The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

First published in the UK in 2014 by

Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2014 Hazel Osmond

The moral right of Hazel Osmond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

PB ISBN 978 1 78087 371 8
Ebook ISBN 978 1 78087 372 5

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

Contents

1. CHAPTER 1
   
2. CHAPTER 2
   
3. CHAPTER 3
   
4. CHAPTER 4
   
5. CHAPTER 5
   
6. CHAPTER 6
   
7. CHAPTER 7
   
8. CHAPTER 8
   
9. CHAPTER 9
   
10. CHAPTER 10
    
11. CHAPTER 11
    
12. CHAPTER 12
    
13. CHAPTER 13
    
14. CHAPTER 14
    
15. CHAPTER 15
    
16. CHAPTER 16
    
17. CHAPTER 17
    
18. CHAPTER 18
    
19. CHAPTER 19
    
20. CHAPTER 20
    
21. CHAPTER 21
    
22. CHAPTER 22
    
23. CHAPTER 23
    
24. CHAPTER 24
    
25. CHAPTER 25
    
26. CHAPTER 26
    
27. CHAPTER 27
    
28. CHAPTER 28
    
29. CHAPTER 29
    
30. CHAPTER 30
    
31. CHAPTER 31
    
32. CHAPTER 32
    
33. CHAPTER 33
    
34. CHAPTER 34
    
35. CHAPTER 35
    
36. CHAPTER 36
    
37. CHAPTER 37
    
38. CHAPTER 38
    
39. CHAPTER 39
    
40. CHAPTER 40
    
41. CHAPTER 41
    
42. CHAPTER 42
    
43. CHAPTER 43
    
44. CHAPTER 44
    
45. CHAPTER 45
    
46. CHAPTER 46
    
47. CHAPTER 47
    
48. CHAPTER 48
    
49. CHAPTER 49
    
50. CHAPTER 50
    
51. CHAPTER 51
    
52. CHAPTER 52
    
53. CHAPTER 53
    
54. CHAPTER 54
    
55. CHAPTER 55
    
56. CHAPTER 56
    
57. CHAPTER 57
    
58. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    

Hazel Osmond
has been an advertising copywriter for many years. In 2008 she won the
Woman & Home
short story competition sponsored by Costa. In 2012,
Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe?
was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s (RNA) Romantic Comedy award. While she is a southerner by birth she now lives in Northumberland and, thirty years after first arriving, has finally taken off her vest. The county has been the inspiration for two of her books and she hopes, in turn, that they will inspire readers to come and discover Northumberland and its people for themselves.

Find out more about Hazel at
www.hazelosmond.co.uk

Also by Hazel Osmond

Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe?
The First Time I Saw Your Face
Playing Grace

For anyone who has put two and two together and come up with five.

CHAPTER 1

Thursday 8 May

It seems to me that a car which is more or less the colour of a ripe tomato is not the best vehicle to drive when you are trying to keep a very low profile indeed.

The man in the hire place informed me that it is the only automatic they have.

‘No call for them, pet,’ he said. Or he might have been saying, ‘I need to call my pet.’ I haven’t quite got my ear attuned to the accent yet, which is weird after all those years in Scotland – you’d think I could pick my way through something this gutsy.

I did understand him later, though, when he said I had the same colour hair as his ‘gran’.

Nice to meet someone as tactless as I am.

Apart from that, he is a sweetheart – very chatty and he’s made me a cup of coffee while he’s gone off to check over the car.

I could sit and twiddle my thumbs, but I’ve ‘borrowed’ a piece of his paper because I always find paper comforting and writing on it stops me feeling quite so alone in this part of the world where I’ve never been and where I know absolutely no one.

Although I suppose that’s not strictly true.

Mr Friendly seemed very enthusiastic about Tynebrook. Said he and his girlfriend often had a run out there and although he wasn’t quite sure of the date, he thought the county show would be taking place quite soon. He looked almost misty-eyed.

When I mentioned I was going to be staying in a cottage, he made a noise that suggested I had all the luck and he didn’t.

I can’t disagree with that. So lovely to imagine getting there and sitting in a cosy, chintzy sitting room, looking out over a garden brimming with old-fashioned flowers and feeling a bit like I’m coming home. I wonder if it has inglenooks inside and roses around the door.

So … I’m still thinking about that chattiness of his. I’ll have to watch it if that’s a widespread trait up here. Coming straight from London where they might as well put ‘Do not have eye contact with strangers’ notices on the walls, it wrong-footed me rather. Found myself offering information I hadn’t meant to.

Had a moment’s unease when he asked me if I was up here on holiday. In the end I just said ‘Yes’ and made sure I had my fingers crossed behind my back.

