Murder on the Menu, page 9
Annabel hadn’t known Gill and Christian were married when she first met the tall, handsome man with the dark hair and the port wine stain on his forehead in Roy’s study all those years ago. Christian had never mentioned Gill, and a few weeks later, in the heat of the moment, he had led Annabel down to the boathouse, and that had sealed the deal. Annabel felt warm at just the thought of that summer’s evening.
Then by coincidence, not long after her meeting with Christian, she had met Gill at the opening of an art gallery in town. She had attended because Roy couldn’t or wouldn’t go but wanted a representative to go for him, to show he was supporting local businesses. Gill had been sent in the same capacity. Annabel had spotted the red-haired, six-foot woman propped up at the bar downing a large measure of neat gin.
‘I’ll have the same,’ Annabel had said, and the two had raised glasses to each other. Their second drink was to their useless husbands, and their third, well, neither of them could remember.
After that, they had met on several occasions for crab and Sauvignon lunches, gin tastings, not to mention the shopping. They both knew how to max out a credit card, although with a black card that just wasn’t possible. They spoke about their husbands at length – of course they did – but they never mentioned names. Or perhaps Gill did and Annabel wasn’t really listening, or maybe she knew deep down that Christian was her friend’s husband and she chose to ignore it. Whatever, it had still been a surprise when she saw them, arms linked, walking up the drive for one of Roy’s lunch parties.
Annabel parked outside Arden Copse and turned off the engine. ‘So you’re the new owner of Arden Copse,’ Christian said. ‘Congratulations, my darling.’ He paused, and she knew he was waiting for some kind of appreciation for his role in getting her to where she wanted to be. There was no way she was going to give him that kind of satisfaction. Instead she said she had to dash and disconnected his call before she had the chance to listen to his pitiful whines.
Annabel checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror and adjusted her mood. She got out of the Macan and opened the front door.
The whole house smelled stale. It needed an upgrade, and she would see to that as soon as she put a stop to Roy’s daughter visiting the house. She was always there on some pretence lately or in the copse looking for things to eat, like a pig snuffling for truffles. What was wrong with shopping at Ocado like the rest of the world? Now that Roy was no longer around and the house was solely hers, she would tell Caroline where to go. She just had to find the right moment to do it. Annabel kicked off her shoes at the bottom of the stairwell. A wicked thought crossed her mind. Maybe she wouldn’t need to go to the trouble. Maybe her stepdaughter would pick a deadly mushroom the next time she was out foraging and that would be the end of her.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Hashtag ArdenParty,’ Brijesh said. ‘That’s what I’m going to start calling you.’
Shilpa slipped her phone back into her pocket and then pulled it out again. ‘Someone’s uploaded more pictures,’ she said. She should have been setting up her market stall, but instead she had been distracted by the pinging of her phone.
‘From the party?’
Shilpa nodded. After Brijesh had given her the idea of examining photos of the event online, Shilpa had been hooked. She had set up an alert to tell her every time someone had used the ArdenParty hashtag, and now there was no going back.
‘Look,’ she squealed, thrusting her phone at Brijesh.
He studied the photo she was holding out to him on her phone. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘That’s Christian,’ she said. ‘Roy Arden’s arch-rival and Annabel’s lover.’
Brijesh took another look. ‘His face is barely visible. Even if you enhanced it, it’s a poor image.’
‘Whatever,’ Shilpa said. ‘It’s evidence that he was there at the party, uninvited.’
‘You already knew that,’ Brijesh said. ‘You overheard his conversation with Annabel at Arden Copse when you were eavesdropping.’
‘This is proof,’ she said.
‘So call the police,’ Brijesh said. ‘My information is better.’
‘I’m not sure what you want me to say,’ Shilpa said, a little deflated as she pocketed her phone and placed the mini chocolate-and-ginger loaf cakes on the plate. She had much to do before customers started arriving. She was late already, and the last thing she needed was Brijesh asking her what she was going to do with the contact details of Cecelia’s family. ‘I thought you were the one who told me to leave the past in the past.’
