Murder in the Manger Page 6

  Carol pulled out from beneath the counter a collection box labelled Slate Green Christmas Kitchen Appeal, the first sign of the festive season in the shop. I reached in my pocket for some loose change and dropped it in the slot.

  “Thank you, Sophie. And you can be the first to sign the cards.”

  She produced two large Christmas cards, one addressed “To our friends at Slate Green Christmas Kitchen” and the other “To the Wendlebury Barrow Community”.

  “This one’s for the guests to show them we’re thinking of them on Christmas Day, and the other’s a paper-saving tradition for the village. Instead of everyone sending each other a Christmas card, we all sign this one, and the names get printed in the January parish magazine.”

  She leaned forward confidentially.

  “The list is always worth reading because it brings you up to date with everyone’s status.”

  I could imagine her checking it to see whether any men were newly single.

  “People use it to announce changes, such as when a couple gets engaged, or a partner moves in, or when they’re expecting a baby in the new year. ‘From Janet and John plus bump’, that sort of thing. Also, you can tell when people’s dogs have died or they’ve got new ones.”

  I extracted a pen from my handbag.

  “Their dogs sign the cards too?”

  “Well, the owners sign for them. One Christmas we were all convinced that this couple who usually kept themselves to themselves had had twins, because her husband had signed for the two of them plus Sharon and Tracy. It turned out those were their new puppies. We worked it out eventually, but only after I’d knitted her two baby blankets. Fortunately she assumed they were for the dogs.”

  “What lucky puppies,” I said, glad Carol hadn’t been embarrassed. I wondered how many garments she’d knitted over the years for other people’s babies, wishing she had some of her own.

  “Still, that wasn’t as unfortunate as when we all thought Mr Brown was announcing a sex-change operation. It looked like he’d signed it as Alexa instead of Alex, so what else was I to think?”

  I shook my head sympathetically, trying not to smile.

  “Turned out it was just young Tommy Crowe up to his tricks, adding extras to the card when I wasn’t looking. I had wondered how I’d managed to miss Prince Charles. And Father Christmas.”

  The baker laughed aloud, making us realise he’d been eavesdropping as he restocked the cake shelf. That made me regret telling Carol that I was going away over Christmas. Now he knew my house would be empty.

  We watched him carry his tray of stale cakes back to his van. The tray was nearly as full as the one he’d delivered. As he returned to give Carol his bill, I bade them both goodbye and headed back to Hector’s House. The baker’s unmarked white van was easy to identify by the stray mince pie wicking up rain in a puddle behind its back doors. There’s nothing to this detection lark once you get attuned to it.

  17 Christmas Past

  “I wouldn’t mind one of these myself,” I said.

  Hector smiled kindly. “You’re never too old for an Advent calendar.” He pulled one off the top of the pile and slipped it into my handbag.

  In the stockroom after the shop had closed, we’d just unpacked the box of Advent calendars that were to be the children’s gifts from our visiting Santa. Hector had ordered a traditional design showing a stable scene beneath a glittery giant star, deeming it a universally acceptable classic. Sticking with a single style also meant that we could give the same thing to all the children, regardless of age or gender. Any left over could be returned to the shop stock for sale in the normal way.

  Unfortunately, the manufacturers packaged the calendars in cheap-looking plastic wrappers, so we were adding value and class by repackaging them. Hector took the calendars out of their plastic bags, slipped them into stiff bright green envelopes, added a festive sticker on the front, and passed them to me. My job was to seal each flap with traditional red sealing wax. We were quite the production line.

  Working together cosily like this provided the perfect opportunity for some idle festive chat, with no customers around to listen in.

  “So who was this bloke that turned Carol against Christmas?” I asked Hector.

  He peeled a cheery reindeer from the sticker sheet, stuck it on the front of his current envelope and set it down on the table, halting our production line to consider.

  “Sophie, the thing is, I’d love to tell you, but there are some things I just can’t share.”

