Murder and a Song (A Pattie Lansbury Cat Cozy Mystery Series Book 2) Read online

  Murder and a Song

  Nancy C. Davis

  ©2015 Nancy C. Davis

  Copyright © 2015

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known, hereinafter invented, without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Thank you

  Your Gifts

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  Chapter 1

  It was June in the West Yorkshire village of Little Hamilton, and that meant trouble. Every year Patricia Lansbury ended up taking a tour of the village to appease all her neighbours, who got unseasonably irritable. She couldn’t blame them. June was the month of the YorkFest music festival, the English North’s answer to Glastonbury, and it always caused major disruption.

  Pattie thought that she was prepared this year. She had been training her houseguests to become comfortable with loud music. Every meal time she would turn up the radio and watch their ears twitch. Cats were not fond of sudden loud noises.

  For the last five years, Pattie’s house had been a luxury “Feline Retirement Home”, and it was home to no less than thirteen rescues, strays and foster-kitties. Pattie was fifty-six and a widow, and her two sons had long since left home. It had been time that she did something for herself, for a change!

  That morning she laid out thirteen bowls of food for thirteen cats, all to their particular tastes. She had no objection to letting her cats roam outdoors, but for the next ten days she wanted to keep them safely inside, away from the chaos and noise of the festival.

  Pattie cleaned her spectacles, checked that all the windows were closed, and then set off into the village.

  The weather was cool and the air felt crisp and clean. She loved days like these, where she could walk for miles breathing in the country air, which reinvigorated her body and sharpened her mind. It had been a while since she’d had to properly exercise her mental faculties. The daily crossword just wasn’t good enough sometimes. The last true test of her wits had been a double murder case that winter, and she certainly didn’t want to hope for another crime like that in Little Hamilton! The police had been thoughtful enough to ask her to consult, considering how her son had once been a Detective with them. The only good thing to come out of that whole debacle is that she inherited another cat for her meowing brood, Macy, who had belonged to her now-deceased neighbour Mister Mosby.

  Pattie checked on her elderly neighbour, Mrs Lancaster, and her cat Fiddles. Mrs Lancaster was complaining about all the litter in the village since the festival-goers had started pouring in from across the country. Why couldn’t they clean up after themselves?

  Pattie visited Mrs Atkinson, who wasn’t her favourite person, but she owned the only Persian in the village and Pattie just couldn’t resist running her fingers through that long white fur. “The sooner that silly YorkFest finishes, the sooner we’ll have our village back to ourselves!” Mrs Atkinson said, tutting.

  “I see no reason we can’t share,” Pattie told her kindly. “After all, it’s only for a few days.”

  “A few days too many!” Mrs Atkinson replied.

  All of Pattie’s neighbours seemed to have something to complain about when it came to the festival. Robert Fredrikson wasn’t looking forward to the loud, thumping music from dawn until midnight. Betty Partridge and her husband were obsessing over the state of the countryside, which would inevitably be left as a muddy pit that would take all year to repair itself – just in time for next year’s festival. The only people who were happy were Benjamin Rosswell and his wife Clara, who owned the general store as well as the B&B upstairs. Festival time was their busiest month of the year.

  Pattie made her way to the rise near Hawthorn Crescent, the highest point of the village at the top of the valley. From there she could look down over the valley and across the wide fields, split here and there by the streams and hedgerows. The festival grounds had been set up. 600 acres of green meadow had been encircled by fences, serviced by 2,000 Portaloos, and dominated by two dozen floodlit stages. It was a big event, and the majority of the grassy area was already populated by thousands of tents, small and large, around which swarmed the countless ticket-holders of all ages.

  Already music was belting out across the countryside, everything from heavy rock to country & western. There was something for every music lover – provided they didn’t mind slumming it inside tents in a churned-up field. It was not Pattie’s cup of tea.

  Speaking of which, she’d intended to drop in on her good friend Elliott Knight, the man who ran the doctor’s surgery single-handedly. Because Little Hamilton had no vet, he also helped out Pattie with any treatment for her furry lodgers in an emergency. They had come to know each other rather well over the last few years.

  The walk had given Pattie several hours of exercise. On the way back through the village, she stopped off at home to feed herself and over a dozen fuzzy little faces, then took off down Shepherd’s Street towards Doc Knight’s practice with a packed lunch and thermos of his favourite Darjeeling.

  When the Doctor had seen his last patient of the morning, Pattie took in their picnic with a smile. “Good afternoon, Elliott. A busy day for you?”

  “Hello, Patricia! It has been, rather.” The kind white-haired gentleman accepted the hot tea that she poured for him and smiled at the unexpected lunch. “I’m always grateful for your visits, Patricia!”

  “And I’m always grateful for the company.”

