Murder at Church Lodge

Book 0: A Maisie Cooper Mystery

by Greg Mosse

Genres: Craft & Hobby Cozy Mysteries

Synopsis

PRE-ORDER NOW! A gripping British cosy crime mystery with a mysterious death and a village full of secrets...

MAISIE COOPER IS NO DETECTIVE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
BUT SHE MIGHT JUST SOLVE A MURDER...

Maisie left the picture-perfect village of Framlington years ago. But when her brother asks for her help out of the blue she soon finds herself back among the windy lanes and open green fields. But it's not the family reunion she hoped for - upon arrival she learns that she's too late. Stephen is dead. And not just dead - murdered.

Frustrated by the slow police investigation headed up by handsome Sergeant Wingard, Maisie determines to start asking questions herself. In a village where everyone knows everyone, surely someone has some information about Stephen. But the longer Maisie stays, and the deeper she digs, the more she begins to sense something sinister at the heart of the village. What secrets are the residents so desperate to keep hidden? And what exactly was her brother going to tell her before his mysterious demise?

And when another death rocks the community, Maisie fears that she needs to catch the killer before they catch her...

(P) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Release date: July 13, 2023

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 384

Sample

PROLOGUE

It was early, soon after dawn, and the kitchen at Church Lodge was bitter. The flagstones were so cold that Stephen could feel the ache through the worn soles of his threadbare slippers. He couldn’t face another cup of black tea so he was drinking cold water, fresh from the iron tap over the enormous butler sink, using a dimpled pint pot he had ‘borrowed’ from the pub. There was nothing to eat but a rather dreadful dehydrated ready meal.

Perhaps, he thought, a pint of water every morning will put me right.

He pulled his notebook towards him – actually a cheap school exercise book bought at Woolworths in town. He opened it in the middle and pulled out two folded sheets, eight lined pages, wondering where to begin.

The letter wouldn’t take long but it wouldn’t write itself.

Perhaps the best place to start would be June, the young woman he had left sleeping, upstairs in his bed, but that seemed indecorous.

If not June, then, should he begin with a sort of general apology? That, inevitably, might be appropriate, but would it get them anywhere?

How about a list of the people he had offended or tricked? No, that would take too long and, if this morning was indeed to be the first step on his journey to becoming a new and better man with an early swim in his neighbour’s heated pool . . .

He sighed. It wasn’t fair. Here he was, in his prime – well, thirty-seven couldn’t be too far from a man’s prime, surely – a man of business with stacks and stacks of ideas but no capital to put them into practice, a fair military record, a fine shot, a reasonable horseman and swordsman, a competent swimmer, a moderate runner.

Actually, he wondered, was that all still true? Were his achievements as a modern pentathlete really worth reminiscing about?

Yes, he decided. If nothing else, he was still a fine shot. In the more athletic disciplines he was not bad, perhaps, for his age. And his weight.

He frowned and squirmed on the hard kitchen chair. Under his dressing gown, his swimming trunks were much tighter than he remembered them. But, of course, it wasn’t the swimming trunks that had shrunk. It was his backside that had expanded.

Stephen pulled his dressing gown tighter around his chest and told himself to focus. He had an envelope and a stamp, kindly provided by his friend Beatrice in the village shop.

‘I’ll put it on the tab,’ she’d told him, with a wink.

Yes, everything was about to change. Today was the first day of a new regime – honesty, hard work and physical fitness. It was unfortunate that, for any of this to take effect, he would need to disappear.

He picked up his pen. It was a cheap ballpoint, also from Woolworths. He had sold the valuable fountain pen his father had saved up to buy him as a coming-of-age present.

Taking a good deep breath, sitting up a little straighter, he began. Once he had started, the words came quite easily.

Well, you won’t be surprised to hear that I am writing to you because I am in trouble. I’m sorry I’ve waited until now to be in touch and I don’t doubt you would be correct in thinking badly of me.

I could go on with the apologies but it’s more useful to come to the facts. Bear with me. There’s a lot to tell . . .

