The Kingston Case Read online

  THE KINGSTON CASE

  A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella

  DIANA XARISSA

  Text Copyright © 2017 Diana Xarissa

  All Rights Reserved

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Letter to Bessie, part one

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Letter to Bessie, part two

  Glossary of Terms

  Other Notes

  Acknowledgments

  The Lawley Case

  Also by Diana Xarissa

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  I seem to be moving through the alphabet very quickly with these novellas. This title is the eleventh in the series. I always recommend reading the books in order (alphabetically), but each story should be enjoyable on its own.

  All of the novellas open and close with parts of Janet’s letters to Bessie Cubbon on the Isle of Man. Bessie is the protagonist of my Isle of Man Cozy Mystery series, and she first met the sisters in Aunt Bessie Decides in that series. The sisters revisited the island in Aunt Bessie Observes. This is the first novella after their visit. The letters to Bessie are simply bookends for the story. You do not need to read the Bessie books in order to enjoy the novellas.

  The stories are set in a fictional village in Derbyshire, so I use English spellings and terms. There is a short glossary and some other notes at the end of the book for readers outside the UK. I do apologise for any Americanisms that have snuck into the text. I’ve been living in the US for eight years now, so such mistakes are increasingly likely. I do my best to eliminate them.

  This is a work of fiction and all of the characters are fictional creations. Any resemblance that they may share with any real person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Although some shops or businesses in their fictional village may bear some resemblance to real-life businesses, that is also coincidental.

  I love hearing from readers. My contact details are available in the back of the book. Please let me know what you think about my books or just drop me a note to say hi. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read my stories.

  26 May 1999

  Dearest Bessie,

  It was so nice to see you and spend some time with you earlier this month. Obviously, some of the things that happened while we were on the island were unpleasant, but I’m determined not to let myself think about them when I remember our holiday. Joan and I simply must insist that you come and visit us next. We’d love to have you in Doveby Dale.

  As sad as we were to leave the Isle of Man, it was nice to get home to Doveby House. I really do love our wonderful home, even if we do have to share it with guests from time to time.

  We’d only been back a few days, however, when we had a visitor who wanted us to help him solve a problem. Of course, we were eager to help. (Well, I was eager to help. Joan was less enthusiastic.)

  Chapter 1

  “Do you have plans for today?” Joan asked Janet over breakfast.

  “I thought I would do the rest of my laundry from the holiday,” Janet told her. “What with all the errands we had to do yesterday, I didn’t manage to get it finished.”

  “I might make another trip to the supermarket,” Joan said. “I know we just went yesterday, but that was really just for what we needed for a day or two. I’ve been making a list this morning, as it seems we’re nearly out of everything.”

  Janet made a face. The small local grocery shop had been shut ever since it had been damaged in a fire. The next closest supermarket was a longer drive from Doveby House, the bed and breakfast the two sisters owned. While it was larger, better stocked, and less expensive than the local shop had been, it wasn’t nearly as convenient, and the sisters had been trying to get into the habit of visiting it only once or twice a week.

  While Janet liked going, as it gave her a chance to add things her sister wouldn’t normally buy to the shopping trolley, she was still feeling tired from their travels. She really didn’t want to make another trip around the shop, not after just having done so the day before. “Maybe I’ll leave it to you this time,” she told her elder sister.

  Joan nodded. “I know we’re both still tired,” she said. “I should have bought more yesterday, but I didn’t want to have to think about meals and cooking, really.”

  “We could just eat at the café today and go shopping tomorrow,” Janet suggested.

  This time it was Joan who made the face. She was an excellent cook who did nearly all of the cooking for the sisters and for the bed and breakfast. While they’d been on holiday, the pair had eaten in cafés or restaurants every day. Janet knew her sister wouldn’t want to do the same now that they were back at home, even if Joan was still tired.

  “I’ll just buy what we need for a few days of simple meals,” Joan said. “We have guests arriving on Friday evening, so I’ll need to go shopping again on Friday anyway.”

  “Are we full this weekend?” Janet asked.

  “Yes. We have a couple arriving on Friday night and a single woman arriving on Saturday morning,” Joan told her. “Everyone is leaving on Monday morning.”

  “Which means a very early start on Monday,” Janet said sadly.

  “I’m afraid so,” Joan agreed.

  Their weekend guests often stayed through Monday morning, preferring to get up early on the first day of the week for their drive home rather than leaving on Sunday evening. As many of their guests hadn’t come from very far away, this made perfect sense, but it did mean that the sisters had to get up very early on Mondays to make breakfast for their guests before they left for home.

  “When do we start getting really busy?” Janet asked. She knew that Joan had been taking a lot of bookings for the summer months, not just for weekends but for midweek stays as well.

