Shortly after ten the next morning, Penny went downstairs, opened her front door, picked up the Sunday newspaper, and then retreated inside to make her breakfast. She glanced at the headlines while she made coffee. As she waited for a frozen croissant to warm, she put a pat of butter in a small white dipping bowl, and a generous dollop of Florence’s raspberry jam in another. She loaded a tray with her breakfast and carried it to the table.
She poured a cup of coffee, then tore off a piece of flaky croissant and spread it with a little butter and a lot of Florence’s jam.
It was just as Mrs. Lloyd had described it: sharp and sweet. No wonder it had won first place in the competition. She picked up the little bowl and contemplated the jam as unanswered questions danced around in her head. How had Gaynor Lewis’s jar of marmalade made it into the competition? And what had happened to Florence’s marmalade?
And even more important, what had happened to Gaynor Lewis?
She opened the newspaper to the arts section, and after reading the same paragraph three times, she gave up and folded up the newspaper. She took a sip of coffee while she thought about what Mrs. Lloyd had said last night. “If you want to know more about Gaynor Lewis, the person you should be speaking to is her sister-in-law, Joyce Devlin.” Penny got up from the table and walked to the cupboard. She pulled a business card out of the jacket she’d worn to the agricultural show and reached for her phone, and when she’d completed her first call, she rang Victoria.
“How would you like to go and see some Labrador puppies after lunch?”
* * *
The drive to the Devlins’ farm took them down winding roads, past endless lush pastures and vibrant green fields in a lovely configuration of timeless landscape. It was a beautiful afternoon and the late-summer sun warmed the hedgerows and stone walls that flanked the narrow road.
“This is it,” said Penny, pointing to a newly painted sign that announced DEVLIN LABRADORS AND BOARDING KENNELS in bold letters under a picture of a black Labrador’s friendly face. They turned off at the gate and drove up the rutted lane until they reached a grey stone farmhouse. The door had once been a proud, dark green, but weather had taken its toll and it was now a faded, lacklustre grey-green. Victoria grasped the black ring door knocker and struck it twice on the matching plate. A banging noise resonated within the house, and a few minutes later, with Billie at her side, Joyce appeared, wearing a faded pinafore over a shapeless navy blue dress. It took a moment for her to recognize her callers, and then a wary but resigned look flashed across her face.
“Hello, Joyce,” said Penny. “Thank you so much for seeing us today. We know you’re busy, and, well, after the way the show ended, I’m sure you had a long night.”
“I’m a bit tired, yes. The police were here this morning asking questions, and there’re always dogs in the kennel that need attending to. I can’t give you very long, but come in.”
She stepped aside to allow Penny and Victoria to enter. Jackets and waterproof overcoats lined each side of the whitewashed entryway. Beneath the coats, several pairs of Wellingtons were neatly arranged, and above them hung four faded Cries of London prints in dusty frames.
“Go on through,” said Joyce, gesturing toward the rear of the house. They entered a large room, with the whitewashed walls, exposed wooden ceiling beams, and slate floors typical of Welsh farmhouse kitchens. An Aga cooker stood against one wall, beside an inglenook fireplace.
A tall, sturdy man who appeared to be in his early fifties—about the same age as Joyce—wearing a plaid shirt and a rough pair of trousers held up by ancient braces, set an empty mug on the table and stood up as the women entered. He looked blankly at Penny and Victoria, then his eyes settled on Joyce.
“My husband’s just going out to the kennels to check on the dogs,” Joyce explained to Penny and Victoria. “I won’t be long, Dev,” she said to her departing husband’s back. “You get started, and I’ll be out to help you soon as I can.” She turned her attention back to her visitors. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the table. “Now, you wanted to discuss the marmalade, and that’s fine with me, because I want to get this business cleared up, so we can put it behind us and all move on.”
“Well, first, we want to say we’re very sorry for your loss,” said Victoria. “We understand Gaynor Lewis was your sister-in-law.”
Joyce acknowledged her condolences with a tiny nod but did not reply.
“Yes, we did want to talk to you about the marmalade,” Penny began. “As we see it, there are two issues: Florence Semble’s marmalade, which was entered properly in the show, never made it to the judging stage.”
“And Gaynor Lewis’s entry,” Victoria added, “which we hadn’t checked in by the deadline, somehow not only made it into the show but won the category. That seems very unfair to Florence.”
Joyce massaged her forehead with a work-roughened hand dappled with sunspots. The skin was loose, and her nails looked brittle and uncared for.