In the end, he filled almost all of the eight lined pages. He folded his letter and squeezed the thickish paper into his envelope. Then he crept upstairs and hid the exercise book in the bottom drawer of his wardrobe, taking care not to wake June, thinking to return for it – but not for her – before he left for good.

Back downstairs, he slipped quietly out of the front door, down the drive to a letter box, set in the stone of Church Lodge’s gatepost. He dropped the envelope in the slot.

To his surprise, he could hear the sit-upon mower at the other end of the garden, in the orchard bit. Wasn’t it still pretty early? How long had he hesitated over his letter?

He couldn’t tell, of course. The good-quality wristwatch his mother had saved up to give him, also on his eighteenth birthday, had been sold as well.

Never mind.

It was a couple more minutes before he went back inside, just long enough for a quick chat with someone who needed putting in their place. By the time that was done, the cold dew had soaked into his tired slippers so he popped in through the kitchen door and put them on the back ledge of the Aga. It was warm from the previous evening so they would soon dry out.

He padded out barefoot across the cold damp grass, past the locked outhouse, beneath the bare branches of the winter trees to the narrow gate in the high flint wall and hesitated for a moment, feeling oddly out of breath.

Or was it dizziness brought on by lack of food?

Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, a plunge into a chilly pool – albeit heated just enough to take the edge off – on a February morning?

Stephen looked up at the sky, grey and dispiriting, then stepped through into a private garden, enclosed by more walls and hedges and tall trees. He removed his dressing gown and approached the water. A few wraiths of steam rose from the surface. He prepared to dive. A small smile stretched his generous lips.

Soon Paris, he thought, and Casablanca – sunshine and blue skies forever.

But he was wrong. He was not alone and, in a flurry of argument and bitter recriminations he went too far. Strong arms wrapped around him, thick cloth was wrapped about his head and forced into his mouth, choking him until he was dead.

ONE

It was a cold Wednesday in the last week of February, towards the end of the afternoon. In the West Sussex village of Framlington, a Norman church sat squat and, if truth be told, a little neglected, at the end of a narrow lane. It had no special architectural features, no historical oddities, but it had served sixty generations of local people in their weekly devotions and important life-changing ceremonies. Their births, marriages and deaths – hatch, match and despatch.

Today was despatch.

The service of commemoration was ended, the modest congregation making their way outside in their decent black for mourning, adjusting their scarves and gloves, preparing their words of condolence. The grass between the gravestones was wet, the overnight frost having melted to unhealthy damp.

Maisie Cooper went ahead and took up a position by the lychgate. At five-foot-eight, she had a slim figure, short curly hair, good complexion, large brown eyes, and was dressed in her light-blue travelling clothes because her brother’s death had come as a surprise.

The first mourner approached, a fat man in grey flannel trousers, his eyes full of sympathy. It was the man who ran the pub. As he spoke, his face assumed a quizzical expression. Maisie knew what he wanted to know. She wanted to know herself.

How had it happened?

The publican gave her a sad smile.

‘Everything will be ready when you’re ready, Miss Cooper,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and put out the sandwiches and that.’

Halfway along the path, the two ladies who ran the village shop were talking to anyone who would listen about what a lovely man Stephen had been. They were an unusual couple, not old themselves but dressed in old-fashioned clothes. Could Stephen possibly have been friends with them, one with grey hair pulled back in a ponytail from her narrow face, the other smiley and hearty-looking? What might they have had in common?

Another two mourners approached, the Casemores, an elderly woman with arthritis twisting her fingers and her vague husband. Maisie did her conversational duty with her mind elsewhere. In reality, she was thinking about the uniformed police officer standing in the shadows beneath the yew tree, his helmet under his arm, an expression of bland interest on his face. He looked about her age, thirty-four or thirty-five. He hadn’t come close, hadn’t spoken to her. Even now, he kept his distance, and she only caught glimpses of him between the gravestones, between the people, solitary and watchful.

She trusted him about as much as she trusted the two men in gaberdine mackintoshes, standing a little to one side, watching everyone with undisguised interest. They were representatives of Special Branch and would be pleased, they’d told her before the service, ‘to have a word’.