  “June is busier than we’ve been, with guests every weekend and some weeknights as well,” Joan told her. “July and August are busier again. I’m trying to leave a day or two each week with no guests, but that’s hard to do. September is already looking busy as well, although not as bad as July and August.”

  Janet swallowed a sigh. She’d never wanted to own a bed and breakfast. That had been Joan’s dream, although Joan had never mentioned it to her sister until recently. The pair had both worked as primary schoolteachers for their entire working lives, living together in a small cottage and sharing nearly everything from their expenses to their car. Once they’d both retired, they were planning to travel. A small and unexpected inheritance had provided them with the funds to purchase Doveby House, which Joan had spotted advertised in an estate agent’s window.

  They’d owned the seventeenth-century manor house for less than a year and were still learning a lot about running the business. This was their first summer taking guests regularly and Janet was already dreading it. She loved Doveby House, especially her spacious bedroom with its own en-suite, as she’d shared a single bathroom with Joan for all of her life, but she didn’t enjoy having guests in the house, at least not regularly. Still, the guests helped pay their bills and had funded their recent holiday to the Isle of Man, so Janet didn’t complain, at least not to Joan. What she told her kitten, Aggie, was another matter.

  “We should think about whether we want to have the library open for guests or not,” Janet said. The library had been one of the main reasons she’d agreed to buy Doveby House. It had come fully stocked with books, and Janet had spent months rearranging the room so every book was exactly where she wanted it.
Some books had been removed, primarily old textbooks and forty-year-old travel guides. Those had been replaced on the shelves by books that the sisters had brought with them when they’d moved. In some ways Janet felt mean leaving the door to the library locked when there were guests in the house, but she also hated the thought of people moving books around on the shelves, or worse, borrowing them and not returning them.

  “I think we should keep it locked,” Joan said, surprising her sister. “We can always open it for any guest who asks, but I don’t like the idea of people being able to wander in and out of there whenever they like.”

  “At least we agree on that,” Janet said happily.

  With the breakfast dishes stacked neatly in the dishwasher, the sisters went their separate ways. Joan headed for the supermarket that was along the road to Derby, while Janet took the stairs to her bedroom to gather up her laundry.

  “Merroow,” Aggie said, stretching as she stood up in Janet’s bed. She slept on a pillow next to Janet’s and hadn’t stirred when Janet had climbed out of bed that morning.

  “Oh, you are going to get out of bed today, then, are you?” Janet asked her pet.

  Aggie gave her an annoyed look and then jumped down off the bed. Janet had already prepared the animal’s breakfast, so she didn’t need to follow her down the stairs. Once her laundry was started, Janet decided to make a phone call. The sisters had found some diaries and letters that had been written by a former resident of Doveby House. Alberta Montgomery had lived in the house in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, reportedly dying in a tragic accident when still very young. Joan didn’t approve of Janet reading the woman’s personal papers, so Janet was trying to find out if Alberta had any distant relatives who might want them. A box of privately published books of poetry had also been found, but having read a copy, Janet was fairly certain even the woman’s relatives wouldn’t want those.

  Janet had been able to find out a little of Alberta’s history from the man who used to run the local historical society, but he was no longer available to her. Before she and Joan had gone on their holiday, Janet had been given another name of someone who might be able to help. Now seemed the perfect time to ring Gretchen Falkirk to see what she knew. The knock on the door interrupted Janet as she was dialing.

  “Ah, William,” she said when she’d put the phone down and answered the door. “How nice to see you.”

  Janet gave her visitor an awkward hug and then stepped backwards to let him into the house. William Chalmers owned a small antiques shop in Doveby Dale. When he’d first moved to the village, both sisters had found him incredibly unpleasant, but once he’d settled in, he’d begun making an effort to fit into village life, and he and the sisters had worked their way into something like a friendship. He’d hinted several times that he might be interested in something more than just friendship with Janet, which made her slightly uncomfortable around him. Today, though, he looked worried and stressed.

  “You look as if you need a cuppa,” she said after she’d shut the door behind him.

  His normally neatly combed grey hair was disheveled. While his dark grey suit was as beautifully cut as always, it looked to Janet as if he’d buttoned the shirt underneath it wrong.

  “Oh, tea would be good,” he told her. “Something stronger would be better, but I’m driving.”

  Janet nodded and led the man into the kitchen. He dropped heavily into the first chair he came to while Janet filled the kettle with water.

  “We haven’t been back long enough for Joan to bake anything,” she told him. “But I have a box of shop-bought biscuits, if you’d like.”

  “That would be nice,” William replied, sounding as if he wasn’t really listening.

  Janet put some biscuits on a plate and set them on the table in front of William. When the kettle boiled, she made two cups of tea, adding extra milk and sugar to William’s before she set it down in front of him.

  “You seem upset,” she said as she joined him at the table. “Is everything okay?”

