Murder Served Cold Page 2

  “Said she should have listened to her mother and never married him in the first place,” Olive chimed in.

  “Course, she’s the one with the money, you know,” Elsie said. “And he—”

  “And you think he’s looking for a new barmaid?” I cut in. “Brilliant. I’ll give him a call. Or better still, go and see him as soon as I’ve finished here.”

  “Well, I hope you make a better barmaid than hairdresser,” sniffed Elsie, who always had to have the last word.

  But I didn’t care. Any job, any job at all, had to be better than being up to my ears in perm lotion and gossip all day. Not to mention wall-to-wall Radio 2.

  Chapter Two

  The Winchmoor Arms hadn’t changed a lot since the last time I was there, just over a year ago. In fact, it would be safe to say, it hadn’t changed a lot since the Queen’s Jubilee Celebrations – Queen Victoria’s, that is. The same faded prints of Cheddar Gorge on the walls, the same tarnished horse brasses above the fireplace. Even the same forlorn spider plant, which the landlady, for reasons best known to herself, had christened Sparky, still drooped unloved and undusted on the far end of the bar.

  Then there was Donald Wilson, the landlord. Dippy Donald, a lot of the locals called him. He was one of those men who’d be hard to describe if you were giving the police a witness statement. Average height, average build, average hair colour. The sort of man who crept through life unnoticed and unremarked.

  “I understand you’re looking for someone to work in the bar,” I said.

  He smoothed back his thinning grey hair with long nervous fingers and looked around furtively, as if checking no-one was listening. Even though the bar was completely empty.

  “Well, yes. I suppose I do need someone to help out,” he said hesitantly. “But it’s only temporary. Joyce is away on a cruise with her mother. She’ll be back in another two months.”

  “Oh, that’s fine by me,” I assured him. I was banking on getting another job – a ‘proper’ job, as I thought of it – long before Joyce Wilson returned from her cruise. Although I wasn’t going to tell him that. “And I can start immediately. Tonight, if you like?”

  “Really?” His pale grey eyes looked slightly less anxious. “Do you have any experience?”

  “Loads. Mostly the students’ union bar, when I was at college.” It was almost true, although most of that experience had been gained on the other side of the bar. “Do you want to see my CV? Only I don’t have it with me, but I can let you have it later.”

  To my relief, he shook his head. “That won’t be necessary,” he said with a quick glance at his watch. “Not for a temporary job. Ok then. Let’s see how you get on, shall we? On a trial basis. Although I heard you were working for your mum.”

  “That was only while Sandra was off with her feet. When would you want me to start? Tonight?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose.” He looked at his watch again and moved towards the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m supposed to be meeting Councillor Crabshaw at the site of some proposed new playing fields they’re considering out on the Dinstcombe Bypass. He’s keen for residents from the nearby villages to get involved right from the start, so he roped me in. I said I’d be there by 3 o’clock. So, if you don’t mind,” he herded me towards the door. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Brilliant. Thank you.” I gave him the full force of my most glittering smile, determined to show him what an asset I would be to his bar.

  He took a step backwards, the worried look reappearing in his eyes. “If you can be here by about quarter to six, I’ll run through things with you before the early evening crowd comes in.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you then.” But, as I reached out to open the door, he called me back.

  “Katie? There is one thing...” A flush of red crept up his pale cheeks. “If – if you don’t mind. What I mean is, could – could you wear something more appropriate this evening?”

  “Appropriate?” I blinked at him. “What? Do you mean, low cut tops? Things like that?”

  “Good Lord, no. No. No. No. Nothing like that.” His pale grey eyes bulged with horror. “I meant – I meant the torn jeans. The customers, you know, they wouldn’t – I mean, I couldn’t – the thing is—”

  I grinned and put him out of his misery. “That’s ok. I get it. No ripped jeans. I’ll see you tonight then, appropriately dressed. I’m a hard worker, Donald. You won’t regret taking me on, honest.”