Maisie had no idea if their interest was protective or suspicious, wary or benign.

The Casemores moved on and there, behind them, was Jon Wilkes, the blacksmith, a heavily built man whose fingernails looked as though they were probably never quite clean. His hands were scarred with scorches and burns and his ‘best suit’ bore marks of the forge – smuts of soot and holes made by sparks. He wore it with the air of a man who wasn’t sure why he had bothered, given he would very soon take it off again. Maisie remembered him from when she was a girl – a much younger man in a heavy leather apron, taking no mischief from the horses or their owners. He had a loud voice, as if he was hard of hearing.

‘I liked your brother,’ said Jon. ‘He took an interest in things but he weren’t inquisitive. I’m sorry he’s left you to clear up after him.’

Maisie was about to say ‘thank you’ or ‘you’re very kind’ or ‘he would be glad to hear you say so’ or one of the other commonplace replies that came jostling into her mind. He stopped her by putting a second calloused hand over hers.

‘Nay, you needn’t say anything back. Keep your peace.’

She smiled gratefully and he walked away. There was a lull. She saw the Special Branch men were discussing something in whispers.

Maisie didn’t think she could cope with their questions right now. She didn’t believe she had to. She wasn’t under arrest, was she? She certainly hadn’t done anything wrong. As far as she knew, Stephen had done nothing wrong. But that was the problem. She couldn’t be entirely sure.

Half a dozen more mourners filed past, then the two shopkeepers were approaching, almost the last.

‘My dear Miss Cooper,’ said the hearty-looking one. ‘My name is Beatrice—’

‘Thank you so much for coming,’ Maisie said.

The woman would have replied had Maisie given her the chance, but she needed solitude and quiet, walking away up the path, between the mossy gravestones, past the yew tree and the uniformed officer and in through the south door of the church.

Inside, the low light of the February sun was casting beautiful patterns through the stained-glass windows. The pale pillars of limestone provided the perfect medium to receive their organic pigments of green and blue and red. Even the darker flagstones beneath her feet were coloured with smudges of the old Christian stories, told by the coloured glass.

There was the Good Samaritan, someone whose generosity Stephen might very well have been happy to take advantage of. Next to it was the wedding at Cana, a ‘holy estate’ that her brother had steadfastly avoided. And turning water into wine? No, despite his easy confidence and charisma, he was much more likely to mess things up and turn the wine into water . . .

Had been more likely. Not any more. He was gone.

Maisie stood for a moment at the bottom of the aisle by the font. This was the church in which she and her brother had been confirmed, where they had sung, quite reluctantly, in the village choir, edging out of the stalls to take communion in company with the rest of the devout.

Up by the altar was the trestle table, covered with a white tablecloth. Maisie approached the display. There was no coffin because the post-mortem wasn’t yet complete. The vicar, Reverend Millns, had led a simple ceremony of commemoration, with the cremation set for three days’ time on Saturday. But there seemed to have been some kind of competition between the neighbours to provide the most impressive show: carnations, chrysanthemums and lilies, some hybridised into unlikely, unnatural colours. Someone had offered half a dozen yellow roses.

Almost smothered by the shop-bought blooms was a posy of wild flowers – no easy task in February. Maisie had been brought up in the country and she recognised daphne, a sweet-smelling flower with pink petals and dark-green waxy leaves. There were also a few cyclamens and snowdrops. The effect was charming and unobtrusive, a note of honest emotion in the midst of ostentatious display.

The wild-flower posy made her think about the coffin she had chosen for Saturday, the wood stained a dark red, in imitation of mahogany. She had asked the undertaker if it were possible to leave the wood untreated.

‘Oh no, Miss Cooper.’

‘Why not?’ she had asked, wondering if it might be for some technical reason.

‘We don’t have any items in untreated wood,’ the undertaker had told her. ‘It wouldn’t look proper. Why, it would seem as if no trouble had been taken. Not to put too fine a point on it, like a pauper’s burial, and he wasn’t a poor man, was he, your brother?’

