Murder at the Maples: A Flora Lively Mystery

  Murder at the Maples

  A Flora Lively Mystery: Book 1

  by

  Joanne Phillips

  Table of Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, localities and incidents portrayed in it are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Mirrorball Books

  An imprint of Bostock Publishing

  www.bostockpublishing.co.uk

  Kindle Edition 2013

  Copyright © Joanne Phillips 2013

  Joanne Phillips asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved in all media. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and/or publisher.

  Cover design by Blondesign

  Chapter 1

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’ Flora looked out of the window and up the cliff face. The other carriage seemed suspended above them. How on earth had she let Joy talk her into this?

  ‘Oh, Flora, you’re such a wimp.’ Joy sat back with a smile and patted the bench by her side. ‘Come on, it only lasts a minute.’

  So does plummeting to your certain death, thought Flora, but she tucked herself in next to Joy anyway and began a head count of the other passengers.

  Visiting the cliff railway at Bridgnorth was a special treat for her friend’s eightieth birthday – Flora’s idea of a fun day out was shopping for vintage clothes or taking to the hills with a backpack. Not risking life and limb for a trip down memory lane. Flora stowed her tote bag between her sandaled feet and began to read the guidebook with determined interest.

  ‘It was right here,’ Joy said dreamily, ‘where Eddie proposed to me. The fourth of May, nineteen fifty-one. The happiest day of my life.’

  ‘It says here that the passenger cars were replaced in nineteen fifty-five, so it wasn’t this actual carriage, in fact.’ Flora looked up in time to catch Joy’s withering glare.

  ‘Flora, sometimes I despair of you. You are entirely devoid of romance.’

  While Joy continued her reverie, Flora dropped the book into her bag and absently chewed on a bitten-down nail. She’d counted eighteen people squashed into the tiny carriage, and presumably there were another eighteen coming down the cliff at the same time. Thirty-six lives in the hands of a couple of ambitious Victorian engineers.

  ‘How does it work, exactly?’ she asked the conductor. He was standing in the wooden doorway, his hat placed at a jaunty angle. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Beats me.’

  Oh, very reassuring, thank you. Flora craned her neck to get a better view of the steep track that climbed up the cliff, and then immediately wished she hadn’t bothered. She ran a hand through her cropped brown hair – back to its natural colour now the bleached blonde had grown out – then placed both her hands very carefully on top of her tensed thighs.

  ‘It’s something to do with wheels and pulleys,’ said a voice by her side. A bespectacled child with a Hello Kitty rucksack perched on her lap was looking up at Flora with a serious expression.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You were wondering how it works. We did it in a school project. The Victorians.’

  ‘You mean ropes and things?’

  The girl nodded solemnly.

  ‘Great,’ said Flora under her breath.

  Joy laughed and bounced in her seat. She laid a white-gloved hand across Flora’s clenched fists and stage-whispered, ‘Hold on tight.’

  The carriage lunged forward with a sickening jerk and began to trundle up the rails. Flora watched layers of carved rock slide past the windows as they rose higher and higher up the cliff.

  ‘Wave hello!’ someone called out, and Flora turned in time to see the other carriage pass them on its way down. A fleeting glimpse of expressionless faces, and then they were gone. The little girl with the glasses was rummaging in her rucksack, oblivious to the entire journey, while Joy sat on Flora’s other side with her eyes closed, a secret smile turning her lips up at the corners. Flora began to hum, blocking out the rumbling of the silly train as it was pulled up and up by ropes and pulleys and, by the looks of it, blind faith. The carriage smelt of hot wood and oil. She focused on a patch of flaky blue paint above her head and imagined herself elsewhere. Anywhere else would be fine.

  And then, with another stomach-churning jolt, it was over.

  ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  Flora waited until they were clear of the ticket station at the top of the cliff, then she leaned against the wall with her back to the view and said, ‘I am never bringing you on a day out again, Joy it’s-nothing-like-a-cable-car Martin.’

  Joy snickered and rolled her eyes. ‘For a young person, Flora, you aren’t very adventurous. You’re twenty-nine, not ninety-nine! Anyway, this is nothing by today’s standards. These days you’ve got all those roller coasters and white-knuckle rides for excitement. When Eddie and I first came here, oh, it was considered very daring. We would just stand and watch the carriages going up and down for hours.’

  ‘And they say there was nothing to do before TV.’

  ‘Flora, don’t be a wet blanket. Come and look at the view.’

  ‘I’m not being a wet blanket, Joy. I don’t like heights, okay?’

  ‘Well, that’s plain silly. You can’t fall from here. Come and have a look.’

  ‘No.’

  Flora could feel her friend’s eyes upon her, but she didn’t turn her head.

  ‘I had no idea you were afraid of heights. I guess the funicular railway wasn’t much fun for you, was it?’

