Scouting for Murder: The Verity Long Mysteries, #3

By Lynda Wilcox

When Verity Long agrees to take a friend's daughter to Brownies, what she expects is to drop the child off and spend a quiet evening in her favourite wine bar. Instead she finds a hysterical Brown Owl and a corpse in the Scout hut.

But Verity, researcher for a best-selling crime novelist, has made a career out of being curious. Determined to investigate, she seizes the chance to cook for the Brownies' imminent holiday at a nearby Scout campsite in her search for the truth.

Sacrificing her customary gourmet diet to serve up sausages and pizzas might be tough for the amateur sleuth with a fondness for murder, men, and Merlot; it is child's play compared to unravelling the dark secrets of the Scout group.

With dead Scout leaders piling up around her and a killer still keen to earn their Murder badge, Verity will need to be prepared - or risk becoming the next victim of a madman Scouting For Murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lynda Wilcox
• Release date: Dec 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519939296

Lynda Wilcox

Lynda Wilcox's first piece of published writing was a poem in the school magazine. In her twenties she wrote Pantomime scripts for Amateur Dramatic groups and was a founder member of The Facts of Life, a foursome who wrote and performed comedy sketches for radio. Now she concocts fantasy stories for older children (10-13) and writes funny whodunits for adults. Lynda lives in a small town in England, in an untidy house with four ageing computers and her (equally ageing but very supportive) husband. She enjoys pottering in the garden where she grow brambles, bindweed and nettles along with roses and lilies. Oh! And slugs!  Slugs that feed well on everything but the brambles and weeds. Most of all, she loves to write —  it gets her out of doing the housework. She also reads a lot and enjoys good food and wine.

Book preview

Chapter 1

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One of these days I'll learn to say no. After all, it's a simple enough word, consisting of only two letters; far easier to say than the trickier and infinitely more dangerous 'yes'. 'No' has that ring of firmness and finality about it that is altogether lacking in the more equivocal 'yes'. What's more, the cunning and devious 'yes' employs its minions wisely, and that morning they came in the shape of a fair-haired moppet of the proverbial butter-wouldn't-melt-in-their-mouth variety.

There she is!

I spun round at the sound of a child's voice echoing down the hall as I locked the door to my flat and dropped the key in my pocket.

Oh, Verity. Thank goodness I've caught you, said the woman from next door.

Good morning, Amy. Morning, Lily.

I smiled at my neighbour and her seven year old daughter, who could best be described as all grin and pigtails. A bright and friendly child, looking very smart in her school uniform, Lily had been cast from the same mould as her mother, with blonde hair, green eyes and the ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey. I sighed and accepted the fact I was going to be late for work.

I wanted to ask you a favour, Verity. Are you busy this evening? Only Dave's on nights, so he has the car and I'm supposed to be helping a friend and I've no one to take Lily to Brownies.

We're decorating our welly pegs tonight, for Pack Holiday, said Lily, eyes alight with excitement.

Are you? That sounds like fun.

It also sounded like Klingon, as far as I was concerned, but I had better sense than to ask for an explanation. I really did need to get to work.

Yes, and Brown Owl says we're going to wear them when we go pond dipping.

Shush, Lily. Amy smiled indulgently at her offspring, before looking back at me and putting me on the spot. Do you think you could take her, Verity? She'll get a lift back with one of her friends, but they can't take her because Rhiannon's at riding lessons first.

I want to learn to ride.

Lily pulled a face, but I knew the Stoddards could no more afford to pay for riding lessons than they could afford to be a two-car family. Lily's father worked shifts as a hospital orderly and her mother earned a pittance as a doctor's receptionist.

I don't mind taking her, Amy. What time and where to?

Oh, thanks, Verity. I really appreciate it. It's the Scout Hut in Temple Avenue and she needs to be there for six o'clock. Don't worry if you don't know where it is, Lily can show you the way. I'll bring her here for a quarter to six. Is that OK?

