Page 1 of And Then There Was the One
CHAPTER ONE
Georgie wasn’t hysterical by nature, but four seemed like an awful lot of homicides.
“Don’t you think it’s becoming rather odd?” she asked Arthur as they stood amidst a small cluster of villagers outside Mr. Marble’s shop, watching as Constable Lexington led Mrs. Marble away. It was a sunny morning in May, the air mild and a bit damp from last night’s rain. The storefront bearing a hand-painted wooden sign reading the Marbled Cheese and a display of several wheels of Double Gloucester did not appear the likely location of a murder. There was a fair amount of shocked murmuring among the crowd, combined with the occasional dark mutter about always having suspected something wasoddabout Mr. Marble’s wife.
Arthur, who was watching the proceedings while jotting down notes on the pad he’d fished out of the pocket of his trousers, glanced over at her with a frown. “What is?”
“Four murders in a year!” Georgie said in an undertone, but further discussion of this oddity was forestalled by Arthur choosing that precise moment to weave his way through the crowd, soliciting interviews; one person, a very pretty woman about Georgie’s age with brown hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose, looked exceptionally eager to speak to him. Georgie was fairly sure the woman was a Murder Tourist—she thought she recognized her from a previous visit to the village that winter—and wondered whether it was her ghoulish interest in violent crimes in quaint settings or Arthur’s own particular charms that made herquiteso happy to speak to a member of the press. Arthur was a reporter forThe Woolly Register, and Georgie supposed he did have a professional obligation to report on the resolution of a murder investigation, so she waited patiently for him to finish his work.
At last, Arthur pocketed his notepad and returned to her side. “What were you saying?”
“Ten minutes ago,” Georgie said acerbically, but then relented. “Buncombe-upon-Woolly is small. Even a single murder should be the event of the year—of the decade!”
“And it was,” Arthur reminded her as they turned away from the Marbled Cheese to continue their progress down the high street, nodding to everyone but avoiding being trapped in conversation. (This was always a hazard in a village the size of Buncombe-upon-Woolly, especially when one was a Radcliffe of Radcliffe Hall. And Georgie, for better or worse, could lay claim to that surname.) “I thought the entire village would collectively perish from excitement when the vicar waspoisoned—do you know we sold more papers that week than we did in the entire previousmonth?”
Georgie personally thought Arthur might try a bit harder to sound less gleeful about murder-induced profits, but the recent crime spree in Buncombe-upon-Woolly had undoubtedly proved to be a promising development for his career.
“But then Mr. and Mrs. Fieldstone were poisoned only a couple of months later!” Georgie pointed out. “And then there was the Christmas murder at Radcliffe Hall—”
“The readerslovedthat one,” Arthur said fondly. “I thought the ‘Murder Under the Mistletoe’ headline was one of my best.”
Georgie cut him a scathing look. “It was atmy house.”
“I know,” Arthur agreed with a solemn shake of his head. “Which is unfortunate in terms of Christmas memories, I expect, but it was dashed convenient for me, in terms of access to the crime scene.The Deathly Dispatchonlywishesthey’d had their reporter on the ground for that one!”
Georgie rolled her eyes;The Deathly Dispatchwas an anonymously published broadsheet that had begun circulating solely in response to Buncombe-upon-Woolly’s crime spree, and it was more or less the bane of Arthur’s existence, obsessed as he was with getting scoops before its unnamed reporter, who went by the nom de plume Agent Arsenic.
“But this one makes four,” Georgie said, refusing to allow herself to be drawn into yet another discussion of small-town newspaper rivalries. She cast a glance over her shoulder at the Marbled Cheese crowd, where Mr. Vincent—the owner and editor in chief ofThe Woolly Register, and therefore Arthur’s employer and, given the size of the village, his only coworker—was still busy taking photographs of the exterior of the Marbles’ shop. “I wouldn’t have thought Mrs. Marble capable of murder. She’s always been very kind.”
“You’re just annoyed you weren’t the one to catch her,” Arthur said slyly, nodding at Mrs. Penbaker, the wife of the village council chairman, in passing. Her husband, Mr. Penbaker, had been blustering in his usual fashion outside the Marbles’ shop, loudly proclaiming to all assembled that the streets of Buncombe-upon-Woolly were safe once more now that the murderous cheesemonger was soon to be behind bars. Arthur had got a lengthy quote from him on the dangers of bitter wives with easy access to arsenic, and Georgie, who had only listened to approximately a third of his speech before beginning to mentally catalogue the plants in the greenhouse at Radcliffe Hall, had been hard-pressed not to roll her eyes.