  You think? Flora shook her head, smiling in spite of herself. This last six months she’d grown to care about Joy like a surrogate grandmother, but you couldn’t deny the old woman was in a world of her own. When Shakers Removals had moved Joy into her new home at the Maples Retirement Village last November, Flora had been blown away by the older woman’s resilience. Never mind that she’d buried her husband of nearly sixty years the month before – never mind that she was moving out of her beloved family home and into a one-room unit with no garden – Joy Martin had remained cheerful and spirited throughout.

  ‘The next time I move house it’ll be me in a box, not ornaments and picture frames and knick-knacks,’ Joy had joked, nudging Marshall in the ribs for good measure.

  Marshall’s face had been a study of embarrassment, much to Flora’s amusement. He still struggled with the British sense of humour – especially the morbid kind.

  Which wasn’t the only thing he struggled with, of course. Having to work for Flora had to be top of the list.

  Joy pulled Flora’s attention back to the present with a sharp tug on the strap of her bag. ‘You really should take a look down here. It’s amazing. The people are so tiny they look like toy soldiers, and that man there … Why, what on earth is he doing?’

  Flora swung around, her curiosi
ty captured, and found Joy leaning out dangerously over the low wall.

  ‘For God’s sake, you crazy old woman, get back will you?’ Flora grabbed Joy’s arm and gripped it tightly. Joy gave a mischievous laugh.

  ‘Made you look though, didn’t I?’

  The girl with the glasses skipped past, holding an ice cream in one chapped-looking hand and her mum’s sleeve in the other. She stared at Flora’s shoulder, openly curious. Flora tugged down the cap sleeve of her T-shirt, but not before the child’s mother had given her the once-over, taking in the skull-and-hearts tattoo and the beaded jewellery and the many-patched vintage jeans with fraying hems. She pulled a face of disapproval, then the two of them skipped away along the walled path, leaving Flora feeling suddenly and unaccountably annoyed.

  She knew people made judgments about her based on how she looked – her dressed-down style and the tattoo; the spiky hair she used to dye a different colour every month; her vintage skirts and jewellery and wacky floral bags – but all this said nothing about her as a person. If they thought she was tough they were right to a point, but they were also dead wrong.

  ‘Do I look like a freak or something?’ she grumbled, turning back to Joy. ‘These jeans were actually really expensive.’ But what a person to ask: Joy was hardly a fashionista in pale blue comfort-fit old lady trousers and a matching flowered blouse, her white fluffy perm showing pink scalp with every gust of wind.

  ‘You look very lovely, dear,’ Joy said, peering at Flora’s face. ‘Although you’d look even more lovely if you wore a little make-up from time to time.’

  Flora shrugged and looked around to get her bearings. She was starting to regret bringing Joy out, birthday or not. Of course, she should have known that with a name like the funicular railway it wasn’t going to be just any normal train journey. She should have known, with Joy involved, that there would be a catch.

  Marshall was right: she was a soft touch. ‘You treat these old people like they’re family,’ he’d said when Shakers Removals got the contract for the retirement village. ‘You get too attached to people, Flora. That’s your problem.’

  Well, it was true. She did. But look at them, she’d argued. Look at them with their crinkly eyes and their cardigans in odd pastel colours, their ugly pets and their ancient, dusty furniture that they just would not admit was surplus to requirements. Not even now that they had moved from their vast family homes and would be living in a room – one room – with a kitchenette and an en suite shower for the rest of their lives. If they were lucky. If they didn’t get carted off to the third floor for Special Care: Joy’s biggest fear these days.

  And look at Joy, leaning over the wall to see down the cliff as if she could lean back through time and grab her dead husband by the hand and wrench him back to life again. She was full of energy, incorrigible, never moaning about being lonely, although Flora knew she must be, deep down. What sacrifice was a day off, really? For someone as special as Joy.

  Flora sighed and tapped her friend on the arm. ‘Come on. Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, can we? I know you prefer your coffee, but in the tea rooms just here you can see the winding gear with the ropes and everything. I read about it on the internet.’

  Flora smiled. ‘Fine. But I’m not going back down the cliff in that thing, okay? I’m walking back to the Low Town – next time you’re on your own.’

  ***

  Joy fell asleep on the bus back to Shrewsbury. Not five minutes into the journey she was snoring softly, her thin lips parted, the lipstick she’d worn especially for today worn off around the edges but still bright pink in the middle. A thin sliver of drool crept down to her chin, following the creases in her papery skin. Flora smiled, her eyes soft with concern. Lately Joy had been on her mind a lot, and not just because it was coming up to what would have been Joy and Eddie’s sixtieth wedding anniversary. She was, Flora feared, starting to lose it a bit. Just the odd comment here and there, things that didn’t add up.

  For example, she’d completely taken against a new resident, a Mr Felix, who Flora and Marshall had moved into the Maples only a month ago. Mr Felix was a harmless little man in his seventies, short and starchy-looking with pale ginger hair swept across a pink and freckled bald patch. He used a mobility scooter, or else hobbled around on Maples-issue crutches.

  ‘He’s got shifty eyes,’ Joy said when Flora pressed her to explain why, that very morning, she had turned full circle and refused to walk through the communal area until the poor man had gone. ‘And his trousers are too long.’

