Bunburry--Drop Dead, Gorgeous Page 7

  “I don’t think anybody’s suggesting that Alfie’s the murderer, Aunt Liz,” said Emma gently. “At least, not until Sergeant Wilson’s on the case. The hope of seeing Alfie behind bars is what gets him up in the morning.”

  “That sergeant of yours!”

  Alfie was always amazed by the vituperation that Liz, normally the mildest of women, reserved for Emma’s boss.

  “Where is he anyway? Why wasn’t he taking the witness statements?” she snapped.

  “Alfie can breathe easy today at least,” said Emma. “The sarge didn’t actually get up this morning. A duvet day.”

  “I had no idea the police force was such an enlightened employer,” said Alfie.

  “Duvet day!” snorted Liz. “You mean he drank too much last night. You should report him.”

  Alfie knew Emma would never do that. The police force operated through hierarchy and Wilson was her superior officer. She just accepted that with only two of them in the station, the bulk of the work would fall to her. She probably welcomed any “duvet days” when she could get on with things undisturbed.

  “I don’t quite understand about being the fall guy,” said Alfie.

  “I’ve probably got the wrong word,” apologised Liz. “Marge is always telling me off for trying to get along with the kids.”

  “Get down with the kids,” groaned Marge. “Just tell us in your own words, Clarissa.”

  Liz swirled the ice round in her gin glass. “It’s rather handy that Alfie bumped into Debbie and was able to be a witness.”

  “But Debbie had no idea that we would bump into one another,” Alfie objected.

  “It didn’t necessarily need to be you,” said Liz. “It could have been anyone, any excuse to get them to the salon. Just so that someone was there when she supposedly discovered the body.”

  “You’re not serious,” said Alfie.

  “Very,” said Liz. “It could explain everything. I don’t think there was any sort of fight in the salon. I think Eve Mosby was poisoned. By Debbie.”

  Emma was nodding slowly.

  “Impossible,” said Alfie. “Debbie isn’t a murderer.”

  Liz gave him an understanding smile. “I’m not saying she did it deliberately.”

  “Of course,” cried Marge. “Well done, Clarissa, you’ve cracked it.”

  Alfie looked from one to the other in incomprehension.

  “This ridiculous new Royal Blowtox thing she’s been banging on about,” explained Marge.

  Alfie suddenly remembered what Betty had said the previous night: Botox is a poison.

  “But surely you can’t just – I mean, these things must be regulated,” he said.

  “There was a woman in The Horse who tackled her about it,” said Marge. “The woman said she’d been reading an article about it, and that it was really dangerous, and should only be done in a proper clinic, not in ordinary shops. Debbie got very stroppy, said her salon wasn’t an ordinary shop, and she’d been trained. But who knows? Injecting poison into someone – that could easily go wrong.”

  “Or perhaps you can get a bad batch of Botox,” said Liz, although Alfie thought she was saying it more out of charity than conviction.

  Emma kicked off her shoes and rearranged herself in the large armchair, hugging her knees to her chest. “So, Debbie kills Eve Mosby by accident with a Botox injection. She panics. She runs across the road to ask her good friend Rakesh for help. Between them, they hatch a plan to cover the accident up. Debbie goes for a walk so that she can be seen by other people, hoping there’s sufficient confusion about the time of death to pretend she wasn’t in the salon at the time. Rakesh, wearing a pair of food handling gloves, goes into the salon and wrecks it. Debbie bumps into Alfie who, for reasons unspecified, wants to go to the salon.”

  She paused and shot him a questioning look.

  “Sounds plausible so far,” he said. “Go on.”

  She pursed her lips but didn’t press him further. “Debbie pretends to unlock the door before pretending to find the body. Then perhaps she’s afraid that Rakesh hasn’t managed to escape, so she runs out, but finds he’s already back in his restaurant. They give their statements to me and are so relieved that it’s all gone so well that they appear positively cheerful.”

  She stretched out her arms wide, like a magician completing an impressive trick.

  “But it’s full of holes,” Alfie objected. “They haven’t thought it through. Surely the pathologist will discover that Eve died from Botox poisoning.”

  “Two things,” said Emma. “First, people who have inadvertently killed other people and want to cover it up right away very often haven’t thought things through. And second, don’t believe everything you see on Aunt Liz’s crime dramas. The pathologists are understaffed and overstretched. Things get missed. When I was in police college, we heard about one case where the pathologist said the victim had been eaten by wild animals. In fact, he’d been dismembered with a hacksaw. At least now we’ll make sure that checking for Botox is on the to-do list.”

  “What about our to-do list?” asked Marge. “I’m more than happy to talk to young Edward.”

  “Careful, dear,” said Liz. “You don’t want people to think you’re a …” She paused, apparently searching for a word. “A Mrs Mosby,” she concluded.

  “Thanks, Aunt Marge, but no, this is a police matter now,” said Emma. “I don’t want you to do anything. Just sit tight and I’ll let you know when we’ve made an arrest. All right?”

  Marge nodded reluctantly, Liz with better grace.

  “Alfie?”

  Emma was looking straight at him, but at least she wasn’t glaring. He gave her his most innocent smile. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of interfering in your investigation.”

