Grave Stones

Book 11: The Falconer Files

by Andrea Frazer

Genres: Cozy Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Grave Stones is the ninth instalment of Andrea Frazer?s Falconer Files, a detective series chock-full of picture-postcard villages, dastardly deeds, and a delightful slice of humour. The residents of Shepford St Bernard are to have a party in the church hall, in response to a request to boost congregation numbers???only their new vicar is a woman, and a young one to boot, which is not to everyone's liking?? The morning after the party, the extent of the brooding resentment felt in the small community is revealed when an elderly woman is found dead outside her house, the contents of her safe having disappeared along with her attacker. ?When Detective Inspector Harry Falconer, Detective Sergeant Carmichael, and Detective Constable Roberts arrive on the scene, they learn that the late Lettice Keighley-Armstrong?s safe had recently held a large quantity of very valuable pieces of jewellery?? As the investigation progresses, with efforts made to find out just who might have been tempted enough to commit such a crime, the violence escalates???making it urgent that the offender is quickly apprehended??

Release date: January 9, 2014

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 200

Sample

Chapter One

Friday morning – Shepford St Bernard

Rev. Florence Feldman (Florrie to her friends) sang loudly and tunelessly as she prepared for the next day’s Special Occasion, which definitely had initial capitals whenever she thought about it. ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ echoed tunelessly in her flat but surprisingly strong alto voice, as she beat the cake mixture for some of her offerings for the next day. The sound echoed mercilessly round the vast, high-ceilinged kitchen of The Rectory, but of this she was totally unaware as she worked. This was her first parish and, even a couple of months after her Induction she was engulfed in enthusiasm and joy for her new position.

Her appointment at St Bernard-in-the-Downs in Shepford St Bernard had been a shock for the parishioners, even those who did not attend services, and a few of the old guard had even had the brass neck to walk out of her Induction service, once they realised that the replacement for the seventy-eight-year-old male incumbent was a young(ish) woman.

Her first Sunday service had been sparsely attended, the majority of the regular congregation – not over-large in the first place – had deserted the church in protest at having a female vicar foisted on them. Rev. Florrie, however, just ignored the lack of communicants and started on a relentless round of parish visits to try to tempt back the regulars and bulk up the congregation with younger members.

Although she was unable to find many young residents in the village, she worked with what she had and had increased attendance significantly; this being, in her opinion, for the village to have the opportunity either to blacken her name still further, or from sheer curiosity at how she would perform. Her visits carried on until she had more than doubled the attendance since she had arrived, and was still involved in a charm offensive on those she had not yet won over.

‘All things wise and wonderful …’ she sang, as she shot two trays of fairy cakes into the oven and began to make the mixture for a chocolate sponge cake. She had always been an optimist, to the point that her glass was not merely half-full, but was brimming over with the intoxicating wine of enthusiasm and hope. She’d break them in the end, she just knew she would.

The next day would witness her first venture into a parish ‘occasion’, as she had decided that a parish party was the best way to get to know people better. It was much more efficient than visiting parishioners individually in their homes. Get them all together in one place, and she could make enormous inroads with enthusing them for her mission, as she too had been enthused, with the charming village and the pretty old church.

She had churned out over a hundred leaflets advertising the event on the old Roneo machine in the little office of the village hall, and personally put one through every letterbox in the vicinity. She had put one in the shop, the pub, the hairdresser’s,  and on the parish noticeboard, and exhorted all her regular worshippers to work on their friends and neighbours, particularly those who never came to the church, to meet the vicar and have a good time to boot.

Her leaflet had advertised it not just as an opportunity to meet their new incumbent, but as a ‘Feed the Five Thousand’ party, with a briefly worded explanation underneath, to advise people that it would not be fully catered, but that the intention was that everybody brought something to eat and drink with them, and so, between all of them, they would have a spectacular offering of refreshments.

