A Simple Country Mystery

  A Simple Country Mystery

  Blythe Baker

  Contents

  Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  Death comes unexpectedly ...

  With the suspicious death of a young woman in the village, Helen Lightholder finds herself once again delving into the menacing shadows that lurk beneath the pleasant surface of sunny Bookminster. Her search for suspects and motives leads her to a prisoner of war camp on the outskirts of the village, but could the real danger lie even closer to home?

  Meanwhile, two very different men vie for Helen’s heart, but neither can take the place of the husband she lost. As a series of break-ins leave her feeling unsafe in her home and shop, Helen has to decide whether or not to continue in the “quiet” life she has found in the country.

  1

  It was dark. So dark that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or shut. If I blinked, it didn’t seem to matter.

  A chill hung in the air, as if I’d been thrust inside an icebox, and it was stagnant as I breathed in deeply through my nostrils. When I reached out with my hands, I expected my fingertips to graze against a frozen metal wall, yet found nothing more than the frigid, open air.

  Where am I?

  A voice somewhere broke the silence, followed by a tired sounding engine. I turned my head in the direction of the noise, and found a narrow beam of light peeking through what appeared to be a crack in a doorway.

  I inched toward it, my heart hammering in my chest. My footsteps made no sound, and as I approached the light streaming in, I heard the voice again.

  “This blasted tractor…” said a man in a ragged tone. “I’ll never get it to work now. That foolish girl lost me the best mechanic in town.”

  I blinked, leaning closer to the crack.

  “We should have left when we had the chance. Now I’ll be carted off to prison, and the harvest will all go to waste, anyway.”

  I found that there was a garage on the other side, though it was far larger than any garage I had ever seen, more like a hangar. A tractor, entirely rusted through, sat outside the large door, backdropped by swaying, golden wheat just ready to be picked.

  The man I’d heard stood with his back to me, surveying the tractor, his hands planted firmly on his hips. A hunting rifle hung across his back, the barrel smoking slightly.

  My stomach dropped as I recognized him.

  Mr. Cooke?

  As if I’d called him by name, the ornery, sickly looking man glanced over his shoulder, his eyes falling directly on the narrow crack of the door.

  “You!” he shouted, his brow furrowing as he turned around. “This is all your fault! If only you’d let well enough alone, I would still be – ”

  His voice, along with the narrow crack in the doorway, completely faded as I staggered backward.

  I gasped, spinning around once again, plunged back into complete darkness.

  Mr. Cooke was in prison, I reassured myself. For killing the Polish refugee that wandered into Brookminster looking for his wife…

  For a moment, all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing, which seemed to echo in the blackness.

  “…in business when I already am?” came another voice, distant once again, just barely audible through the dark. “…to think that I wouldn’t retaliate in some…”

  I took a hesitant step toward the voice. Once again, my footsteps made no sound.

  “…thought for certain that I’d won, finally. There was no one to stand in my…”

  I squinted through the shadows, trying to find another crack of light, yet this time, I found nothing.

  Footsteps suddenly sounded over my head, directly above me, the sharp clack of heels against a polished wood floor.

  “Yes, yes, I hear you,” said the voice, much clearer now. I could tell it belonged to a woman…and a woman who was familiar to me. “I have them ready for you. All you need is to come and retrieve them.”

  The woman began to pace once again, her footfalls like fingertips drumming on a glass table.

  “But Mrs. Warren, you were the one who was so eager to have more rationing coupons,” the woman’s voice said, and I could easily imagine a sly, curling smile on her face. “You said yourself that there was no way a woman should have to live off such stingy clothing rations as what the government has forced on us, yes?”

  I frowned as I recognized the snickering tone.

  It was Mrs. Martin, the woman who owned the clothing store on the other side of town…and the person who murdered my Aunt Vivian.

  “Very good, dear. They are here when you’re ready to pick them up. The price? Oh, come now, dear, you must know these won’t come cheap. Cloth is scarce, as are those pretty shoes you were eyeing when you were in here last Tuesday.”

  Manipulative and deceiving…just like I remembered her being.

  Wait just a moment…I thought. Mrs. Martin…she isn’t alive anymore. Sidney Mason – he shot her when she was trying to come after me.

  Once again, it was as if I had spoken my thoughts aloud.

  “Who’s there?” Mrs. Martin snapped. “Vivian, if that’s you, I swear I’ll – ”

  But her voice and her hammering footsteps were gone like a mist in the morning sun…and it was silent once again.

  What in the world is happening? I asked, pressing my hands against my head. Why are these people –

  But the thought died away in my mind as I found myself standing in a gloomy office. The sound of car horns honking greeted me, as well as the warm glow of street lamps spilling in through a long row of windows, revealing a tightly packed line of buildings across the street, bathed in the shadow of night.