Fine. Look, I must dash, I'll see you this evening. I turned away and headed for the stairs.Thank you, Verity, the child called after me. I turned and waved before making my escape.

In the end, I was barely five minutes late when I let myself into Bishop Lea, the mock Palladian mansion owned by my boss, crime-writer Kathleen Davenport. The place seemed strangely quiet as I crossed the chequerboard of black and white tiles in the hall towards the office and I wondered where KD, as she likes to be called, had hidden herself. There was no sign of her in the office when I entered, and no jug waiting on the hotplate of the coffee machine on the table behind the door, either. I dismissed the idea that she was still in bed: KD is an early riser who claims she writes her best work between six and eight in the morning.

The door to the downstairs cloakroom stood open as I passed it, and my employer was nowhere to be seen in the vast kitchen, either. I fetched the coffee down from the cupboard wondering, a little unkindly for she was only in her late fifties, where the old girl had got to. She'd made no mention yesterday of not planning to be here or having an early appointment elsewhere. I picked up the jug—and nearly dropped it straight into the sink when I caught sight of the blood that smeared the draining board.

Oh my God!

I looked around for more traces; red circles covered the floor towards the back door. I wrenched it open and sprinted into the back garden, calling her name. Only the song of a blackbird answered me as my gaze travelled over the lawn, around the flower beds with the nodding heads of daffodils and blue grape hyacinths, and along the path to the potting shed with its half-open door. It contained all manner of tools and equipment but no sign of my boss. Baffled, I retraced my steps. Where was the woman? I went round the side of the house towards the garage where KD kept the Range Rover and her pride and joy, the Jaguar XK convertible in British racing green. Both cars were there—KD wasn't.

I'd been surprised to learn that the Jag was the first sports car she'd ever owned. When I asked why, she'd replied that once she was old enough to afford a sports car, she was too old to get in and out of it. The XK model however, well built and of ample proportions (a pretty good description of the woman herself) fitted her to a 'T'.

I scanned the empty dew-soaked garden for any sign that my employer had been out there, while a worm of worry niggled at my insides. Bishop Lea, for all its isolated grandeur, its stout perimeter walls, and its alarm system, was hardly the best place a woman on her own could choose to live. Situated in the heart of the countryside, it was desperately short of neighbours to call on in the event of any emergency. Beginning to fear the worst, I hastened to the one place I'd not yet checked, the greenhouse around the far side of the house.

Waa! Aa! My yell of surprise echoed around the garden.

I jumped back in alarm, ricocheting off my employer's ample bosom as we cannoned into each other at the corner of the house.

Oh, it's you. What the hell are you doing out here? I saw the back door open and thought I had an intruder. Why aren't you in the office?

KD scowled at me over the rim of her glasses. Well, good morning to you, too, I thought, wondering what had happened to turn my normally sunny-dispositioned boss into a snapping Gorgon this morning.

I thought something had happened to you.

Don't be ridiculous. I've told you before, I'm perfectly safe here at Bishop Lea.

Yes, I know, but when I saw the blood...

What blood? I thought I'd cleaned it all up. She looked at her thumb, lavishly bound in sticking plaster.

So, you have hurt yourself.

Tchah! It's nothing.

She turned round and headed for the back door.

Now, where's this blood? she asked, when we were back in the kitchen. I pointed to the spots on the floor.

I'll see to it, if you like.

No, I don't like, thank you. I employ you as a secretary and researcher, not a cleaning lady.

Hell's teeth, she was tetchy this morning.

I'm sorry.

She shooed me out of the room and I stalked off to the office, wondering what I'd had to apologise for and why I'd bothered doing so. She made no further reference to the incident, or where she'd been when I arrived, when she followed me in a moment or two later.

Right. Now we've wasted enough time this morning and I have a string of things for you to do, so you'd better get a move on. Once you're done, you can take the rest of the day off.

There are times when I don't know whether to hug KD or to slap her. Unfortunately, given the relative positions of our relationship, the latter is not an option, so I smiled as sweetly at her as I could through my gritted teeth.