  I slumped back in my chair, setting down the sealing wax on its saucer to catch the drips.

  “Was he already married? Was that the problem?”

  Hector, tight-lipped, shook his head.

  “Can’t you just tell me a little bit, so that I don’t jump to the wrong conclusion?”

  Hector passed me his latest envelope.

  “You? As if!”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Go on, you can tell me. What happened? Did you see her kissing Santa Claus?”

  He laughed. “No, not Santa Claus.” Then his face went more serious. “No, it was someone much less fun. Although he did come for her in the dead of night to whisk her away while the village slept.”

  Hector slit the next plastic package, slid out the calendar, and dropped the cellophane in the bin.

  I frowned. “Why the need for such secrecy?”

  He picked up another envelope.

  “Her beau was so unsuitable that there’s no way her parents would have given the match their blessing. And they would have been right.”

  I sighed. “Poor Carol. She has such rotten taste in men.”

  Hector pointed his scissors at me accusingly. “She did used to fancy me, you know.”

  I grinned. “I rest my case.”

  He sealed the envelope, added a sticker, and passed it across to me.

  “He was even more unsuitable than me, if you can believe that.”

  I held the stick of sealing wax over the candle flame.

  “Not Billy, surely?”

  He glanced up at me uncertainly.

  “No, not Billy. Even worse than Billy.”

  I flipped over the envelope and dropped a few blobs over the flap, pressing the little metal seal with a heart motif firmly down into the scarlet wax.

  “I can’t think of anyone less eligible in the village than Billy.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Hector, sticking a holly wreath down. “In any case, as I said at the outset, you wouldn’t know him anyway.”

  I picked up my newly sealed envelope and blew on the wax to harden it.

  “It seems strange to think of her running away. I always assumed she’d been here for ever, always in the village shop.”

  Hector raised his eyebrows. “Our customers might think the same about me. But there’s no reason to.”

  “But surely her parents didn’t expect that she’d stay with them for ever? She had to have a life and a home of her own.”

  He passed me the next envelope. “Yes, just not with the reprobate she chose.”

  I picked up the sealing wax stick again.

  “And they didn’t even have a home to go to. The chap just picked her up in his van and off they went. That was the last anyone heard from her for ages. No mobile phones in those days, of course, and far fewer security cameras.”

  I stared into the flame, watching the wax liquefy.

  “Gosh, you make them sound like Bonnie and Clyde. They weren’t, were they? They didn’t go off and rob banks”

  Hector laughed. “No, not quite. But I think he ended up in prison for assault – whether on her or someone else, I’m not entirely sure. Remember, I was just a kid when all this happened, so I’m sure my mum spared me some of the details when she told me about it. Anyway, I gather Carol had a bad time till she returned the following Christmas Eve.”

  “And her parents took her back in?”

  Hector nodded. “The Prodigal Daughter. They killed the fatted calf. Well
, the fatted turkey, anyway.”

  I dripped the wax on to the next envelope.

  “Did he ever come back to find her?”

  Hector scrunched up another plastic wrapper. “Nope.”

  “Even though he was from the village?”

  I fixed Hector with a steely look, determined to identify the jilting Clyde. I might not be able to wreak vengeance on Carol’s behalf, but at least if I knew who he was, I couldn’t accidentally be nice to him.

  Suddenly I cried out in pain as the liquefied wax ran down my fingers and congealed in my palm. “Ouch! Oh, ouch! Why is this so much hotter than candle wax? It’s like molten lava. I’ve got a volcano in my hand!”

  I waved my hand aloft, pain searing up my arm. Hector scraped back his chair and rushed round to my side of the table.

  “Quick, run it under the cold tap, for at least ten minutes, until it stops burning.”

  He steered me out of the stockroom and into the tearoom and turned on the tap. By this time, I was crying with pain.