  ***

  He might not regret it, I thought later that evening as I stifled a yawn, but I was beginning to. My feet ached, my back ached, my heart ached for the good old days when I had a ‘proper’ job. I had the sinking feeling I’d jumped out of the frying pan of tedious local gossip in Chez Cheryl into the fire of even more tedious local gossip in the Winchmoor Arms. But the smell of beer didn’t make my eyes water, the way the perm lotion did, and at least there was no Radio 2 doing my head in. All this enforced smiling was making my jaw ache, though.

  “Just keep smiling at the customers, Katie,” Donald told me. “That’s the thing you need to remember.”

  “I prefer to be known as Kat, if it’s all the same to you.”

  He shrugged and gave a weak smile. “Yes, well, I prefer to be known as Don, but nobody ever calls me that. Everybody knows you as Katie, same as they all know me as Donald, and that’s the way it is, I’m afraid. Just look cheerful, even if some of them aren’t exactly—” He pulled a face and shrugged. “Well, just remember, the customer is always right. Oh, and don’t stand around chatting while there are people waiting to be served. They don’t like that either.”

  But smiling and being nice while pulling pints of Ferret’s Kneecaps Best Bitter was easier said than done, when you’re listening to a load of grumpy old men – and some of them not so old – moaning on about the weather, England’s chances in the third Test and the date of the next recycling collection, while at the same time fielding yet more questions about my non-existent career prospects and even more non-existent love life.

  “Hey, Katie, I hear you and your fancy boyfriend have split up. If you ever want to see life in the fast lane, sweetheart, you’re welcome to a ride in my cab any time you like.” This particular witticism came from Shane Freeman, a regular with more tattoos than brain cells, who always wore the same scruffy old leather jacket whatever the weather. He’d been a couple of years above me in school and had always been a big guy, but since becoming a lorry driver, too many years of greasy spoon breakfasts had collected around his middle and he was now almost as wide as he was high. I wondered how he managed to clamber in and out of his cab. I also worried for the bar stool he was perched on as he waited for his pint.

  “I’ll pass on that, thanks, Shane,” I handed him his pint.

  “Well, if you change your mind…” He took a long drink, called the dog dozing at his feet, then shambled off to take up the space of two people on the settle by the window.

  “Same again, please, my sweet.” My heart sank as Gerald Crabshaw, the man who put the sleaze into sleazeball, oozed up to the bar. “Hey, Katie, you know what they say, don’t you? You can take the girl out of Much Winchmoor but you can’t take Much Winchmoor out of the girl.”

  Didn’t they just say that? Again and again and again. I glanced down at the pint in my hand, then across at Donald watching me, and wondered if it would be worth going for the quickest sacking on record, if only to see the leery grin wiped off Gerald Crabshaw’s mottled red face by a well-aimed pint of Ferret’s. He’d been the ninth person that evening to make the ‘couldn’t keep away, then?’ comment and the joke, such as it was, was wearing thin. Besides which, when he came to the bar, he’d lean across the counter and leer down my top every time I bent over.

  Tomorrow night, I vowed, I’d wear a blouse buttoned to the neck. Preferably one with the words, “yes, I am back and no, I didn’t choose to be,” emblazoned across it.

  This wasn’t the future I’d planned for myself when I’d
left Much Winchmoor four years ago. I’d honestly believed I would never be back here again. Except to visit.

  “So, what happened to that fancy job you had with that radio station?” asked Gerald Crabshaw, or Councillor Crabshaw as he preferred to be known, picking up the pint I’d just poured him and taking a sip. “From the way your dad talked, you were indispensable. Practically running the place, he said you were.”

  I glared at Dad, who was perched on his usual stool at the far end of the bar near the dartboard. “Well, you know how things are,” I said, trying to sound like it didn’t still hurt. “The recession’s hit everyone.”

  No way was I going to admit to him, or anyone else in the village, that my so-called top job had in fact been a minimum wage general dogsbody role (or radio broadcast assistant, to give it its full title). And, far from being indispensable, I’d been dispensed with faster than Alan Sugar could say, ‘you’re fired’.