Maisie had felt the undertaker’s eye appraising her, as he had doubtless appraised many previous customers. She’d found the experience uncomfortable.

‘Fine, the red-stained deal.’

‘Very good,’ he had replied, as if she had passed a test.

The memory faded as Maisie walked up the aisle and rested her fingertips on a corner of the trestle table.

‘Goodbye, Stephen,’ she murmured.

The was a noise from behind her and Maisie withdrew her hand as if scalded.

‘The verger will set the floral tributes aside for Saturday.’

Maisie turned to look. It was Reverend Millns, a bland, uninspiring man with an unfortunate moustache and nicotine stains on his fingers. Did he want her to leave? Was he preparing another service?

‘Thank you.’

‘Come along then,’ he said to someone lurking outside the door.

The verger bustled in and began removing the flowers, taking them away to the vestry. Last of all, the posy of winter flowers fell from the table, landing on the flagstones with a soft sound. They were wrapped what looked like writing paper.

‘Just a minute.’

Maisie darted forward and saved the posy from the verger’s heavy feet. The vicar gave her a doubtful glance and the two men went outside.

But for her, the church was now empty and, for the first time in her life, Maisie realised she was alone. She had no surviving parent, no sibling, no husband and no child, just an aunt who she hadn’t seen since she was tiny. There was nothing and no one to whom she was tethered or beholden.

She sat down in the front pew. She could walk away from the church and churchyard, out into a new life, and who could stop her? She could emigrate to Australia like the ‘ten-pound Poms’, or find a whitewashed villa on the Costa Brava. Wasn’t that what people did these days? Hadn’t she fled her own life once before, packed up her things and started again, not long after her parents’ deaths ten years ago?

But, of course, she wouldn’t do anything like that. At least, not yet. There was probate and solicitors and all the rest of it. There was the local policeman, whoever he was, and Special Branch. And, before all that could be resolved, there was the wake at the local pub, the Fox-in-Flight – more condolences, more sympathy, the inevitable glances of curiosity, the leading questions.

‘Had you heard from him lately, Miss Cooper?’

‘Was he not a strong swimmer?’

‘What do the police want?’

Maisie supposed she would be told, in the fullness of time, how it was that Stephen had managed to drown, if it was a heart attack or a stroke or something. She supposed a post-mortem examination was being carried out, that its results would soon be available.

Maisie raised the posy to her face, smelling the fresh scent of the modest blooms. There was a fragrance of damp soil, too; the paper it was wrapped in a little moist.

Yes, definitely writing paper, she thought. From a pad of Basildon Bond, perhaps? It seemed to have some writing on the inside.

She unwrapped the posy and the flowers stayed bunched together, tied with a piece of string. She held the paper at an angle to catch the light. Written upon it were six lines of poetry in a swirly, flowing hand. Did she recognise them? She thought she did, though she couldn’t remember where from.

The secret things of the grave are there,

Where all but this frame must surely be,

Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear

No longer will live to hear or to see

All that is great and all that is strange

In the boundless realm of unending change.

For a few seconds, Maisie held her breath. The church was very quiet. The low February sun dipped beyond the yew tree and left the stained-glass windows. The light became flat and grey.

She read the lines a second time and then, without thinking what she was doing, she screwed the scrap of paper into a ball inside her fist.

Yes, she wondered, but what were the ‘secret things of the grave’?

TWO

Sergeant Jack Wingard of the Chichester police left the cold churchyard while the bereaved sister was in the church, driving away in his up-to-date white Ford Zephyr, his mind busy.

There was no need for the intervention of the men from Special Branch. Everything was in hand, whatever the bishop might think. Important as it might be to identify the culprit – and Jack had already solved that riddle – the crucial thing was the recovery of the stolen items. It wasn’t just a question of their monetary value, but also their historical importance – in particular, a sumptuously illuminated and illustrated devotional book. Created in the early sixteenth century, it was an ecclesiastical commentary on the ‘seven deadly sins’ and the ‘seven holy virtues’.

Of course, as a policeman, Jack was more often called upon to address sin rather than virtue.