  “Hector, how did you ever think this was a good idea?” I sobbed, as the freezing water darkened my cuffs. “Why couldn’t we just lick the flaps?”

  18 Logging On

  “Sophie, I need to borrow your laptop tomorrow.”

  Not wanting to have an argument about it on my doorstep, I beckoned Damian into my cottage. Nor did I want to lose the heat from my front room, having just spent half an hour struggling to light the wood-burner.

  He perched on the edge of the armchair by the fire. I was glad this didn’t appear to be a lingering social call.

  “What do you want it for?”

  Damian waved a hand dismissively at my perfectly reasonable question.

  “Oh, just stuff.”

  Alarm bells started ringing in my head. “Damian, my laptop is my workhorse. I write on it, and I use it for my teaching records for the children I help with their reading after school. It’s indispensable. If you download anything on it that shouldn’t be seen by primary school children—”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Sophie, why do you always think the worst of me?”

  I said nothing.

  “Anyway, you won’t be using it during the school day, not till your precious after-school pupils arrive. I’ll give it back to you by home-time.”

  Detecting the scent of scorching denim, he pulled his legs back from the fire, now blazing noisily out of control. He donned the oven glove from the hearth and knelt down by the side of the wood-burner.

  “You’re meant to flip the knob at the back and close the holes at the front once you’ve got it going, you know.” He reached his gloved hand round to do just that.

  The flames immediately subsided into a comforting, steady flicker, and I stopped worrying so much about how long it might take the fire brigade in Slate Green to reach Wendlebury.

  “How did you know how to do that?” I asked.

  Damian’s previous grasp of domestic heating had excluded knowing how and when to turn the ‘on’ switch to ‘off’.

  “Carol taught me. She’s got a wood-burner in her sitting room, and it’s glorious. We’re very cosy in the evenings.”

  Not too cosy, I hoped.

  “So how is it going with Carol?”

  Damian smiled distantly. “Fine. She’s a very good cook.”

  I tried not to take that as a veiled insult to my skills in the kitchen.

  “Talks a lot, though.”

  I hoped he was doing her the courtesy of listening.

  “I expect she’s glad to have a conversation that lasts longer than it takes for someone to do their shopping. She’s been living alone for years since her parents died. She must miss them.”

  “She certainly talks a lot about them. Sometimes it feels like they’ve never left.”

  He looked about for a moment, taking in May’s many souvenirs of her foreign travels, still dotted about the place. I wondered how long I’d need to live here before my possessions outnumbered hers.

  “She’s never been married, you know,” said Damian suddenly. “You’d think a woman like her would have wanted to get married.”

  I sighed. “Just wanting doesn’t make it possible. She’s never had the chance. The same goes for babies. She’s the sort who’d be uncomfortable having babies without being married, so she’s missed out on both counts.”

  Damian seemed unconvinced.

  “You have to understand that she chose to spend her prime looking after her invalid mother, in a village where it’s nigh impossible to meet eligible men.”

  He shot me a reproachful look. “You seem to have wasted no time in finding one.”

  We both fell silent for a few minutes, gazing at the fire.

  “Carol told me she used to be in love with your Hector,” he said eventually. “And the last vicar.”

  I pursed my lips. “I wouldn’t call it love. Those were both just crushes, really. Poor Carol always goes for the wrong kind of man. The vicar was awful.”

  I expected him to make a cutting remark about Hector, but the warmth of the fire was making us too lazy to squabble. Besides, it was nearly Christmas.

  “Shall I put another log on for you?” Damian asked, to my surprise.

  He flipped the knob at the back again, then clanked open the little black doors. The fire immediately burned brighter for the influx of oxygen. He selected a chunky log from the dwindling stack in the inglenook and placed it carefully on top of the embers.

  “You see, it’s just at the right stage to add more wood now. Do you want me to bring more logs in for you? I assume you’ve got some in a shed at the back.”

