The Diane Dimbleby Murder Collection Volume 2, Page 4

  Mrs. Kendall finally rose, and Inspector Crothers moved swiftly around the table to take her arm and help the frail old woman from her seat. He personally walked her to the door where he nodded to the men that had taken up guard, and they escorted Penelope Kendall out into the fresh air.

  The interviews continued for another hour and the tent slowly cleared of patrons who made their way back to the fairground to erase the ordeal from their minds with candy floss and a game of Hook-a-Duck. One after another they told the same tale almost without variation, and it wasn’t helping the investigation one bit.

  Crothers looked over his notes and worked a rough timeline in his head including locations of important players. All of the Winners table party had been clear on their stories. No one had threatened Mrs. Gilbert; no-one had been seen slipping a powder or liquid into her food or drink. Then again, no one had really been paying attention to those things as the caterers passed around them with the meal and drinks; tales were regaled by the Mayor and small talk distracted everyone. Mrs. Gilbert had just started coughing, grabbing at her throat and collapsed onto the floor to die.

  A visitor had mentioned the chill that greeted the awarding of the sponge cake prize, but when he had mentioned it to the major witnesses their response had been unanimous: it was never a reason for murder.

  “Someone else should have won,” said a tearful Jilly. “She wasn’t very nice to other people. But she didn’t deserve this.”

  “Sour grapes!” huffed the Mayor. “Just sour grapes from the other contestants. But it is just a cake contest.”

  “Oh no no,” exclaimed Mrs. Foster. “She was such a good cook. Not a very nice person though. But if everyone that someone didn’t think was nice got murdered….”

  So the idea had started to creep into his head that Mrs. Gilbert was an innocent, a woman caught in a misplaced assassin’s trap that was meant for someone else. He quickly dismissed Jilly Newman from the list of possible victims. Douglas Macdonald, however, seemed to leap from the pack as the original target. He was the wealthiest man in town, a philanthropist in the area, and was known to have a temper when things weren’t done exactly to his liking. From experience, Darrell Crothers knew that with money came vices, arrogance, and jealousy that had other people reaching for their knives. There wasn’t a rich man alive with a back broad enough to house all of the sharp points that were poised to strike them down.

  “Inspector Crothers,” chirped in a familiar voice.

  He had scribbled some final notes about looking into Douglas Macdonald’s personal life and flipped his book shut.

  “Ms. Dimbleby,” he said, looking up into the face that was dominated by the remarkable glasses. “I had hoped we might meet under more pleasant circumstances some day. It never seems to be though.”

  “Not at all. We have a knack of arriving just where our... I mean, your talents are required.”

  The Inspector nodded slowly. He had a list of the times he had come across a case with Ms. Dimbleby at its periphery. She seemed to know people all over Shropshire and the West Midlands. Her years as a teacher in Apple Mews and her natural talents for organization had seen her involved in county-wide drives and the administration of local and national societies. He had performed a background check on her after her third appearance in an investigation. Stranger things have happened than a 60-year-old retired teacher turned criminal mastermind/hitwoman. But his search came up clean, even with a note about her involvement in the solution of her husband’s death years earlier. Since then her peculiar skills and background had helped him more than once in apprehending a villain.

  “What can I do for you?” The Inspector knew that Diane was holding onto something. She rarely came forward without having some piece of information that might be innocuous but invariably turned out to be crucial.

  “Mrs. Kendall…” Diane let the name hang in the air and watched the Inspector’s face for a sign that he might already have what she was about to offer. He flipped open his notebook, thumbed a few pages and read for a moment.

  “Friend of the victim, short woman, heart problem.”

  “Yes, she’s the one. Well, I think you might want to look a little closer at her, Inspector.”

  “Might I?” replied Darrell, raising an enquiring eyebrow.

  “You know, it might be nothing, but she was acting particularly strangely earlier. Evasive, I want to say. I asked her a few questions…”

  “Now, Ms. Dimbleby, you know that’s my job.”

  “I know Inspector, but I overheard her at the time of the incident, and she seemed surprised.”

  “I think everyone is a bit surprised. It’s not often that we get a murder at a fête.”

  “Not the usual shocked surprise. She didn’t seem surprised by the murder, but more by who was murdered.” Diane put emphasis on her words by leaning in slightly towards the table, her eyes seemed to expand behind the thick lenses of her glasses.

  “Did she mention who she thought would be murdered?”

  “Well, not in so many words Inspector. As I said, she was being particularly obtuse when I talked to her.”

  “So what makes you think that she was expecting a different death?”

  “Because the way she looked and sounded, I think she expected to be the victim.”

  Chapter 4

  Diane stalked away from the village green with her temper barely held in check. Penelope Kendall was going to talk to her, one way or another.

  “Poisoning is such a personal act,” she had said to the Inspector. “Don’t you think it’s odd that this happened here, in the middle of the fête?”

  “It’s unusual, I’ll give you that,” he had responded.

  “So why do it here? Why not poison her in her own home, or strangle her, or shoot her? Why poison and why here?”

  The Inspector had sighed at that. She knew that he had a lot of other avenues of inquiry, but she was trying to give him extra guidance.

