Jane Hetherington's Adventures In Detection Page 6

  “Jane, come on,” she said, bossily.

  “One minute, please,” Jane replied, calmly. “I can’t keep my mind on the task ahead, if I am concerned about my appearance, can I?”

  Once she’d touched up her lipstick and checked her eyeliner wasn’t smudged, she ran a comb through her hair. A puff of perfume later and she was ready to meet her new friend’s family, one member in particular. Before she left the room, Jane glanced up at the room’s ceiling. The ceiling didn’t contain a trap door to an attic.

  Hmm, she thought.

  When Jane and Felicity came downstairs, the family were already congregating for lunch in the dining room. Hugh was in the middle of the room, glass of beer in his hand, talking to a young woman. Jane felt a pang of jealousy, until from behind her Felicity said, briskly, “Jane, this is my sister Ginny Windsor, and you know my brother Hugh, of course.”

  This, it seemed, was the only introduction that Jane was going to get, because she was immediately abandoned by her friend, who proceeded to sit at the far end of the dining table, slumped miserably against the wall, lost in her own thoughts. Hugh seemed pleased, if rather surprised, to find Jane at his parents’ house.

  “Hello,” he said. “This is an unexpected, if charming surprise.”

  Jane suddenly felt bashful.

  “I don’t know why you’re surprised, Hugh,” Felicity remarked from the other side of the room. “Jane is one of my best friends, after all.”

  “Are you?” he asked Jane.

  He glanced at Ginny, who shrugged.

  “She is,” Felicity repeated, “has been for years.”

  Jane did not often feel awkward, but she felt awkward now and was very relieved when Felicity’s mother appeared at the dining room’s hatch and said, “Could you lot help lay the table please?” remarking to Jane, “Not you dear, you’re a guest. You can sit down if you’d like to.”

  Jane glanced at Felicity, who looked as though she was about to burst into tears at any minute. Rather than sit next to Felicity, Jane willingly helped Hugh and Ginny carry, first warm plates, then bowls of steaming vegetables and finally a joint of meat from the hatch to the dining-room table. A steaming jug of gravy was the last item on the lunch menu to appear. From the kitchen, Felicity’s mother announced, “Well that’s it, lunch is served.”

  On these words Ginny opened the dining-room door and shouted, “Kids”, but only six-year-old Benjamin appeared. He ran into the room, carrying a small plastic gun and shouting, “Bang!”

  “Where’s your sister?” his mother asked him.

  “Boo!” little Katie, nearly four, shouted loudly, whilst jumping out from behind the curtains. This was followed by a loud scream from Felicity, who then yelled, “Katie! You nearly scared me out of my wits!”

  With Katie in tears, Hugh spun around and said, “What on earth is wrong with you? She was only playing.”

  But Felicity, her face buried in her hands, was too distressed to reply.

  Hugh turned to Jane for some explanation, but none was forthcoming.

  “Maybe we should sit down?” Hugh suggested.

  Jane took a seat next to Felicity. Ginny sat her two children down and took her own seat at the table between them. Hugh sat opposite her, just as his parents joined them in the dining room. It was left to Hugh to make the introductions.

  “Jane, these are my parents, Gordon and Hetty.”

  “I know – Hetty Hetherington,” Hetty Hetherington said. “I was born a Brown and married above myself.”

  While her family laughed at this oft-told joke, Gordon took his place at the head of the table and began to cut the meat.

  “Have we met, my dear?” he asked Jane, passing a plate of meat across the table and setting it down in front of her.

  “Jane’s one of my oldest friends,” Felicity said curtly. “Why do I have to keep telling everyone?”

  Jane took a mouthful of wine.

  “I do apologise, my dear,” he said to Jane. “It would seem my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much, dad,” Hugh said, with a slight smile. “None of us can remember Jane ever being one of Felicity’s friends, either.”