He had never held the book in his hands but he knew it well from its position in the crypt of the cathedral, under glass, resting on a cushion, open at a double-page racily entitled ‘Lust’, gorgeously decorated with ancient inks and gold leaf, illustrating carnal desire.

Which, in a way, brought him on to a separate strand of reflections, this time an issue not exactly related to police business and a question, he would argue, of love, not lust.

Maisie Cooper.

Might he have approached and spoken to her? He wished he had. But at a commemoration service for her disreputable brother?

No, of course not.

He slowed as he arrived in Chichester and waited, his indicator noisily blinking, for the Framlington bus – a single-decker Southdown service in bottle green with cream trim – to pass in the other direction. He took the right turn into Parklands, a suburban street of pleasant bungalows on the edge of town. He parked in front of a low pink house with a well-tended front garden of woody shrubs. His grandmother, with whom he lived, was doing some pruning, wearing thick gloves to protect her from the spines of the pyracantha, the ‘firethorn’. Her white hair made her look older than her sixty-eight years.

He got out, went to meet her and picked up her trug.

‘I think we’re back in charge,’ she said, appraising her work.

‘Good. At least someone is.’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t be sullen. What happened?’

‘Like a fool, I stood under the yew tree and watched.’

‘You didn’t approach her?’

‘How could I? It wouldn’t have been right.’

‘Did she see you there? Did she recognise you?’

Sergeant Jack Wingard frowned and shook his handsome head.

‘She didn’t know me from Adam.’

THREE

Maisie walked quickly back to Church Lodge, the ugly, baggy house where Stephen had lived. It was on the way to the pub in any case.

She crunched up the gravel drive, unlocked the front door, skipped across the chequerboard hallway and along the dark corridor under the sweeping staircase to the kitchen. She put the posy and screwed-up verse of poetry on the kitchen table, wondering once more what the lines might mean. She drank half a pint of water from a dimpled pint pot at the sink, asking herself what had possessed Stephen to choose to live here. Had he liked the frigid rooms, the antiquated plumbing?

She went back out. The pub was only a hundred yards away, past the little cottages where the arthritic Mrs Casemore and her vague husband lived, past the shop owned by the hearty-looking Beatrice and her friend with the grey ponytail, but on the opposite side of the road. Reverend Millns was on his way in, having changed out of his ecclesiastical robes, smoking a crafty cigarette. For want of anything better to say, Maisie asked him if the owners of the big house, Framlington Manor, had been present in the churchyard.

‘He was not in attendance.’

‘Is it still the Fieldhouse family?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Is there a Mrs Fieldhouse?’

‘Yes, his wife, the power behind the throne,’ he replied with a rather acid tone.

‘And she wasn’t there either?’

‘You wouldn’t expect to see her in the graveyard, would you? Very difficult.’

Maisie was about to enquire why it would be ‘very difficult’ when he trod on his cigarette stub, held open the door and she was caught up in another round of sympathy and condolences.

***

Maisie did her best but the reception turned out to be at least as depressing as she had feared. After enduring it for an hour, she felt she couldn’t take it any longer, but also knew she was obliged to be the last to leave.

She took a break, standing to one side, watching Jon Wilkes, the blacksmith. He had a paper plate in his hand and was piling it up with one of everything from the buffet – egg and salad cream sandwiches, cheese-and-pineapple toothpicks, a slice of bacon flan, a piece of McVitie’s ginger cake and an overcooked sausage. Perhaps he felt her gaze upon him, for he looked up and gave her a conspiratorial grin.

‘I prefer to eat on my own,’ he told her, his voice – as usual – unnecessarily loud. ‘Because of my denture. You don’t mind if I take my plate with me?’ He waved his spare hand at six dispiriting feet of cold cuts, sandwiches and cakes. ‘Gerald Gleeson’s done you proud, though.’

I suppose so, thought Maisie.

‘There’s no need to stay,’ she told him.

Jon looked round the room, appraisingly.

‘There’s no one here I would call friends of yours, though you were local. Course I’m an old man now but I remember you as a bonny child who loved the horses. Paris, is it?’

