Cause of Death: The Shires Mysteries 3

Book 3: The Shires Mysteries

by Anna Legat

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Amateur Sleuth

Synopsis

BOOK THREE IN THE SHIRES MYSTERIES - A GRIPPING NEW WHODUNNIT SET IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE.

All is not well in the village. The local meadows have been the pride of Bishops Well for hundreds of years, but now they are facing the sharp blades of developers. The landowner is a rich and reclusive author who is happy to see them destroyed, but the villagers - including Sam Dee and Maggie Kaye - are fighting back.

Until, that is, someone decides to silence one of their number permanently.

As Maggie and Sam soon discover, there is more than a quick buck to be made in the developers' plans. There are age-old secrets and personal vendettas that could have deadly repercussions in Bishops Well today.

With Sam's legal expertise and Maggie's... well, Maggie-ness, they delve into the past, determined to unearth the truth. And, as sparks begin to fly, could there finally be something more between this sleuthing duo?

A GRIPPING NEW COSY CRIME SERIES, FOR FANS OF BETTY ROWLANDS, FAITH MARTIN AND JOY ELLIS.

What readers are saying about Anna Legat:

'Brilliant. I didn't want to put it down!'

'It's a rare author who can keep me guessing until the end - and the ending was a shocker'

'Plenty of twists and turns'

'A brilliantly complex spaghetti of unrelated sub-plots to challenge any armchair sleuth'

'I thoroughly enjoyed this book, reading it cover to cover in a weekend'

'I shall look out for more from Ms Legat'

Release date: April 14, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 256

Sample

The full moon was their silent accomplice – it shone brightly, illuminating the finer detail of the grand forgery they were carrying out on the ground. It wasn’t an easy job. The work had to be conducted on the uneven surface of the south-facing slope of a hill which by day was home to a herd of Friesian cows. A hill covered in cowpats was like a minefield, especially to those who had made the unfortunate choice of sandals for footwear.

Old cowpats pretended to be dormant, but once stirred they could explode in a bouquet of unpleasant odour. That became evident when Rumpole, Vera Hopps-Wood’s Irish wolfhound, was detected smeared with cow excrement and stinking to high heaven. He appeared as happy as a pig in . . . mud, but Vera was inconsolable. No one showed her any sympathy. She should not have brought her pet to work. Forgery was no walk in the park.

The first part of the operation was the painstaking removal of topsoil together with all vegetation and the offending cowpats. That task had been conducted under the watchful eye of the designer and project manager – Maggie Kaye. The whole undertaking was her idea. The loosely organised but fiercely proud community of Bishops Well, in the shape of the Bishops Well Archaeological Association, had rallied round, as they usually did.

Sam Dee had had his reservations, but it was that or desecrating Harry Wotton’s wheat fields with crop circles. He had gone with the lesser evil. At least the injured party would be harder to establish. The ownership of the hill was disputed and claims to it were laid by three warring parties: the folk of Bishops Well, local magnate Lord Weston-Jones, and the parish of St John the Baptist.

By midnight the works were in full swing. The forgers were careful to stay within the outline of the shape, delineated earlier by the best art students recruited by Maggie and fellow teacher Cherie Hornby from Bishops Ace Academy. The labour distribution had been thoughtfully planned: the fairer sex was engaged in the finer art of scraping off the soil and staying within the lines (that required attention to detail and a steady hand) while the men carried bucketfuls of soil, grass, and the ever-present cow muck, which required little more than brute strength, to the top of the hill. There they distributed it evenly so that no one would detect it in the morning.

‘If Alec knew what I was getting up to, he’d have to divorce me,’ Vanessa Scarfe whimpered as she shovelled a stubborn tuft of grass out of existence. ‘I had to say I was staying at Vera’s tonight!’ Her chubby cheeks reflected the ghostly moonlight in all its fullness. Crime didn’t become her. And it shouldn’t – after all, she was the wife of Detective Chief Superintendent Scarfe, a pillar of the community and a man beyond reproach. He couldn’t afford to be linked to a common trespasser partial to forgery and vandalism.

