Page 72 of Murder in the Winter Woods
‘Ken Payne!’ she said.
Hayley Gibson looked at her in surprise.
‘The muffins!’ Julia said, pointing. ‘They look…’
Hayley caught on immediately. ‘Has anyone eaten one of those muffins?’
Pippa came back in with the tea tray, the puppies trailing behind her. They looked delighted to see a room full of new humans, even if the humans seemed tense and distracted.
‘What’s going on?’ Pippa asked.
Hayley didn’t answer her question, but instead took a handkerchief from her bag, and picked up the plate of muffins, which she moved to a side table. ‘Who made the muffins?’ she asked.
‘Aunt Margaret, of course. She’s always been a wonderful baker, but she can only do simple things now. Scones and muffins. It’s one of the few things she can still enjoy. It calms her down when she’s agitated.’
‘Nobody eat or drink anything,’ said Hayley, reaching into her bag for her phone. ‘Everyone sit down. We’re going to be here a while.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Pippa asked.
The puppies were looking for attention, jumping up at their legs, and trying to climb onto their laps. No one paid them any attention, let alone tried to wrangle them to order.
‘Ken Payne was poisoned by a plate of muffins left on his doorstep,’ said Julia.
‘Luckily, he only had a bite or two and left it because it tasted funny,’ said Hayley. ‘He got very sick – vomiting and loss of motor function. The doctor in the emergency room found it peculiar, and did some blood tests. Poison, and strong pain medication. If he’d eaten more, he would have died.’ She glanced at Margaret when she said it.
‘A man was poisoned? In Berrywick? Good lord. Who would do a thing like that?’ said Pippa.
Julia and Hayley looked at her. ‘Someone with a grudge,’ said Hayley.
Pippa looked pleadingly from Julia to Hayley and back again, hoping for confirmation that the notion was absurd.
‘Why would Margaret have anything against this Ken Payne person? I’ve never even heard his name before today.’
‘Pippa, think about it. Ken was in the band. So were Matthew and Lewis. And it’s clear that Margaret was furious with them for what happened in the past.’
‘If Margaret’s muffins were poisonous – which I must say, I find hard to believe – then it was entirely by mistake,’ said Pippa decisively. ‘She might have put rat poison in the mix instead of flour – the woman has a brain tumour, you realise. I put all the dangerous substances up on the highest shelf, but when she gets an idea in her head, she’s very stubborn. She might have been remembering some time in the past when they kept flour up there, or something. And I can’t watch her every minute.’ Pippa’s voice rose.
Julia’s heart broke for poor Pippa, who had tried so hard to take good care of her ailing aunt. She took her hand, and shook her head. She said gently, ‘Pippa, I found that St Christopher at the scene of Lewis’s accident.’
‘This suggests that Margaret herself was there,’ Hayley said. ‘And I think that the forensics will find damage to her car which is consistent with hitting a person. Hard. Two people, in fact. It appears that Matthew died the same way, likely at the hands of the same person.’
‘This is madness,’ Pippa exclaimed. She looked at Julia pleadingly: ‘Julia, please, explain to the detective that it’s not possible.’
‘Pippa, I wish I could…But I think Hayley is right. Margaret ran over two men, and when you took her car keys away, she poisoned the third. Unless I’m very much mistaken, Dominic – the fourth person at that lunch – might have been next.’
Hayley turned to Margaret, who had been gazing out of the window, seemingly unconcerned by the fraught conversation going on around her. ‘What size shoe do you wear, Margaret?’
Margaret smiled. ‘Four. Feet like a child, my mum used to say.’
Hayley turned back to Pippa and Julia. ‘Consistent with the forensics.’
‘There is no way my sweet, sick aunt is a murderer,’ said Pippa. ‘Not a chance.’
‘The thing about getting old,’ said Margaret, conversationally, ‘is that people often underestimate you. Lewis saw me driving towards him, you know. Heknewwhat he did to me back then. But he just stood there. Thought I would stop. Thought I didn’t have the balls. Ha! He was wrong, wasn’t he? Ran him over, and then again, just to make sure. My only regret is that he didn’t suffer like I suffered all those years.’
Rather chillingly, Margaret described Lewis’s death as if she were relating a story about a church jumble sale.
‘Aunt Margaret! I can’t believe you would do that,’ protested Pippa.