Brijesh looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes. ‘I’m single now, so I have a lot of time on my hands, and I’ve accrued so much leave. I thought I may as well take some time off.’
‘So you’re not at work today?’ Shilpa asked.
Brijesh shook his head.
‘Here then,’ she said, handing him a crate of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. ‘Put those over there.’
‘So after Cecelia James’s death, her family moved to New Jersey?’ Shilpa said.
‘First to Bakewell like your neighbour said, then to Sheffield and then, poof, they disappeared,’ he said.
‘I thought you said they moved to New Jersey.’
‘Same, same,’ Brij said.
‘It’s not quite the same thing,’ Shilpa said.
‘The neighbour I tracked down was only young at the time. She remembered that the family arrived with a black cloud over their heads, or that was what her mother always said. After Cecelia’s death, they struggled to move on with their lives. Eventually they thought moving country would help. They had two other children – the neighbour couldn’t remember much about the children, but she was clear that they went to New Jersey. The neighbour was certain about this because she said that was the most exciting thing that happened that decade.’
‘That decade?’ Shilpa said.
‘Her words not mine. She was young. She said her mother got a postcard once from the family and she pinned it on the wall, hoping that one day she could make the trip.’
‘And did she?’ Shilpa put out two plates of rose-and-pistachio cakes on the red-and-white-chequered tablecloth.
‘She said that life got in the way. She never made it. She hadn’t thought about it in years, she said. When I jogged her memory, she was quite glad of the reminder. So…’
‘So what?’ Shilpa said.
‘Some detective you are. Aren’t you going to make contact with the family? You can easily find them on Facebook or something.’
Shilpa was silent. Brijesh sighed. ‘I tracked down the family. Granted, Cecelia’s parents are dead, but they had other children, or one child that we know of at least. Look at this.’ Brijesh shoved his phone in front of Shilpa’s face.
‘It’s a picture of a dog,’ Shilpa said.
‘It’s a profile picture. You could make contact. I’ll send you the details on Messenger.’
Shilpa shook her head. ‘Her parents are dead. The trail is cold there. It was a stupid idea to track them down in the first place.’
Brijesh looked at her. ‘You know what? I think you’re right.’
Shilpa poured them both a coffee from her thermos and sat down behind her stall. Now they were out of summer, she only had to cater for the stall once a month. Trade at the market had picked up recently, and she made quite good money when she had a table full of cakes to sell, so she no longer minded the early starts.
It was still early, and there was a chill in the air. Shilpa warmed her hands on the stainless-steel cup and watched as locals and the occasional tourist ambled past. It had been two weeks now since Roy’s death and her lunch at Kaya Rock with Olivia.
At their lunch, Olivia had wanted to know all the details about Roy’s death. Shilpa gave her a rundown of her suspicions and explained to Olivia that the inquest was taking place on Monday. ‘Gosh,’ Olivia had said in response. Shilpa thought that her friend was going to say something insightful, but instead she was looking past her towards the exit of the restaurant.
‘What?’ Shilpa said. Her friend was great at peppering their conversation with general observations.
‘Look at that long, beautiful hair on that woman over there. I hope my hair’s like that when I’m that age. I bet yours will be. I’ve got no chance.’ She put her spoon down and tugged at a blond curl.
Shilpa laughed at her friend’s randomness, and their conversation had moved on until Olivia had mentioned her brother-in-law Danny. He was a sergeant now based in Otter’s Reach, and Shilpa was sure he would have heard whether Roy’s death was thought of as suspicious or not, so she couldn’t help but ask. Till now, all the police had done was release a holding statement to the press, which gave her no further clues. She would have approached Danny herself had she not still felt embarrassed for fancying him last year. She blushed again at the thought. Olivia said his little one was coming up to a year soon and was doing just fine. Shilpa had dropped the conversation there, and Olivia had made her way to the powder room.