  “Diane,” he had said, mildly exasperated. “We’re not even sure that she was the target. Who would kill a harmless old lady? The only suspects are her fellow contestants, and it makes no sense to kill her after she had already won the contest.”

  “Exactly my point, Inspector. Poison isn’t the weapon of rage brought on by losing a contest. It’s subtle, it’s personal. There’s something more here, and Mrs. Kendall knows about it.”

  “Why on Earth would Mrs. Kendall not have told me already? I could have protected her from any murderer if she had told me. Yet she said nothing and I believe her. You’re barking up the wrong tree this time, Diane.”

  “But Inspector…” Diane had started, but the Inspector made it clear that the conversation was over.

  “I have other people to look at here. This may have been the wrong person killed, and I need to get to work. Thank you for your efforts Ms. Dimbleby. I must get on.”

  And with that, he looked down dismissively at his notebook, a spark to light Diane’s simmering anger.

  She had left the tent immediately, forgetting about Albert, who saw her head out of the flap and jogged after her. He trailed behind her now, trying to keep pace, but exercise was something he had given up when he retired.

  “Come on Diane,” panted Albert, “Slow down a bit eh.”

  “I’m going to get to the bottom of this, with the police or not. If they won’t use what I’ve found, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Let them do their job,” pleaded Albert, whose legs were trying to convince him to go and have a sit down. “This isn’t one of your mystery novels. There’s a real murderer running around.”

  Diane stopped then. As Albert approached, she turned to face him, and he knew that he had passed the point of safety. The sun glinted off her glasses like the launch of a fusillade of rockets.

  “Don’t treat me like I’m a child, Albert. I know exactly what is going on here.” He knew that when she spoke softly like that, it was like a Venus Flytrap seductively drawing in the fly before caging
it within its deadly grasp.

  “Now, I didn’t mean anything like that.” The words stumbled out of his mouth, trying to undo the harm of his careless wording.

  “Of course you didn’t. You just think I should let a murderer run free when I know some evidence, when some secret lies before me. You think I should go back to the kitchen maybe.” Albert flinched. This was not going to end well for him. “Maybe I should wash some laundry and forget anything about this while the police wrap it all up in red tape and distractions.”

  “I never said anything…”

  “This isn’t a game Albert,” said Diane, cutting him off mid-apology, “and I mean to get to the truth, one way or another. With,” Diane paused for effect, but Albert knew what was coming, “or without your help.”

  Albert pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket and waved it half-heartedly, his head downcast and looking sheepishly up into Diane’s face. He had only seen her temper a couple of times before and on both occasions, he had capitulated in the same way.

  “I surrender,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about your safety. That’s all. This is a dangerous business.”

  “Then we had better get on with finding the killer,” said Diane, turning back to her walk though her pace was now slow enough for Albert to pull alongside. She felt a little ashamed of turning on him, but she knew that every second was another moment of freedom for a killer. He would understand when it was over, she was sure.

  Several police vehicles were pulling into the road before the inn, the crowds reluctantly flowing around them as they edged forward. A large white van held the crime scene team that the Inspector had called in from Shrewsbury. It stopped at the curb, and several individuals rolled out carrying large black cases. An incident van was set up behind it, uniformed officers fanning out from inside to set up cones and signs asking for information. A handful headed to the green and an officer directed them around the perimeter of the tent.

  Diane and Albert walked up the road and past the supermarket without comment, the silence between them a mixture of shame at the altercation and a desire to not spark another. As they left the radius of the fête, the streets cleared of people, and they made for the dark stone of the older terraced housing, relics of the Victorian industrial past that had outlived the Age.

  The music of the carnival rides faded, and the songs of birds replaced the pipe organs, the rows of the avian choir stringing crisscrossed over the road along telephone lines. A tabby cat sat cleaning its whiskers under the arch of an alleyway to a backyard, flicking a glance at the birds high above as if their presence should be kept under surveillance. Somewhere a dog barked, but the message it sent was muffled and damped by the intervening houses.

  Diane had worked and lived in Apple Mews for most of her life and knew the location of the homes of anybody that was anybody. She had taught Penelope Kendall’s son, Walter, many years ago and, being the boisterous and inattentive child that he was, Diane had spent many an evening visiting with the family at their home. She had given advice on directing Wally’s energies into a more constructive area; Penelope and her husband Duncan had tried as they might, but to little avail. Walter had left Apple Mews after finishing at the school and rarely returned, especially once his father had passed away. Diane had last heard that he was a labourer in Wigan.

  They passed door after door, the only distinguishing features being the colour of the woodwork and the number nailed to the frame. The windows, doors, and arches came at regular intervals, cloned habitats for the worker drones from the old iron mills. Modernity had been forced upon the aged structures with wire and drill, electric lights and PVC windows at odds with the stained brown brickwork. Mutton dressed as lamb, thought Diane, the old saying her mother would repeat whenever an older woman tried gaudily to regain her youth, and it seemed fitting for the patchwork improvements.

  Checking the numbers, Diane asked Albert to hold back and wait under one of the arches, out of sight from the doorway. She didn’t want to spook Mrs. Kendall by intimidating her.