After all, it wasn’t a black lie, it was one of those social ones that keep everything moving along instead of the conversation grinding to a halt. I mean, even someone as chatty as he is might have found it hard to carry on if I’d said, ‘No, not a holiday. I’ve come to find something I didn’t even know I had until I lost someone I obviously didn’t ever really know.’

Looks more like gobbledygook when it’s written down than when I say it.

But then that’s the thing about the truth. It’s often stranger than fiction. Harder to believe.

CHAPTER 2

Tom Howard didn’t want to look down at the llama spit on his shirt; the smell of it was horrible enough – masticated cabbage with top notes of vomit.

‘Bad, Salome. Very bad,’ the woman holding the llama said as she tried to advance on Tom with an antiseptic wet wipe. Her progress was impeded by the way Salome, teeth bared, was rearing back as if there was more spit coming. The woman kept hanging on, but as Salome was about twice her size, Tom wouldn’t have been surprised to see her being whirled around and launched over the county showground like a human discus.

He leaned forward to retrieve the wet wipe, freeing up the woman to administer a jerk to Salome’s halter that would have snapped a lesser neck. Salome simply continued to glare at him. Those hostile eyes and that long neck reminded Tom of his wife – although, to be fair, she had never spat at him.

He dabbed at his shirt. Great, gobbed on by an overgrown
draught-excluder on legs. Perhaps he could pass the sludgy stain off as something Paul Smith had intended –
My signature look for summer: Irish linen with a hint of hockle
.

‘She’s taken against the crowds today,’ the woman announced, whisking the soiled wet wipe from Tom’s hand. ‘Never seen it this busy.’

Tom had to agree with her. He was forced to plant his feet to avoid getting jostled back into Salome’s spit line.

‘OK,’ he said flipping his notebook shut and shoving it deep into his trouser pocket, ‘I think I’ve got all I need for now, but I’ll send Derek, our photographer, over to take some shots too.’

Very slowly, so as not to spook Salome, Tom put his sunglasses back on. He caught the sharp way she swivelled her head, like some malignant periscope, but this time she was glaring at a guy waving his ice cream about as he talked. It looked like he was about to get an unusual topping on his Mr Whippy.

Tom pushed out into the crowd and attempted to make some headway. Big contrast to last year when it rained from first light and it was just the locals and farmers who’d turned up to slip around in the mud. He’d watched the rain bead and run off the wax jackets before seeking warmth in one of the marquees. Bit like Glastonbury, but without the music or the drugs.

Today, everyone else was following the British tradition of exposing as much skin as possible because it might never be sunny again – he could feel the back of his neck starting to burn, but his mind was taken off the discomfort of that by the public address system. Its broadcasts generally had all the clarity of Esperanto being spoken through a sock full of wet sand and, right now, whoever was holding the mic was experiencing particularly trying technical difficulties.

‘In the main arena at 2.30 …’ whistle, squeak, ‘the popular …’ dip to voice-from-beyond-the-grave volume, ‘trained ferrets …’ surge of power before an ear-splitting whine, followed by a voice saying, with perfect clarity, ‘Well I didn’t know I had to keep my finger on the fucking button all the time.’

Tom joined in the spontaneous cheering at that before skirting around some hen houses and bee hives. He was avoiding a woman putting the dry into dry stone walling, when his phone rang.

‘Sorry, took longer than I thought,’ he said when he answered it. ‘Nearly there … Yeah, I see you.’ He raised a hand in greeting and by the time he’d put his phone away, he had reached his brother. Rob was cradling a tray of tomato plants on his stomach and carrying a blow-up hammer under one arm.

‘You planning some DIY?’

‘Yeah. Gonna buy some blow-up nails in a minute. Works though, look.’

Tom took the thwack that Rob gave him in good part. ‘Nice touch, that squeak.’

‘Reminds me of that blow-up woman you brought to my stag party. Miss Flatulence. The one with the faulty vulva.’

‘Valve, you pillock.’

‘Oh, aye. Tricky sods, vowels.’

Despite the different routes they’d taken since school, Tom and his brother had now reverted to the roles of childhood – Rob playing gormless and making the rude jokes, Tom reeling him back in. Tom suspected that Rob was aware of this too, judging by the way he was grinning at him.

‘Git,’ Tom said with affection, before asking, ‘OK, what have you done with Hattie?’

‘Toilets. Baby’s pressing on Kath’s bladder. Hattie went to keep her company in the queue.’ Rob’s expression suggested that they had been gone a long time. He nodded at the tomato plants. ‘They should have just peed on these to bring them back to life.’

‘Lovely. Remind me never to have salad at your house. So, has she behaved herself?’

A laugh. ‘Usual wall-to-wall questions, especially when Kath and I took her in to see the bulls.’ Rob lowered his
voice. ‘Well-endowed lads. And Hattie wanted to know what, well, what those big rugby ball type things hanging down were.’