Deadly Clementine Read online

  “I know, my dear. But like the reverend said, these things happen to us all. Nobody stays on the earth forever. Everyone must die at some point. Life is a like a book, isn’t it?”

  “How so?” Clementine dragged her gaze away from the quite country lane outside the front of their house and looked searchingly at her father.

  “Well, some books are huge thick tomes with plenty of adventures inside. Others are long, family-based sagas. Others are short stories, or teenage adventures cut short before adulthood weighs its heavy burden. On this occasion, Sally’s book seems to have been ended mid-stride, but she made an impact while she was here, didn’t she? She used to help the church and village a lot,” Cameron murmured gently. “I am sure everyone who is involved in the fair will miss her terribly, but life has to carry on.”

  Clementine felt the sharp sting of tears but blinked them away. “I just don’t understand how someone so healthy can take ill and die so suddenly. Sally never even said she had a stomach-ache, or even a headache.”

  Clementine’s voice trailed off to a whisper as she thought over yesterday’s meeting with Sally. Over and over they whirled and churned in a kaleidoscope of worry and self-doubt. Had she missed something; some vital clue as to her friend having a hidden illness? Was there anything Sally might have hinted at that would have given her some idea that something was wrong, if only she had paid a little closer attention?

  “I don’t suppose I will ever find out now,” she whispered.

  “Don’t blame yourself. I am sure that whatever happened to Sally to take her life there was nothing you could have done,” her father assured her. “Best not to think about it, eh?”

  But Clementine did think about it. Even when she tried not to think about it, she found herself thinking about it. She tried to do something to keep herself occupied, but nothing felt right, especially when she found herself sitting down in the swing seat in the garden later that day. Clementine began making the lists she should have been drawing up with Sally and was once again reminded of what she should have done that day.

  “This is wrong,” Clementine hissed, slapping the parchment onto the bench seat beside her in disgust. “This is so wrong.”

  She knew, deep in her gut, that something was not quite right about Sally’s death, only had no idea what caused that feeling, or why she should suspect there had been foul play of some kind.

  “I need to go and see for myself,” she whispered.

  She studied the paper beside her but had no interest in writing anything more. Instead, her attention was locked firmly on the single key tucked away in the back of the kitchen drawer; the key to Sally’s house.

  “She wouldn’t mind me going in if she was here. I am sure she won’t mind me going in now she has gone.” The instant that Clementine said that aloud she made the decision that she would go and check Sally’s house before she went to see how Dotty was. Then, well-

  Then I shall just have to take it from there and see what happens, won’t I?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Clementine fetched the key to Sally’s house and left the house. She hurried down the narrow country lane toward the village and Sally’s house nestled within it.

  The small, two storey property was neatly painted; the curtains closed in a display of respect for the dead. All was still and quiet. Cautiously, Clementine let herself in through the front gate, and wandered slowly along the narrow path leading to the front door. There was no movement inside the house, but Clementine had the distinct feeling that something was wrong. It was difficult to know what caused the acute sense of disquiet that settled over her. At first glance, the house looked the same as it always had; neatly tended and peaceful. Now, though, there was a somewhat eerie feel to the place. It was odd because there was no reason why it should be there. Nothing had essentially changed except Sally no longer lived there. That was no reason why Clementine should feel so uneasy, but she did. She got the distinct impression that she was being watched even though there was nobody around. The nearest neighbour, Mrs Saunders, wasn’t anywhere near her sitting room windows, and even if she was there was no reason why she wouldn’t wave as usually did when they saw each other.

  “It’s odd but I truly feel as if I am being watched by someone inside Sally’s house. Maybe it is the doctor?”

  It felt odd to approach the front door and not see her friend’s merry face appear in the side window next to the front door, peering out at her before she scurried through the house to yank the door open before Clementine reached it. Still, Clementine removed the key from her pocket and, after a swift look around the still and silent garden, let herself into the house.

  The first thing that hit her was the cold. As if waiting for her to arrive, it settled its chilly cloak around her and snatched all vestige of warmth from Clementine’s flesh the instant she crossed the threshold. With no fires having been lit today, a distinct dampness had settled in the air. It made Clementine’s breath fog out before her whenever she puffed out her cheeks, like she found herself doing as she closed the front door only to find herself encased in an eerie silence. She stood with her back to the door for a moment and studied the hallway. Slowly, Clementine tugged her thick shawl tighter around her shoulders and held it together with her numbed fingers as she contemplated what to do. With a deeply fortifying breath, she eventually gathered the courage to wander through the house.

  “First, I will check that everything is all right,” she whispered only to then realise just how alone and isolated she felt.

  Sucking in another breath, Clementine forced herself to remain quiet as she made her way through the property, poking her head into each room to make sure that everything remained undisturbed. Rather than upset her, as she expected it to do, Clementine contemplated what was bothering her, and it wasn’t grief. It was a little disconcerting that she had already started to look for signs of a struggle, although why she had no idea why she should feel the need to do so.

  “If there had been any signs of a struggle the vicar would have told me,” she whispered.