  “Do you know what, Councillor? Me and Cheryl, we’re victims of the boomerang generation, that’s what we are,” Dad called across the bar. “This is what it’s like these days. You think your kids have left home for good and you just start making a nice bit of room for yourself when boom, back they come, like a flipping boomerang. She’s got more bags and boxes than Parcelforce. And there goes my snooker table.”

  This earned him a burst of laughter from his cronies, a pint from Gerald Crabshaw and another glare from me. Even Donald, not known for his joviality, smirked as he came up behind me, soft-footed as a cat, and placed a pack of mixers on the floor.

  Gerald Crabshaw had lived in the village all his life and was out of the Marjorie Hampton mould of fingers into everything – except he was there first. He was a district councillor, chairman of this, treasurer of that. He saw himself as Mr Much Winchmoor, or Sir Gerald of Winchmoor if he got his way. There wasn’t a planning application submitted, a village hall booking made nor a complaint about the local bus service lodged that Councillor Crabshaw didn’t have a hand in, or an opinion about.

  “And what do you think the lovely Joyce is going to say about her Donald employing pretty young barmaids while she’s away?” Gerald asked the group around the bar, who sniggered like a gaggle of ten-year-old boys who’ve just heard a rude word. Gerald gave me what he obviously imagined was a long suggestive wink. Instead, it merely made him look as if he had a severe tic on one side of his face.

  “Here, Donald, how’s Joyce getting on with her cruise? Have you heard?” asked a man with close cropped hair and a fatuous grin.

  Donald jumped, as he always did when someone spoke to him directly, seeming surprised someone had noticed him. He was, after all, a very easy man to overlook and seemed to appear and disappear like a small grey shadow. “Joyce? Oh, right, Dave. No, I haven’t heard from her. I don’t expect to, really.”

  “Still, make the most of the quiet, eh?”

  Donald turned away and forced a smile at Gerald Crabshaw. “Good meeting this afternoon, Gerald. Worth doing, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What?” Gerald looked startled for a moment.

  “The meeting about the playing fields,” Donald said quietly. “It went well, I thought. Considering. I should think that will bring about a very satisfactory outcome for all.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, of course. Excuse me, my companions over there are dying of thirst.”

  “Donald!” someone shouted, in a shrill tone that Basil Fawlty would have jumped to. Everyone in the bar laughed. Except Donald, who gave a tight-lipped smile, like it was something he’d heard many times before. I gave him a sympathetic grin but it was not returned.

  The Winchmoor Arms regulars were not known for the originality of their repartee, as I could testify. That evening, as well as the ‘couldn’t keep away, then, Katie?’ question, there was the ‘does Will Manning know you’re back?’ query. Not to mention the ‘what have you done to your hair? Is that courtesy of rent-a-nest?’ one.

  On the other hand, over on Gerald Crabshaw’s table, the conversation suddenly sounded a lot more interesting.

  Gerald’s red mottled face was even redder, even more mottled. His shrill, angry voice cut through the tedious chorus clustered around the bar.

  “For heaven’s sake, man,” he bellowed at the browbeaten man sitting opposite him. “What are you blathering on about? Everyone knows it was that wretched Marjorie Hampton who killed—”

  “Here, Katie, don’t stand there like a spare part,” Donald pointed to the crate of mixers. “Unpack these and put them on that bottom shelf, will you? And we’re running low on crisps.”

  If that wasn’t typical. The first time this evening there was a remotely interesting conversation and what happened? I missed it. Who was Marjorie Hampton supposed to have killed? She was a bit of a busybody. Correction: a lot of a busybody. And it was common knowledge that she and Gerald Crabshaw were at daggers drawn. But a murderer? Here in Much Winchmoor, where the main topic of the evening, after my love life and job prospects, had been the muddle over the date of the recycling collection? Surely not.

  By the time I’d put out the mixers and replenished the cheese and onion, the conversation on Gerald’s table had moved on to the riveting topic of the closure of rural post offices and an upcoming planning appeal. The browbeaten man’s brow was looking more beaten than ever.

  “What were you saying just now, about Marjorie Hampton?” My curiosity got the better of me when Gerald came up to the bar for a refill and another eyeful.

