Harriett (The Tipton Hollow 1)

“It’s alright, I don’t mind,” he smiled, strangely reluctant to release his hold on her. Whatever he was about to say next was interrupted by a rapid knock on the door. He turned and sighed with relief at the sight of Fred, the village constable, on the front doorstep together with a florid faced young boy who stood at his elbow.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mark moved to let them in and flicked the halfpenny at the boy, who beamed proudly and doffed his cap before he raced off to tell his friends about his good fortune. Mark stared pointedly at Fred, whose face turned sombre as he entered the room.

“I need you to send for my colleague at the station.”

“I will get on to it right away, sir,” Fred replied and disappeared out of the shop. Within minutes the young boy had returned and stood to await further instructions so he could earn himself a second reward.

Relieved that the beat bobby was so efficient, Mark clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s drop the blinds so we aren’t watched. I am afraid that there has been another death, constable.”

“Oh, dear,” Fred sighed moments later when he spied the prone body of Mr Montague behind the counter. “Did you find him, Harriett?”

Harriett nodded jerkily and accepted the sympathy on Fred’s face with a half smile. “I came for tea with him.”

“You had tea with him most afternoons, didn’t you?” Fred’s round usually took him past the tea shop. Although he never stopped, he always popped his head through the door to hail a greeting as he went on his duties. Today he had been held up by a strange message that had turned out to be nothing but a merry chase and hadn’t taken his usual afternoon stroll through the neighbourhood.

“I hadn’t planned to, but it is my day off and I wanted to drop by to see how he was. I haven’t seen him for the past few days, and I missed our usual chats. When I got here though, I found him like -” she waved blankly behind the counter and lapsed into silence.

Mark appeared in the doorway that led to the small yard at the back of the shop. He had studied the gate and the back door but there was no sign of forced entry. It pointed to the fact that whoever had added the poison to Hugo’s tea and entered through the shop’s front door, or had been allowed entrance to the yard by Hugo, who had closed and locked the gate.

“What did it?” Fred asked as he squatted down to lift the cover off Hugo’s face. He frowned at the strange odour around the man’s mouth and glanced at Mark.

“Poison,” Mark sighed and moved to the dresser in the back room to study the contents. He lifted the lid of the small metal box of tea, and sniffed the contents, and repeated the procedure with the sugar, milk and several other items. A rummage around in the cupboards revealed nothing untoward. There was no sign of any household poisons for pests; there wasn’t even a demon trap in the shop. There was nothing to indicate that the tea may have been poisoned by mistake by Hugo himself, who had inadvertently done something silly like stirred his tea with a spoon he had used to lay poison out for rodents. Instead, everything was as clean as a whistle and in keeping with someone who ran a neat and tidy store.

“Did Hugo have someone helping him?” Mark called as he studied the numerous cups and saucers stacked neatly on the dresser.

“No, he worked alone,” Harriett replied. She carefully skirted around Hugo’s feet to stand in the doorway and watch Mark’s search of the back room. “He was a little pernickety with his things. Everything had a place and he would get quite grumpy if anyone messed with his piles. Lots of people called in to chat with him though. There was always someone here, sitting on the stool out front, sharing a cup of tea and chat.” Her voice quivered at the thought of that easy generosity so cruelly, and so unnecessarily, erased. “Hugo was a nice, kindly man who was no threat to anyone. He liked a bit of gossip, obviously, everyone does. Even those who say that they don’t indulge in gossip lie. It’s the mainstay of village life, especially in somewhere like Tipton Hollow. Why would someone do this to such a helpless old man? What purpose would it have?”

“To stop gossip,” Mark replied starkly. He could see no reason to favour her delicate sensibilities. This was the second death in less than a week. He couldn’t discount the message that had been issued at the séance that ‘H is in danger’. So far, although Minerva Bobbington didn’t have H in her name, Hugo Montague did. Had Hugo been the person the threat had been issued to? It looked entirely possible now, however Mark had to question whether Hugo was the only intended victim. He closed his eyes as he realised that Harriett had intended to have tea with Hugo on that very same afternoon. If she had not had been in Great Tipton, she would have been in the haberdashery with Hugo and would have drunk the poisoned tea that killed her friend.

That led him onto another thought that made him sick to his stomach. Was Harriett the intended victim? He sucked in a deep breath in an attempt to quell the worry that swept through him at the thought that it could have been her behind that counter, on the floor, dead.

Mark disappeared outside and combed the nearly empty back yard as he tried to blank that particular image out of his mind. The outhouse revealed nothing except for a few squares of neatly cut newspaper next to the privy, and a solitary demon trap stationed beside t

he door. The coal house beside that held nothing but coal and a battered dustpan and brush. Aside from that, there was nothing in the yard.

He had yet to do a more intensive search of the back room of the haberdashery, but suspected that whoever had poisoned Hugo’s tea hadn’t been careless enough to leave a packet of poison around, or left any indication as to how they had managed to get the poison into Hugo’s tea. That left Mark to consider the very distinct possibility that whoever had poisoned Hugo, was someone with whom he regularly shared tea and gossip. His thoughts turned toward Harriett, but he immediately discounted that notion. It was simply inconceivable to him that someone so pretty, so intelligent and seemingly honest would stoop so low. She simply wasn’t the murdering kind; if there was a murdering kind of person.

Minutes later Doctor Woods arrived. He took one look at Mark’s face and paused just inside the doorway. “Too late, I take it?”

Mark nodded and waved to the body behind the counter. “Far too late, I am afraid. I need you to provide me with a cause of death, although I think I may know what it is.” He didn’t expand further and merely stood back to allow the man to inspect the body.

“He has been dead about an hour or so,” David sighed. “He is still slightly warm, and has no sign of rigor mortis.”

Harriett shuddered at the dispassion in the David’s voice. She hated the controlled manner in which he spoke about the death of her friend, but knew that it was his job. He couldn’t become emotionally involved in his patient’s lives. Still, the way in which he discussed the morbid details of Hugo’s body made her feel slightly sick.

“Come on, lass, let me get you home. I am sure the Detective Inspector can find you there when he needs to ask you some more questions,” Fred muttered.

She made no protest when he took hold of her elbow and escorted her firmly toward the door. She was glad to be out of the haberdashery and didn’t think about how the villagers would perceive her being escorted from the property by the local bobby.

The journey home was something she struggled to remember. Even when Fred had left her inside the house with instructions to lock the door, she sat at the table in the back room and merely stared at the wall as she tried to absorb the events of the last few hours. She had no idea how long she sat motionless before Babette arrived in a flurry.

“What happened? Harriett, are you alright?”

“I am fine, Babette, honestly.” Harriett offered her a smile that wavered before it broke under the weight of the uncontrollable sobs that swept through her. Strangely, while she cried, her thoughts weren’t only on the demise of her erstwhile friend, Hugo, but turned again and again to the image of Mark, seated in the tea shop window, holding the hand of the beautiful mystery woman. Harriett was fairly certain that her tears were for Hugo, even though a small voice of doubt warned her that she wasn’t looking deep enough into her emotions to be honest with herself.

“Now, there then. Tell me what happened,” Babette sighed once a fortifying cup of tea had been placed on the table.