“If you remember, there were two entry sheets left over when entries closed at eight o’clock, both Gaynor’s,” said Penny. “You were very clear in your instructions that we were not to accept entries after the deadline. But the thing is, Gaynor hadn’t arrived by the time we left, so maybe the best place to start would be to ask you if you know why Gaynor’s entries were allowed.”
Joyce let out a small sigh heavily laced with exasperation of long standing. “Bloody woman. Even though she’s dead, she’s still causing problems.” She stood up. “I need a coffee. Would you like one?”
“Well, if you’re making it anyway, yes, please,” said Penny.
Joyce picked up a teaspoon off the worktop, added measures of instant coffee to three mugs, poured in previously boiled water from the kettle, added a splash of milk, gave them all a good stir, and plunked the mugs on the table. Victoria, who normally took sugar, said nothing. Joyce sat down and took a deep breath. She cupped her hands around her mug and leaned forward slightly.
“Right. Let’s get to it. Here’s what happened on the Friday night,” said Joyce. “Gaynor rang me just before eight o’clock, just as Barbara and I were on our way to the marquee to see you, actually.” Her eyes tracked from Penny to Victoria, then to a spot somewhere near the ceiling. “Gaynor said she wasn’t far away but was caught in slow traffic. She knew I was still on-site, and she asked if I could just give her a few minutes’ grace until she got there with her entries. Because she’d called to let me know she was almost at the show grounds, I agreed, albeit with some reluctance. I told her she’d have to look sharp, as I still had a lot to do and I couldn’t hang about waiting for her to turn up. And then Barbara and I arrived at the marquee and met up with you. And you know what happened then. We wrapped things up, and you left. Shortly after that, Gaynor came rushing into the marquee, I accepted her entries, and I set them down at the end of the table, ready for the judging in the morning.
“Then I got called away to an incident in the livestock area. There was something going on with the horse people.” She made a vague palm-up hand gesture. “Many exhibitors choose to spend the Friday night before the show camping on the grounds because they don’t want to leave their livestock unattended, see. And of course, there’s always something happening in the run-up to the show. A crisis every five minutes, it seems like. Barbara and I practically spent the whole time running from one disaster to the next, putting out fires.” She took a sip of coffee. “Not literally, of course. And not with you two. Everything went quite smoothly there. For the most part. Unless, of course, you count what happened to Gaynor, but that wasn’t anything to do with you. I meant the logistics.”
“So you left the marquee. Did Barbara leave with you?” Penny asked.
“She did.”
“And Gaynor was still there when you left?” asked Penny.
“She was. But since her jam and marmalade had been accepted, I reckoned she’d be leaving, too. It was getting late. And besides, what reason would she have had for sticking around?”
“Well, that’s a very good question,” said Penny. “And it could be key to solving her murder, because she must have met up with someone after you left, and therefore you could be the second-to-last person to see her alive.”
The only sound in the room was Joyce’s sharp intake of breath.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Did you see anyone when you left the tent?” Penny asked.
“I saw lots of people. There were lots of folk about, and all sorts of things going on,” said Joyce. “It was still light, so people were setting things up, working on exhibits, moving their animals in, ready for the judging in the morning. All the last-minute things. The police officer who was in charge of security was there, keeping an eye on things.” Joyce’s eyes narrowed. “You’re asking a lot of questions. I went over all this with the police, but I must say, I’m not sure they were quite as probing as you.”
“Sorry,” said Penny. “It’s just that when we were talking about Gaynor, I was interested in what happened after we left.”
“My friend here gets carried away sometimes,” said Victoria, throwing Penny an affectionate grin. And then, turning her attention back to Joyce, Victoria asked, “But Gaynor is, or was, I should say, your husband’s sister?”
“That’s right. She’s the younger sister of my husband, Daffydd. Everybody just calls him Dev. You met him. Well, sort of met him. I should have introduced you, I suppose, but he was just on his way out. Anyway, yes, she was his sister and she’s been nothing but a right cow since the day we got married. Or before, truth be told.”
“What do you mean?” asked Penny.
“She didn’t want Dev to marry me. Said he was marrying beneath him. He could do better. You know the sort of thing. And it just got worse after we were married. She criticized everything Dev and I did.” She paused for a moment, and when she continued, her voice was slightly shrill, with an exaggerated, mimicking tone. “She didn’t like the way we were bringing up our children. We were spending too much money on our dogs. My housekeeping was terrible. I didn’t bake cakes from scratch.”
