Chapter 3

The carpark is empty mid-week. It’s a typical Dartmoor landscape, the rough terrain windswept and dotted with boulders. With Raider on the lead, we follow a path to a locked gate. Below the Restricted Access sign, an information board gives details about the life-cycle of the Wolf Weevil which is still endangered. It includes a touching dedication to Molly Crane, honouring her research and its role in solving her death.

While Raider strains on the lead to sniff the out-of-bounds area beyond the chain fence, I imagine Molly coming here on her own most days and sometimes at night, focused on checking her traps and being alone with her insects. How did someone familiar with the mire – in all weathers over several years – manage to trip and fall hard enough to knock herself out and drown? Right after she told her family she was going away camping on the moor for a month so no-one would look for her.

Were these questions asked at the time? Did the police follow-up Molly’s personal and professional contacts in search of a motive? Was there even an inquest? Or did Helena’s answer to the marks on her neck satisfy the police investigation, allowing them to concentrate on the minor crime – the teen who’d helped himself to Molly’s bike?

These are all ideas for Piper to pursue in Death by Deception – the title just popped into my head – while she wonders if an invisible trip-wire might have caused the victim to fall and crack her skull. A trip-wire set across the access path by someone knowing she’d be alone. If the culprit wrapped jute sacks around his boots, his footprints would have been long gone after a month.

And what if he manufactured the time delay? In a more recent mystery, he could send a text message to the family as if from the fictional victim, saying she was going away. When he returned to the scene to remove the trip-wire – and a hidden motion-activated wildlife camera that told him she was dead – he could have noticed her fallen phone and used it to send the message to her family, then cleaned up the evidence before finally dropping the phone into the bog beside her.

This is what can happen when you visit the site of a real-life tragedy. Even years later, ideas bubble up. Who was the fictional murderer and why did he kill her? If I go for something personal and nothing to do with the insects – saving me a lot of research – the loneliness of the woman’s habits and the mire itself would have given him a convenient place to manufacture her ‘accident’ unseen.

Raider’s bark brings my attention back to the present. He’s explored the circle allowed by the lead and tied my legs together in the process. With no-one around, we could probably do some teensy trespassing over the locked gate but I wouldn’t do that even if the pooch wasn’t with me. Instead I head for a low tor of boulders rising to our right and we clamber over them to a small plateau with a view of the bog.

It’s larger than I expected, stretching to the horizon with a few pools of water here and there between vast clumps of tussocks. Perching on a rock, I let Raider explore. If the mire hasn’t changed over the intervening years, it shows how unlucky Molly was to trip near one of the few places where her face would be submerged.

A view like this makes Piper even more suspicious of just how ‘accidental’ her victim’s death wasn’t. But how could Piper ever prove her trip-wire theory? Unless the wildlife camera turns up in a charity shop with the recording still on its memory card. Too convenient? My fans make sure I keep my plots plausible.

We return to the car and on the drive back I reflect on what I’ve learned. Without taking anything away from Helena Loxton’s expert diagnosis, the isolation of the site makes it entirely possible that Molly was threatened by someone. Someone who knew her and planned her ‘accident’. Or someone living rough around here and Molly confronted them to protect her precious Wolf Weevils. If she’d been pushed into the mire, bruising would have appeared at the autopsy but what if she’d been running away from an assailant and lost her footing on the rough ground near the bog? While her body was undiscovered, the weather obliterated any tell-tale footprints. I remember when Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ attributed a series of deep toe-tip prints in soft ground to a man running for his life.

I smile at the thought of asking my occasional nemesis Ben Baker, now a newly promoted detective constable, to reopen the Molly Crane case on the basis of today’s conjecture. He’d give me another lecture on the difference between ‘police business’ and ‘author business’. And he’d be right. These ideas will make useful angles for Piper to explore.

As we arrive in Lympstone and pull onto the parking apron in front of the cottage, it’s clear that Helena Loxton’s letter to Sim has already inspired Piper’s new mystery. Once inside, I type up the ideas from the site visit and return to the long article about Helena, reading several more cases that she cracked.

These insights into the success of her unconventional thinking are fascinating and easy to access on the public record. But lurking in the shadows is her mysterious private life and the secret she can’t remember. All very tempting. But what complications could any research I’d undertake for her create – for both of us?

Her phone number is at the bottom of the letter. I tell myself that I owe her a call – after her very first case has worked its magic – and a conversation is not a commitment.

“Hello. Helena Loxton.” Her voice is still strong and clear.

“It’s Tiggy Jones. The mystery author. Answering your email.”

She screams.

It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.

“Sorry, Antigone. It’s really you. Your accent is so distinctive. I never believed for a minute you’d phone me.”

“Call me Tiggy,” I say. “And Helena, I’m just phoning. I’m not … promising.”

She laughs. “A straight talker. Thank you. I need …”

“A private investigator?”

She’s silent for a moment and I wonder if my talking has already been a bit too straight. I often forget that English people do prefer a soft approach to pesky topics.

“I need a writer who loves research,” she says. “To dig through my memorabilia, discover this thing I’ve forgotten and document it.”

“Your private life.”

“I’m atoning for keeping it secret.”

I wonder what ‘it’ is.

“I rang to tell you what’s happened since Simeon Barron forwarded your letter. And to explain why I don’t think I can accept your offer.”

“Not on the phone. You need to come to my house.” Pause. “Please.”

She’s rescued my muse – and a chat about Molly’s case can help make the book more plausible.

“I have a well-behaved dog,” I say. “A Dalmatian Labrador cross. Raider the polka-dot pooch.”

“I’m a dog-lover without a dog. We can sit in my kitchen and watch him investigate my courtyard. This afternoon?”

Too soon for me. We make a time for tomorrow morning.

Next call: Sim.

“You got the email from Dr Loxton,” he says. “Should I duck before you throw something at me? It’s not an insult, Tiggy. I’m just trying to … undock Piper Halliday’s shackles.”

“Helena’s public life has already sparked a starting point for Death by Deception. And … I’m meeting her tomorrow.”

As Sim does his own version of the scream, I hold the phone away from my ear.

Rupert’s first video of the boathouse renovations shows the big shop windows being installed on the street. They match the heritage style of the neighbouring businesses. By lifting the former raked ceiling under the old roof only slightly, we’ve been able to add an extra floor with dormer windows. This has allowed us to divide the footprint of the boathouse into a street-front and a river-front. A two-level loft-style New York apartment for me on the riverside and a shop and two upstairs offices on the Punt Lane side. The new owner of the former florist next door – we share the central wall – is doing the same on his side. On our side, Rupert has managed the near-completion of the commercial premises first, to bring in rent while my residence is being built. This is possible because the boat ramp that I’ve used as a parking space provides side access to the river bank behind.

The most exciting news regarding a commercial tenant came when our friend and antique-dealer Henry Buckingham was given notice to vacate his long-term shop, two streets away. His business Cobwebs Collectibles will move straight into the boathouse shop as soon as it’s ready.

In the middle of the night a thought wakes me. Of all the local mystery authors here in England, Helena chose me, a recent arrival still unfamiliar with how things work over here. Why? Something to do with the secret she can’t remember? It suggests she knows something about it that’s made her avoid sharing it with a local.

As I drift off again, a question lingers: Should I be worried? Or intrigued? Then I remember I’m going to reject her offer.