  My instinct was to say, “No thank you, I’m perfectly capable of doing it myself,” then I realised the benefits of his offer. I could stay snug by the fire, keep my hands clean, and avoid any wildlife lurking in the shadows of the woodshed.

  “Thank you, Damian, that would be great.” Maybe some of Carol’s kindness was rubbing off on him.

  While he busied himself in the garden, I picked up “A Christmas Carol” from my desk and read a few more pages. When he returned with a very full basket, he set it down carefully on the tiled hearth so as not to drop sawdust on the rug. Carol must have been housetraining him.

  “Carol reckons log fires are good for building strong arm muscles.” He grinned. “She said in winter her triceratops are always bigger than in summer.”

  “Triceps,” I translated.

  He resumed his perch on the armchair.

  “Oh, by the way, I’ll need to borrow your internet too.”

  I knew his generosity concealed an ulterior motive. “If you’re getting along with Carol so famously, why can’t you use hers? Or her computer, come to that?”

  Damian gazed into the fire, which was ticking over nicely now. “Hers is ancient and slow. Besides, it would feel wrong, like rifling through her handbag.”

  More like he didn’t want her to see what he was doing on it.

  “And you don’t mind delving in my handbag?”

  He flashed me a flirtatious look. “Oh no, that’s not the same thing at all. There’s nothing in your handbag that I haven’t seen before.” I threw a cushion at his head. “So is that a yes, then?”

  I gazed at the full log basket. I am too easily bought. “OK. I’ll give you a spare key and you can let yourself in while I’m at work tomorrow.” I switched to my dog-trainer voice. “But don’t change any of the settings, and don’t go on sites that cost money.”

  He leapt up from his chair, mission accomplished. “Thanks, Sophie, you’re a pal. I’ll be round about lunchtime, and I’ll drop your laptop up to you at the bookshop as soon as I’m done with it, so that you’ve got it ready for your after-school coaching sessions.”

  “OK, but this is just the once, all right?” I didn’t want these unsolicited evening calls to become a habit. At least, not while I had a full log basket.

  I spent the rest of the evening password-protecting all the files on my laptop.

>   19 Keyed Up

  I was glad Hector was in the stockroom when Damian came bounding into the shop the next afternoon, clutching my laptop.

  “Thanks for everything, Sophie.”

  I put down the publisher’s catalogue that I’d been browsing through.

  “You’re welcome. Did you get what you wanted?” I hoped my casual tone might fool him into inadvertently revealing exactly what that was. But he just nodded and looked smug.

  “And don’t worry, I didn’t run your bill up or change your precious settings.” He looked at his watch. “Right, I’d best get going, then. I usually take a cup of tea down to the shop for Carol about now.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “She’ll miss you when you’ve gone.”

  I hoped he didn’t take that to mean that I would miss him too. As he turned to go, he stopped in the doorway to say over his shoulder, “By the way, I’ve left a little surprise at your house as a thank you.”

  And with that he slammed the door too hard and was gone.

  Silent as a ghost – well, not Marley’s ghost, obviously – Hector emerged from the stockroom, looking irritated. I didn’t want him to misconstrue our conversation.

  “He’s only been using my laptop.”

  “In your house?”

  “He needed the wifi.”

  Hector pointed to the shop’s free wifi code on the chalkboard by the door. “Why didn’t he use Carol’s? Or ours? Or the pub’s?”

  I wished I’d thought of that. “Oh. OK. I’ll tell him for next time. But he was only using it while I was out.”

  “So he has a key to your cottage, does he? That’s more than I’ve got.”

  “Only for today.”

  I thought it better not to tell him that I’d forgotten to ask for it back.

  As I strode home after work, I couldn’t help but wonder what Damian had been up to. Was his request to use my wifi just a ruse to gain access to my cottage while I was out? And what was the surprise he had in store for me?

  I was mightily relieved not to find him naked on the hearth rug. Instead, the only evidence of his presence was a trail of muddy footprints to and from the kitchen.