Page 16

Chapter Sixteen

My lunch break wasn’t until half-past one, and before that I received three telephone calls. The first was a complaint about someone littering and ruining the village’s aesthetic. They hadn’t seen the culprit so there was pretty much nothing I – or Yanni – could do about it. I promptly filed my notes on that call into the bin: no need to add to the various paper piles. Efficiency is my middle name. Actually my middle name is Elizabeth, but Efficiency sounds cool and starts with the same letter.

The next call was from a mermaid who complained that someone kept sailing their yacht out to sea and disrupting her by playing music too loudly above the kelp forest. Given that Yanni had given me access to the police database, I did a quick search while the caller was still on the line. This complaint had been made before with a repeat comment in the response logs: There are no boundaries in the kelp forest.

‘Unfortunately,’ I repeated, ‘there are no official boundaries in the water. Meaning they are within their rights to do that.’

‘That’s ridiculous! It’s practically my home!’

I felt for her, I really did, but I couldn’t see a way around it. ‘Sorry,’ I apologised. She rang off in a huff and I imagined her flipping her tail dramatically before swimming off in a swirl of indignation. I didn’t really blame her.

The final phone call was, as Yanni had already predicted, from Mr Margate complaining that the banshees had once again announced his imminent death. I told him how sorry I was and assured him we would prepare accordingly, though I didn’t know what preparations he expected us to do. Throw a farewell party? Order him a coffin in his favourite colour? I did neither of those things.

When half-past one rolled around, I grabbed my stuff and headed straight to Mrs D’s. Halfway there I wondered if I should have checked she still lived in the same place; it had been years since I’d visited her and she could easily have moved house.

I dismissed the idea when I saw all the catmint in the garden; Mrs D still lived in the same place. We’d been pretty sure she was some kind of feline shifter, though what type I had never found out – and today wasn’t the day I was going to ask. It felt rude to greet someone with, ‘Hey, are you part housecat, lynx, or an ancient tiger goddess?’

After knocking on the door I waited patiently, but there was no response from inside the house. Instead it came from behind me. ‘Can I help you?’ I turned around to find myself facing Mrs D.

With her walking boots, thick coat and a bit of colour in her cheeks, she looked substantially better than the previous day. ‘Oh my goodness, Beatrix!’ Her wrinkled face beamed. ‘Twice in two days? This is a lovely surprise. Come in. Come in.’

She shuffled past me to open the door then beckoned me in. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ she asked as she removed her boots.

I did the same before I followed her inside. ‘Hi, Mrs D, I hope you don’t mind but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about what happened yesterday.’

‘Really?’ Her eye twitched slightly, possibly because of the light drizzle that covered her skin. ‘I’d heard you’d become a bit of a detective out there on the outside.’

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I told her. ‘But yes, I wanted to look into it, find out what happened. For your sake.’

She patted my arm. ‘That’ s kind of you but I’m sure Yanni will get to it when she has time. You don’t need to worry yourself.’

‘Unfortunately Yanni having time is a bit of a rarity,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m working at the police station now on the phones. But I’ve only got a few questions, and they won’t take a minute.’

Mrs D scratched behind her ear and her left eye twitched again. I got the impression she didn’t really want to talk about it. I wasn’t surprised: she’d never been one to like any fuss. Being on the front page of the newspaper was probably her worst nightmare.

‘Warren’s still alright, isn’t he?’ she asked.

‘I haven’t heard otherwise.’

‘Well, I’m okay too so I don’t think the matter requires looking into.’

‘It definitely does, Mrs D. Imagine if somebody tries the same thing again – and uses more poison. We have to get to the bottom of this. Now, I noticed that at the start of the contest you sat in Warren’s seat first and you picked up one of his pasties with your glove. And you were only wearing a glove on one hand, right?’

‘Yes. Yes. I think I was.’ The twitch was non-stop now, and not only in her left eye but her right one, too. It looked like she was trying to communicate in Morse code. ‘Please, dear, I don’t know why we need to go through all this if everyone is okay. Can’t we forget about it?’

‘You can’t really want to do that, Mrs D. Look, I have a theory that perhaps Warren was the target, and when you picked up his pasty with your glove—’

‘It was me, okay! It was me !’ Her voice shot across me, rendering me silent.

‘You?’ I said, unsure I had heard her correctly.

‘It was me, Beatrix. I’m sorry.’ She was trembling and then she started wringing her hands. ‘I’m not cut out for a life of crime.’ That much was clear considering she’d cracked faster than a cheap biscuit. ‘I didn’t think it would make anyone ill – it was only meant to taste horrible, to slow him down a bit so I had a chance of winning.’

‘You tried to poison Warren?’

The old woman sniffled and big, ugly tears dripped down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him,’ she reiterated. ‘Warren has cut off funding for the underprivileged children’s trip to the museum in London – and that is his prerogative,’ she added hastily. ‘But I needed the funds for the kids. Five hundred pounds would cover it. I didn’t mean to hurt him, I really didn’t. It was a type of chilli that should have made his throat burn and stop him from eating all the pasties. That was all I wanted. He was my only real competition. I’d already done so much damage to those children by losing his funding. It must have been my fault he stopped supporting us – I must have done something wrong because he’s been a stalwart supporter for years.’ She was so upset she could barely breathe. ‘You must think I’m a horrible person.’

I patted her hand. ‘I could never think that, Mrs D. You know that.’

‘But you’ll have to tell Yanni, won’t you?’

I nodded reluctantly. Yanni had to know if for no other reason than to stop the investigation and avoid wasting any more police time. ‘Look, from what I know of Warren he’s a pretty generous guy. I’m sure he’ll understand that this was a mistake.’

‘So generous that he stopped our payments without a word and hasn’t replied to any of my emails? That’s not exactly a charitable man, is it?’ she responded bitterly. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know it’s his money, but I don’t know what to do. We rely on him so much.’

‘Can’t you ask the parents to pay?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘With clubs and uniforms and the cost of living being so high, we can’t. A lot of families are already struggling – good people in good jobs.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘We’ll have to stop a lot of our out-of-school activities. It’s heartbreaking that this will be my final legacy. ’

‘Your legacy is in the generations you’ve taught and helped. You can’t be blamed for this situation.’

She ignored my words of comfort. ‘Will I go to prison?’ she asked. ‘Only I promised my class I’d take them to a camp-out for the homeless in Edinburgh next month. Some of the young water shifters have been a bit adrift – they need to see how tough life can get and how we can help. Do you think I could still go? One last hurrah?’

The guilt and anxiety rolling off her was so strong that all I wanted to wrap my arms around her and tell her everything would be okay. But that wasn’t something I could do. ‘I’ll talk to Yanni,’ I said instead. ‘I’ll make her understand it was an accident. I’m sure it won’t be as bad as you think.’

My stomach knotted as the words left my lips. Fingers crossed I wasn’t lying.