh.

Janet poured
herself a cup of tea and then sat down at the table with him.
 
Joan handed Janet a plate for biscuits
before fixing her own tea and sitting down as well.

“The first
thing I have to make perfectly clear is that you were in great danger last
night,” Robert said to Janet.
 
“If
Gavin Appleton had found you snooping around his garage, there’s no telling
what he might have done.”

“I wasn’t
really snooping,” Janet said defensively.
 
“I stopped because I saw the lights were on and I wanted a quick word
with Gavin.
 
I was hoping to get a
better idea of what papers he was looking for, as we’d found so many boxes full
of paperwork.”

“Yes, well, I
know exactly what he was looking for,” Robert told her.
 
“And he wouldn’t have told you.”

“I wasn’t to
know that,” Janet said.
 
She sipped
her tea, hoping the man believed her.

“Gavin could
press charges against you for trespass if he wanted to,” he said.

“I wasn’t trespassing,”
Janet insisted.
 
“The lights were on
and the door was open.
 
I just
walked in, looking for someone, and while I was doing that someone locked the
door behind me.”

“Well, you
must never do anything like that again,”
Robert
said
sternly.
 
“If you have concerns
about someone, you must come to the police and let us handle things.
 
I’d be even more angry if there hadn’t
been such a successful outcome, of course.”

“The cars in
the garage were all stolen?” Joan asked.

“Yes, and one
of the young men who was working for Gavin has filled us in on the whole
scheme.
 
Gavin hired a number of
young men and used them to modify the stolen vehicles.
 
He usually did the actual stealing
himself, apparently, but in the box of parts that you found were vehicle
identification plates.
 
Gavin was
making his own and replacing the genuine ones with his.”

“Wow, it’s
like something from
telly
, not real life,” Janet
remarked.

“It is
rather,” Robert agreed.
 
“He started
out small and at some point his mother found out what he was doing.
 
Apparently that’s when she cut him out
of her will.
 
Anyway, lately he’d
increased his little operation, bringing in more staff and stealing more cars.”

“So he was
after that box of parts,” Janet said.
 
“That’s why he wanted to get into the house here.”

“Not just that
box of parts,” Robert told her.
 
“Where are those boxes of papers you found?”

Joan carried the
boxes in from her sitting room.
 
He
quickly flipped through the first box, pulling out several sheets of paper as
he did so.

“Blank registration
papers,” he explained, showing the sheets he’d taken to the women.
 
“All Gavin had to do was fill in the
blanks and he could claim to be the owner of each stolen car.
 
Somehow Margaret got her hands on a large
number of these and that box of parts.
 
Gavin won’t tell us how she got them, but apparently she used to visit
him at the garage from time to time before their falling out.”

“But he didn’t
kill her to get them back?” Janet asked.

“No, Margaret
wasn’t murdered,”
Robert
told her.
 

“So how did
Margaret die?” Janet demanded.

Robert
frowned.
 
“I’m afraid I can’t answer
that question,” he told her.
 
“You’d
have to ask Gavin.”

“But he’s
locked up,” Janet said with a sigh.
 
“I know it isn’t really any of our business, but I can’t help but be
curious about it.”

“Well, rest
assured that Gavin had nothing to do with it,” Robert told her.
 
“He wasn’t anywhere near her when she
died.”

The policeman
took a few photos of the wardrobe where they’d found the box of car parts and
went through all of the boxes of papers, removing several more of the car registration
pages.

“These are
issued by the DVLA.
 
The Derby CID
is working with them to find out how Gavin managed to get his hands on blank
ones,” he commented as he slid all of the sheets into a large envelope.

“So it was
good that I was stuck in the garage last night,” Janet suggested as the man was
preparing to leave.
 
“Otherwise you
wouldn’t have found the stolen cars.”

“Actually,
we’d requested a search warrant, based largely on the box you’d given me and
the papers I saw when I looked through the boxes here.
 
We were going to execute it this morning
anyway,” Robert replied.
 
He left
before Janet could point out what a big help she and Joan had been in turning
the box over to him.

“I am really
sorry I spoiled your date,” Janet said to Joan after Robert was gone.
 
“I didn’t intend to.”

“It’s okay,”
Joan replied after a moment.
 
“It
was getting a little bit awkward, anyway.”

“But you had
fun?
 
Are you going to go out with
him again?”

“I did have
fun and if he asks, I will go out with him again,” Joan told her.
 
“But he might not ask.”

“Of course he
will,” Janet insisted.
 
“You’re
wonderful and he’s just about smart enough to have noticed.”

“After lunch
we need to talk about getting the bed and breakfast up and running,” Joan told
her sister as Janet headed up to her room to curl up with a book.

Janet made a
face at no one.
 
She wasn’t in any
hurry to start their business.
 
If
they had guests now, she certainly wouldn’t be able to just curl up with a book
all morning.

Lunch was over
far too quickly for Janet’s liking.

“Let’s sit in
the sitting room and talk,” Joan suggested.
 

Janet followed
her and sank down on a couch.
 
A
moment later the doorbell rang.

“Ah, Michael,
what a lovely surprise,” Janet exclaimed, ushering the man into the house,
feeling as if just about anyone would have been welcome just then.

“I just
stopped over to thank your sister for a lovely evening,” he told Janet.
 
“That is, thank you,” he said to Joan
with a small bow in her direction.

Joan
flushed.
 
“I should be thanking
you,” she replied.
 
“Dinner was wonderful.”

“I understand
the police have arrested Gavin,” Michael said.
 
“Apparently he was behind a rather large
car theft ring.
 
I can’t quite
believe it.
 
Nothing that exciting
ever happens in
Doveby
Dale.”

“Margaret
Appleton died suddenly,” Janet said.
 
“Surely that was a little bit exciting.”

“But she
didn’t die in
Doveby
Dale,” Michael told her.

“She didn’t?”
Janet asked.
 
“Do you know what
happened to her, then?”

Michael looked
at each sister in turn.
 
“You didn’t
hear the story?” he asked.

“No, no one
seems to know the story,” Janet said in frustration.

Michael
chuckled.
 
“Well, I know the story,
but I suppose that’s because I know the gentleman she was with when it happened.
 
I didn’t
realise
it wasn’t more widely known.”

“What
gentleman?
 
What happened to
Margaret Appleton?” Janet took a deep breath to stop
herself
from shouting.
 
“Sorry, but we’ve
been wondering what happened to her since we bought the house, but no one seems
to know.”

“It was a
tragic accident,” Michael told her.
 
“She was in Ibiza with a gentleman friend.
 
I won’t give his name, as it isn’t
relevant to the story, but he is somewhat younger than Margaret was.”

“We don’t need
to know his name,” Joan said.
 
Janet
just resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at her sister.
 
She wanted to know who the man was, even
if Joan didn’t.

“So what
happened?” she prompted the man.

“They were at
a nightclub just after they arrived in Ibiza.
 
Margaret was dancing on a raised
platform in six-inch heels.
 
When
the foam party started, the platform got very slippery and she fell off and
landed on her head.
 
I understand
she died instantly.”

“I’m sorry,
but how old was Margaret Appleton?” Joan demanded.