  More troubled than ever, Clementine made her way upstairs to Sally’s bed chamber, which was just as neat and tidy as the rest of the house. Someone had removed the sheets and folded them neatly at the end of the bed leaving the bed unmade. The shutters had been drawn back a little but only to allow enough daylight into the room for the various professionals to be able to go about their duties.

  “It’s as Sally always left it,” Clementine murmured, a little bothered by why she should even begin to contemplate that it might not be.

  Something is odd. I can feel it.

  At the door, Clementine turned to study the room with a more critical eye. Everything on the dresser sat in precisely symmetrical positions, displayed to impress while they waited for the mistress of the house to return. The cupboard doors were closed with no clothing poking out. The chair and small table beside the bed were both devoid of any small trinkets or accessories. While she tried to make out what unnerved her, Clementine ran through what Sally might have done once she had left her.

  “The vicar said that Sally had died sometime yesterday evening,” Clementine whispered.

  With that in mind, Clementine had no idea why she was looking in the bed chamber. It was hardly likely that Sally had gone to bed a little after six when she had left her, yet Clementine knew that if Sally had fallen ill, she might have taken to her bed.

  To her consternation, Sally’s neatly folded night-gown was draped over the back of an armchair in the corner of the room. Clementine turned to look at the hooks on the back of the door only to find Sally’s dressing gown still hanging up. Further, Sally’s slippers were positioned quite precisely beneath the same chair her night-gown still rested on. They weren’t next to the bed where Clementine would have expected Sally to leave them had she gone to bed early.

  “Did you go to bed dressed?” Clementine whispered. “Where are all of your clothes, Sally?”

  If she took them off then they wouldn’t be put away, wouldn’t they? Despite a small voice warning Clementine that Sally might have decided to lie down while still fully dressed, Clementine bent over. Her frown grew heavy when she found Sally’s boots beneath the bed where Sally usually kept them.

  “Well, you weren’t wearing your boots, but why would you if you went to bed?” Clementine whispered.

  Having been the last person to see Sally alive, Clementine began to rummage through Sally’s drawers for the clothing she knew Sally had been wearing.

  “Well, you might have taken to your bed dressed, which isn’t good news,” Clementine grumbled because it pointed to the fact that Sally had indeed taken ill suddenly. “This gets curiouser and curiouser, especially because I know that if you had taken ill so swiftly you would most likely have hurried next door to ask Mrs Saunders to fetch the doctor. You cannot have taken ill so swiftly that you didn’t get the chance to get help yet managed to stumble upstairs, could you? Of course, the vicar didn’t actually say where you had been found.”

  Clementine was assaulted with an unusual mix of excitement that she was right to suspect something strange had happened, confusion driven by the fact that she didn’t have any answers yet, and downright terror at the thought of what it all might mean. Had Sally been murdered? That was what she was looking for, if she was honest. Signs of ‘foul play’ was quintessentially murder, Clementine knew. She was just reluctant to say that single, condemning word aloud. It seemed ridiculous because she instinctively rejected all possibility of Sally having been killed in cold blood. There had to be a reasonable explanation for an otherwise healthy person to have died so suddenly. But something niggled away in the back of Clementine’s mind and refused to be ignored.

  “Well, your clothing isn’t here
. I will have to find out from Mrs Saunders if you were wearing it this morning when she found you,” Clementine muttered. “For now, I think I will search the rest of the house and try to find out where you died.”

  Despite this reasonable plan of action, Clementine was compelled to check in the cupboard beside the fireplace. Her hand visibly shook when she tugged the door open, but she had no idea why she should be so afraid. She hesitated when she found Sally’s cloak hanging within. That wasn’t unusual in any way, but the mud on the sodden material, and the small puddle of water gathering in the bottom of the cupboard was.

  Clementine opened her mouth to speak but then realised that she had nobody to talk to. Closing her mouth with a snap, she studied Sally’s boots, which were dry and neatly polished, just as Sally would have worn them.

  “So, where did you go in your cloak last night but without your boots on then?” Clementine whispered.

  She studied the cloak again, but it was most definitely not her imagination. There could be no other explanation for the muddy, wet fabric. The cloak had been worn last night, not long after, or during, the rainstorm Clementine herself had made sure she avoided when she had left for home a little earlier than planned at six o’clock.

  “My cloak was just like this last night, but mine has been dried before the fireplace. Now why would you not dry your cloak, Sally?” she whispered. “This is not something you would usually do. Nobody knowingly puts a cloak away while wet.”

  Clementine contemplated the possibilities. The only theory she could come up with for Sally not taking the time to dry her cloak was that she had been ill and hadn’t felt well enough to bother with it.

  But that doesn’t explain why you then took the time to polish your boots. If you were so ill that you couldn’t fetch help you should have been too ill to go upstairs to hang your cloak up.

  Scratching her head in consternation, Clementine studied the contents of the rest of the closet but nothing else seemed untoward. Curious now, Clementine rummaged through the rest of Sally’s belongings. Several long moments later, she took one last look around the room.

