Today's recommendation
A sleuth mystery by Dawn Treacher
Extract from The Seeds Of Murder
Cedric was a village vicar
until his wife packed a small case and left on the bus and didn’t return. There
was gossip and speculation. The loss was hard for Cedric to bear. He took to
gardening and writing but he soon discovered that lies grow thickly like weeds
in a garden and the villagers had secrets of their own.
***
Dead heading the roses was always the first
job of the day, Cedric’s early morning mug of tea balanced on the fence post
beside him. The robin who followed him around the garden as if overseeing his
progress, sat a few feet away, a worm wriggling in her beak. Each year the rose
bush had grown stronger, its leaves a rich glossy green. Nimbly he snipped the
dead blooms, dropping them one by one into his bucket. He’d followed the
instructions for propagating a rose to the letter and had marvelled as the limp
stick of rose grew roots and sprouted tiny shoots of new life. He’d chosen the
spot in his new garden carefully, ensuring it had plenty of sun and room to
spread. Now it had grown almost as large as the bush that had spawned its
rebirth. He may not have been able to bring his wife’s favourite rose bush with
him when he moved that bleak day in early March, but she would have been proud
of what he’d achieved, not just in that corner of the garden, with its neat
flower border alongside a manicured lawn, but in the multitude of tubs that
erupted colour in the form of fuchsias and marigolds and early petunias.
Scarlett had been more supportive than he
could have hoped and had even bought him an edging tool for his birthday.
“You should start a blog, Dad,” she’d
joked, wheeling a barrow of ripe manure and tipping it over the base of the
rose bush.
“Vicar turned gardener, you’d have all the
housewives hooked.” Her pony tail of thick auburn hair glinted in the sunlight.
Cedric looked away. From the back view, his daughter looked so much like
Carolina as she’d looked then, the year took on the vicarage, with its garden
so thick with nettles he’d doubted she’d ever tame it. But he’d been wrong to
doubt her and indeed had learnt more than he dared to admit from her
determination to build a garden from a wasteland loved by bees and thistles
alike.
“I’ll set it up for you,” called Scarlett,
abandoning the wheelbarrow and slumping herself down on the lawn, kicking off
her boots to wriggle her toes. “You just need to provide the words, and we know
how good you are with those.”
Cedric joined her, but blogging wasn’t his
style at all. It was far too personal, intrusive, letting people comment on
what he held dear, mock him for his failings; as insidious as ground elder
under the bushes.
Vicar leaves parish under cloud of scandal
Cedric never did discover who the
journalist had been talking to, but as with all local papers, gossip sold much
better than news and even a vicar made the occasional enemy. He’d left such
rumours behind him when he moved ten miles to a new village outside the parish
boundaries. No, a blog was far too public and his garden was his and his alone.
Amongst the flowers in summer and the fallen leaves in winter, he felt his wife
was near in spirit if not in body.
Now, Cedric stood and looked at the pebbled
drive which extended down the side of the small bungalow which he and Rubens
called home. His new office, as that was what he’d decided to call it, would
fit nicely just below the window of his bedroom. He’d be able to sit inside and
look out upon the roses; hear the birds singing in the trees. And Scarlett had
promised him the WIFI would reach and the whole thing could be plugged into the
electrics. He could even make tea.
He heard the crunch on the drive, the sound
of an engine stopping, followed by footsteps on the path. Stage one of his plan
had arrived in the form of a shabby 1970’s Buccaneer caravan, rather green upon
its roof, its windows yellowed in the sun but to him, it was perfect.
Scarlett took charge to dress that caravan
as if it were a house in need of a makeover. She may have dropped out of
college, claiming fashion design had no future and that lifestyle YouTubing was
where all the money was, but she certainly had the flare and the skill. Using
Carolina’s old sewing machine at full pelt, Scarlett had soon replaced the
faded poppy upholstery on the sofa cushions with smart new green velvet covers
and added thick curtains with a tweed finish at all the windows with cord
curtain tie backs and matching tweed cushions.
“It’s masculine, yet chic,” she said, as
she plumped the cushions and laid down a brown striped rug between the two
sofas. She’d found a perfect high coffee table in a charity shop which would
hold Cedric’s laptop and notebooks, painted all the cupboards a deep gloss
maroon and even bought him a little whistling kettle for the stove top. “You’ll
get your novel finished in no time in here,” she’d said, settling herself down
on one of the sofas next to Rubens, who’d decided it was better than any
armchair in the bungalow. He purred loudly in his sleep.
Yes, it would do nicely as a place to write, but though his manuscript, handwritten in a set of matching notebooks was sitting beside his laptop, that wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he’d bought the caravan from a scrap dealer for a measly three hundred pounds. No, it was an office but not just any office. Now was not the moment to tell Scarlett, or anyone else for that matter. As Scarlett was intent on potting up some plants to decorate the gravel around the entrance to the caravan, Cedric settled down with a mug of tea and bourbon biscuit, notebook open and pen in hand. Rubens, who always took the opening of a notebook as a sign that he had to help out in the art of writing, stretched and then jumped up off the sofa cushion, leapt up onto the coffee table and sprawled out, one paw draped over the edge of Cedric’s work of the day before. Cedric gave the cat’s tummy a tickle and began writing.
“...Pushing open the door, Inspector Barnabus found himself in a room in which he doubted another single object could have been wedged onto the shelves which crowded the damp stained walls or crammed into drawers so stuffed full several failed to close at all. It never failed to surprise him that no matter how heinous the crime or objectionable the perpetrator first appeared, inside each house he searched, hoping to find clues and blame, he found threads of a life, woven tightly together, portraying on the outside the normal existence of a blameless soul. Rooms full of memories and mementoes that the perpetrators never believed would one day be carefully sifted through, catalogued and photographed. This room was no different but as he removed each layer and veneer of deception, just maybe beneath he would find the tiniest fragment of a clue. And here, inside a drawer full of what would appear to be old utility bills and final reminders, was a ticket for a dry cleaners and a quick check on his phone confirmed his suspicions, that it wasn’t one from the city, not even the neighbouring town, but one two hundred miles away.”
It was late afternoon by the time Cedric
put down his pen and closed his notebook. He started up his laptop and opened a
file on the desktop. Rubens had long since decided his assistance was no longer
required and had taken to the floor of the caravan where he’d begun the ritual
of washing first his belly then in between his toes.
“Rubens,” said Cedric, typing now. “There’s more to searching for clues than looking in obvious places.” He proceeded to add to a list he’d been compiling in a file entitled: Finding the missing. Look for the mundane in hidden places.
Dawn Treacher
Dawn Treacher is
based in North Yorkshire, England. She writes in both adult crime fiction and
children's middle grade fantasy adventures. She is also an illustrator of
children's fiction, an artist and plush artist. She runs both a writing
critique group and a creative writing group and goes into schools to promote
storytelling.