  I was in London.

  Someone cleared his throat, drawing my attention back into the room.

  Two men were hovering over a desk. The balding man who stood on one side had a cigar clamped between his teeth, the smoke billowing into the air above his head. The other…was my late husband Roger.

  “Are you certain there is no other way?” asked the man with the cigar, skillfully keeping the cigar in his mouth while speaking around it.

  “I’m certain,” said Roger, and the sound of his voice made my heart catch in my throat.

  All I could do was stare at him. How long had it been since I’d seen his face? Seven months now? Almost eight?

  I’d almost forgotten his profile, his sharp jawline, strong chin, and high cheekbones. His eyes, a deep blue, regarded the man standing across from him with mingled respect and worry.

  I took a step forward, longing to run to him, but I found I could not move.

  “You know what this will mean, don’t you?” the man asked, regret clear in his gaze.

  Roger’s jaw became tight, and he swallowed hard. “I do,” he said. “But there’s no other way.”

  No other way? I thought. What does he mean by that?

  I reached out toward him, opening my mouth to shout out his name…but as soon as it left my lips, there was a sharp crack of thunder and a flash of bright lightning, so bright that I had to flinch away from the windows.

  When I opened my eyes a moment later, blinking again in the sudden darkness, both Roger and the man with the cigar were gone.

  My heart began to race, hammering against my ribcage like a ca
ged bird.

  Roger! I called with my mind. Roger, where are you?

  I turned and ran from the room, out into a long, seemingly endless hallway lined with doors along one wall and windows looking out onto the streets of London on the other. I started down it, calling out to Roger.

  “Roger!” I shouted, running, yet never seeming to get any closer to the other end of the hall. “Roger, where are you?”

  A man suddenly appeared out of one of the doorways, dressed in a clean cut military uniform.

  I staggered to a stop in front of him. “Sir, please…have you seen my husband? Roger?”

  As I stared up at the man, I realized that he had no face; he was entirely hidden in shadow.

  Fear gripped my heart, and I continued down the hall.

  I ran into a few others like the military man, all of whom had no faces, and no voices.

  Infuriated that no one would help me, or even seemed to want to try, I kept running.

  Just as I thought I might never reach the end, I slammed into a wooden door, the frosted glass with the word Investigator etched across its surface trembling slightly.

  I pushed open the door and found Roger standing in the room, staring at the opposite wall. His hands hung at his side, as if in defeat.

  “Roger?” I called, my voice loud and strong.

  Roger’s back stiffened, and slowly, ever so slowly, he began to turn around.

  My heart beat faster, eagerly waiting, longing to see him look at me once again, after so long.

  But just before he turned fully, the sound of explosions in the distance, followed by flashes of light, told me I was too late.

  The bombs were falling…and he was gone.

  I gasped for breath, as if I’d been held under water for several minutes.

  Sitting straight up, I grabbed at my heart and my head. I checked my legs, and accounted for both of my arms, and each finger and toe.

  It took the moment of blind panic to pass before I realized that I was alone, in my bedroom…having woken from a terrible nightmare.

  I shuddered, wrapping my arms tightly around myself in the dark.

  It was just a dream, I told myself. Nothing more than a nightmare.

  I sat in the silence, the blood rushing through my ears for a moment or two. It was difficult to calm down as the darkness continued to press itself against me.

  I turned on the light beside my bed, and my heart skipped. I was half expecting to see Mr. Cooke standing in the corner with his rifle pointed at me, or to see the body of Mrs. Martin splayed out with a fresh wound in her chest.

  Neither was there. I really was alone.

  Well, I’m certainly not getting back to sleep after all that…I thought.

  I drew myself out of bed, sliding my feet into my slippers. In the washroom, splashing my face with warm water helped to thaw my chilled fingertips.

  I glanced at the clock on my side table as I returned to the bedroom, and saw it was nearly five in the morning.

  With a heavy sigh, I headed out toward the living areas.

  I found a seat on the sofa after making a hot cup of tea, and sat down, my legs curled up underneath me as I tried as best I could to fight the images in my mind. It was deeply troubling that the hardest things I’d experienced in the last few months were the memories that were following me so closely, plaguing me even in my dreams where I hoped to find relief from the fears.

  Mr. Cooke was behind bars now. Sam Graves, the local police inspector, had informed me of this himself. And Mrs. Martin was long dead, having been killed in my presence.

  But Roger…

  Instead of fighting that part of the dream, I reflected on it for some time. As the minutes ticked by, and the sun began to rise outside the window, I thought of Roger’s face, of the secrets I never learned the answers to, and the infuriating way that no one seemed to want to help.

