A Murder to Die For Read online

  At the other end of the High Street the village’s only pub, the curiously named Happy Onion, was also preparing for the busy weekend ahead. The saloon bar had been decorated with Agnes Crabbe memorabilia including framed book covers, a school report, prints of the only known photographs of her, a portrait of her tragic young husband, Daniel, in his Herewardshire Rifles regimental uniform, and several of the letters that had passed between him and his young bride before his death in the Great War. There were also autographed monochrome glossies of Helen Greeley, the glamorous star of The Miss Cutter Mysteries TV series and, standing incongruously next to the Gents, a shop mannequin wearing one of her costumes from the show: a pleated ‘flapper’ dress and matching cloche hat, and the trademark double string of pearls with which Miss Cutter daringly lassoed guns, whipped villains across the face or scattered across the floor to make her enemies slip and tumble. Throughout the festival, the pub would be a bustling hive of activity but tonight it was almost empty, a fact that landlord Vic Sallow ascribed not to the rain but to the behaviour of one of his regulars. Savidge was having one of his bad days.

  ‘Historical accuracy, my arse,’ he growled. ‘You don’t see them taking down the TV aerials, do you? And no one says we should remove all the burglar alarms or paint out the yellow lines on the road. Oh no. Not if it inconveniences the cosy middle classes.’ Savidge was a well-built man in his late forties, with a receding hairline of dark curly hair turning grey at the temples. His unshaven cheeks were ruddy with anger. ‘As usual, it’s people like me who get victimised. Working-class people with businesses to run who need our vehicles to earn a bloody living. And another thi—’

  ‘Be sensible, man,’ said Vic, deliberately cutting him off. He had known Savidge since he was a boy, and experience had shown that the best way to tackle one of his venomous lectures was to prevent him from getting a word in. ‘There’s only so much the festival organisers can do for authenticity. I mean, they can’t stop jets flying overhead or people using their mobiles, can they?’

  ‘If you can ever get a bloody signal,’ grumbled Savidge. ‘It’s like a black hole around these parts.’

  ‘But they can clear the High Street of vehicles,’ continued Vic, ignoring him. ‘And, anyway, it’s not like they’ve sprung this on you, is it? They pedestrianise it every year.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it right. My burger van has had that pitch—’

  ‘And besides, moving your van is more about health and safety than historical accuracy.’

  ‘I didn’t think his burgers were that bad, Vic,’ said Frank Shunter, the only other person who had braved the Saloon Bar on festival’s eve.

  ‘Oh, ha ha,’ said Savidge humourlessly, breaking off from a deep swig of his beer. The froth on his upper lip gave the impression that he was foaming at the mouth. ‘Just what the world needs, a copper who thinks he’s funny.’

  ‘Ex-copper,’ corrected Shunter, smiling at Savidge’s irritation. During his thirty-year career with the Met in London, he’d been insulted and screamed at more times than he could remember and had grown a skin as thick and impenetrable as an armadillo’s. Savidge’s regular rants didn’t bother him and he’d learned to tune them out. However, the burger man was having a particularly vociferous evening and even the beer, which would normally help to bolster Shunter’s stoicism, was ineffectual. He’d therefore resorted to attack as a form of defence by throwing the occasional barbed remark into the conversation and watching as Savidge’s face got redder and redder. It was proving to be tremendously satisfying. He finished the dregs of his pint, wiped his neatly clipped grey moustache on the back of his hand and returned to reading his book.

  ‘You know what it’s like over Agnes Crabbe weekend,’ continued Vic. ‘The High Street will be heaving with Millies and someone would be knocked down for sure if we allowed vehicles through. And it’s only for one weekend a year.’

  ‘Yeah, the busiest weekend,’ said Savidge. ‘That’s my point. I’ll be the only mug not making any money. It’s all right for you. The Onion is on the High Street but I have to—’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Vic. ‘You’ve got a great pitch over on the village green. You did all right there last year. I saw the queues.’