“That must have been hard to live with,” remarked Penny.
“Oh, it was. And besides the constant criticism, she was always on at me or Dev about some perceived slight. There was no pleasing her. We used to invite her to family dinners, and she always found some excuse not to come, and then when we gave up and stopped inviting her, she complained we never invited her to dinner! But gradually, I learned to tune out her negativity, if you know what I mean. I took no notice of her, in my personal life, and tried to be civil to her in public, or when I had to be. I reached the point where she just wasn’t worth one more minute of my time. I was done with her.”
“I can certainly understand that,” said Penny. “But I’m curious as to why you allowed her late entries in the show? Doesn’t sound as if you owed her any favours, or had any particular reason to be nice to her.”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? If she’d been a reasonable sort of person, I would have been able to say, ‘No, sorry, Gaynor, rules are rules and you missed the deadline, you daft mare, and maybe next year you’ll show up on time with your jam and marmalade like everybody else.’ And that would have been the end of it. Lesson learned. But I let her jam and marmalade in because if I hadn’t, she’d have kicked off, and her nastiness would have started up all over again, and I’d never have heard the end of it. And I really didn’t want her turning on Dev and having a go at him. He’s not well, and he doesn’t need her kind of stress in his life.”
“So anything for a quiet life,” commented Victoria.
“Yes, I suppose you could say that.” Joyce took a moment for her breathing to slow, then continued. “So yes, I did let her bally marmalade into the competition. But I didn’t judge it, and I had nothing to do with it winning.”
“But what about Florence’s marmalade?” asked Penny. “Do you know why that didn’t make it into the competition?”
Joyce, who had been taking slow sips of the now-tepid coffee after she finished her diatribe, shook her head and set down her cup. “That I do not know. But really, Gaynor is dead, and why can’t that be the end of it? Let her have her little posthumous bit of marmalade glory. What does it matter now?”
“Well, Florence isn’t dead, and it matters to her,” said Penny, her voice rising slightly. She paused to take a calming breath, then continued. “She feels that for some reason, someone didn’t want her marmalade in the competition, and we”—she tipped her head in Victoria’s direction—“have to agree with her. It certainly looks that way. It’s important to Florence that we get to the bottom of this. And besides being completely unfair to her, the integrity and reputation of the show are at stake. If people think the judging is unfair, or, and I hate to use the word fixed, but to put it bluntly, if people think the competition is fixed, then next year no one will want to enter.”
“And Mrs. Lloyd isn’t happy, either,” said Victoria. “You serve on the show’s organizing committee with her, so you must know what she’s like. In fact, she’s already tried to confront you herself about this, and her next step would probably be to bring the matter to the attention of the whole committee. We told her to leave it with us. To keep things, well, unofficial and contained, you might say, before it gets out of hand.”
“And to try to keep it out of the newspaper,” said Penny. “If the Post got wind of it, which they could do very easily, since Mrs. Lloyd’s niece is the star reporter, and if she started asking questions—”
“All right, all right,” said Joyce with a flash of temper, interrupting Penny. “You’ve made your point. I’ll ask around and see what I can find out, although it does seem a bit petty to me. I can’t think of any reason why someone would not want Florence’s ruddy marmalade in the competition. Let’s put things in perspective here. It’s just a rural agricultural show, and not a very large or important one at that. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal.”
“Well, apparently it was a big deal to somebody,” said Penny. “Somebody, perhaps, who thought Florence was a threat to them? Somebody who wanted to win very badly? You see, Florence received a telephone call telling her that she should bring her entries to the tent for judging in the morning. Saturday morning, that is, long past the deadline. So when the entry deadline approached on Friday night and we hadn’t received her entries, I called her, and Florence and Mrs. Lloyd hurried over with Florence’s preserves and cake, and made it just in time.”
“But perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered too much if they’d been a few minutes late,” said Victoria, “as apparently there’s some flexibility. If you know the right people, that is.”
Joyce shot her a thunderous look.
“Look, I’ve already said I’ll see what I can find out.” She tapped her fingers lightly on the table. “And to be fair, that phone call does put a different slant on things. That almost makes it look like sabotage. And now that I think about it, I did hear that there was talk at the Women’s Guild about Florence being a threat. Some of the long-standing members, who were used to coming in first or second every year, felt threatened by her. Word had got round that she was just that good.”
“Are you a member of the WG?” Penny asked.
