Page 13 of A Village Theatre Murder

‘Of course. It’s just that Roger said he checked. It must have been…Well, I don’t know what happened. I’m just saying that he…’

‘If Roger Grave says he checked for a bullet, he checked for a bullet,’ said Hayley Gibson snappily, having seemingly forgotten that not a moment ago she had said she couldn’t discuss the matter with Julia. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I need to take down Tabitha’s official statement, and then yours, Julia.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course. Tabitha, I’ll wait for you outside.’

Julia sat on the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting area. To avoid the unwelcoming gaze of Cherise, the desk sergeant, she took out her phone and checked for messages. Even so, she could feel the judgement emanating from Cherise. She always regarded Julia with a tinge of disapproval. She seemed to think – not without some justification, it had to be said – that Julia interfered in matters that were not her business. Police business, to be specific.

Julia was pleased to see a message from Sean, who was at a petrol station just outside London, notifying her of his safe progress. It ended with a hug emoji, a flower emoji, and three hearts, an unusually extensive selection of images. Sean was generally a single x chap. Julia stared at them, wondering what she could deduce from this. After some moments of staring, she deduced that she was a sixty-something woman in a long-standing and satisfying adult relationship, not a hapless twelve-year-old with her first flirtation, and she would give no more attention to deciphering tiny cartoon images on a phone.

She closed the message and opened Wordle, which she usually did in a pleasant, leisurely moment over her morning tea. That, of course, was when she didn’t have two separate crises needing her attention at daybreak.

She got two letters in the right place on her first guess – STARE. The A in the middle, and the E at the end. It seemed like a good, solid start, but she knew from experience that it was anything but. With this configuration, it would be nothing more than chance, from here on out. There was no strategy to be employed. She would be sticking random consonants into the grid until one of them happened to be in the right place. Which is exactly what happened until she got the word FLAKE on her fifth try. She closed the app, dissatisfied, just as Tabitha emerged from the door next to the front desk.

‘All okay?’ Julia asked.

Her friend nodded. She looked tired, but calm. ‘I can only tell her what I know. And that’s what I did.’

‘If you can wait for me to be done, I’ll drive you home.’

‘I’d like that, thank you.’

Julia’s formal statement to Hayley was straightforward, and covered nothing that she hadn’t already told her. Yet she felt quite exhausted when it was over, and when she walked out of Hayley’s office, she saw that Tabitha looked pale.

‘And thank you for waiting, Tabitha. I feel quite exhausted.’

Tabitha nodded. ‘Me too. The sadness and the stress, I suppose. And low blood sugar. I failed to have breakfast, other than a cuppa.’

‘Poor you, you must be weak as a kitten! You must eat something as soon as you get home.’

‘I will have a nice piece of toast. There’s not much else in the house. I’d planned to shop this morning. I was going to stockup for the week and drop something to Jane, poor woman. I’ll go out later once I’ve had a rest.’

The two women climbed into the car and drove for a few minutes, before Tabitha’s stomach gave an actual, audible growl. They couldn’t help but laugh.

As the growl faded, a bakery appeared in the windscreen like a sign. Well, it was an actual sign that readKneady, but also, asignthat they should stop and buy baked goods.

‘Shall we?’ asked Julia, already indicating her intention to turn into a parking space right outside the little shop, with its striped awning over the glass front door. ‘They do a good pie.’

‘These are straight out of the oven,’ said the baker, coming through from the back at the sound of their arrival. She held a tray of steaming golden pies in her oven mitts. ‘Lamb, pea and mint, all free-range and organic, and made by my own fair hand.’

Tabitha didn’t have to resort to ‘a nice piece of toast’ after all. No convincing was needed once the buttery smell of hot pastry reached their nostrils. They asked for one each.

‘My treat,’ said Tabitha.

‘If you fancy something sweet, we have a cinnamon raisin loaf today.’

It looked magnificent, its top glazed golden and shiny, studded with fruit.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t,’ said Tabitha, sadly. ‘Trying to cut back on the sweet things.’

The two women silently contemplated those pesky five pounds. ‘Oh, I know,’ Tabitha’s voice lifted. ‘I’ll get that for Jane. It’ll be a nice treat, and handy when she has visitors. Do you mind if we deliver it to her on the way home, Julia?’

Jane and Graham Powell’s house – Jane’s house now, presumably – was in a row of four golden sandstone cottages, all identical,but for the colours of their painted doors and the state of their gardens. Despite the Powells having moved to the cottage quite recently, Jane’s garden more than held its own. It was small, but lush and lovingly tended, and accommodated a number of small decorative items – a ceramic birdbath already hosting a ceramic bird, a white-painted arch over which grew a climbing rose, with a ceramic hedgehog and frog peeking from the undergrowth. Julia imagined Jane and Graham drinking their morning coffee at the small, round, metal table, and surveying their pretty garden. She felt horribly sad for the new widow, who would now be drinking her coffee alone.

They had not intended to stay and visit but Jane ushered them in as soon as she opened the door. ‘I’d like the company, really I would,’ she said, brushing away their objections. She did seem genuinely eager for them to stay, even insistent. They followed her into a neat little kitchen, its centre table already holding a quiche and two iced cakes, and a number of bunches of flowers pushed into an ice bucket. Clearly, the Berrywick crisis cavalry had been coming over in full force.

‘You can freeze it,’ Tabitha said, handing over the raisin bread.

‘Now, Jane,’ said Julia. ‘Would you like me to arrange those flowers in a vase for you?’

---