  “Get me another packet of pistachios and I’ll tell you, sweet Katie,” he smarmed, knowing I’d have to bend down to get them.

  “So who’s she supposed to have killed?” I asked as, with a move that would have impressed a limbo dancer, I managed to grab a packet of nuts without having to bend over.

  “Interfering old baggage,” he growled as he reached into the inside pocket of his tweed jacket for his wallet. “That wretched woman has been nothing but trouble since she moved in to the village. Sticking her nose into things that don’t concern her.”

  “But you said she’d killed somebody,” I handed him his change.

  Gerald laughed. “Not someone, my dear, but something.” He took a long pull at his beer and looked round to make sure he was the centre of attention. He straightened his regimental tie and puffed out his chest like he was practicing for Prime Minister’s Question Time.

  “Marjorie Hampton,” he declaimed, “killed the farm shop.”

  A farm shop? Talk about a let down. I thought he was talking about a nice juicy murder that would liven up the place a bit and give everyone something to talk about other than last night’s Corrie and how things used to be back when men were men, women knew their place and the railway still went through the village.

  “You’ve done it now,” Shane Freeman muttered. “Once you get old Gerald started on that, there’s no stopping him. He’ll be banging on for the next half hour about how this townie government is ruining rural life and all that rubbish. Isn’t that right, Gerald?”

  Gerald ignored him. “If poor Sally Manning was still alive it would break her heart to see what a sorry state her precious farm shop is in now, thanks to Marjorie nose-into-everything Hampton.” He scowled and there was no sign of the smiling, genial man he’d been a few moments earlier. His too-close-together eyes were hard and cold, his small mouth taut with barely suppressed anger. “I tell you, that woman is going to poke her sticky beak into one pie too many one of these days, and she’s going to come to a very unpleasant end, you mark my words. A very nasty end indeed.”

  Before he could come out with any more words for anyone to mark, the front door crashed open and a large unkempt man stood swaying in the doorway. Conversation in the pub stopped as abruptly as if someone had thrown a switch.

  “Evening, John,” Donald said warily as the man zig-zagged to the bar.

  “Pint of Ferret’s and a whisky chaser,” he slurred, and the fumes on his breath suddenly made this morning’s perm lotion seem a lot less noxi
ous.

  “That’ll be £6, please.” As I handed him his drinks, I looked at him closely for the first time. I almost spilt the whisky as I recognised the wreck of a man who half stood, half leant at the bar, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, his face dark with several days’ stubble, his hair tousled and matted. His clothes looked like he’d slept in them for weeks.

  It was John Manning, husband (or, rather, widower, I reminded myself with a twinge of sadness) of Sally and father of Will, the guy I’d always thought of as my brother and best mate when we were growing up.

  It was over a year since I’d last seen John Manning. I’d been home for the weekend and had looked in on the farm to collect a pie from Sally and to tell Will what a prize idiot he’d been the night before. John was a big bear of a man, gentle, strong and softly spoken, who often teased me about my aversion to mud and farmyard smells. At least, that was how he used to be.

  “How – how are you, Mr Manning?” It was a stupid question because I could see how he was. And it wasn’t good. But he didn’t answer. Gave no sign he’d even heard me, least of all recognised me. Instead, he tossed back the whisky, picked up his pint and shuffled off to a table in the far corner where he stayed, speaking only to order more drinks, until staggering out at about half past nine, ricocheting off the door frame as he did so.

  Mum had told me how, after Sally’s death from cancer four months ago, John had fallen apart. But I’d thought that must have been a bit of exaggeration on her part. Sadly, it wasn’t. Poor John. And poor, poor Will.

  Tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d go up and see Will. Even though he probably wouldn’t want to see me. Not after the awful things I’d said to him that last time we’d met.

  Chapter Three

  Next morning, Mum was in the kitchen when I got back from my early morning run. She looked up as I came in, her eyes sparking with annoyance.

  “Look at this, Katie,” she said, stabbing at our local paper, The Dintscombe Chronicle, spread out on the table in front of her. “It’s a disgrace.”