The Lawley Case Read online

  The Lawley Case

  A Markham Sisters Cozy Mystery Novella

  Diana Xarissa

  Text Copyright © 2018 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 Moody Case

  Also by Diana Xarissa

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  With this, we hit an even dozen Markham Sisters novellas. I have so much more planned for the sisters, including a visit from Bessie Cubbon later this year. I always suggest reading the entire series in (alphabetical) order so that you can see how the characters change over the course of the novella, but each story should be enjoyable on its own if you choose not to read them all.

  The aforementioned Bessie Cubbon is the protagonist in my Isle of Man Cozy Mystery series. Janet and Joan first appeared in Aunt Bessie Decides, and the sisters have remained in contact with Bessie ever since. These novellas open and close with excerpts from Janet’s letters to Bessie. You do not need to read that series in order to enjoy this one.

  The stories are set in the fictional village of Doveby Dale in Derbyshire. Because of the setting, I use UK English and spelling, although it is increasingly likely that American words and spellings may sneak in, as I’ve been living in the US for some years now. I do apologize for these errors and try to fix them when they are pointed out to me.

  This is a work of fiction and all of the characters are fictional creations. Any resemblance that they may share with any real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The shops and restaurants within the story are also entirely fictional. If they resemble real businesses, that is also coincidental.

  I love hearing from readers and all of my contact information is available in the back of the book. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch at any time. Thank you for spending time with Janet and Joan.

  23 June 1999

  Dearest Bessie,

  I’ve sat down to write to you a dozen or more times in the past month, but I never seem to get past the first sentence before I have to rush away to do something. Joan and I were expecting the summer months to be busy, but I don’t think either of us truly anticipated what that meant.

  This is the first day in June where we haven’t had guests here and I’m delighted that we only have one couple checking in tomorrow, as well. A second couple arrives on Friday, and both couples will be here through the weekend, but thus far we actually have a day off the following week as well. It appears that we are completely booked for most of July and August.

  I know that I shouldn’t complain as this was always Joan’s dream (even if she never bothered to tell me about it until last year), but I am rather exhausted from having to be nice to people all the time. Still, we are doing very well financially, especially as Joan has just put our rates up and that hasn’t slowed down bookings in the slightest.

  Besides being busy with the bed and breakfast, things have been fairly quiet in Doveby Dale of late. We did have one rather peculiar incident that all started with Stuart, our neighbour from across the road.

  Chapter 1

  “What time do today’s guests arrive, then?” Janet asked, trying not to sound as grumpy as she felt.

  “Mrs. Armstrong said that she thought they would arrive around five,” Joan replied. “Any earlier and we’d struggle to have the room ready. Mr. and Mrs. Carter haven’t left yet.”

  “I thought they ask you to have their breakfast ready for seven,” Janet said. She glanced at the clock. It was half nine.

  “They did, but they haven’t come down yet. I was thinking about going up and vacuuming the other bedroom. Maybe that would wake them.”

  “Are Mr. and Mrs. Fordham out, then?”

  “Yes, they had their breakfast at seven, as they’d requested. I gave them Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s meals, too, so that they wouldn’t go to waste.”

  “We should charge extra if you have to make extra food.”

  “We probably should. I shouldn’t have started cooking until the Carters arrived in the kitchen, really, but they’ve been incredibly prompt every other morning, and they were insistent that they needed their breakfast ready when they got downstairs today so that they could eat quickly and get on the road back to Cornwall.”

  “You don’t think something has happened to them, do you?”

  “I certainly hope not. Maybe we should check on them.”

  Janet frowned. The last thing she wanted to do was bother their guests if they’d decided to lie in.

  “Meeroow,” Aggie said from the other side of the room.

  “You think they’re okay?” Janet asked.

  “Mmerew,” Aggie replied.

  “Aggie thinks they are okay, just having a slow start,” Janet told Joan.

  Joan raised an eyebrow. “While I may concede that you have learned to understand Aggie when she speaks to you, I find it hard to believe that Aggie is capable of knowing whether something is wrong or not with guests behind a locked door.”

  “She’s a very smart kitten,” Janet replied. “I believe her.”

  Joan sighed. “We’ll leave them for one more hour, but then I’m going up to check on them.”

  Janet shrugged. “They’ll be down eventually.” And while they’re still up there, I don’t have to wash bedding or dust and vacuum, she added to herself.

  She’d been looking forward to only having one set of guests for a few days after the Carters left, until Joan had booked the Armstrongs into the empty room. While Joan had spent her years as a primary schoolteacher dreaming of owning a bed and breakfast one day, Janet, working the same job, had always looked forward to retiring and travelling the world. Now Joan was living out her dream and Janet sometimes felt stuck. She loved her sister, otherwise she never would have agreed to buy Doveby House in the first place, but the busy summer season was proving to be hard work.