Georgie huffed out an irritated breath as they came to a stop before the library, which was an almost offensively charming building of honey-colored stone with ivy creeping up its walls in the very heart of the village. “I didn’taskto help solve those murders, you know,” she said as Arthur stepped forward to open the door for her. “It’s not my fault that no one else in this village seems capable of identifying common poisons.”
“Some of us, George, have better things to do than spend our days studying every weed we spot growing along the riverbanks,” Arthur said, and Georgie had to exercise great restraint to stop herself from elbowing him in the stomach. She was twenty-five now, and while that had not been an uncommon habit when she and Arthur were younger, she thought vaguelythat she should perhaps attempt to be a bit more dignified in her advanced age.
“Being able to identify a bouquet of lily of the valley in a woman’s kitchen, when the vicar’s symptomsperfectlymatched those associated with that particular poison, is just common sense,” Georgie said in an annoyed whisper. “And yet the police were too stupid to manage even that basic level of investigation.”
“See? You’re irritated that they didn’t consult you.” Arthur sounded smug, as he so often did lately, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up on his nose; his articles for theRegisterhad garnered regional interest, and a few had even been picked up by some of the London papers. She could tell he was daydreaming about the glamorous life he would lead in London once he managed to secure a reporting job there instead; he was already dressing the part, she thought, casting a thoughtful glance at the herringbone trousers and carefully pressed shirt he was wearing. He made her feel rather dowdy by comparison, in her serviceable brown dress and woolly cardigan—but, she thought philosophically, she’d spent her entire life not caring much about how she looked, so there was no reason to start now, just because Arthur was looking a bit… well, dashing. (At least, she noted with satisfaction, his curly dark hair was as unruly as ever.) No doubt he intended to abandon Buncombe-upon-Woolly for a fast-paced life of nightclubs and cocktails, and would conduct love affairs with half the women in London (and half the men, too, Georgie didn’t doubt), and she’d only see him once a year at Christmas. She felt a bit gloomy at the thought.
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she said stiffly, and then promptly abandoned him to make a beeline for the botany section, while Arthur headed off to consult the library’s collection of other archived Gloucestershire newspapers, to compare historical crime statistics to those of the past year. For all he might tease her about her interest in the recent spate of murders, he was just as curious.
Georgie set about amassing a stack of books to take home with her—many of which, admittedly, she’d already read—and, after some minutes spent browsing, approached the desk where Miss Halifax, the librarian, was seated. She was perhaps fifteen years Georgie’s senior, with dark hair that was pinned loosely back from her face; she wore a blue day dress with a white collar and, per the laws of librarianship, a cardigan. She had an Agatha Christie novel in hand and was scribbling away in a notebook as Georgie set her books down before her. Georgie spotted a page labeledBook club questions, and she shook her head darkly. The book club, as she understood it, had formed in the wake of the village’s recent murder spree, and solely read crime novels.
“Any chance we might see you at the next Book Clue Crew meeting, Miss Radcliffe?” Miss Halifax asked, looking up as Georgie produced her library card from her dress pocket.
Georgie did not snort, but she was tempted. “No, thank you,” she said. “I think that there are quite enough murders in my day-to-day life without seeking out fictional ones. In fact,” she added, “I should be very happy to not think about murder ever again.”
“I think there are many readers who would disagree withyou, Miss Radcliffe.” Miss Halifax handed back her library card.
“Well,” Georgie said, watching as Miss Halifax set about stamping her books, “I can assure you that I’ve better things to do than worry about the opinions ofmysteryreaders.”
“Georgie!”
Georgie, her arms full of books, was attempting to scrape mud off the sides of her oxford shoes so that Mrs. Fawcett did not murder her in her sleep for mucking up her clean floors. She paused at the sound of her sister’s voice, and turned to see Abigail standing dramatically on the stairs in…
“What on earth have you got on?” Georgie asked, setting the books down on the floor next to her as she unlaced her shoes.
“A Victorian nightgown,” Abigail said, in a tone that implied that this should have been obvious—and that, moreover, there was nothing else that she possibly could have been expected to be wearing at—Georgie consulted the antique clock above the empty fireplace in the entrance hall—three-fifteen on a Monday afternoon.