‘Good thing he won’t know, then,’ Maggie assured her. She slunk out of the darkness and squatted next to Vanessa.

Maggie had dressed in a tightly fitting black bodysuit, complete with a balaclava with cat ears. She was channelling Catwoman. Considering that she was a few sizes larger than Halle Berry, she was something closer to a seal than a cat in her appearance. Nonetheless, she was a well-proportioned seal and easy on the eye – in Sam’s opinion. Nearby and similarly garbed, toned and long-faced Vera resembled a dressage mare, and Vanessa a wombat.

Sam had no idea where those zoological analogies came from. It must be due to the white horse under construction on the hill, he thought. He lifted his two buckets with a groan and began his ascent to the top. His lower back would pay a heavy price for this adventure.

‘Nobody had better find out,’ he heard Vera grumble, ‘especially not my Henry! What that would do to his prospects at Westminster bears no contemplation!’

Sam smiled to himself. The Right Honourable Henry Hopps-Wood had more skeletons in his cupboard than lay buried in St John’s graveyard. The only reason he was still an MP was the fact that the Tories could not afford a by-election. Vera’s little transgression paled into insignificance by comparison with her husband’s past indiscretions.

Sam passed Mary Nolan and Megan Murphy who were working on the horse’s rear. They worked silently, Mary as usual tranquillity personified, Megan fully engrossed in her task under the horse’s tail. Megan was the newest member of the AA. She and her husband Ivo, both in their early thirties, considerably lowered the average age of the AA’s caucus.

Sam plodded on. Towards the very top of the hill, he found himself short of breath. Age was catching up with him.

‘You can run, but you can’t hide,’ he muttered.

‘Someone’s thinking of running! Blimey!’ Dan Nolan grinned at Sam and his two buckets. It was easy for Dan to laugh, Sam pondered, being a thick-necked bull of a man with the constitution of a Neanderthal.

It was good, however, to see Dan laughing and fully reintegrated into Bishops Well’s criminal fraternity. He had Mary to thank for that. After his daughter’s tragic death, he had cursed the town and all its inhabitants with it, but Mary had brought him back from the brink and now he was full of beans and mischief like the rest of them.

‘Mind if I join you? I’ll just get me running shoes on.’

All that Sam could afford in reply was to groan and rub his lower back; he had no breath left in him for much else.

‘That bad?’ Dan commiserated.

‘Worse!’ Sam emptied his buckets, making sure that he scattered the soil evenly over the (in his view considerable) extension to the hill. When he was finished he wiped his brow and grinned back at Dan. ‘So your work’s done for the night?’

‘Sit down with us,’ Dan shuffled along the bench to make room for Sam, ‘We’re taking a short break.’

The menfolk of the AA had gathered on top of the hill, which featured a sturdy wooden bench, its brass plaque dedicated to Jenny Gorse-Young 1939-2003. Dan and James Weston-Jones (who was happily going against his father’s interests in joining the AA’s cause) were sitting on the bench, while Edgar Flynn had made himself comfortable on his upturned bucket. Ivo Murphy and Michael Almond were standing. With his hands on his hips Michael was performing a bizarre shoulder rotation. He, just like Sam, was feeling his age in his severely tested spine.

Sam slumped on the bench between Dan and James and sighed. A few equally desperate sighs answered him, but men, being men, Sam thought, kept their mouths shut and admired the view. And the view was to die for! Lit by the eerie moonlight, the hill rolled down like a lazy sea and seeped into the flat, sleepy meadow sprawled at its foot. The meadow in its turn trickled into the thickets of Sexton’s Wood. All of that was bathed in the silver glow of the full moon.

The night silence was disrupted by the occasional hoot of an owl or cry of a fox.

Then came the drone of a van engine, which died quickly, and was followed closely by Cherie Hornby’s commanding voice, hollering, ‘Over here, gentlemen! Bring your buckets! This is no time for having siestas! We only have a couple of hours before sunrise. Get your buckets! Get a move on! The whitewash is in the drum at the back of the pickup.’