  “There is no dress, Sally. So, what did you wear when you went out last night? Did you die still wearing your dress? If you did it would still have been wet this morning when you were found, just like your cloak, wouldn’t it? If you had gone out, what did you wear on your feet because I know you only had one pair of boots, and they are in your bed chamber, neatly polished and bone dry. If you wore your boots, why did you polish them into a high shine yet not feel well enough to dry your cloak? If you wore your cloak, why would you not then wear your boots, especially when you went out in the rain?”

  Placing her fists on her hips, Clementine spent several minutes trying to come with a credible explanation, but without knowing what Sally had been wearing when she had been found it was impossible to know if she was allowing her imagination to run amok and seeing shadows where there were none.

  “I need to speak with Mrs Saunders,” she decided eventually.

  When Clementine eventually turned to leave, something very faint and very furtive creaked loudly in the silence of the house. Clementine was certain she had just heard the faint rustling of clothing that accompanied it. Her stomach lurched sickeningly when she realised that she was not alone in the house. She waited for a few minutes more and willed herself not to panic. It might have just been the house settling or adjusting given how cold the place was.

  Clementine almost convinced herself that she was all alone in the property when the faint creek of something sliding against wood broke the silence. It was swiftly followed by a clatter of something together with what sounded like the dull thud of a footstep.

  “Now who would that be then?” Clementine breathed.

  Should she stay where she was and pretend that she wasn’t there, or should she go downstairs and challenge whoever was down there? Clementine struggled to know what to do. She wanted to go and see who was there, if only to quell her curiosity, but fear compelled her to stay where she was. She tried to listen and guess what the other person was doing down in the kitchen, but all she could hear was her own heartbeat.

  “I need to do this,” she whispered, not least because of how guilty she would look if the person downstairs also came up to Sally’s bed chamber to check everything was all right, and found Clementine trying to hide in there.

  Determined to be brave, Clementine squared her shoulders, sucked in a breath, and tugged the door open. She began to shake as she crept on cautious tiptoes across the landing. A part of her felt foolish for being so clandestine, especially because it added to how guilty she looked being there in the first place. She was, after all, in the house of a newly deceased person, albeit a good friend as was. Now, though, she was an intruder who really had no purpose being there.

  But neither does anybody else.

  It was instinctive to want to call out and ask if Dolly was there, but Clementine didn’t want to frighten the woman if it was. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, Clementine peered down the length of the hallway. Her nerves jangled worryingly to the point that the small hairs on the back of her neck began to tickle the collar of her dress. Edging out into the hallway, Clementine paused when the very faint scrape of something being moved again broke the silence.

  Is someone tidying up?

  A huge weight of relief flooded her at the thought that it might be Mrs Saunders after all, only for that relief to be followed by panic because Clementine knew she now had some explaining to do.

  I cannot tell the woman that I suspect Sally has been murdered. Seeing as I was the last one to speak to Sally alive, I think, it is probably best that I don’t then get caught creeping around her house. I may as well hand myself over to the magistrate for a crime that may not have happened and be arrested for something I didn’t do.

  While everything within her was compelling her to just leave, curiosity made Clementine stay where she was. She wanted to know who else was in the house but didn’t have the courage to call out to them and ask. Instead, she crept into the study and peered through the window that overlooked Mrs Saunders’s house. At first, she didn’t see any movement, but as the minutes ticked by, the silver-grey hair of the elderly woman moved past the window. Mrs Saunders was at home.

  “It isn’t you then,” Clementine whispered. “I wonder if it is Dotty in the kitchen?”

  By the time she reached the doorway again the noise coming from the kitchen was even more audible and quicker, as if whoever was moving about was doing so much faster than before. So much so, Clementine could make out the sound of a chair scraping across a floor and the dull thud of a drawer sliding shut almost simultaneously. She returned to Sally’s study and picked up a heavy candlestick from the small table beside the fireplace before retracing her steps. This time, before she could talk herself out of it, Clementine made her way cautiously and quietly to the kitchen doorway. She paused with one hand on the latch while she tried to think of what she could say to whoever was on the other side. Before she could push the door open, she contemplated the front door. Freedom was just an open door away. Again, Clementine wanted to just leave. Common sense urged her to take the chance to escape while she could.

  If only I can get my feet to move.

  Confused about what to do for the best, Clementine sighed in disgust. It was only when she had exhaled noisily that she realised how loud she had just been. Her heart leapt into her throat when the faint noises emanating from the kitchen suddenly ceased and the house fell into deathly silence once more. Clementine daren’t move because of the rustling the fabric of her dress would make. Instead, she flattened herself against the wall next to the kitchen door and began to pray that the intruder wouldn’t come into the hallway to see who else was in the house.

  Within seconds the quite distinctive click of the back door being closed rattled through the house. Clementine frowned when she heard it. She tried to hear the rustling of movement but all she could hear was the very faint thud of retreating footsteps. Cautiously, she lifted the latch on the door and nudged it open. A quick peek into the kitchen revealed it to be empty. Whoever had been there had gone.