It was then that Shilpa noticed an elderly couple at the edge of the restaurant sitting by the magnificent glass wall that overlooked the crashing waves at Kaya Rock beach. The elderly man had reached out to his partner and was holding her hand, moving his thumb across her frail skin. It reminded Shilpa of her parents. Despite their bickering they loved each other. She watched the old couple as she waited for Olivia to return from the powder room. They looked so at peace with one another. She was sure they had a relationship filled with memories both good and bad, but then Olivia had returned and their conversation had turned to beauty salons.
It was only twenty minutes later that she realised the elderly couple were familiar. At first she couldn’t remember where she had seen them, but then it came to her. She had been talking to the gentleman when Roy fell onto Mermaid Rock.
Geoffrey was his name, and he was quite eccentric from what she recalled. He had been asking her why his cakes tended to sink in the middle right at the moment that Roy Arden fell to his death.
Shilpa had mentioned his wife to Brijesh as she had been in deep conversation with Roy earlier that evening. Shilpa had thought that perhaps Roy had taken a lover closer to his own age than Annabel. It was plausible. It would have made Geoffrey a likely suspect, but it couldn’t be him. She was his alibi, and surely he was too frail to push a man off a cliff even if the man in question was older than him. From what Shilpa had seen, Roy had had a certain joie de vivre, and that gave him an inner strength that she was certain Geoffrey didn’t have. If Geoffrey was an unlikely candidate to have pushed Roy off a cliff, then so was his wife, Patricia.
At the time, Shilpa had believed there could have been something between Geoffrey’s wife and Roy, but looking at the way Patricia was with her husband now, she realised she had been mistaken. Patricia could have been talking to Roy about a million other things, business, for one. Geoffrey had mentioned that his wife had contacts in the area and Roy was involved in all sorts of new enterprises and start-ups that he had confessed to her the night of his party. Didn’t Geoffrey say that his children lived in the area? It could have been related to that.
If Geoffrey and Patricia were too frail to have pushed Roy off the cliff, then so was Roy’s estranged brother Martin.
‘What are you thinking?’ Olivia had asked her, and Shilpa had explained her train of thought.
‘You said Roy was limping that night,’ Olivia had replied.
Shilpa had nodded.
‘Well then,’ Olivia had said. ‘All anyone needed to do was to coax him to the edge and then kick him in the shin.’
Shilpa had nearly choked on her ginger beer as she stifled a laugh.
‘What?’ Olivia had asked. ‘You can push someone off something no matter their strength if they don’t see it coming.’
Her friend had a point. So if Roy had been pushed off the cliff, he trusted whoever it was he was speaking to. Any one of them could have pushed him off.
Shilpa was doing it again, getting herself involved in something that had nothing to do with her. She’d almost lost her life the last time she did this; she was foolish to do it again. She silently chided herself for having a suspect list.
‘Do the police think it’s murder?’ Shilpa had asked as she fished out a crab claw from her bowl. Nothing compared to the taste of Salcombe crab.
Olivia had shrugged. ‘I think it is,’ she had said, picking up a mussel. ‘What you said about the lights going off like that moments before you heard the scream, that’s right out of a Christie novel. Man, it feels good to be out somewhere fancy without three screaming kids in tow.’
‘It could have just been overloaded power cables.’
‘It could be,’ Olivia said. ‘Or it could have been something more sinister.’
Chapter Twenty
Shilpa had enjoyed her lunch out with Olivia and had even got a job out of it. As she and Olivia were leaving Kaya Rock, someone had called her name. Shilpa had looked up and seen Geoffrey smiling at her.
‘This is the cake lady I was telling you about, Patricia,’ Geoffrey had said to his wife before introducing her to Shilpa.
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Shilpa thought again of how close Patricia and Roy seemed that day at the party.
Patricia nodded. ‘I can’t claim to have known Roy very well,’ she said with a strong Kiwi accent. She paused. ‘I did know him though. I’m sorry. Even at our age, you think you have so much time left. You have to live while you can. It takes someone dying like that, so unexpectedly, to make you realise you have to live.’
‘I wanted to ask you something,’ Geoffrey said. For a moment, Shilpa thought they were going to ask her for her opinion on whether Roy Arden had been pushed or had fallen, but then she remembered not everyone knew she was an amateur sleuth, if she could call herself that.
