“Murdered!” I exclaimed.
Mum gave a small cry. “No!” She pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down heavily. “I don’t believe it.”
“I’m having another cup of tea—Mum? I’m making one for you, too.” I could see Shawn watching my mother like a hawk. “Shawn? Another cup?”
“Alright. Thank you.” He sat at the table, too. I made more tea and brought out what was left of the packet of McVitie’s chocolate digestive biscuits. Shawn dived in, adding apologetically, “I didn’t get much to eat last night.”
I was tempted to ask him why not, but my mother cleared her throat and said, “What happened to Muriel?”
“We’re waiting for the results from the autopsy,” said Shawn.
“Won’t that take weeks?” I asked.
“I have a friend who can get things done quickly,” he said, reaching for his third chocolate digestive. “She’s doing me a favor.”
I thought back to the pretty strawberry blonde from the night before and was astonished to realize that I actually felt jealous.
“Well,” said Mum, rallying around. “I’ve already given you my alibi. Thank you for bringing back that page. I had no idea that it was missing. What are you doing?”
Shawn put the page back in the plastic carrier bag. “We’d like to hang on to it for a little bit longer, if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind,” said Mum. “Please. I’ve never asked you for anything, but having that page is very important to my career.”
“I’ll tell you what, I will photocopy it and you can send that off to your publisher. That’s all I’m prepared to do.”
“Thank you,” Mum gushed. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“You can thank me by telling me the truth.”
“I have.”
“Not even about your red MINI—”
Mum blinked.
“That is your car, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not going to insult me by telling me that someone stole your car?”
“Muriel’s car was stolen,” said Mum.
“Muriel’s car was repossessed,” said Shawn. “We learned that this morning.”
“So not stolen at all,” I said.
“It seems she was in some financial straits.”
“Actually, Muriel asked if she could borrow some money,” I put in.
“You never told me that!” Mum exclaimed. “I hope you said no. Remember what your father said, ‘neither a borrower nor lender be’?”
“I gave her three hundred pounds,” I said.
“Very kind of you, Kat,” said Shawn.
“Are you suggesting that she staged her own robbery?” Mum said. “Do you think she buried that old tin in her husband’s grave?”
“It’s something we are considering,” said Shawn. “It looks like Fred Jarvis was heavily in debt.”
“You think he spent the money for the re-enactment?” I said.
“We’re exploring all lines of enquiry,” said Shawn in that annoyingly pompous way he had.
“Poor Muriel,” I said, and I really meant it. “And you think she was trying to hide it?”
“But let’s get back to you, Mrs. Stanford,” said Shawn. “Your MINI was seen in the car park at the Hare & Hounds pub last night, but I have already spoken to Stan and Doreen Mutters and no one saw you there.”
“Oh.”
“But you were seen in the churchyard,” said Shawn.
“The churchyard?” Mum’s astonishment was genuine. “Why would I go to the churchyard? Who told you that?”
“Violet Green’s cottage overlooks the churchyard,” said Shawn. “She saw two people moving around.”
Mum was incredulous. “Well, that was definitely neither me nor Alfred.”
“Unfortunately, it’s your word against Ms. Green’s.”
“She’s as blind as a bat!” Mum exclaimed. “And what time did she say she saw something?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“I did see some lights inside the church,” I said suddenly. “That would have been around midnight, wouldn’t you say, Mum? You and Alfred would have been at Jane’s by then.”
“Jane’s?” said Shawn. “Why would they be waiting for you at Jane’s Cottage?”
“I know this sounds hard to believe, but Snap—you do know the card game I assume?” said Mum—“it’s addictive. Kat just had to play a quick game before bedtime.”
Shawn gave a heavy sigh. “I know you are hiding something, Iris. Luckily for you, this is Little Dipperton; otherwise I would have you in the back of my car and you’d be down at the police station in Dartmouth, where they would not be treating you so leniently.”
“But I haven’t done—”
“There is also the problem of the re-enactment,” Shawn went on. “Unfortunately, his lordship is adamant that the festivities go on next weekend. We’ll be keeping this under wraps for the time being.”
“You mean no one knows that Muriel is dead?” I said.
“We’re suggesting that she died of natural causes until after the Skirmish is over.” Shawn regarded my mother with open disdain. “You might want to think about getting a solicitor, Mrs. Stanford. In fact, perhaps you should keep a solicitor permanently on call given your track record for getting into trouble.”
“I’m innocent!” Mum exclaimed.
Shawn got to his feet. “Thank you for the tea. I’m off to have a word with Alfred now. Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached into his trench coat pocket. “I brought you today’s newspapers. They were outside your front door. I’ll see myself out.”
The moment Shawn was out of earshot, Mum said, “I wonder if there are any more pages still at Muriel’s? The assistant told me there were only five missing, but she was obviously wrong. And that Violet Green is such a troublemaker. Why would she say she saw me in the churchyard?”
I stared in dismay at the front page of Star Stalkers, the trashiest newspaper in the country, and one I was all too familiar with.
“Katherine?” said Mum. “Are you listening?”
“I thought you canceled this newspaper!”
“I didn’t think I needed to,” said Mum. “You gave all that glamor up when you moved down here. Why?”
I pointed to the headline.
“Oh dear,” she said.
Splashed over the front page was:
SCROUNGING A FREE MEAL?
EX–TV HOST OF FAKES & TREASURES CAUGHT IN PRANK WITH NEW BOYFRIEND!
5-STAR MICHELIN RESTAURANT FOOLED!