‘We plough the fields and scatter …’ she growled as she removed the fairy cakes from the oven, shot in the two cake tins of chocolate sponge to replace them, then rinsed her bowl in preparation for making butter drop biscuits, simultaneously thinking it odd that she should have picked a harvest hymn when spring was in the air.

It must be the rural setting, she decided, as she put the butter on to melt and weighed the flour. She’d spent all her life, up till now, in an urban or semi-urban environment, and she was delighted to find herself deep in the countryside, and working with a completely new rhythm of life. How lucky could a person get? And tomorrow was party day!

She wasn’t completely naïve, and had already obtained a special license to sell alcoholic drinks on the premises, the bar being run by the publican’s wife. No party, in the circumstances, could go with a swing without a tot or two to get people relaxed and talking, and she’d also had an offer from the two sons of a parishioner to DJ for the event. She had even persuaded grim old Lettice Keighley-Armstrong to come along, provided Rev. Florrie picked her up in her ancient car and brought her home afterwards. Now that really was progress!

‘All we like sheep, have gone astray-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay …’ her tortured voice now offered to an audience of only her cat, a dumb creature with no cognizance of the fact that she had now shifted her performance to a snippet from the Messiah.

 Becoming aware of what she was lustily roaring out made her think that it must be the rural situation of her new home that had brought that one to the surface. There were sheep everywhere surrounding the village, their lambs leaping and pirouetting in the sunshine, glad to be alive, and unaware of how short that life was going to be before they graced someone’s Sunday dining table.

Out with the two halves of the chocolate sponge, and onto the cooling trays, then in with the biscuits. These offerings, along with a couple of bottles of sherry, one sweet and one dry, should be sufficient for her contribution to the party. Now, she’d have to see about putting up some bunting in the hall and inflating as many balloons as she could manage before running out of puff.

A quick glance in the mirror in the hall convinced her that she had need of a quick trip to the bathroom as she had chocolate sponge-mix stigmata on her chin and forehead, and she thundered joyously up the staircase, now whistling, in her enthusiasm for life.

She left The Rectory five minutes later, to make the short trip through the graveyard to the village hall, her short thick curls being tossed by the playful spring breeze. Rev. Florrie was of medium height and just a bit on the chubby side, but had a kind face and lively hazel eyes that held those of anyone who spoke to her, and somehow communicated her caring nature and genuine interest in others and their problems.

As she approached the hall, a stray gust of wind lifted her cassock and wrapped her head in the folds of its inky blackness, and she pulled it away from her face with a chuckle. She wore the ungainly garment with pride, and eschewed civvies whenever she could, so proud was she to have the right to be thus enrobed. She was going to enjoy decorating the hall for their forthcoming celebration, and the liveliness of the wind had merely put her in a more playful mood.

In Carpe Diem, Coopers Lane, Gwendolyn Galton was packing bibelots in newsprint in preparation for her Sunday foray into the antiques world. She was a dealer in small collectables, and made her way from fair to fair every weekend with her booty, spending her weekdays searching for new stock and cleaning and repairing her finds.

As she wrapped a particularly ugly but rare Toby jug, she sighed with pleasure, and decided that when she had filled the box she was currently working on, it would not be indecently early to stop for a cup of coffee.

Gwendolyn was a slim woman with long snow-white hair, passable features, and pale blue eyes. About fifty, she had never been married and never felt the need for a life companion. She was comfortable in her own company and only sought that of others if she was in one of her rare sociable moods. Her solitary existence bothered her not a whit, as her profession was all-consuming, and she loved what she did.

When she tripped off to the kitchen to put on the kettle, the reason for packing early recurred to her, and she decided that she really must make something for the party the following evening, immediately setting her mind to decide what would have the most impact, with the least effort.

Trifle! That was it; she’d make a trifle. Everyone loved it and, since the advent of tinned custard, its assembly couldn’t have been easier. It was really only a case of waiting for the jelly to set before adding the other layers.