  ‘There may have been queues but they didn’t bloody buy anything,’ moaned Savidge. ‘All they did was complain. Is the beef organic? Is the coffee Fairtrade? They need shooting, the lot of them.’

  ‘Probably not the best time to commit a homicide,’ said Shunter. ‘What with eight hundred murder-mystery fans descending on the village. You’d be caught for sure.’

  ‘It would be worth it,’ said Savidge.

  ‘Or you could extend your range of products?’ suggested Vic.

  ‘It might mean less bloodshed,’ added Shunter.

  ‘Poxy festival,’ snapped Savidge. He sank into a desultory silence and stared at his hands, clenched into fists on the bar.

  Shunter shook his head in despair. He was only six years older than the burger van man but their outlooks on life were polar opposites. While Shunter had seen the very worst of humanity, he remained resolutely optimistic about life and the future. He knew that there were far more good people than bad, and that more acts of kindness were done every day than acts of evil or wickedness; they just didn’t get reported in the increasingly sensationalist and fear-mongering tabloids. Savidge, meanwhile, believed everything he read and, as far as he was concerned, the world was going to hell in a handcart. He could find the negative in any situation and seemed to take perverse pleasure in believing that he was either cursed or being deliberately put upon all of the time. His almost constant frown had carved deep crevasses into his forehead.

  ‘Another pint, gents?’ said Vic, attempting to lighten the mood. ‘Something different perhaps? The Cockering Brewery has put on a special edition ale for the festival called To Die For. I can give you an advance preview if you like. On the house.’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Shunter.

  ‘Savidge? One for the road?’

  ‘Do you want to get me nicked for drink driving?’ said Savidge, pointedly. ‘I’ve had two pints already and, as you well know, I have to move my van off the High Street because it’s a sodding anachronism. It’s like I said, it’s us traders who—’

  ‘G’night then,’ said Vic firmly. Savidge glowered at him but took the hint. Vic Sallow had the curious build of a man who was simultaneously both short and large, like a fridge with limbs. His shoulders bulged and he didn’t seem to have a neck. There was a lot of strength contained within his oddly shaped body. You didn’t need a gym when you spent your day moving full firkins about. Savidge drained his glass, clonked it heavily on the bar and stormed out of the pub.

  ‘Drive safely,’ said Shunter, smiling.

  ‘Thank Christ for that. That man is kryptonite for publicans,’ said Vic, puffing out his cheeks. ‘I should bar him.’

  ‘He did have a bee in his bonnet tonight, didn’t he?’

  ‘Swarms, more like. He drives all my customers away. I reckon he needs stronger medication.’

  ‘Ah, he’s all bluster.’

  ‘He’s getting worse, I swear,’ said Vic. ‘One of these days he’ll lose it completely, you wait and see.’

  ‘In my experience, it’s the quiet, introverted ones you have to watch out for,’ said Shunter. He shut his book and placed it on the bar. Vic swivelled it around to read the title.

  ‘Dalí Plays Golf,’ said Vic. He tapped the author’s name. ‘Shirley Pomerance is a local girl, you know. Her family comes from over Tingwell way.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘No idea. She uses seven words when one would do, and all seven are words I didn’t even know existed.’

  ‘That bad, eh?’

  ‘Bletchley Park would have struggled to decode it,’ said Shunter. ‘There should be some way of checking people’s IQ at the till. I’m clearly not smart enough for them to have sold it to me.’


  ‘I’ve heard people buy her books just so that they can look brainy,’ said Vic.

  ‘Only a masochist would buy them for fun.’

  ‘She can’t be that unreadable, surely? She’s won awards.’

  ‘I’ll give you a taster,’ said Shunter, riffling through the pages. ‘Ah. Here we go. “Lavinia acquiesced her lubricious girlflesh to his dexterous phalanges, all the while assiduously palpating his tumescent boypole to priapic . . .”’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s a sex scene.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Vic. ‘I think I’ll stick to Agnes Crabbe.’