There was a photo of me standing with Mr. Roberts smiling for the camera along with “Roger Matthews” and a quote: “I’ve personally admired Kat Stanford for many years, so of course I accepted her friend’s credentials on trust.”
I was stunned.
Mum snatched the paper up. “Piers called himself Roger Matthews?” She skimmed the article. “A seven-course meal estimated to cost two hundred pounds a head—good heavens! No wonder those jodhpurs are tight!”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“Blah blah blah … tour of the kitchen?”
“That bit is untrue,” I protested. “We didn’t go—”
“Blah blah blah … half a dozen bottles of wine for … wait a minute … reviewer … Air France?” She began to laugh. “I didn’t think you had it in you!”
“It’s not funny!”
“Ooh … what a change from stuffy old David Wynne and pompous Shawn,” Mum said gleefully. “And see here … Piers is described as an international playboy. Listen to this—”
“No thank you.”
“Viscount Carew, son of the Earl of Denby, is well known for his pranks among the European jet set.”
“Great.”
“But how nice to see you on the front page again, darling,” Mum said. “Although why you wore that old T-shirt? You’ve got plenty of other nice outfits. You don’t want to let yourself go, especially if Piers is used to going out with models.”
“I’m not going out with Piers ever again,” I said. “He told me we were going for a quick drink. I did it for you in fact.”
“You’d better tell me the whole story,” said Mum. So I did.
Before long we were both laughing. “Serves them right if they are too caught up in their own self-importance not to check the facts!” Mum tossed Star Stalkers aside and picked up the weekly local paper that came out every Saturday. “I wonder what the Dipperton Deal has to say. Let’s see.”
“It won’t be in there yet, Mother.”
As expected, there was no mention of Muriel’s murder given that it had happened after the newspaper had gone to print. A national tabloid could easily have done so, but the Dipperton Deal didn’t have that kind of modern technology.
The front page was devoted to the upcoming Skirmish, with a warning to keep all valuables safe given a spate of thefts in the area. There was a paragraph on the discovery of a skeleton in Cromwell Meadows with the promise that the illustrious Dr. Crane from Plymouth University would be sharing his findings in next week’s edition. In fact, the Dipperton Deal promised a one-page “splash.”
I turned to page 2. “What about this?” I said. “You could have blamed your MINI being parked in the Hare & Hounds car park on him.” I showed Mum a photograph of a clean-cut, good-looking man in his early forties wearing a suit and tie. He grinned mischievously at the camera. “Danny Coverdale,” I read aloud, “leader of an international car theft ring, is still at large following his escape from Ford Open Prison in West Sussex.”
“At large?” Mum mused. “Do they still use that old-fashioned term?”
“Apparently so,” I said. “Did you know that according to this report there are over ninety prisoners who have escaped from Ford Open Prison over the last few years and many are still on the run!” I had a thought. “Where was Alfred staying at Her Majesty’s pleasure?”
“This last time?” said Mum. “Wormwood Scrubs. Why?” Her eyes widened. “Alfred is not an escaped prisoner! And besides, he would never have hurt Muriel.”
“Well, someone did,” I said. “And it sounds like there were quite a few people who she upset along the way.”
“Maybe it was a loan shark?” Mum suggested. “If Muriel’s Fred had been in debt, maybe they came to collect their money? They obviously took back that awful canary-yellow Kia.”
“Maybe that’s what they were doing when Alfred turned up,” I suggested. “Maybe he interrupted them in Muriel’s kitchen?”
Mum pulled a face. “That’s a bit of a stretch. But I suppose it would explain why they didn’t finish staging the job and why the suicide note hadn’t been finished.”
I shook my head. “But that doesn’t make sense. If it were a loan shark, wouldn’t they have taken whatever they could in repayment? Alfred said they left the TV and the new appliances. And what about the post office safe?”
“If Muriel didn’t die from gas fumes because the oven was never turned on, how did she die?” Mum mused.
“We won’t know that until—”
“The autopsy, true. This is all so depressing. Tell me something cheerful. Did Piers take something from the grave after all?”
“Yes,” I said, and went on to tell her all about Eleanor and Nicholas being in love and supposedly marrying in secret.
“How romantic!” cried Mum. “And to accuse a Honeychurch of murdering his own kin—how exciting!”
“Hopefully there might be some information in the Parish registers,” I said. “They’d have to have their marriage recorded whether it was secret or not. We should ask Violet for the key to the padlock.”
“But if it is true…,” said Mum slowly, “then they ghosted her.”
“They what?”
“Ghosted. Apparently that’s what young people do these days. Rather than end a relationship, they delete the other person from their life and pretend they no longer exist. Charlize Theron did that to Sean Penn.”
“For someone who doesn’t have the Internet or social media you seem particularly well informed.”
“Stacey—that’s my hairdresser at Snipx—tells me everything,” said Mum. “It must be awful to be young in this day and age.”
“You might have a point about the ghosting,” I said. “We wouldn’t have even known of Eleanor’s existence had I not seen Frances’s plaque in St. Mary’s.”
“Hmmm,” said Mum dreamily. She had adopted a look I knew all too well. “Kat!” she exclaimed. “That’s it! Nicholas Carew and Eleanor Honeychurch—that’s my new Star-Crossed Lovers story. It’s so Romeo and Juliet.”
“Well, don’t thank me; thank Eleanor.”
“I must strike while the iron is hot. I think I can redeem myself with my new editor with this idea—do you mind if I go and get cracking on this story?”
“Be my guest,” I said. “I’ll see you later. I’m off to ride with Harry.”