  The only thing that kept Janet going was the knowledge that they were tucking away a considerable profit from their little business. She knew that after the summer was over, things would be considerably quieter, and she was determined to convince her sister that they should do some travelling during those months when they would struggle to book guests.

  Janet was in the seventeenth-century manor house’s small library an hour later, looking for something to read on the very full shelves, when Joan found her.

  “They aren’t down yet,” Joan said in a worried tone.

  “I’m sure they’ll be down any second now,” Janet told her. “Any suggestions for something different for me to read?”

  “There are thousands of books in here. Just choose one at random.”

  “I could do that. But after all the time I spent arranging the shelves, it wouldn’t be truly random.”

  The library had been full stocked with books when the sisters had purchased the house. That was one of the main reasons why Janet had agreed to the purchase in the first place. Janet had spent many months working her way through the entire room, categorising and arranging the shelves exactly the way she wanted them.

  “I can choose something for you if you’d prefer,” Joan offered. “I still don’t understand how the books are arranged. Your system doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”

  Janet grinned. “It m
akes sense to me. You said I could do whatever I wanted.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps I was a bit hasty in that,” Joan replied with a frown. “Anyway, try this one,” she suggested, pulling a completely random book off the nearest shelf.

  “Gardening for Beginners,” Janet read off the cover. “I’m not sure that’s exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Oh, dear, Ms. Markham, we are sorry,” a man’s voice came from the corridor outside the room.

  Joan turned around. “Mr. Carter, I was just starting to worry about you,” she said.

  “Yes, um, well, we are sorry. I set the alarm on my phone, but, well, it seems that I turned it off and went back to sleep. It’s just lucky my son rang to check on our progress towards home. He wasn’t best pleased to learn that we hadn’t even left Derbyshire yet,” the man replied.

  “Will you and your wife be wanting any breakfast, then?” Joan asked.

  “I wish we could, as your cooking was one of the highlights of our stay, but sadly, we don’t have time. My wife is just finishing the packing and then we’ll need to be away.”

  “I have some cereal bars that a previous guest insisted that I buy. You’re more than welcome to take a few of those with you for the drive,” Joan said.

  “That would be a help, actually, as we probably won’t stop for lunch until late. Thank you.”

  Joan glanced over at Janet and then winked at her. Janet knew that Joan hated having the bars in her kitchen, but she was too frugal to throw them away. This was the perfect way to get rid of some of them. As Joan left to get the bars and show the Carters out, Janet dropped into the nearest chair.

  “Gardening is the quintessential British pastime,” she read from the first page of the book Joan had handed her. “It can provide hours of quiet enjoyment while making a person’s surroundings more beautiful.” She looked at Aggie, who was washing a paw. “I don’t know. I’ve always thought of gardening as hard work. Maybe I’ll try to catch Stuart and ask him what he thinks.”

  Stuart Long lived in one half of the semi-detached property across the road from Doveby House. He was a retired gardener and he spent much of his spare time looking after the rather extensive grounds around Doveby House. The sisters paid him a small amount of money for his time and then supplemented that with a continuous supply of tea, biscuits, and cakes. It was an arrangement that seemed to suit everyone.

  Aggie didn’t bother to reply. Instead she curled up in her bed that was in one corner of the room and went to sleep. Janet turned the page, but was immediately interrupted.

  “The Carters have gone,” Joan told her. “We must get their room ready for the Armstrongs.”

  Janet dropped the book onto the desk and followed her sister out of the room. She’d lock up the library later, once Aggie was done with her nap. The Fordhams would be out all day, anyway, and the Armstrongs weren’t due until later.

  Joan stripped the bed and started the laundry while Janet dusted and then vacuumed the smaller of the two guest rooms. They made up the bed with the second set of sheets and blankets, and then Joan cleaned the en-suite bathroom while Janet dusted and vacuumed the other guest room. That was a more difficult job as Mr. and Mrs. Fordham had left their things all over every surface. Janet did her best anyway.

  “I’ll clean the en-suite in here if you want to get some flowers for both rooms,” Joan said a short while later.

  “I’d rather get some lunch,” Janet told her.

  Joan glanced at her watch. “The morning has flown past, hasn’t it? We can have a quick lunch before we finish in here, then.”

  It only took Joan few minutes to make sandwiches for them. Janet was quite content to let her older sister take care of the cooking and baking for both of them, although she was quiet capable of looking after herself, as well. What Janet wasn’t interested in doing was cooking and baking for the bed and breakfast.

  As they’d lived together for their entire lives, Joan knew exactly how Janet preferred her sandwiches, anyway. “What’s in this?” she demanded now as she took a bite.

