A Body in the Village Hall by Dee MacDonald (best business books of all time .txt) 📗

‘For God’s sake, Angie, I think I’d know if I’d met some serial killer! Get it into your head – it’s someone I’ve met! On the list! Now, isn’t it time you got dressed?’

‘I’m not sure whether to wear my sackcloth and ashes or my shroud,’ Angie said as she got up to go.

Sunday evening or not, two police officers arrived at Lavender Cottage at five o’clock.

‘Can we see your ladders, please?’ they asked. Kate unlocked the garage, indicated the ladders and left them to it. When she went out later to offer them a cup of tea – which they politely refused – they were able to show her exactly where the ladder had been placed, indicating the two dents in the ground.

‘Still got mud on it,’ one of them said, showing Kate the foot of the ladder.

Then the other one said, ‘Have either of you ladies got big feet?’

Kate had been asked some odd questions in her time but not, until now, the dimensions of her feet.

‘No, not really,’ she said, stepping forward so that her feet could be seen clearly. ‘I’m a size seven, and I think my sister is too.’

‘Have you had anyone at all round here in the past few days – workmen, say?’

Kate was puzzled. ‘Not that I’m aware of. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, no reason,’ the first one said. ‘The detective inspector will tell you.’

He certainly will, Kate thought, intrigued.

Woody phoned in the evening after they’d eaten their lamb shanks.

‘I just wanted to make sure you were all right,’ Woody said. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘You’ve no need to be,’ Kate said, ‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, there’ll be a police patrol round at regular intervals,’ he said. ‘Have you warned your sister?’

‘Yes, I have,’ Kate said, looking across at where Angie was fortifying herself with an enormous gin.

‘I just wanted to make sure you were OK,’ he repeated.

‘I’m still a little tired but I’m fine,’ Kate said.

‘I know I keep repeating myself, but I want you to be very, very careful, Kate. I also know you want to solve this thing single-handed, but please leave it to us now. Just keep a low profile, keep your doors and windows locked and your phone close by. Much as I appreciate the help you’ve given, this is not the time for you to be out and about alone doing your detective work.’

‘OK, I’ll be careful – promise!’

‘And keep your ladders locked away.’

Her shift at the medical centre the following day proved to be interesting.

A woman with wild, dark, untameable hair and a face full of freckles arrived for a blood-pressure check. Even in this part of Cornwall Kate didn’t expect her patients to arrive in wellingtons. But Alyss Evans did.

Inevitably their conversation came round to the murders.

‘I hear it was the Greys who did it,’ said Alyss eagerly.

‘No,’ Kate said, ‘both Maureen and Billy Grey have been released.’

‘So, who do they think it is?’ asked Alyss.

‘No idea. I suppose it could be Fenella’s husband, Seymour Parker-Jones, or Dr Payne or…’

‘Surely it can’t have been that nice Dr Payne! Such a gentleman! He was so kind to my Archie when we first moved in and we thought he had chicken pox. Why on earth do they think it’s him?’

‘Well,’ Kate said, being careful not to go into any details about the doctor’s long-running affair with Fenella, ‘apparently he hasn’t got an alibi for the night of the murder. He was supposed to have gone to Camelford to buy some milk but they can’t trace him on the CCTV from Good Buys supermarket.’

‘Remind me,’ Alyss said, with a look of emerging realisation dawning on her face, ‘what night was that murder in the village hall?’

‘It was Monday, the twenty-fifth of March,’ Kate replied.

‘Well, that was me who served him! That was the last night I worked there. I’d only gone there for a month temporary, to give us some extra money. And I’d actually left on the Friday but I had to work a shift for Karen Mason, because she’d worked a day for me the week before that. I don’t think they changed the names on the rota; they weren’t very bothered about things like that as long as the shift was covered. And I remember him!’

‘You should go straight to the police with that information,’ Kate said.

‘I will.’

It now appeared Dickie Payne was in the clear as far as Fenella’s murder was concerned. But could he, for some reason, have delivered the note? And why?

Mindful of Woody’s instructions, Kate made her way up to the police station at half past three and then had to wait almost half an hour because, she was told, the detective inspector was in a meeting.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Kate,’ he greeted her when he eventually emerged. ‘Come in.’

He set up the recorder and they got started – his questioning thorough, her answers as concise as she could make them – and the whole thing was done by quarter to five. She’d described her hunch, how she found Maureen, about Delyse Barber, the rail tickets and their return. He informed her that an Alyss Evans had made a statement about Dr Payne that very morning. ‘The supermarket insisted we’d spoken to everyone concerned, but they didn’t appear to know that Alyss had worked for someone else that Monday.’

‘So she wasn’t on the rota that evening?’

‘Correct.’

When they’d finished Woody said, ‘Now, you need to be careful and don’t go wandering around on your own.’

‘But I need to walk the dog sometimes,’ Kate protested. ‘Angie’s so worried about getting murdered she won’t go any further than the pub.’ Angie had, in fact, bought some sort of anti-attack spray, which she’d been advised to aim at the face of any assailant, who would then be so overwhelmed with the odour it released that she’d have plenty of time to make her escape.

‘Well, let the dog run around in the garden,’ Woody advised, ‘or else go for a