  Another look shot across the table, this time from Jane to Hugh, who ignored it, instead taking it upon himself to pile her plate high with vegetables. Roast potatoes followed by cauliflower cheese and green beans and peas were heaped onto her plate. Jane glanced at Felicity. Her elbows were on the table, and she’d buried her temple into her clenched fists and was staring distractedly at the tablecloth.

  “Elbows, Flick,” Gordon Hetherington ordered. She looked at him in amazement, but when he motioned to the children, she removed her elbows from the table and leant back in her chair.

  “Dad, you know you washed your car, yesterday?” she said.

  “That far back I can remember, yes,” he said.

  “Were you in the drive the whole time? You didn’t go into the garage, or anywhere else, did you?”

  “Not as far as I can remember,” he replied.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Quite sure, Felicity.”

  “Think really hard.”

  “Contrary to what you clearly believe Miss, your father and I aren’t in our dotage just yet,” Hetty Hetherington said.

  But Felicity had stopped listening, and was staring up at the ceiling in quiet desperation. Annoyed with her daughter, Hetty turned her attention to Jane.

  “What is it that you do for a living, dear?” she asked.

  “Jane’s a librarian, Mum,” Hugh said.

  “Of course, you two already know each other, don’t you?” Ginny remarked.

  “Do you?” Hetty Hetherington asked.

  Jane couldn’t help noticing that every adult at the table (other than Felicity) was waiting for the reply to this question.

  “I met Jane a few days ago, at the library when I was returning your book, Mum,” Hugh said.

  “As a matter of fact,” Felicity said, suddenly a part of the conversation again, “it was during a visit to the library, that I met Jane and we instantly became friends.”

  “Really?” Hugh asked, smiling. “That must have been the first and last time you visited a library, Flick.”

  “I’ll have you know,” she replied, “that I’m intending to join the library. I want to start reading up on true-life crimes.”

  Jane took another mouthful of wine.

  “Katie has a new ring,” young Benjamin Windsor suddenly announced. Jane felt Felicity spin around in her seat. With the whole table staring at her, the little girl began to fumble in the small silk-like purse which she’d been clutching ever since she’d jumped out from behind the curtain. The child clumsily tipped the contents of the purse onto the table. A small pebble with a hole in it, a bead, a badge and finally a bright orange plastic ring fell onto the table. Jane heard Felicity groan to herself and visibly crumble. She gave Felicity a look of sympathy, but caught Hugh watching them both with a bemused look.

  “Why, that is a beautiful collection,” Katie’s grandfather said to his granddaughter.

  “Yeah, beautiful,” her mother said, wrinkling her nose, and gathering the contents of the purse together.

  “What do you think of Felicity and Lars’ wedding venue, Jane?” Hugh asked, with a slight smile.

  Jane winced. They both knew she had no idea who Felicity was marrying, never mind when or where. Jane glanced at Felicity, only to find her wrapping her hair around her hand more and more tightly, as though she was about to rip it out by the roots. No help there then.

  “I don’t believe I know it well enough to say,” Jane replied.

  Her reply was greeted with a certain amount of surprise around the table.

  “You don’t know the cathedral?” Hetty Hetherington asked.

  “You’re getting married in the cathedral?” Jane said to Felicity.

  “Why, didn’t you know?” Hugh said, teasing her.

  “L
ars sang in the cathedral choir when he was at school, that’s why he has the right to marry in the cathedral,” Felicity muttered.

  “We lost Katie there,” Ben informed Jane.

  “Did they, Katie?” Jane asked her gently.

  The child smiled at her.

  “If we hadn’t found you, we’d have had to go home without you,” her grandfather said. “And you’d still be there today.”

  The little girl laughed.

  “She fell asleep under one of the pews. We think she was playing hide and and seek, but forgot to tell anyone to look for her,” Hugh explained. “It took us a certain amount of time to find her once we’d realised she was missing.”

  “Talk about forgetting things,” Hetty Hetherington said, jumping to her feet. “Lars’ parents sent us a postcard. I’ve put it on the mantelpiece. Here it is,” she said, picking the card up and reading from it. “Arrived late last night. Hasn’t stopped raining,” Hetty looked up from the card and said, “and there she added an exclamation mark.” She returned to the card,” Hope to have a wonderful time when it does. Be back in two weeks. By my calculations, that means tomorrow,” Hetty informed the group.