  They didn’t have long to catch up before the phone rang. Elliott answered it and glanced at Pattie. After a few short words he said, “Of course. I’ll ask her to go right over. Goodbye.”

  He put down the phone. “Is there a problem?” enquired Pattie.

  “That was Detective Constable Downey. He says he’s holding a woman named Blossom Carter at the police station, and this woman has asked for you. He wants to know if you’ll oblige her by going down to the station.”

  “Well, of course, even if it is a bit unusual,” said Pattie, wiping her hands on a napkin. “What has this Carter woman been charged with?”

  Elliott looked her in the eye. “Murder.”

  Chapter 2

 
Detective Constable Tom Downey met her outside the station, where he was having a discreet cigarette.

  “Thomas!” she said, appalled. “I thought you’d quit those nasty things years ago!”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Lansbury,” he replied. He stubbed out the cigarette on a nearby dustbin. “I’ve had a rough few weeks. Isabelle and I are getting a divorce.”

  “Really? Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.” Pattie’s son Andrew had grown up with Tom, and they’d both been in the police academy together, so when Tom was hurt, Pattie felt it. Over the years he had almost become a surrogate son after Andrew had been driven out of town after a scandal.

  D.C. Downey smiled and unwrapped some mint gum. “How are the cats?”

  “All very well, thank you. Archie’s been off his food lately, but he’s always had funny habits. My newest, Macy, has really settled in with the others.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Are you ready to go inside?”

  “Yes. Could you fill me in on what’s happened?”

  They walked and talked. The D.C. said, “A pair of out-of-towners arrived two days ago for the festival. Blossom Carter and her partner Daryl Hardy, both 46 years of age – folk music fans, apparently, and you can tell from the look of them. They were sharing a tent in the meadow.”

  “Were?”

  “A few hours ago, Mr Hardy was found dead. Ms Carter claims to have woken up beside him in their tent and seen a knife protruding from his back. He was long gone. She screamed the place down, eventually someone took notice, and we went out to the scene.”

  “Was there any evidence at the scene?” asked Pattie.

  “Just a lot of junk food wrappers and a couple of empty beer bottles. We’ve got forensics working on the body and the knife, but there was nothing near the tent. The whole ground is already churned up. We decided not to put a stop to the festival: there’s sixty thousand people on that site, and we’re expecting another twenty more thousand by tomorrow.”

  They had arrived at the interview room. The door was open and the room was empty, just a table with recording equipment and a few chairs. The Detective Constable’s partner, D.C. in training Juliette Palmer, arrived to hand Pattie the case file.

  “Strictly speaking, we’re not asking you to consult on this one,” explained Constable Palmer. “The current position is that Ms Carter is our prime suspect and we have no reason to believe otherwise, but Ms Carter asked if there were any private investigators in the county and of course we thought of you. She is maintaining her innocence.”

  “And why don’t you believe her?” asked Pattie, taking the file.

  “Because the knife that was buried in her boyfriend’s back…? It was hers.”

  Chapter 3

  After Pattie had a chance to catch up on the details of the case, the suspect was brought to the interview room in handcuffs.

  “Hello, Ms Carter. If you have a lawyer, then I advise you to have them present,” said Pattie. “I’m not a licensed detective, although I’m often used as a consultant in certain cases.”

  Blossom sat down opposite Pattie. She looked ten years older than her real age, heavily lined with straw-like brown hair and hooded eyes. It seemed as though decades of partying had aged her prematurely. She said, “I have a lawyer and he’s on his way up from Cornwall. He’ll be a few hours. I just want to get started.”

  “Alright,” said Pattie with a smile. “I’ll get us some tea. Have you eaten today?”

  “No. I don’t want anything.”

  “I’ll ask one of the officers to stay with us. That’s procedure in these situations.”

  D.C. Downey nodded at his partner, then said, “Constable Palmer will sit in on the interview. She’ll observe and only step in if there’s a breach in protocol. I’d better get back to handling the festival.”

  He closed the door and the three women took seats. Pattie set up the recorder and took out a pad to make notes. Someone came by to give Pattie a cup of tea and Constable Palmer a coffee. Blossom said that she couldn’t stomach anything.

  “I threw up a few times,” she explained reluctantly.

  “That’s quite normal. You’ve had a very rough morning. I was sorry to hear about your partner.”

  Blossom said nothing, just looked at the table.

  “Had you been together long?”

  “Just a few months.”

  “Maybe you could run me through what happened, as far as you know?” suggested Pattie, her pen poised.

  Blossom nodded. “Okay. Daryl and I drove up from Cornwall day before yesterday. For the festival. We set up the tent and have just been chilling out since then, taking walks around the valley, had lunch in the village yesterday, getting to know the people in the tents nearby. Last night we both went to sleep.”