Yes, KD.

I sighed softly. consoling myself with the thought that after such an awful start, the day could only get better. Events would prove me horribly wrong, as usual.

* * *

KD's idea of giving me the afternoon off was for me to spend it researching for her next book. Luckily, I considered pure research to be the best part of my job and didn't mind at all and, having finished my tasks by one o'clock, I drove back home, left the car in the underground car park and walked up the ramp to street level. From there l headed into town and along the High Street to Crofterton Central Library.

Beyond the double doors of the Victorian building lay the main area where the knowledge of generations stood to attention in upright rows, like crack troops, forever on hand to lead the fight against ignorance. I showed my card to the librarian and followed her through the fiction section and the reading room until we reached a flight of stone steps leading down to the basement. Here, in a large temperature-controlled room, she switched on one of the computers, typed in a password, then pointed to the bank of micro-fiche readers on a table against the far wall.

You know where everything is, don't you?

I assured her that I did, promised to switch everything off when I'd finished, and took my pad and pen from my bag. Huge racks lined the walls on two sides of the room and I ran a finger along the spines of the leather bound copies of the Crofterton Register, an early collection of news pamphlets that recorded the events of the town in the 18th century and the weekly goings-on of its inhabitants.

Hello, old friends, I said, then turned to the second rack where more up-to-date copies of the Crofterton Gazette, the local newspaper, were stored. Even these were too old for my purposes, for they contained copies of every single edition from 1801-1960. Inside, reports of royal visits nestled cheek by jowl with announcements of births, marriages, and deaths, advertisements for Pears soap and Bartholemew's cough linctus ('a prophylactic against winter chills') and all the news of a small but growing, busy Midlands town. All the modern copies were now computerized, though available only by subscription, or here in the library.

Returning to the desk, I slipped off my coat, sat down, and typed in my search which brought up the Gazette's website. I clicked on 1989, not a totally arbitrary choice because I had already gone back as far as 1990 in a search of these archives for KD the previous year. That had thrown up a couple of usable cases, including the disappearance of a 14 year old schoolgirl which had occupied me during the summer.

Some of the jobs I undertook for KD - opening fan mail, answering the phone and making appointments - made me feel little more than a glorified secretary, but starting on new research always brought with it a frisson of excitement that made everything worthwhile. For me, it was never wasted time; I likened it to starting out on a journey into the unknown with the thrill of new discoveries around every corner. Trawling through dusty archives, examining the minutiae of past lives and times, isn't just nosiness on my part. I find it endlessly fascinating. Within the computer's files lay the stories of people's joys, their sorrows, and (because newspapers tend to report only the extremes of human emotion) their tragedies. All of them waiting for future generations to uncover, read and, perhaps, bring back to life. My interest wasn't only pecuniary, and I took no pleasure from their suffering. What pleasure I gained came from the satisfaction of finding their stories, of a job well done. I supplied KD with the resources, the carded and spun threads which she used to create her magic, weaving them into tales of intrigue and mystery.

It took me nearly an hour, without finding anything useful, to read through the Crofterton Gazette entries for 1989. So far my pad was clear of any scribblings but it began to fill up the further back I searched. A couple of reports in particular caught my interest. The first was the murder of a retired banker at his home in Torgrave, and much copy had been written regarding this upright citizen's untimely death. The reporter had been very hard on the police for the lack of progress in the case, constantly berating them for ineptitude and lack of diligence. No change there then, I thought as I jotted down the details. I found no reports of any conviction in the case; to this day it appeared to be unsolved. The second report was a piece about prostitutes vanishing from Crofterton's streets. Alien abduction, perhaps? I could imagine KD's face if I suggested that. Her nose would wrinkle and her mouth would turn down at the corners in a moue of distaste at anything so sordid or downright unlikely. Nevertheless, I found myself intrigued by the story and read on, flicking back and forth on the screen as I checked through each of the day's papers, searching for more information.