  William shook his head. “I’m forgetting my manners,” he said. “How was your holiday?”

  Janet took a sip of tea. “It was lovely,” she told him. “We were right on the beach and got quite spoiled with the view.” There was no need to tell the man about the less lovely aspects of their time away, she decided.

  “And did you get to spend much time with your friend?” William asked.

  “We did,” Janet said. “We got to see quite a lot of her, actually, and Joan and I both enjoyed her company a great deal.”

  “Excellent,” William said. He took a sip of tea and then ate his way through several biscuits before speaking again. “I missed you,” he said, nearly causing Janet to choke on a biscuit.

  “Really?” she said after a moment. “I mean, I didn’t expect that.”

  “I don’t mean just on a personal level,” the man said. “Although I did miss you, but I know you aren’t sure about starting a relationship with me right now. All things considered, that might be good.”

  Janet blinked. “I don’t think I understood that,” she said.

  William shook his head. “I’m not making sense,” he told her. “I have too much on my mind.”

  “What’s on your mind?” Janet asked.

  “Two things,” he replied. “For a start, you have a guest arriving on Saturday.”

  “We do,” Janet agreed. “Joan said it was a woman on her own.”

  “Did Joan tell you her name?”

  Janet thought for a minute. “No. We didn’t discuss it, why?”

  “Her name is Alice Chalmers,” William said gloomily.

  “A relative of yours?”

  “My ex-wife.”

  Janet forced herself to take a long drink of her tea before she spoke. The first dozen questions that sprang into her mind were inappropriate or rude. Eventually she settled on something that she hoped was better.

  “I didn’t realise you’d been married,” she said.

  “Actually, I’ve been married twice,” William said, looking sheepish. “My first wife and I were together for about ten years. Unfortunately, she died in a car accident during a somewhat difficult period. Alice and I met a few years later. Our relationship was always volatile, but we ended up getting married after a while. We separated the day after our first wedding anniversary. We’ve been divorced for many years now.”

  “So why is she coming to Doveby Dale?” Janet had to ask.

  “She likes to see how I’m doing now and again,” William said. “In the past, whenever I’m doing well, she’s suggested we should try again. I’m hoping she won’t like the idea of life in a small village and will just turn around and go right back to London where she belongs.”

  Janet bit into a chocolate digestive to keep herself from asking any of the questions that were swirling around in her head. She chewed slowly, trying to find a neutral topic to suggest once she’d swallowed. A sip of tea washed the biscuit down.

  “Didn’t you say you had two things to talk to me about?” she asked.

  “Ah, yes, Alice’s visit is just a small problem, really,” William said. “The other problem seems bigger, at least to me.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was hoping Joan might be here as well,” William said. “I’m sure between the two of you, we can find an answer.”

  “An answer to what?” Janet felt as if she was losing patience.

  “To who has been sending me anonymous letters,” William replied.

  Chapter 2

  “What sort of anonymous letters?” Janet asked.

  “They’re well, rather threatening,” William told her.

  “Threatening?”

  “I think that’s the best way to describe them,” William said.

  “Did you bring them with you?” Janet asked.

  “No. They’re locked up in my safe at the shop,” he replied. “I thought that was best in case anything happened.”

  “So what do
they say?” Janet demanded.

  “The first one said something like ‘You aren’t welcome here,’ or words to that effect,” William told her.

  “How many have there been?”

  “Four.”

  “What does Robert Parsons say?” Janet asked, wondering with their local police constable thought of the matter.

  “Ah, um, that is, I, you see,” William took a deep breath. “I haven’t talked to Robert about it,” he said eventually.

  “Why not?” Janet asked in surprise.

  “I hate to drag the police into this,” William told her. “I like Robert, but I’m not totally comfortable with the police, really.”

  Janet nodded. She knew that William had spent some time in prison for selling somewhat dodgy antiques in his former shop in London. William insisted that he’d been duped by some of the people he’d trusted to run the shop for him. Janet wasn’t sure what to believe, but she could sort of understand why he might feel reluctant to consult the police over a few letters.

  “What did the other three say?” she asked.

  “The second one was much like the first. It said I wasn’t welcome in Doveby Dale and suggested I should move back to London.”

  “And then?”

  “The third said I should move back London or ‘I’d be sorry,’” William said with a sigh.

  “That’s definitely threatening,” Janet said. “What about the fourth?”

  “It was the same as the third.”

  “Exactly the same?”

  “The wording was the same, but the words and letters had been cut from different magazines,” William told her.

  “So whoever is doing this is cutting up magazines to make the words?”

  William nodded. “I can even tell you where they got the words and letters for the first letter,” he added, naming the country’s most popular television listings guide. “I’d actually only just finished reading it and I recognised some of the words from one of article headlines.”