Buckets in hand, the men obediently got to their feet and shuffled towards the van parked in the dead end of the dirt road behind them. When they reached it, they found a large industrial drum filled to the brim with a chalky whitewash. Sam was impressed to discover that Cherie had thought of bringing a ladle with which to scoop the paint from the drum and into the buckets. She had also secured several large heavy duty brooms. They would be perfect for painting the horse white in no time at all.

Painting the horse was a chaotic affair. People were tripping over each other, stepping into each other’s buckets, and spilling their whitewash all over their feet. White footprints trailed out of the horse in all directions. It looked as if it was under siege from a squadron of white flies. Any minute now and it would start kicking.

Despite those minor hiccups, by five a.m. the project was completed, the area cleared of any incriminating evidence (fingers crossed), and the gang of forgers were packed into Cherie’s pickup to be transported to the foot of the hill.

There they stood in awe.

The sun was rising over the horizon, its first faint rays growing wider and more assured. If the night view was to die for, the image of the sun emerging over the left shoulder of the hill was like a resurrection. The sun hit the image etched into the face of the hill with all its might, and the still wet whitewash glistened and sparkled like liquid silver.

Maggie was elevated. She gasped, ‘Our very own Bishops Well White Horse!’

The prototype for the endeavour, the ancient Westbury White Horse, had inspired several other equine carvings across the Shires to welcome the approach of the new millennium. Bishops Well might have been a decade or two late joining the trend, but that’s how things were done in Bishops – all in its own good time.

Vera shaded her eyes from the sun and scowled. ‘It looks more like a donkey.’

Maggie and Cherie glared at Vera. Sam swallowed a chuckle. The truth was that the blinking horse indeed looked like a donkey.

‘The ears are far too long,’ Vera continued.

‘It’s a horse,’ Maggie growled.

‘A bloody horse,’ Cherie verified, ‘and that’s final!’

‘It is a bit donkey-like. There’s no two ways about it!’ Dan Nolan waded in – unwisely – on the ladies’ disagreement, to his wife’s chagrin.

‘It’s a horse, Daniel!’ Mary, unusually for her, raised her voice.

James proffered a compromise. ‘It isn’t entirely a horse, I admit, but neither is it a donkey . . .’

Maggie compressed her lips to hold back the trembling. Sam could tell she was close to tears. He couldn’t bear it. In a conciliatory tone, he declared, ‘Of course it isn’t a donkey. It’s a mule – Bishops Well’s very own White Mule.’

Cherie drove the company to the edge of Sexton’s Wood. From there they took the brand new footpath leading to Bishops Well Celtic Museum. The museum was situated in the heart of Bishops Swamp, where only last year the foundations of a Celtic roundhouse had been unearthed. It was the same place where the remains of Lady Helen Weston-Jones, James’ mother, had been found. Helen’s body had been deposited precisely where the pitch of the thatched roof of the roundhouse would have been.

Following that historic discovery, the AA extended the dig to find an ancient burial ground containing two relatively well-preserved bog bodies with no twentieth-century add-ons. It soon transpired that two thousand years ago, that part of Bishops Swamp hadn’t been a swamp at all, but a small island in the middle of a secluded lake. Accessible only through an impenetrable forest and then by water, the island had been earmarked as the perfect place to build a prehistoric housing estate. The people who had come up with that brilliant idea were identified as the Belgae, a Celtic tribe prevalent in the area on the cusp of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

By the time Bishops’ amateur archaeologists drilled into the soggy bottom of what would have been a moat, or possibly a pig trough, their Richard Ruta Legacy funds had run out. Ever resourceful, they did not give up. Based on their major findings, they were able to secure funding from Heritage UK and a few shillings from UNESCO. Experts flocked to the excavation site to authenticate and preserve everything in its original location. A sturdy wooden path, complete with rails and platforms, was constructed over the swamps. IKEA donated a pine log cabin on stilts to accommodate the teams of archaeologists and historians who moved on to the site.