Placing a large glass bowl and a jug on her work surface, she reached into her food cupboard and extracted two sachets of strawberry jelly crystals and a tin of fruit cocktail. A quick look in her cake tin revealed the remains of an angel cake and a raspberry swiss roll. They would do admirably, and that would leave only the custard and whipped cream to add, with a few hundreds and thousands sprinkled on at the last minute, so that the colour hadn’t bled by the time she handed it over.

She could use the water from the kettle to melt the jellies, and it could boil again for her coffee, while she arranged slices of stale cake, covered them with drained fruit, added the syrup to the jelly mix, and poured it over, although it would have to be covered and put in the fridge out of harm’s way. Although she lived alone, her ginger cat, Marmalade, had esoteric tastes, and she wouldn’t put it past him to develop an over-riding passion for unset strawberry jelly.

Finally pouring water over a teaspoonful of coffee granules and adding a splash of milk, she returned to contemplate what other little trifles of the collectable kind she should include for her stall on Sunday. It would be an early start, so she wouldn’t stay over-long at the party; just long enough to have a little chat with her friends and acquaintances, and then head off for an early night.

Tossing her snowy locks over her shoulders, she settled down, kneeling on the floor to survey her treasures, hoping that the weather would be as fair as today when she went out touting her wares. There really was nothing worse than paying what she considered a small fortune for a pitch at a big fair, then having the turnout ruined by torrential rain, high winds, or a combination of both.

In Sweet Dreams on The Green, Krystal Yaxley’s fraternal twins, Kevin and Keith, entered the kitchen, to find that most of their view was taken up by their mother’s wide buttocks sticking out of a cupboard door as she knelt on the floor rummaging in the back of the shelves. ‘What the hell are you doing, Ma?’ asked Kevin, the oldest by twenty-three minutes.

‘You look like a hippo foraging in a skip,’ added Keith, oblivious to how sensitive his mother was about how big she had got in the months since her husband had walked out on her.

‘If you must know,’ she replied, her voice muffled, as she made no effort to remove her head from the inside of the cupboard, ‘I’m looking for something I can take along to that damned party without having to shell out for anything. I can’t just be throwing money around, as well you know.’

‘But we need some petrol money for the weekend,’ Kevin informed her, a wheedling whine entering his voice.

‘Look in the usual place then,’ she suggested and, when Keith asked them where that might be, informed them that the best place was down the back of the sofa or the armchairs. ‘Never know what treasure you’re going to come up with down there,’ she added, switching her attention back to what she had in her store cupboard that would not only solve the problem, but which might also be nearly out of date, thus using up something she might otherwise have to throw away if she didn’t find it soon.

‘Mother!’ exclaimed Kevin with disgust. ‘Don’t you have any real money? I’m fed up going to the shop for a newspaper with a handful of coins from the small change jar.’

At this, another of life’s little stings, Krystal swiftly removed her head from inside the cupboard, incautiously banging it in her haste, and raised her voice, to inform her two needy teenaged sons, ‘I haven’t had a penny from your father since he left. I’m well into my overdraft, even though it’s only the beginning of the month, and I have no other means of getting my hands on hard cash. What do you want to do? Send me out onto the streets and pimp me?

‘Why don’t you get in touch with your father instead of whining at me, as if I were some sort of cash-point. I’m potless! Don’t you understand the situation? He’s done a bunk and taken his nice regular salary with him. Go and whinge at him, if you think it’ll do you any good. If not, it’s the sofa or nothing.

‘And if you’re bored, the lawns need mowing, the flower beds need weeding, and you could do a lot more around the house to help me, instead of just lying in bed half the day then playing your damned music for the rest of it while stuffing your faces as if you were constantly starving.’

‘Bor-ing!’ both lads chorused in unison.

‘Boring it might be, but it’s all got to be done, and I don’t see why I should have to be the only one who does it when there are three of us living in this house. If you want money, go and see if you can get some bar work; wash cars, ask people if they want any gardening done. The Bank of Mum and Dad has closed down until further notice, and you’ll just have to find a different source of cash. This cash-cow is milked dry. The end.’