  For a moment, it was as if I’d just received the call about his passing. My chest was heavy, as if my heart had physically broken. And now just as then, I had no answers. There was no one I could call, no one who would respond to my letters. I wasn’t even sure if anyone who had been with him had survived the blast. It was possible there was no one left alive who would ever know exactly what had happened to him in the first place.

  My desire for answers had never left me, but it surprised me just how strongly I still felt that way.

  The dream itself had felt so real, even though as I thought through it, I could easily see where it had been nothing more than a product of my own imagination. It left me feeling raw, and rather exposed.

  Was that at all like what Roger was doing when he died? I wondered, the warmth from my teacup seeping into my cold, numb fingers. Was he planning? Was he awake? Was he happy?

  Those were dangerous questions to ask, I knew. But I couldn’t help it. Especially not after that sort of nightmare.

  As I heard my alarm sound in the bedroom, I realized it was time to put aside the dream and begin my day. I wasn’t reluctant to do so; in fact, I was relieved at the idea of doing something entirely mundane and normal. I longed for simplicity, for the physical reminders that my dream was not real, and that the waking world was.

  I realized, though, that trying to distance myself from Roger’s memory was not serving me well. In fact, the intentional attempt to smother those memories was only making the dreams I had worse and worse, for this was not the first nightmare I’d endured in the last few weeks. It just seemed to be one of the many.

  To resolve that, I made my way up into the attic, making a beeline straight for the box that I’d so sadly put away. Roger’s memory didn’t deserve to be forgotten. If it was going to take me more time to heal than I had thought, then so be it.

  I pulled out a picture frame that I’d hung on the wall in the room in my parents’ home when he and I were living apart. We’d had it taken on our honeymoon in Italy before the war broke out. The glass inside the frame was still intact, thankfully. I’d half expected to find it shattered in my careless attempt to hide it from myself.

  I also found a number of Roger’s letters, all tucked away inside the box I’d purchased specifically for them, with a pretty rose carved into the top, and a little, gold lock on the front. Perhaps a bit juvenile, but I’d loved how romantic and simple it was.

  I carried the things down the stairs as gently as I would have carried a sleeping child, affectionately holding them against my chest.

  I set the photograph down on the mantle above the fireplace, where I could see it from everywhere in the room, and then carried the box of letters into the bedroom, where I slipped them inside the drawer of my side table until I could find a better place for them to live. As I didn’t have many of Roger’s earthly possessions, I wanted to eventually find a way to display these letters and honor him in a tasteful way.

  As I dressed and ate a small breakfast, I found myself much happier now that Roger’s things had been taken out of that box. It was as if I’d freed myself of the guilt of hiding his belongings away, like I’d done something wrong in the first place.

  It was just before seven when I made my way down the stairs to the haberdashery shop that had once belonged to my aunt. Everything was just as I’d left it the day before, ready and waiting for the customers who would inevitably come in, looking for their orders or for new ways to mend their clothing. I’d had a great deal of success at selling some clothing I’d mended myself, with new collars, buttons, and hems.

  But before I was to start my day, I had made plans to enjoy some tea and biscuits with my dear friend, Irene Driscoll.

  As I stepped outside into the cool, morning mist, I took a deep breath. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and the wet earth; it must have rained in the night. The flowers in my front garden were in full bloom, giving the walk a friendly, inviting feel.

  It wasn’t long before I saw Irene making her way up High Street toward my little cottage, wearing a lovely pink parka with large, black buttons.

 
She lifted her hand in a wave as she approached, and I did the same in return.

  “Good morning,” I said, smiling at her. The nightmare was finally starting to lose its grip on my heart.

  “Well, good morning,” Irene said, a grin spreading across her pretty, round face. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a braid that circled her head like a crown. “I think we might be in for some more rain this morning. I’m certain the teahouse will be quite busy today.”

  “This summer has been good for business, hasn’t it?” I asked, opening the front gate for her.

  A movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I looked up to see Sidney Mason, the handsome man who lived next door, coming toward us.

  “Good morning to you, sir,” I said, waving at him.

  As he lifted his ginger head, though, my heart sank.

  Something was wrong.

  “Hello, ladies,” he said in his Scottish accent, coming to a stop beside us. He adjusted the dark fedora he wore, worry written all over his handsome, freckled face.

  “Whatever is the matter, Mr. Mason?” Irene asked from beside me. “You look positively dreadful this morning.”

  He heaved a deep sigh, scratching the back of his neck. “I certainly wish I’d woken up to better news,” he said. “Have either of you read the paper yet?”

  Irene and I glanced at one another. “No, not yet,” I said.

  “Neither have I,” Irene said. “Nathanial always fetches it on his way out in the mornings.”

  “What happened?” I asked, my heart racing. “Is it something to do with the war?”

  He shook his head. “No, not this time…”

  He looked at me, his piercing gaze cutting right through me.

  “There was another murder in town,” he said. “Just two days ago.”