‘Would you be able to make a cake for us? In roughly two weeks’ time it’s my daughter’s birthday.’
Shilpa had checked her diary and pencilled it in.
‘I’ll take that one,’ an old lady said, interrupting Shilpa’s thoughts and pointing to a perfectly iced caramel-and-cashew cupcake.
As Shilpa took the note from the woman and handed over the change, her phone buzzed. It was Caroline. Shilpa didn’t answer. A conversation with Caroline was never five minutes, and she needed to sell some cakes.
Brijesh was typing something on his phone. No doubt a long essay to Tanvi on why they should still be together. From what she had weaselled out of Tanvi last night, it sounded like Brijesh had definitely not given up on their relationship. Shilpa didn’t want to return home later with a boot full of unsold cakes, so she put her phone on silent and slipped it back into her coat pocket.
Shilpa couldn’t work out Caroline Arden-Harris, the daughter of the millionaire who married the estate gardener like something out of Downton Abbey. After their conversation at Arden Copse, when Shilpa had been to pick up her cake stand, Caroline had taken to calling Shilpa at all times of the day, ‘just for a chat’. Shilpa soon realised that their conversations were very much one-sided. Caroline needed to vent about a lot of things, it seemed. Mainly, she discussed her hatred for her father’s widow, but she had other minor concerns as well, like whether Terry had started stealing, as her mother’s old silver hairbrush had gone missing. Shilpa didn’t know Terry, but it was likely that Annabel had just put it away rather than it being stolen. Caroline had conceded on that point and from then on confided in Shilpa in all manner of things related to the Arden estate. She was an unlikely acquaintance for Shilpa, let alone friend, but it appeared that Caroline didn’t have anyone she could talk to, and had found that she could trust the cake maker.
Over the last fortnight, Shilpa had spoken to the woman half a dozen times. The cool and collected lady she had met when Caroline had ordered her father’s birthday cake had disappeared, and in her place resided an anxious woman. She was fearful of Annabel, she had said, worried of what she was going to do to the house. Caroline was certain that the baby was a hoax and that when this ruse was discovered, Arden Copse would return to her.
Poor Jack, thought Shilpa. In all their conversations, the poor man’s name hardly came up at all.
Shilpa couldn’t really work Caroline out. On some level, Caroline regretted giving up when her children were small. She had confessed that they had to rely on handouts from her father to live the life she wanted and that it hadn’t gone down well with Jack. Shilpa could sense remorse, as if Caroline had just realised that she hadn’t needed the finer things in life and having a happy family was more important. Had Caroline felt pressured to live her life a certain way to prove herself in her father’s eyes? Had she built up years of resentment towards her father because of it?
Caroline had said that she was arranging some flowers nearby when her father had fallen. ‘They just didn’t look right,’ Caroline had said. ‘I don’t know what the florist was thinking.’ Shilpa thought it was a strange thing to do so late in the day when it was dark and most of the guests were partied out and too drunk or tired to care what the flowers looked like.
What was stranger still was that Caroline had been one of the first on the scene after the fall. Shilpa had seen Roy’s daughter that night in her cream silk dress shriek as she peered over the cliff, her husband Jack holding her back. The flowers she claimed to have been rearranging were in the dining room, close to where Shilpa had been standing with Geoffrey. It would have been impossible to make it to the cliff so soon after the fall. Logistics aside, Shilpa found it hard to believe that Caroline was responsible for her father’s death, but she was certainly hiding something, Shilpa just didn’t know what.
Shilpa pulled her phone out of her pocket again to check the time and saw a number flashing on the screen. Caroline was desperate to get hold of her, but a man in a blue fleece was approaching her stall. Shilpa cancelled the call and checked the time. As the man approached, Shilpa realised why Caroline wanted to speak to her. Despite it being a Saturday the Arden family solicitors were discussing the contents of her father’s will before the inquest on Monday. Caroline was probably a bag of nerves. Shilpa told herself she would call Caroline later and put on her best smile for her approaching customer.