He put a piece of ginger cake in his mouth, an inquisitive look in his eye. Maisie turned the question back at him.

‘Did you see Stephen often?’ she asked.

‘He was friendly enough, passing the time of day. Old Nige Bacon, his neighbour, reckoned to be his bosom pal, but you can’t be friendly with a man who mistreats his own horse, can you? Now then, you should come to the forge and we’ll have a chat.’

Maisie smiled. It would be pleasant to see the inside of the forge after so many years.

‘I think we’re winding down, Jon. The pub will have to set up for the evening soon. Don’t feel you have to stay to the bitter end.’

She watched him move the ginger cake from side to side in his mouth with his tongue, his lips not quite closed. He put a sooty finger in his mouth to unstick it from between his denture.

‘If the mood takes you, you know where to find me,’ he told her. ‘He knew horses. That would be the army and his pentathlon, would it?’

Maisie smiled, unhappily. Here was someone who, in a way, knew Stephen better than she did – at least, knew the person her brother had become, the man she had seldom seen since she abandoned her life in England and fled to Paris, leaving everything behind.

‘Thank you, Jon. Yes, he loved horses,’ she said politely, and moved away.

As she neared the bar, the publican offered her a glass of warm white wine. She refused and watched him serve Jon Wilkes a pint of Harvey’s Sussex stout. The blacksmith had evidently changed his mind about leaving and sat down, taking a good swig, swishing it like mouthwash, a look of contentment in his dark eyes.

What had he meant, that these people weren’t her friends?

Well, she reflected, just that. Her friends were in Paris, where she lived. It was a miracle, she thought, the coincidence of Stephen suddenly being in touch with her just before his untimely death. She hadn’t set foot in England for years.

The idea made her uneasy. There was more to it than that, wasn’t there? Some kind of police investigation, for a start, involving Special Branch. What did they want? She didn’t dare imagine.

But if Stephen’s phone call to her Paris apartment hadn’t been a coincidence, what had it been?

A cry for help?

A warning?

Maisie sighed. She hadn’t even heard his voice. Her flatmate, Sophie, had taken a message. Otherwise, she would have pressed him for more details.

She did another circuit of the Fox-in-Flight. Everyone seemed happy – at least, as happy as one is allowed to be at a wake. They weren’t just there for the free food and drink. She drifted in and out of conversations about, well, the same as every other day: the weather, gossip, politics, holidays, all the rest of it.

The rather frail elderly Casemores with matching white hair – one arthritic, one vague – were gently arguing about whether they needed a new stair carpet. They had moved into the village after she had left. Maisie felt she rather liked them.

‘It is quite worn through,’ Mrs Casemore said to her husband, shaking her head. ‘What will people think?’

‘It will see us out, dear,’ he replied.

‘In any case, it’s really the responsibility of the landlord, wouldn’t you say?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I don’t think that’s a fight we are likely to win.’

A boy of about twelve was eating his sandwiches in front of the fire, his face red. He had that slight air of undernourishment proper to his age. He would fill out in time, Maisie supposed, with muscle or with fat.

An older man with steel-grey hair held flat with Brylcreem advised the boy to move away from the flames. It gave Maisie a jolt to realise that she recognised the man from when she had been twelve herself – Mr Chitty, from the bike shop on North Street in Chichester.

‘Yes, Grandpa,’ the boy begrudgingly replied.

She was about to speak to Mr Chitty when she heard Reverend Millns talking about Stephen. She turned to see him smoothing his unfortunate moustache and hoped he was saying something charitable, out of duty if nothing else. But no, he was discussing the redevelopment of Stephen’s house, Church Lodge, and the possibility of it being divided into flats.

‘The location is exceptional, the grounds extensive. Further construction might be undertaken. There is no need for someone to live in a park, is there?’

The vicar gave a spiteful emphasis to the word ‘park’, as a class warrior might refer with contempt to ‘the opera’. Then he saw her out of the corner of his eye and Maisie stood in silence as he delivered a tepid wave of professional condolences. She let it wash over her, wishing she felt more able to engage with the. . .