Feted to Die: An Inspector Constable Murder Mystery (12 page)

Amelia drew herself up slightly. “I do hope you’re not implying that I would eavesdrop on my customers’ conversations, sergeant.”

“Not at all, madam,” replied Copper calmly. “But sometimes it’s impossible not to hear what people are saying, especially if you’re close to them.”

“That’s true, sergeant,” said Amelia, mollified. “Of course, I was to and fro to the table, and serving other customers, so I didn’t hear a great deal of what went on, but I do know that it was about her books – you know, the Carrie Otter series.”

“Yes,” sighed Andy Constable. “We’ve already had a couple of conversations about young Miss Otter’s adventures – haven’t we, sergeant?”

“Oh, are you a Carrie Otter fan as well, sergeant?” beamed Amelia. “I certainly am. I’ve read them all – they’re very good, aren’t they? Well, I think so, but then, of course, I’m no intellectual – not like Horace. Or so he thought, with his book reviews in the Sunday paper. I’m not at all sure Horace would have agreed with me – not after what he said in his column about the last one.” She sniffed.

“And can you remember what he did say, Miss Cook?” enquired the inspector.

“I can, inspector, because I remember reading the write-up in the paper and getting quite hot under the collar. He had the cheek to call it ‘Carrie Otter and the Half-Baked Plot’, he said that anyone with half a brain would enjoy the story because they wouldn’t need the other half, and he described the whole book as … now, what did he call it? Oh yes – ‘A load of old warlocks’!” Sergeant Copper suddenly seemed highly engrossed in the contents of his notebook, and emitted a swiftly-suppressed choking sound.

“But that was Horace Cope all over,” continued Amelia. “He fancied himself very much above the Common Man. I call it most unnecessary and most unkind, and I believe Helen was quite upset about it at the time. But obviously she must have forgiven him, because there they were having coffee together. It just goes to show you never can tell, doesn’t it?”

Andy Constable made a further effort to steer Amelia’s ramblings back to the investigation. “So what did you happen to hear of their conversation last week?”

“Well, I think Helen was trying to persuade Horace to be a bit nicer about her next book. She was saying how exciting it was all going to be, and she was really being very enthusiastic and talking about how much her fans were looking forward to it. In fact, she asked him if he would like a copy to look at as a special favour, and he just waved the idea away. ‘No need, my dear, no need,’ he said, and Helen sounded a bit taken aback and said ‘Oh. Very well’. I thought Horace sounded very patronising, but I don’t think Helen noticed. I suppose she was trying to talk him around to how most people feel about her books.”

“And how did Mr. Cope respond to her efforts?”

“I didn’t quite hear it all, because I was making a cappuccino for someone, and that coffee machine does make such a noise, which is not at all in keeping with the sort of atmosphere I like to cultivate at the Copper Kettle, but of course these days some of the modern customers seem to have developed quite a taste for these coffees with continental names – it’s all these foreign holidays, you see – so I have to be able to do those as well as a nice traditional filter coffee. So … now, where was I?”

“You were telling us what Mr. Cope said,” answered Constable with a patient smile which was beginning to grow rather fixed.

“Ah, yes. Well, that’s the annoying thing. I’m sure it must have been something important, because of the way Helen reacted, but I’m not sure I heard him properly because the coffee machine chose that moment to make one of its horrid spluttering sounds. Horace said something about somebody’s mother – no, ‘getting mothered’, that was it.”

“‘Mothered?’ Who was getting mothered? And who by?”

“No, wait a minute – that’s not right, but it was something like that.” Amelia gazed at the ceiling and flipped her fingers in frustration. “Oh, it’s so irritating when you can’t remember, isn’t it, inspector?”

“Quite so, madam,” replied Constable, stifling a sigh.

Amelia beamed brightly. “Oh, don’t you worry, inspector,” she trilled. “It’ll come to me. These things always do. Usually when I’m in the middle of getting something out of the oven, and I can’t do anything about them.”

“Well, do let us know if you remember.”