  This was too much for poor Felicity, who, after letting out another scream, ran out of the room. Her departure from the room was greeted with a stunned silence, which was broken by her mother saying, “For pity’s sake. I’ve heard of pre-wedding nerves, but this is getting ridiculous.”

  Both Ginny and Hugh looked at each other and then at Jane, as though she was going to provide them with an explanation. Jane, who had also finished eating, patted her lips with her napkin and then leant across the table towards Katie. She tucked the little girl’s hair behind her ear and said, “Katie, shall we go upstairs and visit Auntie Felicity in her room?”

  The little girl nodded.

  Jane walked into Felicity’s room, holding Katie’s hand. Felicity was lying face down across the bed. She looked up at them, tears streaming down her cheeks. Oblivious to her niece’s presence, she said, “They must have used a plane and sent it through the open window. There must have been some device to pick up the box.”

  Katie was staring up at Jane. Jane looked down at her.

  “Katie, you like to play hide and seek, don’t you?”

  The child nodded shyly.

  “Do you like to hide in Auntie Felicity’s room?” Jane asked.

  The little girl nodded again and giggled.

  “Would you like to show Auntie Felicity where you hide?” Jane asked the child.

  Katie nodded obligingly and ran across the room to her aunt’s wardrobe. Felicity stared in amazement while the little girl climbed over the shoes and under the long skirts of her mother’s bridesmaid’s dress, completely disappearing from sight.

  “My God!” was all Felicity could say.

  “She must have been in the room when you came back from the jewellers. She was watching you the whole time, look,” Jane said, her eyes darting towards the wardrobe, where Katie Windsor was peering at them from under the hems of the skirt. Immediately they caught sight of her, the little girl dropped the hems of the skirt and disappeared from sight again.

  “But she was in the kitchen. Under the table,” Felicity said.

  “Was she? Did you actually see her?”

  “Well, no. But, I looked in the wardrobe,” Felicity reminded Jane.

  “No, you glanced at it and when you didn’t see a six-foot-two cat burglar staring back at you, you panicked and ran out of the room,” Jane reminded her. “You didn’t search it thoroughly until you returned, by which time she’d grown bored and left. My guess is that she saw you at the window with the ring, and when you went to the bathroom, climbed out of the wardrobe to get it. For a child of her age, a beautiful, shiny ring like that would have been too much of a temptation. When she heard you at the door, she ran back to her hiding place.”

  “This is all very well,” Felicity said. “But where’s the bloody ring?”

  “What ring?” her sister Ginny asked, from the doorway of the room, where she stood with her son. When neither Jane nor Felicity answered her, she said, “We’ve come to collect Katie. It’s time to go home.”

  “You’ll find her in there,” Jane said, just as the little girl once again peered out from under the hems of her mother’s bridesmaid’s dress.

  “Katie!” shrieked her mother. “Get out from under there at once! You’ll ruin it!”

  The child climbed out from under the dress, both she and her brother screaming with laughter. None of this was much consolation to Felicity, who sank back down on the bed again, raised her arms up in the air and brought them down on either side of her, with a thud.

  “Where’s the ring?” she wailed.

  “Well, and again, it’s only speculation on my part, but if she couldn’t open the box and couldn’t fit the box in her purse, then the ring is probably where she abandoned it.”

  “Which is where?” Felicity wanted to know.

  “In there,” Jane said, pointing to the wardrobe.

  “What ring?” Ginny asked, for the second time.

  “We think Katie might have hidden a small ring box somewhere, which contains an antique ring that Felicity’s been looking for. We think it might be somewhere in the wardrobe,” Jane said.

  “Katie?” her mother asked her.

  “I’ll look for it,” Benjamin said.

