Chatter picked up in hushed tones, closing behind us like the wake of a boat. Snatches of conversation caught my ears as we maneuvered between the tables.
“That place has always been strange. Remember the old blind man who used to own it? Why did a blind bloke want to spend so much time with books he couldn’t read. That’s weird.”
“I’ve always said that gypsy was up to no good in the village. He’s probably murdering writers to steal their wallets.”
“I think that young lady’s in charge. She’s from the council estate, you know. They don’t raise children right out there. I bet you anything she’s sleeping with all those blokes. Got them wrapped around her little finger. It ain’t right, I tell you.”
“One thing’s for sure. I’m not setting foot in that shop again. It’s too dangerous.”
Maybe this was a bad idea, after all.
As we made our way out the back to the beer garden, I caught sight of a hand waving above a table. “Yoohoo, Mina.” It was Mrs. Ellis. “Over here!”
I didn’t exactly want to spend my drinking time filling Mrs. Ellis in on every gory detail of the murder, but her company couldn’t help but improve my mood. Gratefully, we sat down at the end of her table. I glanced around at her companions, recognizing the two writers from her knitting group, as well as local historian Florence Lawton, who I’d roped into giving a history lecture at the shop next week.
“Another spot of trouble at the bookshop, Mina?” asked Dotty.
“Yes.” I shuddered. “I don’t really want to talk about it, so—”
Mrs. Ellis tsked. “A famous and handsome crime writer, killed in the same manner as the victims in his books! It sounds like the plot of an Agatha Christie novel. You found the body, didn’t you Mina? Tell us, was it terribly gory? Was his face all bloated and—”
“Right, I’m having the steak and kidney pie. Mina?” Heathcliff growled, pointedly flinging open the menu in front of my face.
“I bet it was that publisher, Brian Letterman.” Dotty leaned forward, her voice conspiratorial. Mrs. Ellis’ friends were bound to love a juicy murder just as much as she did. “Did you see his face when Danny announced he was self-publishing his memoir? He looked ready to kill.”
“Or it could’ve been Beverly Ingram. What was she doing, barging in like that!” Mrs. Ellis said. “I know it’s a tragedy, but it’s not handsome Danny’s fault that he happened to use the same murder weapon in his book as Abigail’s murderer.”
“Beverly’s been a bit doddery these last few weeks,” added Wenda. “That’s what happens when you don’t have a husband and when you turn away all the friendly people in the village. Why, just the other week I ran into her at the market. She parked her trolley across the entire aisle, just staring at a rack of cereals. I says to her, I says, ‘Beverly, you just have to let it go.’ But then she just starts flailing her arms at the shelves. Cereal everywhere! She’s been barred from the market for a month.”
“Why was she attacking the cereal aisle?” Morrie asked. While Mrs. Ellis turned to elaborate, he swapped her wine glass for his. He sampled the bouquet and decided it was superior, for he took a grateful sip.
“Her daughter Abigail did some modeling back in the day. Abigail’s face appeared on a cereal box. She did a commercial for toothpaste, too. Beverly thought her daughter would be in the pictures one day. She was a real looker, was Abigail, and she knew it. She had a trail of boys following her around the village like she was the pied bloody piper. But she could be a vicious trollop – she and Beverly were always going at it about her drinking and partying with the wrong sorts of people. You could hear them screaming at each other halfway across the village.”
“I was only young when the murder happened,” I said. “I don’t remember it, but it must have shaken the whole village.”
“It was a terrible tragedy. Beverly was a nurse at Barchester General. She came home from a late shift around two in the morning and found Abigail dead in her room, garroted by her own silk scarf.”
My fingers raked at the wooden table. “That’s horrible,” I breathed.
“It was quite the scandal. There was some drug paraphernalia in the room, and signs of a struggle – a broken mirror, knickknacks all over the floor. But there wasn’t a break-in, so she must have known and trusted her killer, at least initially. The police assumed it was one of her boyfriends, perhaps flying into a jealous rage.”
“Boyfriends?” Did Beverly’s daughter have a harem, like me? That was chilling.
“Oh yes, at least two they knew about, including Danny Sledge. But they couldn’t pin it on any of them since the coppers had nicked them all for dealing drugs that same night. That lovely Angus Donahue was the inspector at the time, wasn’t he?”
Dotty nodded. “Poor Angus. He tried so hard to crack that case, and with the media breathing down his neck too, but they couldn’t find who did it. I think it haunted him because he left the police force soon after, and he’d only just been promoted. That’s maybe why Danny’s book has some of the same elements of the crime. It weighs on both Danny and Angus. No wonder Beverly was upset.”
“That’s not Danny’s fault!” Mrs. Ellis cried. “Beverly shouldn’t have killed him just because he wrote a book!”
“Who says Beverly was the one who killed him?” Wenda leaned forward. “I heard that Danny wasn’t exactly a devoted husband. Had a bit of a wandering eye, didn’t he? Maybe that sour wife of his bumped him off in order to put a stop to his philandering. I imagine she stands to inherit a great deal.”
“Or maybe it was a crazed fan,” Dotty squealed with delight. “That happens, you know. One minute, they’re collecting rare first editions, the next minute they’re carving their name into your internal organs.”
“Only in Stephen King books,” Heathcliff muttered, reaching across the table to steal some of their chips.
“Or it could be a serial killer, stalking authors who speak in the bookshop,” added Florence. She shuddered.
Panic fluttered in my stomach. “Please don’t worry, Florence. I’m sure that’s not it. The police are going to catch the killer and everything will be fine in time for your event.”