James convinced his father, Lord Philip, to sell the site together with the right of way through his land to the AA for a symbolic penny. With the National Lottery grant that Sam had applied for on an off-chance (and was astonished to receive) they had set up the museum, and Cherie became the curator. The site was quickly becoming one of the main tourist attractions in the local Shires, inferior only to Stonehenge and Avebury. And now that they had their own White Horse, there was no limit to how far they could go.

They briskly negotiated the woods to avoid the Swamp’s plentiful mosquitoes. Because they were running for their lives with their heads down and because the thick canopy of July treetops hung over them like a huge green umbrella, they were unable to see the result of their handiwork on the hill. But as soon as they arrived at the archaeological site and their collective gaze travelled northward, they were rewarded with a breathtaking vision – that of their spanking new Bishops’ White Horse towering over the plains.

They were spellbound. The birds had begun to tweet their dawn thanksgiving. Cherie was taking frantic snapshots of the scene – frantic because the elusive beauty of the rising sun would last only a few minutes. The photos were intended for the Museum’s brochure. Looking at the majestic white stallion bathed in the morning sun, there was little doubt that one of the photos would feature on the cover.

‘It still looks like a donkey, I’m afraid,’ Vera’s voice shrilled, having a cringeworthy effect on Sam. There was no saying what effect it was having on Maggie. Her hands furled into tight, deadly fists, and it looked like she was gearing up to beat the living daylights out of the unsuspecting Vera.

‘It’s a blinking horse,’ Maggie hissed through her teeth.

‘Didn’t we compromise on a mule?’ Ivo tried to arbitrate, but it was too late.

‘No, no, no! It’s a horse. It’s always been a horse. It will always remain a horse.’

‘Amen,’ Cherie intoned and Vera, thankfully, held her tongue.

That settled, the company went into the cabin where they collapsed in a heap of exhausted middle-aged carcasses and started whining. Michael mentioned pulling his shoulder. Sam complained of a suspected slipped disc. Vanessa still worried about the clarity of her conscience (though that, strictly speaking, wasn’t a physical affliction). Rumpole was howling outside – they couldn’t let him in because he stank of cow excrement. Mary cried over her mosquito bites, woefully broadcasting the fact that her skin was a magnet for the bloodsuckers. Edgar had wandered into a patch of nettles and was now scratching himself stupid. Dan was counting his calluses and Megan was showing everyone a huge blister under her index finger. Everyone had a wound to lick, but – at least according to the radiant Maggie – it was worth it!

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she offered cheerfully. Sam welcomed the idea; he was feeling light-headed and in urgent need of sustenance.

‘You do that, Maggie.’ Dan too nodded his approval. He whisked a hip flask out of his pocket and took a swig from it. He sucked his teeth – whatever it was, it had to be pretty potent. He passed the flask to Ivo. And so it went, doing its rounds. Maggie abandoned the kettle so that she too could have a turn. Tea simply wouldn’t do for her if spirits were on offer, and not necessarily those in their ghostly variety.

A teetotaller, Mary took over at the counter. She carried the mugs to the table where a bottle of milk and a bag of sugar were at the ready. They drank the tea in silence, fortifying themselves with the patriotic beverage before embarking on the business of their War Council Deliberations. And it was at that very moment that the cavalry arrived in the shape and form of Angela Cornish, armed with her unrivalled namesake pasties.

‘I thought you could all do with some refreshments.’ She carried in two baskets wrapped in the aroma of fresh baking.

‘How did you know what we were . . . well, what we were up to?’ Vanessa blinked her astonishment at Mrs Cornish, who tapped the side of her nose and said, ‘Bishops Well is a very small town.’

No one else bothered to find out how the town’s chief gossip got wind of their enterprise – they were all too busy stuffing their faces with steaming pasties.

I have so far failed to mention that the Carving of the White Horse on the hill had a dual purpose. One: it was to enhance the cultural appeal of our budding Museum. Two: it was to obstruct the proposed new housing development.

Let me elaborate.