  “I put some spinach in both of our sandwiches,” Joan told her. “It’s good for you.”

  “But I don’t want spinach in my sandwich.”

  “You’ll barely taste it with everything else that’s in there.”

  “But I can taste it. That’s how I knew you’d done something different.”

  “As I said, it’s good for you.”

  “Do I get pudding if I eat it all?”

  Joan sighed. “I think you’re old enough to eat healthily without having to be bribed.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t agree. I don’t like the spinach, but I’ll eat it if I can have a slice of Victoria sponge when I’m done.”

  “How old are you again?”

  Janet laughed. “I’m two years younger than you, so old enough to be retired, but not quite old enough to eat my spinach without a bribe.”

  Shaking her head, Joan got up and refilled her coffee cup. “You’re over sixty,” she pointed out as she did so.

  “Yes, but nowhere near seventy,” Janet replied cheerfully. “Let’s not argue. As you are up, you can cut me a piece of cake.”

  Joan looked as if she wanted to argue, but after another sigh she unwrapped the Victoria sponge and cut off a tiny slice. She put it on a plate and then glanced at Janet. “It’s come out rather thinner than I expected,” she said. “I’ll just cut you a slightly larger one.”

  Janet hid a smile as Joan cut a larger slice and handed it to her. Then Joan put the smaller slice at her own place before she rewrapped the cake. Once they’d enjoyed their cake, they went back to work.

  “That’s everything ready except the flowers,” Joan said as they walked back down the stairs a while later. “Do you want me to get them?”

  “No, I’ll go,” Janet replied. “I love being out in our garden. I don’t spend nearly enough time out there.”

  “I don’t either. We should make more of an effort to enjoy it.”

  Janet collected a pair of scissors and then headed out into the garden. For several minutes she simply stood and soaked in the glorious sights and smells of it. There seemed to be flowers everywhere, an explosion of colours and scents on all sides. She meandered along the paths that ran throughout the grounds, admiring everything as she went. She was just outside the coach house when she found the man responsible for it all.

  “Stuart, everything looks fabulous,” she told him.

  He looked at her and then nodded. “It’s doing well this year,” he said. “I’m happy with most of it, anyway. There are a few persistent weed patches in one of the beds and some things aren’t flowering as much as I’d like, but overall it’s doing well.”

  “I think it’s absolutely gorgeous, every inch of it. But I want a few flowers for the guest rooms. What would you suggest?”

  “Let’s start with the bushes that need a bit of pruning back and see how we get on,” he suggested. “You may get all that you need from them.”

  Janet got what she needed and a great deal more by the time Stuart was finished with his pruning. “Take some home to Mary,” she suggested, referring to the man’s wife.

  “Oh, she’s off visiting her son again,” Stuart said with a shrug. “She won’t be back for a fortnight, at least.”

  A dozen questions sprang into Janet’s mind, but she didn’t ask any of them. Instead she thanked the man for his help.

  “Always happy to help,” he replied. “But do you have a minute? There’s something that’s been bothering me and I’m not sure if I should talk to the police about it or not.”

  Chapter 2

  ‘The police?” Janet echoed. “My goodness, that sounds serious. Why don’t you come inside and have a cuppa? I’ll get the flowers into vases while we wait for the kettle to boil.”

  Stuart nodded and then followed Janet into the house. She filled the kettle and then several vases. By the time the flowers were all arranged, the kettle had boiled.

  “Goo
d afternoon,” Joan said, smiling at Stuart as she walked into the kitchen. She shot her sister a questioning look.

  “Ah, good afternoon,” he replied. “I hope this isn’t inconvenient for you. I wanted to talk to Janet about something.”

  “That’s not a problem at all. I’ll leave you two alone, then, shall I?” Joan replied.

  “Oh, no need to do that. I’m happy to talk to both of you, really,” Stuart said quickly.

  Janet made three cups of tea and then glanced at Joan. “Maybe we could have biscuits,” she said.

  “I’ll put some out,” Joan told her. “But it is nearly time for dinner.”

  Janet smiled to herself as she slid into a chair. A few biscuits wouldn’t spoil her dinner, and if what Stuart wanted to discuss was serious, a little bit of sugar would help.

  “I hope everything is okay,” Joan said in a questioning voice as she put a plate of biscuits on the table in front of Stuart.

  “Everything is fine, at least I think it is,” he replied. “It was just something odd that happened, that’s all.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Janet suggested before helping herself to a custard cream.

  “That’s probably for the best,” Stuart agreed. He ate a biscuit and drank half of his tea before he continued. “I was at the garden centre yesterday, you see. I wanted to get some new secateurs and a few other things. I was just looking around at the trees when I, well, I overheard a conversation.”

  “And what you heard is worrying you?” Janet asked as the man nibbled his way through another biscuit.