  ‘As I should have done. At least her saucy bits are saucy,’ said Shunter, sipping his pint. ‘Shirley Pomerance’s idea of foreplay is fingering a thesaurus.’

  Two miles outside the village, a coach driver glanced nervously at his wing mirrors and pined for the wide open carriageways of the M13 motorway where he usually did most of his business. But this was the eve of the Agnes Crabbe Murder-Mystery Festival weekend and, for the next seventy-two hours at least, this would be his lot: ferrying fans to and from Nasely on some of the least coach-friendly roads in South Herewardshire. The contract was lucrative, to be sure, but the drive was horrible. There were only three roads into the village and all of them involved negotiating canals, low-hanging trees, narrow lanes and sharp corners. There was no street lighting either, and the light spring rain reduced his visibility still further. He cursed under his breath and prepared to tackle yet another humpback bridge.

  Sitting behind him, and oblivious to his discomfort, three dozen middle-aged ladies hungrily devoured the novels of Agnes Crabbe, or discussed the novels of Agnes Crabbe, or listened to Agnes Crabbe audiobooks, or watched The Miss Cutter Mysteries on laptops and tablets, or leafed through the festival brochure and made their plans for the weekend. The atmosphere on the bus was fragrant with lavender and anticipation.

  Esme Handibode swept her lifeless silver-grey hair back from her eyes and perched a pair of half-moon reading glasses upon the humpback bridge of her nose. She frowned at the brochure laid out on her friend’s lap.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re even considering going to the Helen Greeley talk, Molly. It’ll be standing room only and you’ll learn nothing, mark my words.’

  Molly Wilderspin looked up into her friend’s face and smiled weakly. ‘Oh, but I hear that she’s very nice.’

  ‘Nice she may be,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘But we only have two days. You must stick to events that add value to your visit, like the Andrew Tremens talk.’

  ‘I’m definitely going to that one, Esme,’ said Miss Wilderspin. Short, timid and thickly bespectacled, she was both physically and behaviourally the opposite of her friend, the taller and more bombastic Mrs Handibode. She turned to a different page in the brochure and tapped the photo of a middle-aged man with a very nice smile. ‘It says here: “Andrew Tremens will make an announcement of major importance to all Crabbe fans.” It’s very intriguing.’

  ‘I dislike that term immensely,’ said Mrs Handibode.

  ‘Intriguing?’

  ‘Fan. You wouldn’t call a Shakespearean scholar a fan, would you?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’ Miss Wilderspin looked through the programme of events again, eyes lingering on the seductive black-and-white image of actress Helen Greeley who had agreed to open this year’s festival.

  ‘She is so brave,’ said Miss Wilderspin. ‘If I ever found myself in a situation like the one she was in last year, I’d go to pieces. She’s like a real-life Miss Cutter, isn’t she?’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ huffed Mrs Handibode. ‘I’d be surprised if she’s even read any of the books.’

  ‘Actually, I meant because of the way she dealt with that stalker,’ said Miss Wilderspin. ‘So brave. I’d have been too terrified to do anything.’

  ‘You mark my words: her talk will be packed to the gunwales with star-struck spinsters making silly old fools of themselves and you’ll learn nothing of any worth. Andrew Tremens, on the other hand, has had sole responsibility for the Crabbe archive since its discovery. He has an intimate acquaintance with her work and her diaries and he will have some fascinating insights to share.’

  ‘There’s a rumour going around that he’s found some kind of manuscript. Maybe an unpublished story or—’

  ‘You should know better than to listen to gossip. It’s invariably nonsense.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Esme,’ said Miss Wilderspin, resignedly. ‘But we could go to both talks, you know. They don’t clash. Do you think we’re very far away now? I tried looking at the satnav on my phone but there’s no signal around here. I thought that only happened in films.’

  ‘We’ll be there very soon,’ said Mrs Handibode, looking out of the window. The coach was gingerly inching its way over the bridge while the driver desperately tried not to scrape the bottom of his vehicle. ‘This is the Dunksbury Road canal bridge, just outside Nasely. But do you know which bridge it corresponds to in the books?’