“I will, inspector, never fear. Anyway, whatever it was, Helen looked quite shocked and asked what on earth he meant.”

“And what do you think he meant?” asked Copper.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, sergeant,” replied Amelia with a tone of baffled triumph. “I didn’t hear it properly, did I? But then he went on to say that he had friends in the printing business, and that he was sure that she knew all about publishers’ advances, if she knew what he meant.”

“And did he … she?” asked Copper, who by this time was becoming hopelessly confused by Amelia’s tangled syntax.

“Well, obviously she did, because she glared at Horace and said ‘Don’t you dare!’, and then he said ‘It’s all a question of whether it’s worth more to you than it is to me. Your readers or mine?’.”

“And what was Miss Highwater’s response to that, Miss Cook?” enquired the inspector, taking pity on his colleague, who was scribbling frantically.

“Nothing, inspector. She just picked up her bag, got to her feet without another word, and left in a great hurry. Never even said goodbye to me, which is most unlike Helen. And, she didn’t even touch her Viennese Fancy, and I’ve never known that to happen before.”

Inspector Constable exchanged glances with Sergeant Copper. “It sounds, Miss Cook, as if the Copper Kettle is the place to come if one wants to witness a little excitement in Dammett Worthy,” he remarked. “It seems you had quite an eventful morning.”

Amelia Cook raised an eyebrow at the detective. “Now you’re making fun of me, inspector,” she said, “but as it happens, you haven’t heard the full story.”

“So there’s more?”

“Indeed, there is, inspector, if the sergeant has his notebook quite ready.” Amelia settled herself back in her chair, her earlier urgency seemingly forgotten, along with her disinclination to gossip.

“Go on.”

Amelia drew a deep breath. “Well, I don’t suppose it could have been more than a minute or two after Helen left, because Horace was still sitting there looking pleased with himself, and Laura Biding came in. So Horace looked up, smiled at her with that oily smile of his when he wanted something, and said ‘Come and sit with me, Laura. Let me treat you to a coffee. I’ve got a little business proposition to put to you.’ There was just something in his tone – I thought to myself, ‘I don’t like the sound of that’.”

“And … er … did you by any chance …?”

“Oh sergeant, don’t be silly – of course I listened in. Laura’s a dear girl, and for all that the family has known Horace for years and Laura has always called him ‘Uncle’, I still didn’t like Horace’s tone.”

“And what did this ‘business proposition’ turn out to be?” asked the inspector.

“Well, that’s the thing, inspector. I’m still not quite sure. Horace was so … I suppose ‘oblique’ is the word. He said something about Laura coming up to see him in his new flat in London, and she said she didn’t know if she could, and then he said he’d got a wonderful collection of photographs, and they could go through them together and see if she thought any of them were particularly interesting.”

“Photographs? What sort of photographs?”

“He didn’t say, inspector. Of course, Laura has done some modelling work for the smart magazines, so I expect it could have been something to do with that. Anyway, he just said that some of the pictures were ‘quite arresting’.” Amelia sounded perplexed. “I thought it seemed a funny thing to say when he said it, but then of course I was off to the kitchen again to toast some teacakes, and then it went clean out of my mind.”

“You didn’t find any photographs at Mr. Cope’s cottage, did you, Copper?” enquired Constable.

“Not a thing, sir,” replied Copper. “Mind you, he might have had something on that computer of his – I didn’t get a chance to have a real go at that. And then there was the safe – we might find something in there. If we knew what we were looking for.”

“Yes, sergeant. Well, we’ll just have to wait until we’ve got the search warrant, won’t we,” said Constable briskly. “So did Mr. Cope not explain about these photographs?”

“Not that I heard, inspector.”

“And what about Miss Biding? How did she react to these remarks of Mr. Cope’s?”

Amelia leaned forward and dropped her voice. “Well, that’s the thing, inspector. She didn’t say anything at all. Of course, I couldn’t see her face, because she was sitting with her back to me facing the window, but I got the impression that she just sort of froze. Anyway, by the time I came back into the tearoom, Horace was saying something about her using his flat for business, and I remember he said ‘it was a good game, but he knew a better one’. He was smiling all over that horrid shiny face of his as if it was the greatest joke, but I must say that Laura didn’t seem to find it very funny.”

