“Michael’s dead!”
Nova felt her stomach drop. “What?”
“I saw his body being taken away from his house under a sheet yesterday.” Phyllis was practically hopping from foot to foot in her excitement.
“My God, the poor man,” Arthur said.
“Poor man, my arse! He stole ten thousand pounds from this place, remember?”
“But still, he didn’t deserve to die!”
“How do you know it was Michael if the body was under a sheet?” Nova said.
“By a process of elimination. Aside from the police car and the coroner’s van, there was only one car in his driveway, suggesting there were only one or two driving-age adults in the house. The body being carried out was heavy—the two people pushing it looked like they were exerting themselves—and Michael must have weighed at least fifteen stone. Plus, I saw a woman around his age standing in the doorway with smudged mascara, who I assume was the grieving wife. Ergo, it must have been Michael.”
“Imagine stealing ten thousand pounds and then dropping dead a few hours later,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “All that effort for nothing.”
“Assuming he did just ‘drop dead,’ ” Phyllis said.
Nova looked at her in surprise. “What are you suggesting?”
Phyllis smiled, as if she’d been hoping for this question. “Let’s look at the facts, shall we? Michael Watkins, a man who lives five miles away in Port Gowan, chose to come to a neighboring book club rather than one closer to home. Odd, no?” She turned from them and began to pace across the room. “He behaved suspiciously the whole time he was here; clearly the man’s no bibliophile. On his second visit, he arrived late and seemed distracted but showed no obvious signs of ill health. Then, having received a text message that alarmed him, he ran abruptly from the meeting halfway through. These are peculiar things, wouldn’t you agree?”
Nova opened her mouth to answer, but it had clearly been a rhetorical question as Phyllis continued.
“Yesterday morning, ten thousand pounds was discovered missing from the community center, and yet there was no sign of a break-in, and CCTV footage showed that no one else entered or left the building, suggesting Michael was the thief. And then, most peculiar of all, a few hours after the missing money was discovered, our main suspect is dead, and the police are at his property investigating.”
“You’re not seriously suggesting you think Michael was murdered?” Nova said.
“The great Miss Marple always said that if all the facts fit a theory, it must be the right theory. And all the facts point to Michael’s death being suspicious.”
“But isn’t there another explanation?” Arthur said. “What if Michael came to our book club because he actually liked books, then got some bad news in the text, and on his way out he saw the unlocked office and stole the petty cash tin on a whim? And then, completely unrelated, later that night he had a heart attack or died from some other unfortunate natural cause. It could be a complete coincidence that the two things happened so close together.”
Phyllis let out a grunt of impatience. “Another of the many things I’ve learned from reading Agatha Christie’s novels is there’s no such thing as coincidence. Miss Marple knew this and always paid attention to the small, peculiar things, as she knew they were likely relevant. Like when Elvira Blake just happened to turn up at the same hotel as her long-lost mother inAt Bertram’s Hotel, or Anne Protheroe accidentally not carrying her handbag inThe Murder at the Vicarage. Others dismissed these as irrelevant coincidences and yet Miss Marple knew they weren’t. Just as I know that a man attending a faraway book club on the same night money goes missing and then his dead body turning up the following day are not mere coincidences. The man was murdered, and I propose that his death was linked to our stolen money.”
Phyllis stopped and looked at them as if expecting a standing ovation, but Nova’s mind was racing. The older woman was well known for having an overactive imagination: Lauren had told Nova about the time Phyllis had accused Sandy of running an international drug smuggling ring, all because she’d caught the woman with several boxes of donated talcum powder for the Christmas fete and been convinced they were cocaine. But however carried away Phyllis might sometimes get, Nova had to admit that everything that had happened in the past thirty-six hours did seem a bit, well, suspicious.
“How did you get Michael’s address in the first place?” she asked Phyllis. “In fact, how did you even know about the stolen money yesterday? Nobody knew outside of the staff here and the police?”
“I might just be a little old lady, but I know more than you think.”
“Have you told your theory to the police?”
Phyllis let out a guffaw of mirth. “Of course not! They’ll dismiss me as a dotty old lady, just like they always did with Miss Marple.”
“I still can’t believe Michael’s dead,” Arthur said softly. “Do you think we should go and pay our respects to his wife?”
Nova was about to say no, but then she remembered how grateful she’d been for all the people who’d come to offer their condolences after her dad died, even the ones she’d never met before.
“That’s an excellent idea!” Phyllis said. “And while we’re there, we can ask a few gentle questions about the missing money.”
“No!” Nova said. “You can’t ask anything about the missing money, or the circumstances around Michael’s death. All we’ll do is say how sorry we are and then leave, okay?”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Phyllis said, not even attempting to hide the excitement in her voice.
Chapter Seven
Nova