  ‘Is it the Vallory Road canal bridge?’ ventured Miss Wilderspin.

  ‘Very good,’ said Mrs Handibode, smiling.

  ‘That’s where Maynard Grader was murdered in Swords into Ploughshares, isn’t it?’

  ‘And where Mavis Frusty threw away the murder weapon in Ministry of Death. I’ve taught you well.’

  ‘How exciting to actually be in the real Little Hogley!’ Miss Wilderspin clapped her hands with glee. ‘I can’t wait to find other locations from the books.’

  ‘You can pay a tour guide to show you around,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘But I’ve been to Nasely several times before and I’m willing to show you around for free.’

  ‘Well, I thought I might—’

  ‘No one knows Agnes Crabbe and her books better than I do,’ said Mrs Handibode. ‘In fact, were I to believe in such things, I would say that it was entirely possible that I was her in a previous life.’

  Miss Wilderspin considered pointing out that her friend’s life had actually overlapped that of the great author’s by two years but decided to bite her tongue. Esme Handibode was not a person who took kindly to being corrected, even in the face of unimpeachable logic. She considered herself to be the foremost expert on Agnes Crabbe and there was every good reason to think that she might be. She ran the Agnes Crabbe Fellowship, the largest of the many fan clubs and societies, and edited and published the quarterly Agnes Crabbe Fellowship Journal (circulation 27,910). She had amassed an enviable collection of first editions and memorabilia, and had even appeared on TV’s Mastermind, although she had eventually lost in the semi-finals to a man who knew a ridiculous amount about Vincent motorcycles. Her knowledge of Agnes Crabbe was nothing less than encyclopaedic, and she threw herself into her studies with a single-mindedness that, if the gossip was true, had seriously affected her marriage. Certainly, no one had seen Mr and Mrs Handibode together in many months and their relationship was rumoured to be frosty at best.

  Naturally, there were pretenders to her crown; people like Denise Hatman-Temples, who ran the Agnes Crabbe Literary Society; Gaynor Nithercott of the Agnes Crabbe Book Club; Brenda Tradescant of the Millicent Cutter Appreciation Society; Elspeth Cranmer-Beamen of the Miss Cutter Mysteries Fan Club and many others who purported to know just as much as she did. But Esme Handibode was confident in her superiority; as far as she was concerned, no other Agnes Crabbe-related fan club could hold a candle to her Fellowship and she refused even to acknowledge claims to the contrary. Instead, she reserved the bulk of her ire for a journalist named Pamela Dallimore who, irritatingly, was the media’s go-to person whenever they needed a perspective on Crabbe’s life and works. Dallimore was chauffeured in luxury cars, or sent by air or rail in first-class comfort to Crabbe conventions and TV appearances all over the world, despite appearing to be quite vague about Crabbe and her books. The reality was that her entire reputation was based upon a bestselling biography that she’d written called The Secret Queen of Crime in which s
he had alleged that Crabbe was involved in a same-sex relationship with her best friend, Iris Gobbelin. The fact that Dallimore’s claims were based upon specious or entirely apocryphal stories didn’t seem to matter to the thousands who’d bought a copy.

  But it mattered to Esme Handibode, and she had made it her business to publicly denounce the book at every opportunity. As far as she was concerned, Pamela Dallimore embodied everything that was wrong with the cult of celebrity in twenty-first-century society: the adoration of the banal; the elevation of the ignorant; the hunger for gossip and scandal; and the complete lack of value placed upon self-discipline, systematic research and hard-won expertise and knowledge. Mrs Handibode had dedicated fifteen years of her life to the study of Agnes Crabbe and her creations, but her thunder was continually stolen by a second-rate hack who just happened to have sold a lot of copies of a very bad book. Hate was not a word that Mrs Handibode used lightly and she rarely wished ill-will to anyone. But she had no qualms in admitting that she hated Pamela Dallimore with a passion and secretly wished that something very nasty would happen to the wretched woman.