  Benjamin waited for Jane to unhook the bridesmaid’s dress and remove it from the wardrobe, before he slid inside the wardrobe and began scrabbling around and throwing shoes out of the wardrobe one after the other. Eventually he emerged, holding the ring box.

  “Is this what you are looking for?” he asked. “It was in a shoe. She likes putting things in shoes, doesn’t she, Mum?”

  Felicity leapt up from the bed and ran across the room and snatched the box from the little boy’s hands. She almost dropped it in her panic to open it, but when she finally managed to prise the lid up, the ring was still inside.

  “Oh thank God,” she said. “Thank God.”

  Next to arrive on the scene was Hugh, accompanied by a tall, very blond and rather lanky young man.

  “Jane, this is Lars, Felicity’s fiancé,” Ginny explained.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Jane said. “I’d better put this back,” she said of the dress, still in her hands, which she delicately re-hung in the wardrobe.

  “What’s going on?” Hugh said.

  Both he and Lars were staring at Felicity, tears still streaming down her cheeks. She wiped her hands across her nose and sniffed.

  “Something to do with a missing ring,” Ginny replied, shrugging.

  “Flick, love, what’s wrong?” Lars said.

  “Oh Lars,” she said. She burst into tears and threw her arms around him. Lars’ eyes fell upon the ring in Felicity’s hand.

  “Isn’t that my grandmother’s engagement ring?” he asked.

  Felicity straightened herself up, snapped the ring box closed and thrust it into her fiancé’s hand, with the words, “Take it! Take it! I never want to see the bloody thing again as long as I live!”

  Her outburst finished, she pushed past him and ran out of the room.

  “Felicity! Flick! Sweetheart!” he shouted after her.

  Lars looked at everyone in the room in turn, but when no one said anything he dashed out after Felicity.

  This left Jane, Hugh, Ginny and the two children in the room. All eyes were on Jane. She sensed that some form of explanation was required from her.

  “It’s a rather long story,” she said.

  “I’d love to stay and hear it, but I really should get these two home and into the bath,” Ginny said, steering her son and daughter towards the door. When she reached her brother, she said, “That French bistro his Lordship took me to the other day was super-duper.”

  This information was passed on to Hugh, with a couple of gentle nudges. “Well, bye then dearie,” she said to Jane. “I expect I’ll see you again,
quite soon.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SAM

  I

  Jane knew few would believe the Pink Cottage, the quint- essential ‘chocolate-box’ thatched cottage she was lucky enough to live in, had once been ramshackled, but it had. This hadn’t stopped her falling in love with it instantly though. “And I didn’t even do that with you,” she used to tease Hugh. She’d been as proud as punch the day she and Hugh picked up the keys of their new home from the estate agents. How lucky she was, she thought as they drove to the cottage. There she was, madly in love with her hand- some young husband, and now she owned a thatched cottage. “Aren’t you going to carry me over the threshold?” she teased Hugh on its doorstep. “Once I get the door open,” he replied, putting his shoulder to the front door to force it open. It took a couple of attempts, but eventually it did. “That’s more like it,” he said, brushing the dirt away from his jacket. The couple peered into the house. It was dark and dank. Hugh switched the lights on. They fl ickered on to reveal a stepladder lying on its side across the hallway, blocking their way. Hugh picked the stepladder up and lent it against the stairwell. At that moment, the lights flickered again and failed.

  “Okay,” Hugh said. “We have a house with an outside toilet, no heating to speak of and an unreliable generator. Right then,” he said, clapping his hands together rather perfunctorily. He put one arm around Jane’s waist and the other behind her knees and dutifully picked her up as requested. Her shoe fell off before he could step through the front door, causing her to yell.

  “Wait. Put me down.”

  “It’s only a sandal. I’ll pick it up when we’re inside.”

  “Suzi,” she replied.

  “You must be joking?”

  “It’s Suzi’s home too,” she reminded him.

  He gently set her down and waited patiently for Jane to put on her shoe, return to the couple’s car and remove their black and white cat from its cat basket on the back seat. She returned to her husband with the animal firmly clasped in her arms.