Kevin and Keith slouched off back into the living room with sneers on their faces. So much for this being the house of their dreams: nightmares more like, the way things were going from bad to worse.

Krystal put her head back into the depths of the cupboard, thinking how spoilt the twins had been in the past. Ken had had a six-figure salary, and they’d never wanted for anything. Now he’d gone, she had no idea how on earth she was going to find the wherewithal just to keep the house going, never mind pay next term’s tuition fees for them both. At least they’d be out of mischief tomorrow night DJ-ing the music for the parish party.

With a muffled yell of glee, she laid hands on two boxes of cake mix and a packet that promised a perfect lemon meringue pie; and both of them were nearly out of date. Perfect! Six months ago she could never have imagined that such meagre finds could instil her with so much triumph, but she was learning to adapt. She had no other choice.

For a few guilty seconds she remembered the appointment she had made with Wanda Warwick for the next day, and what that would cost her but, in the long run, she considered that it could prove to be money well-spent, if she could get some guidance as to the right path to take in her straitened circumstances.

A similarly desperate situation was going on in the house of Jasper and Belinda Haygarth. They lived in a detached house, situated at the junction of the Downsway Road with The Green, then surrounded still further by a narrow lane that joined the aforementioned roads, creating a triangle, and it was in this triangle that their house was perched, isolated from other residences and aptly named “Three-Ways House”.

They had started a textiles business when times were booming, and had made a fair bit of money from it; enough, certainly, to relocate to this postcard-pretty village, away from the urban sprawl that they had so hated. Times had changed, however, and the business was now struggling to break even, let alone make a profit, and was in a state where they had to decide if it was possible to revitalise it, or just walk away from it and cut their losses.

Belinda had had the temerity to start making a shopping list, and ask Jasper if there was anything he needed, at a point where he was contemplating the yawning financial abyss, and thus drawing out of him an unexpected tirade about her spendthrift ways, and how she was going to have to learn to live a more frugal life for the foreseeable future.

‘That’s all you ever do; spend, spend, spend! How on earth do you think we’re going to cope with virtually no income, when you just let it run through your fingers like sand?’ he yelled, quite unreasonably, in Belinda’s opinion.

‘I’m going out to get some food!’ she stated, more loudly than she had intended. ‘If I don’t buy any, what do you propose to live on? Cockroach stew and cobwebs? You know I’ll get as many things on special offer or reduced as I can find, and we don’t exactly live high on the hog these days, do we?’

His reply was unreasonable and illogical, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘Why the hell are you always buying food? How on earth do we manage to get through so much of the stuff when there’s only the two of us?’

‘I go once a week to the supermarket, and always when I know they’re going to be reducing things, and the reason I’m ‘always buying food’, as you put it, is because eating is a daily occurrence, and I emptied my emergency store cupboard some time ago. We don’t have any food stockpiled like we used to. And anyway, you eat like a horse. I honestly believe you’ve got hollow legs. I’ve never known anyone to pack away as much as you do; and three times a day to boot.

‘You spend little enough time on the business these days. Why don’t you get up off your well-fed arse and dig up that back garden? That way, we could at least grow some of our own stuff. And no, it won’t be ready for some time, but later is better than never.’ With that sobering suggestion, that he actually do something practical, instead of moaning all the time, his wife flounced out of the house, just in time to miss his indignant protest at the size of his backside, and the voraciousness of his appetite.

Belinda’s mind was more concerned with how she could take something appetising to the hall tomorrow for next to no outlay. If she could find a pack of bacon offcuts, maybe she could make an egg and bacon quiche. That always went down well and wouldn’t cost her much, if she bought own brand eggs (hopefully near their sell-by date and reduced to clear) and flour, and bought a pack of bacon off-cuts, which may even be reduced too. It was certainly the right time of day for the supermarket employees to be swanning round the store with their price-guns. She just might strike lucky.

She drove off, determined to do her best to spend a. . .