“No?”

“Not at all, inspector. Ah, but then she did speak up. She said something about Lady Lawdown having the influence to get him stopped, and Horace just scoffed. He said he knew all about that, and that he had the proof, and it wasn’t as if she was that much of a lady anyway. Honestly, that made my blood boil. When I think of how much Lady Lawdown does for this village and all her work as a magistrate and everything, and of how nice she’s been to Horace over the years, it was just so two-faced of him to say that. I don’t know why Laura didn’t just slap his face. Both of them!”

“It certainly doesn’t sound like the friendliest of comments,” remarked Constable.

“It made me quite hot under the collar, inspector,” said Amelia, her feathers obviously thoroughly ruffled at the mere memory. “But of course I couldn’t say anything because they would have known I was listening to a private conversation, and that would never do, would it?”

“Not at all, madam. So what happened after that?”

“Well … nothing, I’m afraid.” Amelia seem conscious of a slight anticlimax. “Horace just got up, came up to the counter and paid me in the most patronising way, and slithered out, leaving Laura just sitting there gazing out of the window. I went over to collect the empty cups and she didn’t even seem to notice I was there, and I didn’t like to say anything, and then she left a few minutes afterwards.”

“And that was the last time you saw him?” asked Copper, turning over yet another page of his rapidly-filling notebook.

“Yes. Oh! No! I tell a lie!”

“Well, now, you wouldn’t want to lie to the police, would you, madam?”

“Of course not, sergeant. But that wasn’t the last time I saw Horace. Of course, I don’t know whether it matters …”

“You never know when this information is going to be helpful, madam,” coaxed Copper. “So when was it then?”

“It was the other day … it must have been Tuesday. I was on my way to the church, because I do the flowers every second Tuesday and every third Friday, and it was my turn, although I’m sure that if I didn’t mark it on the calendar I’d never be there at the right time. All of us in the Flower Society do our bit to help out, and the vicar is such a dear sweet man, and it must have come as an awful shock to him, finding Horace the way he did, but you know what they say, ‘In the midst of life, we are in death’, although I’m sure Mr. Pugh didn’t expect to have to take the Bible quite so literally … or is it the Book of Common Prayer …?” Amelia tailed off and looked expectantly at the detectives. “I don’t suppose you remember which, do you?”

Inspector Constable shook himself slightly. “Be that as it may, Miss Cook, I think you were going to tell us when you saw Mr. Cope.”

“Oh. Yes. Silly me. Well, it was then. Horace was walking up the lane from the church just as I arrived. I didn’t speak to him, though.”

“So that was all, was it?” The inspector was disappointed.

“Yes, I’m afraid so, inspector. I did the flowers while the bell-ringing practice was going on, and I hadn’t quite finished when it ended, and I came past the vestry door, and Lady Lawdown was in there looking through some papers.”

“With anyone else?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone, but then, most of the bell-ringers go out of the small side door at the bottom of the tower, so I wouldn’t normally see them. I expect the vicar was about somewhere, because I’d seen him earlier on, but I hadn’t really been paying much attention because I was concentrating on making the flowers nice.”

“So you didn’t actually speak to anyone at all?”

“Well, only to say ‘Evening, Your Ladyship!’ Poor Sandra, I must have taken her quite by surprise, because she jumped like a startled ferret, bundled something into her handbag, and was off like a shot! It was quite funny, really. So then I just topped up the water in all the vases and came home, by which time of course Horace was long gone. So I really do think that’s all I can tell you.”

Inspector Constable let out a long breath. “We’re very grateful, madam. I’m sure we shall find the copious notes which my sergeant has taken most enlightening.” He raised his eyebrows invitingly at Dave Copper.

“Absolutely, sir. I’m sure I’ve got everything.”

“Then we’ll leave you to get on with it, Miss Cook. Thank you once again. Come along, Copper.”