Three women, Donna Warden, Pauline Dowling and Claire Smeaton had, according to others of their profession, simply disappeared from their regular haunt, a notorious red-light district of the town, between April and June 1988. In the first two cases, it had been the families who had reported them missing but other prostitutes had told the police about Claire, and I wondered if she had any family to care about her whereabouts. The remaining ladies of the night, never numbered or named in any of the newspaper accounts, had become increasingly concerned when Claire no longer appeared on her 'patch' after being seen getting into a dark-coloured car. Police enquiries revealed that all of the missing women had been seen getting into cars but, unfortunately, no one had thought to note the registration numbers, so there was no way of knowing whether it was the same vehicle that had been responsible in each case. By the end of July, by which time the area's streets were probably empty at nights, no further disappearances had been reported.

I sat back, wondering what had happened to the three women. I doubted that the case would hold any interest for KD, but it seemed to me that a case involving fallen women would be ideal for her fictional sleuth, Agnes Merryweather, a Church of England vicar, whom she had placed in a rural (and clearly murderous) parish. I stretched my arms over my head and rolled my head from side to side, then leant back toward the screen, working on for a while longer. Copies of the Gazette from 1987 revealed nothing exciting, for Crofterton was far from the hotbed of crime that KD had invented as the village setting for her books, but there were a couple of interesting locations. A lock-up garage on an industrial estate had been used by a suicide and an unsuspicious death had occurred on a riverbank close to a weir.

At five o'clock, remembering I had agreed to take young Lily to Brownies, I closed down the computer, slipped pad and pen into my bag, and returned the key to the librarian. Pleased with an afternoon spent among the murkier events of the not too distant past, I headed home to my clean and modern flat.

* * *

Lily looked neat and tidy in her brown and yellow uniform and was clearly excited when her mother brought her to my door at twenty minutes to six.

Thanks so much for doing this, Verity. She'd have had to miss it otherwise and she loves going to Brownies.

Lily's blonde plaits swung up and down as she nodded in agreement and she happily held my hand on the walk down to the car park. Strapped in to the back seat, she chatted away as I followed the route her mother had given me and added directions of her own when I got us lost in the maze of streets that surrounded the Scout hut.

Turn right, up there by the shop, she instructed. Then take the first on the left.

I completed these manoeuvres. Where now, Lily?

Turn right at the big house. That one! She pointed urgently, in case I drove on past it.

That's where Brown Owl lives, she added, as I waited to turn.

Is it? She doesn't have far to come then, does she?

No, and she has a great big garden where we have our summer barbecue.

Ahead of us the houses began to thin out as we drove into open countryside.

It's here! It's here! Lily bounced up and down as I overshot the turning and had to reverse back.

The cinder drive opened out in a wide car park with the Scout hut off to the right. A large and somewhat muddy field containing a circle of logs lay beyond the building and a flagpole stood to attention in front of it. A semi-circle of trees fringed the area and marked its boundary.

There's Polly and Rhiannon! exclaimed Lily, waving at a group of similarly clad girls chasing each other on the grass. She had the door open almost before I'd stopped the car.

Wait a minute, Lily.

Desperate to get out and join her friends, she fiddled with her seat belt. I was more concerned by the lack of any adult; at least, none that I could see.

Where's your Brown Owl?

She shrugged. Inside, I guess, getting ready. Thanks, Verity.

The belt at last released, she shot out of the car with an eager shout and ran off to join her friends.

Damn, I thought. No way was I going to just drive off and leave my charge playing in a field in the middle of nowhere. With a sigh for my disappearing evening, I turned and parked the car, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door in time to see a dishevelled woman, her eyes wild, a hand to her mouth, come barrelling out of it. She hurtled into me. I put an arm out to steady her.

Are you all right?

Oh my God, oh God. She gripped my upper arm. There's, there's...

Hey, hey. Take it easy. I kept my voice low, trying to calm her. Are you Brown Owl? What is it? Can I help?

She glanced over