  9. Two Interviews

  Emma sat across the desk from Edward Wright, who had no idea how closely he was being studied. His eyes were red-rimmed, she noted, suggesting that he had been crying. But, of course, he might simply have rubbed at his eyes before her arrival.

  He looked okay; not as handsome as Alfie McAlister, but then, who was? He was thirty, a few years older than she was herself, fair-haired with a carefully trimmed beard. He was wearing a formal grey suit with a crisp white shirt and what she guessed was an expensive silk tie.

  The room they were in was a cut above the usual office. The carpet was soft and springy, they were sitting in ergonomic chairs, and the surface of the polished wood desk was inlaid with green leather. Instead of filing cabinets, there were purpose-built shelves stacked with box files. There was another smaller desk in the corner. It had a laptop on it, and a pile of folders with papers spilling out of them. Emma guessed that this was Edward’s usual place: so, he had already upgraded himself to the boss’s position.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said curtly. If he was going to play Grieving Lover, she could parry with Tough Cop. “Where were you on the day Mrs Mosby died?”

  He swallowed as though it was an effort to speak. “I was in Cheltenham all day. Eve – Mrs Mosby – was interested in investing in more property, and I was scouting out some possibilities.”

  Emma opened her notebook and held her pen in readiness. “I’ll need a list of addresses for the properties, and contact details for the estate agents or landlords you met.”

  He shook his head in a bewildered way. “It wasn’t like that. I was just looking around.”

  “You had no idea where you were going? You hadn’t checked what was on the market?” Her tone was scathing.

  “I wanted to get a feel for things. Sometimes there’s the opportunity for a private sale.”

  “You make it sound rather underhand, Mr Wright.” He flushed and she wondered if she had scored a bullseye. “So where did you go? Which properties did you see?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “I’m sure
you could if you tried. It’s really not that long ago, and I’m sure Mrs Mosby wouldn’t have employed a personal assistant with a poor memory.”

  He fumbled at the knot of his tie as though it was too tight. “I was just generally driving around. I – there didn’t seem to be that much in town, so I drove out in the direction of Winchcombe.”

  “I see. So, when you said you were in Cheltenham all day, you were lying.”

  She held herself in readiness for him to become aggressive, but he seemed to collapse in on himself, like a burst balloon.

  “I went to visit a friend.” It was little more than a whisper.

  Cheltenham to Winchcombe, the start of the so-called Romantic Road. “A girlfriend?”

  The pause was so long that she wondered whether he was going to reply. And then he mumbled: “Nothing serious.”

  Emma observed all this as though she was a theatre critic. He was teetering on the edge of melodrama, she thought. Was anything he had said true?

  His eyes looked watery. Should she be sniffing the air for onions?

  “Eve – Mrs Mosby – a few months ago, she said that if anything happened to her, I should open the top drawer in her desk,” he said. “She was laughing. I thought it was some sort of joke. But I opened the drawer this morning.”

  He indicated a small pile of papers on the desk and handed her the top one. She unfolded the document to see that it was a will. Quickly scanning it, she discovered that Dot had been right: Eve Mosby had left everything to her personal assistant.

  “Every cloud, eh?” she said, deliberately provocative.

  But rather than being provoked, he seemed to shrink away even more. “I had no idea,” he whispered. “I never realised.” He reached over and indicated a section with his forefinger.

  Emma re-read it. “… my beloved Edward who has brought so much happiness into my life …”

  “I didn’t know that was how she felt about me. I mean, I liked her, she was fun, she was generous, but –”

  He broke off and buried his face in his hands, a handy means of concealing his emotions, Emma decided.

  “I don’t deserve this,” he groaned.

  “Were you often in the office on your own?” she snapped.

  He nodded wordlessly.

  “And you’ve only just read this?”

  Another nod.

  “That’s remarkable self-control. Most people, if they knew there was something interesting in the top drawer of the desk, would check it out immediately.”

  “I never thought … it didn’t seem important.”

  “Really? And a pretty odd thing for her to say, telling you to check out the drawer if anything happened to her?”

  “Maybe she knew,” he said brokenly. “Maybe she knew she was ill, and she didn’t want to spoil our time together. I don’t even know what happened. Was it her heart?”

  Oh, this was impressive, such an innocent question.

  “Our investigations are still ongoing,” said Emma. “Was there anything else in the drawer?”

  “Everything’s here. I haven’t looked at the rest of it yet. I was just so –” There was a catch in his voice and he failed to finish the sentence. He pushed the other papers towards her.

  She looked through them. Financial documents, insurance, and then a hand-written letter. As she read it, her eyes widened.

  “What about this?” she demanded.

  He squinted at it. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it before. What is it?”

  Yes, what was it? Genuine? A forgery? And was he really claiming that he didn’t know anything about it?

  “What exactly are your duties as Mrs Mosby’s personal assistant?” she barked.

  He flushed scarlet. “I keep her appointments diary. I organise meetings. I do the filing, the correspondence –”

  “The correspondence.” She held up the letter. “What about this?”