  Well, that may be true, but was it any reason to act so disgusted? Flora felt embarrassed for him, although it was a fact that he hadn’t been overly friendly on moving day. When Flora had offered to set up his kitchenette for him, and maybe even cook his dinner if he was very tired, he had looked affronted and told her no, thank you, and would they mind hurrying up, please. Flora hadn’t been able to meet Marshall’s eyes the entire rest of the afternoon – she just knew what he was thinking.

  That was the trouble with Flora’s line of business: it was hard not to get personal with people. You came across them at times of such importance: moving into their first homes, with barely a stick of furniture but so proud of their boxes marked “Kitchen!” and “Bedroom!”, all jaunty writing and exclamation marks. Or moving up from their first home to something bigger and better (and more expensive, a drain and a burden, Marshall would say), with tiny babies bundled up in blankets and flustered-looking mothers saying, ‘Now, where did I put those scissors exactly ...?’ Or simply walking from room to room with the baby on a hip, their faces blank and bewildered.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Flora always wanted to tell them. ‘Once you move in it’ll all get sorted in no time.’ And often she did say this, or something similar, and the customer would turn to her with a face so bright and hopeful. ‘Do you really think so?’ they’d ask. ‘Really? Will it?’

  It was no wonder she got so involved. Her dad should have known better than to leave her the business. When had she ever been able to remain detached?

  The bus pulled into the terminal with a screech of brakes and Joy lifted her head from the window and yawned. She had a crease down one cheek and smudges of black under her eyes. Flora said nothing. She took Joy’s arm, gave it a little squeeze, then steered her towards the zebra crossing, the river, and home.

  ***

  The Maples Retirement Village was a sprawling maze of blocky, low-roofed units with a three-storey weather-boarded building at the centre. Its resemblance to a prison was uncanny, and unfortunate, because the Maples was in fact a highly desirable place to live out one’s retirement. Or so the literature claimed. Desirable or not, it was certainly expensive – when Joy had confided in Flora how much her own tiny unit cost per week, Flora was stunned, and she made a mental note to look into her own pension as soon as possible. She might be only twenty-nine, but it would take a lifetime to save enough to cover just a year of care in a place like the Maples.

  Or, as Marshall called it, Sleepy City, where the residents’ every need was catered to, and there was no requirement to go “off site” at all if they chose. Sleepy City had it all: medical centre, hairdresser, general store, mini library, mobility shop. There was a communal lounge with a bewildering array of entertainment and craft activities on offer, a coffee shop and a travel agent called Coaching Dreams. Marshall said it made him feel ill: he had been against taking on the contract from the outset – Shakers, in his opinion, should be moving into a completely different business area. Flora had overruled him – he might be the manager but she owned the company. Besides, Flora loved the place. There was something so other-worldly about it, and she imagined it to be very American. Marshall, who actually was American and therefore not so impressed by all things USA like Flora, looked at her with a combination of pity and despair when she said this. Which was just about his usual expression anyway.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ Flora told Joy when they arrived
at the Maples’ incongruously grand entrance of faux marble columns either side of a topiary arch. ‘I’ve missed about twenty phone calls from Marshall. There must be a problem back at the office that he simply can’t cope with. Being a man and all.’

  Joy tutted. ‘You know, that’s just sexist, Flora. There’s no reason why being a man should affect his ability to do his job.’

  Flora let the comment pass with a good-natured shake of her head. Joy had feminist views which went way beyond those usually held by women of her generation – it was one of the reasons they’d struck up a friendship in the first place, with Joy surprised and impressed by Flora’s unlikely status as the owner of a removal firm. ‘And you do all the lifting too?’ Joy had asked. ‘You don’t leave that to the men?’

  ‘Of course I don’t!’ Flora had heard this question far too many times. ‘I can shift a wardrobe down a flight of stairs single-handed. It’s all in the technique,’ she’d added when Joy eyed Flora’s slight frame dubiously.

  Joy wouldn’t hear a word against Marshall, although Flora had her suspicions that this had far more to do with Marshall’s rugged good looks and undoubted sex appeal than Joy’s own personal equality affirmation programme.

  ‘Afternoon, ladies.’

  Flora smiled at the old man who’d stopped outside Joy’s unit. The Captain was one of the Maples’ oldest residents, and also the most dapper. His neatly combed moustache emphasized a slightly hooked nose, and the medals on his left breast pocket shone proudly.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he said, holding out a crisp white envelope. Joy took the card with a warm smile, and promised to join him later for “the play”.

  ‘Amateur dramatics?’ Flora asked, watching the Captain walk away, his erect posture making her straighten her shoulders.

  ‘Radio Four. Anyway, you should have told me you needed to get off.’ Joy rooted in her stiff leather handbag for her key. ‘I could have walked back here alone.’

  ‘Of course you could.’

  Joy’s unit was identical to all the others except for bright red Venetian blinds and a hand-printed sign on the door which read: Beware of the dog! Flora leaned against the breeze-block wall. ‘I wanted to see you back safely. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re wearing your gloves again. Eczema playing up, is it?’