  “About what time was this?” asked Pattie.

  “Just after midnight, I think. We were tired but we’d been chatting with some other people and were having a good time. Anyway, we went to sleep, and when I woke up this morning, Daryl … He was … dead. Lying on his front with a … a knife in his back.”

  Blossom put her hands over her trembling lips and closed her eyes. She took a few deep breaths and then wiped her cheeks. “I don’t usually get upset about things, but this was … Obviously it was a big shock. The last time I saw a body was my Dad, after he passed away in hospital a few years ago. At least then I knew that it was coming…”

  Pattie took a packet of tissues from her coat pocket and offered Blossom one. The suspect’s handcuffs jangled as she wiped her eyes. Pattie said, “What time did you wake up and find the body?”

  “About five past ten. It’s easy to sleep in late during festivals.”

  “And whose was the knife?”

  “It was … mine. Just a small kitchen knife we brought with the cooler. For making sandwiches, that kind of thing. I can’t believe that someone was in our tent, doing … that … and right next to me while I was sleeping! Oh, god…”

  Pattie pushed her spectacles up her nose. “Forgive me for saying, but from an outsider’s perspective, the simplest explanation is that you killed your partner. The weapon belonged to you; it happened in your tent with no-one else present.”

  “I know that’s what it looks like,” she replied, burying her face in her hands.

  “Had you any reason to be upset with Daryl?”

  “We bickered sometimes, but not over anything serious. Directions in the car, things like that. Nothing enough to make me want to kill him!”

  Constable Palmer cleared her throat. “Mrs Lansbury, we have witnesses who claimed to see Ms Carter and Mr Hardy arguing loudly the night before his death.”

  “Is that true?” asked Pattie.

  “Yes. We couldn’t find the schedule for the folk stage and blamed each other. A stupid little row over nothing,” Blossom explained wearily. “We found it later on, under his sleeping bag. He could be a bit of an idiot sometimes.”

  “Is there anyone else who might have wanted to cause you or Daryl harm?”

  “Argh, I’ve been thinking!” Blossom exploded, pulling on her hair. “I can’t think of anybody! We knew each other well enough, but it wasn’t like we were married. The only person I ever knew who made threats against Daryl was the day we arrived here in the village. There was this farmer just outside the parking space for the festival, and Daryl nearly hit one of his cows. The farmer went mental at him, yelling and screaming. He said, ‘I’d better not see you again, or you’re in for it!’ but we didn’t take it seriously. I suppose we weren’t exactly friendly to him after he started yelling, not that he deserved anything less. He was a nasty piece of work…”

  Chapter 4

  Pattie talked with Blossom for almost an hour, then sat with Constable Palmer to compare notes.

  “That’s the first we heard about an angry farmer,” she said to Pattie. “Who do you think it is?”

  “There must be four landowners around that festival site. It could be any one of them. Can you spare anyone fo
r interviews?”

  She smiled. “Tom – um, D.C. Downey, he’s run off his feet on peacekeeping detail with the festival. We’re really undermanned for this whole thing, and the organisers of the festival have had to hire private security companies to keep their insurers happy. I think it’s pretty much just me for this one.”

  Pattie went with her to photocopy her handwritten notes for the case file. “So, how are you and Thomas getting along, as partners? You’ve been working together for over a year now, am I right?”

  The Constable must have seen the older woman’s discreet smile, and her eyes twinkled in response. “It’s a perfectly professional relationship, Mrs Lansbury. Don’t get any ideas about us!”

  “Oh, of course not,” said Pattie, but that didn’t stop her giving the young woman a wink.

  They took out a map and divided up the five local farmers whose land was adjacent to the festival ground. Pattie secretly picked the two most likely suspects for herself.

  There were two large areas designated for parking, and Seth MacGowan’s pastures were adjacent to both of them. He also fit the bill for a crotchety so-and-so who was likely to yell at complete strangers. He wasn’t Pattie’s favourite person in the village for precisely that reason. Manners, after all, cost nothing.

  She stopped off at home just long enough to change into her bad-weather-boots and pet Simba, who was always the first cat to the door whenever she returned. Then she trudged back down the valley to the festival site.

  As she approached the sounds of revelry became louder. From the Post Office the music was nothing more than distant bass thumping, but it was only another mile down the main road when she could hear melodies and singing from the crowd. The crowd made a constant white noise, like surf, and even though it disturbed the quiet it made Pattie’s heart brighten to hear so many people enjoying themselves. Life for Pattie had been about simple pleasures lately: a bit of easy TV, petting and caring for the cats, a walk in the sunshine … It had been a long time since she’d felt her heart beating in her chest from excitement.