  “I’ll call if there’s any need,” she said.

  Albert nodded and leaned nonchalantly against the wall of the tunnel, trying hard to look inconspicuous. He patted his pockets and then remembered that he had given up smoking a few years earlier, Diane’s and doctor’s orders. He wasn’t sure which one he placed more emphasis on; pleasing Diane or the doc’s tests.

  Diane rapped her knuckles on the wood of the door, avoiding a particularly pointed strip of peeling paint. It had seen better days, but then again so had most of Apple Mews. The steady decline after the ironworks had left had been abated in places by philanthropists like Douglas Macdonald and the appearance of other industries such as tourism and agriculture. The recent arrival of a local university with industry backing to renovate and restore an old iron mill had been the first major development in the village in years.

  No one answered the door after a second set of knocks and Diane, a little more alert to danger than usual, peered in through the living room window, cupping her hands over the sides of her face to reduce the glare from the sun. Net curtains impeded her view, but with much squinting and head tilting she was able to make out a living room that matched her memories from years earlier.

  A creak to her left told her the door had been opened, and she turned to see a bemused Penelope Kendall staring at her.

  “What can I do for you?” Penelope asked quizzically, as if she hadn’t seen Diane before, let alone an hour earlier.

  Diane decided to take advantage of the apparent confusion as best as she could by playing innocent.

  “I was hoping you had some of your marvellous crumpets left. My Albert is such a fan.”

  “Crumpets? Hmmm,” mumbled Penelope. Her eyes roved down the road and circled along the houses opposite. “I think, yes, I think I have some leftover.”

  “Would you be amenable to selling them to me? I’m hoping to surprise him this evening.”

  “Hmm. Yes, I suppose I…” Penelope’s voice trailed off, and she stepped back into the house.

  Diane took this as an implied invitation and rushed through after her before the door could be slammed on her foot.

  Penelope closed the door, her head peering up and down the street until it was closed fast, then she slipped a chain across the door and a deadbolt thunked into place. She bustled past Diane in the cramped hallway and made for the kitchen in the back of the house. A bead curtain draped over the opening, and she passed through it like a stiff breeze. Diane followed cautiously; the Penelope Kendall she was seeing today was at odds with the determined, motherly woman she had known. Her demeanour was distracted and forgetful, which could all have been a ruse to clatter Diane over the head with a frying pan as it poked through the beads leading into the kitchen.

  Diane passed a hand through the curtain first and parted it enough to see into the cramped workspace. Penelope was bustling around the refrigerator, pulling out plates of crumpets covered in clear plastic film and arranging them upon the countertop.

  “Oh that is more than enough for Albert I can tell you. His eyes are bigger than his belly when it comes to your crumpets,” joked Diane. Penelope didn’t even acknowledge she had spoken. She seemed to be muttering softly to herself as she went about stripping off the film. She suddenly stopped as if she had come to a decision after her solo discussion.

  “I’ve got to be next,” she said, turning her gaze to Diane. There was fear written over her face, eyes wide, brow furrowed.

  “You’ve got to be what?” replied Diane, unsure where this change in Penelope was leading.

  “Vera… if it was meant for her, then I have to be next. Or else…”

  “Else what, dear?”

  “I---I received this in the mail,” says Penelope, slipping through a side door into the dining room.

  As Diane arrived to follow her, she was greeted with a small fist waving a crumpled sheet of paper.

  “This... I got this a couple of
days ago. But, you know, kids these days, I thought nothing more of it. I---I don’t know what to think now.”

  Diane took the letter and smoothed it out on the counter next to the plates of crumpets. In large capital letters in a style that looked like an angry toddler read the words:

  LYING IS A CRIME

  No other identifying mark was obvious upon the page as Diane flipped it this way and that, up in front of the window to look for hidden marks.

  “The envelope? Did you keep it?”

  “No, I never thought about it. I don’t know why I kept that. Threw it away when I read it.”

  “You’ve got to show this to Inspector Crothers, Penelope. This is most important.” Diane was shaking the paper before Penelope’s face, trying to get her to understand that time was crucial if they were to find the killer.

  “I don’t… I mean, it might be… it’s just too incredible,” stammered Penelope.

  “This could be evidence, fingerprints, and things.”

  Then it struck Diane that she was thinking in the wrong direction about the letter. It might have evidence on it, but it was more of a distraction right at that moment.

  “What does it mean, Penelope? ‘Lying is a crime’ is pretty specific. What did you do?”

  A shimmer of light passed over her eyes as Diane watched, before pools formed and tears began to roll down her little round cheeks. Once they were moving, other floodgates opened, the tears became sobs, and the sobs became wails. She felt along the wall, retreating as much from the question as Diane and groped until she found a chair. Her head found her hands as her body was wracked with shuddering sobs. There seemed to be words encoded in the misery, but they were another mystery that Diane could not fathom. She moved into the room, resting a hand upon the shaking back of the weeping woman.

  “Now, now, dear. It can’t be all that bad,” Diane said, trying her best to console her.

  “It… was… so… long… ago,” came the staggered reply.