  “I’ve no idea.” He sounded confused, slightly defensive. She was going to have to be careful. There was a lot more she wanted to know, but an unofficial chat that he could subsequently deny wasn’t the way to get the information. And so far, she didn’t have enough of a reason to interview him under caution.

  Being in line to inherit a lucrative property empire could well be an incentive to commit murder. But it wasn’t evidence in itself. And now she had strong evidence against someone else entirely.

  Edward Wright was either very honest or very devious and she had no idea which.

  *

  Alfie was on the way back to Windermere Cottage, having collected his morning paper, when he saw Edith opening up the doors of The Horse. He had promised Emma he wouldn’t interfere in her investigation, but there was no reason not to canvass opinion. And Edith knew more than most about what went on.

  He waved and crossed the road to greet her. “Morning, Edith. May I be your first customer of the day?”

  “Drowning your sorrows because your girlfriend’s gone and left you?” she asked caustically.

  He gave a theatrical sigh as he followed her into the pub, its bar and wooden tables all freshly polished. “Edith, what more can I do to convince you that I only have eyes for you? Will you let me buy you a drink?”

  She made a show of looking up at the clock. “Bit early for me.”

  “And me,” he said quickly. “I’m not in for a beer, just a latte. Will you join me? I hate drinking alone.”

  “You poor boy, we can’t have that. I’m sure I can spare five minutes. I’ll get one of the girls to take over.”

  She trotted to the door leading to the pub’s back premises and called: “Joanne! I need you at the bar. Two lattes and some shortbread, quick as you like.”

  She led Alfie to one of the secluded booths at the back of the pub.

  “You know The Horse was the first place I came to when I arrived in Bunburry?” said Alfie. “You must have been away at that point. It was a filthy night, I was soaked to the skin, and when Joanne showed me up to my room, I felt like a VIP in Buckingham Palace. I couldn’t have had a better introduction to the village.”

  Edith beamed with pleasure. “We do our best.” She looked at the bar, where Joanne was wrestling with the coffee machine. “Although heaven knows some of the staff aren’t the brightest.”

  She stood up, exclaiming in irritation. “Turn it to the left, girl, to the left! Oh, just leave it – I’ll do it.”

  A few minutes later, she returned with the lattes and a plate of shortbread rounds.

  “Lovely, thank you,” said Alfie. “I’ve been thinking of renovating Aunt Augusta’s cottage. The en-suite bathroom in my room upstairs here was exactly what I’m looking for. Do you remember who did the work?”

  Edith pursed her lips. “And there was me thinking you wanted my company, when it’s actually a plumber you’re after. I might have known you had an ulterior motive.”

  “Edith, you can see right through me. I do have an ulterior motive, although it’s not about finding a plumber. I wondered if you had any thoughts about what happened to Eve Mosby.”

  “What sort of thoughts?” she asked, her head on one side.

  “Thoughts about who might have been responsible.”

  “The Bunburry Triangle needs help, does it?”

  Was everyone calling them by that ridiculous name now? He supposed he couldn’t complain: Marge had challenged him and Liz to come up with an alternative, and they had failed miserably.

  “It does, and I thought you were just the person who could give it.”

  She leaned forward confidentially. “They would sit in here. In this very booth. Him and her. Canoodling.”

  “Mrs Mosby and Edward?”

  She nodded. “Ridiculous, a woman of her age behaving like that. She was besotted with the boy. You could see by the way she looked at him. And you could see fr
om the way he followed her about, looking hangdog, that he didn’t feel the same way about her.”

  “But that doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “Not unless what Dot says is true, and he knew he was going to get all her money.”

  Money was certainly a motivation. But not everyone was obsessed by it. Vivian had been ferociously independent. Any time he took her out to a smart restaurant, she would counter by taking him to whatever tiny ethnic eatery her paltry wages would allow. And he had to admit he often enjoyed those outings more.

  “So, there’s Edward,” he said to Edith. “Anyone else spring to mind?”

  “Oh yes. That Debbie Crawshaw’s not so green as she’s cabbage-looking.”

  Alfie stared at her, baffled.

  “It’s an expression,” she said. “I mean she’s not as dippy as she looks, all those pink clothes and dyed hair. She’s got as sharp a mind as anyone.”

  Alfie was shocked by the implication. “You think Debbie could be a murderer?”

  “I think Debbie could be anything she liked if she set her mind to it.” Edith gave a meaningful smile. “She knows what she wants, and she goes out and gets it.”

  “But she surely didn’t want Mrs Mosby dead?”

  “She was one of Eve’s tenants, wasn’t she? I reckon all of them wanted Eve dead after she took over from Robert. He wasn’t a pushover, but he took account of people’s difficulties. All she was interested in was money, money, money. And if you couldn’t pay, that was your problem, not hers. There was no love lost between Mrs M and Rakesh.”

  “Rakesh? What about him?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know exactly, but he didn’t have a good word to say about her.”

  Alfie sighed inwardly. This hadn’t got him anywhere – it was just rumour and speculation. All they could do was wait until the post-mortem revealed the cause of death.

  “Thanks, Edith, that’s been really helpful,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it soon.”

  “I’m sure you will,” she said. “We’ve all got faith in the Bunburry Triangle.”