The hill upon which the White Horse now dwells lies in what the locals refer to as No Man’s Land. It is a stretch of ten or fifteen acres comprising the hill, the surrounding water meadows where Mr Wotton’s cows persevere with establishing their squatters’ rights, and the banks of the River Avon meandering towards Salisbury Plain. To the west sits the town (sometimes erroneously described as a village!) of Bishops Well. In the south-eastern direction sprawls the Weston Estate, buffered on the south by Sexton’s Wood. Behind the hill, facing north, stands an eighteenth-century folly which during the last war was requisitioned for an army hospital.

After the war, the previous Lord Weston-Jones, from his deathbed, gifted the folly to the Church of St John the Baptist to be used for charitable causes. The army hospital was transformed into an orphanage. It was in use until the mid-nineties when it received its last contingent of war orphans from the Balkans. That had been organised by Vicar Laurence, who knew the area well having spent every summer at his grandparents’ farm in Bishops as a child (his idyllic memories of the place were why he’d returned as vicar after many years in war-torn countries). After that, the building fell into disuse. It now presents a sad picture of disrepair and neglect with its broken windows, rotten floorboards and crumbling walls.

Further to the north, No Man’s Land borders the estate of a reclusive horror writer, Daryl Luntz. Mr Luntz purchased the land from the current Lord Weston-Jones in the late nineties and built his ugly neo-Gothic residence there. Allegedly, and it is Lord Philip who makes those allegations, No Man’s Land was part of the sale and purchase agreement. That allegation is strenuously contended by Vicar Laurence, who claims that No Man’s Land was gifted to the Church together with the folly by the old Lord Weston-Jones.

Regardless of those finer details, and most importantly, we, the residents of Bishops Well, demand our continuing possession of the land to be recognised in law. For generations, we have been asserting our rights to this patch of land by grazing it, crossing it at will, picnicking on it, fishing in the river that runs through it, and in some cases doing all sorts of things there that nobody can name without blushing.

The various parties had been coexisting peacefully in No Man’s Land until Daryl Luntz decided to sell it to a property developer in March this year. That was when all hell broke loose. And that is why we carved the White Horse on the face of the hill. It was our way of branding it as our ancient Village Green under the communal dominion of the Bishops Well’s inhabitants.

I am proud to say, it was my idea.

Tonight’s meeting of Bishops Well Parish Council was open to the public and ardently attended by just about every man and his dog. It was held in the village hall, which resembled a World War Two army barracks complete with a well-established lawn on its sloping roof. Despite its size it was bursting at the seams.

The reason for its unprecedented popularity was a new housing development proposed to be built on No Man’s Land. That proposal was to be debated and voted on by our parish councillors. The developer, a company with limited liability, trading as Cinnamon Rock, had already done their homework by surveying No Man’s Land and finding it to their liking. An undisclosed offer was on the table, subject to contract. Daryl Luntz stood poised to sign it in his capacity as vendor as soon as the Parish Council approved the development. This was to be done in two steps: firstly the rezoning of the use of the land from agricultural to residential, and secondly granting Cinnamon Rock the licence to develop it. Both decisions were to be taken tonight.

In anticipation of a favourable outcome, Cinnamon Rock had architects and landscapers design the estate which, on paper, looked green, tranquil, and village-friendly. Plans, sketches, and mock-up digital impressions were plastered on the walls. They showed eco-friendly, mud-brick mansions nestling on the banks of the River Avon or tucked away on the slopes of Bishops Hill. They looked like they had always been there. The folly was proposed to be extended and converted into a low-rise block of flats under the Affordable Housing Scheme. There would be two playgrounds and one pond.

The pond wasn’t there just for the entertainment of ducks. Its primary objective was to act as a reservoir to contain and regulate water overflow from the marshes. The floods frequently inflicted on No Man’s Land would thus be consigned to the past – alongside most of its unique wildlife.

The Parish Council consisted of five councillors. The chairman was Howard Jacobsen, the erstwhile headmaster of Bishops Well Lord Weston’s CE Primary School. He was a man in his early sixties, short, corpulent, and oozing zero authority. He had the high-pitched voice of a man in a state of permanent distress calling for backup.

The second in command was the parish parson himself. Vicar Laurence held his Councillor’s post ex officio – it was not something to which he would dedicate his time a. . .