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Category:
Humor
Publisher: JP Wright
ISBN-10: B00Z7X2WME
Type: Fiction
Pages: 168
Copyright: 2015
ISBN-13: 9781370125982
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Violet has to prepare for her Home Ec assessment, but with a house full of guests and a lunatic sister playing at detectives, how will she ever get it done? And if the dog did not destroy Mother's cake, who did? Did she really see someone lurking down at the gatehouse? Which one is the bay tree, and what does nutmeg look like anyway? Should self-confessed teachers be allowed out into society?
All these questions must be answered before the weekend is over, with lessons to be learned along the way about baking, loyalty and just how strong a Mother can be.
Violet has to prepare for her Home Ec assessment, but with a house full of guests and a lunatic sister playing at detectives, how will she ever get it done? And if the dog did not destroy Mother's cake, who did? Did she really see someone lurking down at the gatehouse? Which one is the bay tree, and what does nutmeg look like anyway? Should self-confessed teachers be allowed out into society?
All these questions must be answered before the weekend is over.
Excerpt
A murder mystery ought to begin with the discovery of the body of the first victim, I suppose, swiftly followed by the arrival of the detective, who must be unorthodox; independent of the police force, or at the very least a maverick within the force. Ideally there will be a sidekick, indispensable for expositionary purposes. There should be a country house, filled for one reason or another with strangers, guests or extended family. Families especially are useful for hidden motives, resentments, feuds and secrets.
There will of course be staff: at the minimum a cook (motherly, given to country wisdom and muttered bloody asides, perhaps married to the truculent game-keeper with the dark past), a maid (flighty, tearful, possibly with child, to be discovered at an opportune moment clutching a torn photograph or lover's letter), and a butler (to do the dastardly deed, or to serve as misdirection). According to grandpa, butlers come in two flavours, the dry, lean and silver-haired absolute soul of discretion who turns out to have been watering the port; and the buttery, bloated and whiskery kind, apt to beat the maids and embezzle money to lose on the dogs. Both smell of red herring.
Given sufficient funds, we would add a scape-grace gardener, groom or manservant, and a housekeeper with a grey chignon and a decades-concealed passion for the master of the house. She would have an apothecary cousin or have access to the medicine cabinet, as well as to the family secrets. For this weekend, we will have to scrape by with the bare essentials, and even that will be a fuller staff than had been kept at the house for two generations; finances have never run to live-in maid, butler, or cook in my lifetime, and livery when required was do-it-yourself.
A few chapters in, a glamorous stranger ought to arrive. An actress or an heiress, a belated guest or mysterious half-cousin around whom the plot can be made to twist; and there will be rumours abroad about person or persons unknown staying in the village, sitting in dark corners of the snug of the King's Head or meeting with suspicious characters in the spit-and-sawdusty Golden Hind, being caught lurking near the stables the night before the race, or showing an unwarranted interest, a poisoner's interest, in the town pump or millennium horse-trough. If gypsies or circus performers are mentioned, you can be sure they are a distraction, something to throw the local bobby off the scent: he is a village policeman, so of course he will suspect the Hindoo juggler, or the smooth Musselman ambassador.
Well, a detective of sorts, and certainly unconventional, I can offer you. The country house we have too: Garton Grange, tucked into a green little pocket of England's East-Anglian waistcoat, is a fine example of the type, according to the braced and bow-tied estate agent who came last week to poke around. What the type is, I am not sure. It is in parts brick, in parts stone. Yellow and red, and pretty in the autumn light in particular. Not very practical though – the stone has always been crumbling and the bricks have recently become downwardly mobile, dropping their faces at decreasing intervals to crack on the driveway or terrace, and on one occasion to smash through the glass of the orangery. The house is left pock-marked, ravaged by obsolescence rather than adolescence. Some treatment is clearly called for, some age-defying formula capable of dealing with wet rot, dry rot, subsidence, cracking, leaks, warping and death-watch beetle.
Anyway, the shabby-chic or decaying gentry look is perfect for this weekend's entertainment. It is authentic without the vulgarity of crenellations, suits of armour and white ladies walking knee-deep in the floors. The location is ideal too: the village is two miles away, the nearest railway station and taxi-rank, eight. It was formerly set in more extensive grounds, but straitened times mean that the meadow through which the gravelled drive sweeps has been sold to a local farmer. The gardens are still large enough for chance encounters and secret rendez-vous though: there are the remains of a maze behind the house, beyond the terrace and rose garden; there is a walled kitchen garden that ends in a compost heap, a tangle of blackberries and a shady copse. Opposite the front of the house, across the widest expanse of the driveway, is a pond, scarce in fish but plentifully stocked with lily pads that hide half the surface. I remember playing by the pond, sailing leaf-boats across it while Grandpa tried to fish: even then, I do not believe there was anything to be caught, and probably he was just trying to catch a few minutes’ peace and forty winks away from pestering little girls. The pond is screened from the house by a bank of holly, though from the dining room, if one is seated back-to-the-door, a glimpse might be caught of it between the trunks. The stables that link to the north-east wing of the house hold guests now – or will, or will have to, if the estate agent is to be kept at bay – not horses (a sore point), so there is no champion hurdler to be guarded, and no groom (more's the pity) to upset the maids of the household.
Farther from the house, between the last curve of the drive and the road, and opposite the lodge, there is a round barrow. It was excavated by grand-aunt Hettie, a redoubtable-looking, tweedy woman in sepia photographs, only ever seen posed with stick or shovel or trowel in hand. The few unimpressive remains she unearthed are still on display in a dusty case in the village hall. Not too much imagination is required to turn the hump of grass into a ghostly place: especially on a windy, moonlit night it would be easy to imagine the angry dead rising to seek out their stolen treasures. But this is a crime story, not a ghost story.
You can see that the Grange has a fine range of locations for murder au plein aire, as well of course as the usual indoor facilities – kitchen, study, drawing and dining rooms, bedrooms, attic, cellar, candlesticks, lead pipes. Maybe not lead pipes: the plumbing was replaced when I was little, so now it is not life-threatening, though it is still ineffectual. Odd then that our victim was found in broad morninglight in the usually peaceful parsley patch of the kitchen garden. I was first on the scene. Well, technically, I was second – Marcus was already there when I arrived.
Let me explain. I had got up for breakfast. This was Saturday morning, so no school, but I had been woken early by my geek sister crashing down the stairs. Naturally I stayed in bed resting for another hour or so, and by the time I got up the kitchen was something of a scene of devastation. Mother had been baking – a fine flour-dust was still hanging in the air, swirling in the breeze that was coming in through the open window, but rapidly settling to cover any foot or finger-prints. Empty egg boxes littered the table and a mixing bowl teetered on the edge of the sink, licked clean, doubtless by la petite vache. The sight of an empty milk carton on the side set a fear in me that a glance in the fridge confirmed. The thing was stacked with sliced ham, terrines, pickles, salmon mousse, crab cakes, quiche, scotch eggs, sliced beef. It was definitely not stacked with milk. It contained no milk. Not a pint, not a gill, not a drop of milk was to be found there. V went to the fridge, and the fridge was bare. Not even a dribble for my tea; certainly not a splash for my cereal.
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