“Oh God, no. Gaynor was the president of the WG, in case you didn’t know, so there’s no way I’d be going to those meetings. Not with her there, lording it over everybody. But I know women who are members, like Barbara, and I heard the talk about Florence and her baking and cooking skills.”
She drained the last of her coffee and adjusted her position in her chair as a signal that she was getting ready for the conversation to come to an end.
“And you’re right about the perception about the integrity and impartiality of our show. We do have high standards, and we must be seen by everybody as being fair and impartial. I’ll ask Barbara if she heard anything.”
“Who’s Barbara when she’s at home?” Victoria asked. “We saw her with you, and wondered about her.”
“The woman who was with you in the tent on the Friday evening and again on Saturday,” Penny said. “Small, timid-looking. Holding on to the files and things?”
Joyce nodded. “Barbara Vickers. She’s the show secretary. Keeps all the paperwork in order. Deals with suppliers. Makes everything run smoothly. Honestly, I don’t know what we’d do without her.”
She stood up. “I must say, it feels rather good to get all that Gaynor business off my chest. I’ve probably been waiting years to unburden myself. I know what they say about not speaking ill of the dead, but I feel a lot better for it.” Her tone softened. “And now I expect you’re ready to see some puppies?”
“Yes, we certainly are!” and “Yes, please!” Penny and Victoria said at the same time.
“Right, well, just give me a minute or two to get changed, and then we’ll have a quick tour of the kennels. But don’t go getting any ideas about the puppies. They’re all spoken for, and there’s a waiting list, besides. You mustn’t get your hopes up.”
“Before you go, Joyce, have you got a photo of Gaynor?” asked Penny. “I’m curious to see what she looked like when she was alive.”
Joyce walked over to a substantial Welsh dresser that took up almost half of one wall. A beautifully crafted, solid piece of oak furniture, with cupboards and drawers similar to a sideboard making up the lower part, and utilitarian shelves with plate racks on top, the Devlins’ dresser had the well-worn, polished patina of an heirloom that had been lovingly cared for down through generations. Commemorative plates, souvenirs of events in the life of the nation—like the late Queen Mother’s hundredth birthday—and decorative plates with patterns of songbirds, Christmas scenes, autumn landscapes, and black Labrador retrievers filled the display shelves. Two dusty brown-and-white ironstone platters, one large and one small, were interspersed among the plates. Joyce combed through a pile of papers on the flat surface of the sideboard part of the dresser and pulled out a framed photograph. “It was taken quite a few years ago,” Joyce said as she handed the photo to Penny. “That’s the three of them. Gaynor and her brothers. That’s Dev on the left, and Andy on the right, before he…” She then shuffled out of the room, her tattered brown sheepskin slippers making light scuffing noises on the slate floor. Billie followed her.
Before he what? thought Penny. Died? Committed suicide? Moved to Australia?
Victoria picked up the used mugs and took them to the sink. As she tipped the untouched coffee out of hers and rinsed all three, Penny took the photograph to the window and, angling it to catch the light, examined the subjects. Two men stood on each side of a woman wearing a flowered dress and a bright blue fascinator over curly brown hair swept back from her face. Penny recognized the Llanelen church behind them. Probably taken at a summer wedding, she thought. The woman squinted slightly into the sun, and her smile seemed forced and insincere. The men posed as if unwillingly, looking awkward and stiff in their suits and ties, and the distance between all three seemed uncomfortable and strained.
The photographer had not been close enough to capture details of the woman’s face, but in this image she looked unremarkable and ordinary. Penny thought she could have bumped into her in a shop or passed her on the street without noticing her, and in all likelihood, she probably had. She showed the photograph to Victoria, who glanced at it, gave a dismissive little shrug, and said nothing.
Penny took one last look at the photograph, then walked over to the dresser to put it back. The flat surface of the dresser had become a catchall for paper clutter. As Penny’s eyes flicked across farm equipment catalogues, church newsletters, programs from the agricultural show, and magazine cuttings, several unopened envelopes with FINAL NOTICE printed on them in red letters caught her attention. At that moment, the clicking of Billie’s toenails on the slate floor announced she and Joyce were on their way, and Penny scuttled across the kitchen to join Victoria beside the sink just as Billie and Joyce, now wearing a shapeless pair of grey worsted trousers and a black cardigan, entered the kitchen. Penny handed her the photograph.
“Right. Boots on, and we’ll be off,” Joyce ordered as she lightly dropped the photo on the kitchen table.