Stage for Murder

By Marina Oliver

A suspicious death, a newcomer who becomes involved in village affairs, and Dodie Fanshaw on the trail of the truth, create a delicious cosy crime novel.
Catherine, widowed, returns to her home in the Lancashire hills. She and Ian Hanson, a retired newcomer, quickly become involved in village activities.
She goes to work for Martin, whose wife died in a tragic accident for which he was blamed but exonerated. Then the rumours start up again and Martin's mother, a former dancer with Dodie, asks Dodie to help. Can she find the truth? Find out what happens in the 5th Dodie Fanshaw mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Belgrave House
• Release date: Jul 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781610846622

Marina Oliver

Most writers can't help themselves! It's a compulsion. Getting published, though, is something really special, and having been so fortunate myself I now try to help aspiring writers by handing on tips it took me years to work out. I've published over 60 titles, including four in the How To Books' Successful Writing Series, and Writing Historical Fiction for Studymates.I have judged short story competitions, been a final judge for the Harry Bowling Prize and was an adviser to the 3rd edition of Twentieth Century Romance and Historical Writers 1994. If you want to find out more about your favourite authors, consult this book. I once wrote an article on writing romantic fiction for the BBC's web page, for Valentine's day.I have given talks and workshops for the Arts Council and at most of the major Writing Conferences, and helped establish the Romantic Novelists' Association's annual conference. I was Chairman of the RNA 1991-3, ran their New Writers' Scheme and edited their newsletter. I am now a Vice-President.As well as writing I have edited books for Transita, featuring women 'of a certain age', and for Choc Lit where gorgeous heros are the norm.I was asked to write A Century of Achievement, a 290 page history of my old school, Queen Mary's High School, Walsall, and commissioned to write a book on Castles and Corvedale to accompany a new circular walk in the area.Most of my Regencies written under the pseudonym Sally James are now published in ebook format as well as many others of my out of print novels which my husband is putting into ebook format. Our daughter Debbie is helping with designing the covers. For details of all my books and my many pseudonyms see my website.

Book preview

OLIVER

AUTHOR NOTE

Much-married former dancer and starlet Dodie Fanshaw has already solved a number of murder mysteries for me. This isn't a murder, apart from malicious rumours. Not at first.

I have enjoyed many visits to Pennine villages like this one, and lived in villages where local rivalries can assume enormous importance, and where established leaders can resent newcomers.

Though I haven't come across any murders, I have been involved in many village societies. I much enjoyed creating scenes where these rivalries can be displayed, and where my sleuth Dodie could once again use her people skills to discover the truth.

Chapter 1

'Dodie? I need you. Please can you come and visit?'

Dodie Fanshaw looked at the telephone receiver in her hand and frowned. Who was this? There was so much anxiety in the voice she could not recognise it.

'Please, Dodie, I'm scared. It's getting worse again, when I thought it would soon go away. It's Martin, he, well, they're saying he killed her, but it's not true! He couldn't have!'

Dodie nodded. Now she knew. She and Phyllis Weston kept in touch occasionally, but usually by letter, which was why she had not recognised the voice at once. Phyllis sounded uncharacteristically fraught, and normally she was one of the calmest of women. Dodie was intrigued. What had caused this, which sounded like panic?

Phyllis had worshipped Martin when he was a baby, and her letters were always full of how clever and handsome and kind he was. In some ways she envied Phyllis. Her own son had been none of those things.

'Phyllis? I don't understand. Who is he supposed to have killed?'

'Susan, his wife, but he didn't! It was an accident, and he was nowhere near at the time.'

Dodie recalled that Martin's wife had died in a horrific accident several months ago, last August. She'd been abroad at the time, so hadn't seen any newspaper reports. Phyllis was explaining.

'They are saying he rigged up a booby trap. I know he didn't! Dodie, you've solved murders before, so please, won't you help me now?'

How could she refuse? They'd been friends for more than thirty years.

'I'll help you, Phyllis, but I'm not a detective, those other murders were just luck because I happened to stumble over some things the police didn't know.'

'Then you'll come? As soon as you can? Will you come by train? We can meet you at Preston.'

'But you are twenty miles north, I thought? I'd better come by car. How do I find you?'

By the time she had listened to Phyllis's somewhat incoherent directions Dodie decided a good map was essential. She recalled Phyllis's inability to know her right from her left when they had both been dancing in the chorus. She had been threatened with dismissal so many times because she had moved or high-kicked in the wrong direction. It was fortunate when Francis Weston had fallen for her, and whisked her off to a register office just in time to save her from losing her job.

'Tell me how Susan died,' she said. 'I've forgotten the details.'

Phyllis took a deep breath. She was noticeably calmer.

'I'll show you the place when you get to the farm. It's difficult to explain. She was getting her bike out of the garage, and Martin's tractor rolled back. The brakes were off. She was in a corner between the garage wall and another wall, and she was crushed. There was nowhere for her to escape.'

'And there was no one there at the farm at the time?'

'Martin had gone to collect some feedstuffs, and there was no one else working in the yard.'

Dodie was gradually recalling the letter Phyllis had written to her some months before, when the accident happened.

'Then how did the tractor suddenly move?'

'The brake was off, they discovered, and it was on a slight slope.'

'Yes, but there must have been something to start it moving,' Dodie said. 'How did it come to move just then?'

'No one knows. But they suggested Martin rigged it up somehow to move when the garage door was open. But he didn't! They said that at the time but they couldn't prove anything. The Coroner brought in a verdict of accidental death. So why is it all starting up again? It's wicked rumour, and I thought they all liked Martin in the village!'

She began to cry, and Dodie made haste to comfort her.

'I must do certain things tomorrow, Phyllis, but I'll drive up the day afterwards. I'll be with you late afternoon, with luck,' she said, crossing her fingers. She wasn't the world's best map reader, but she could always stop and ask the way. She couldn't go wrong on the M1 and M6, could she? And she knew to come off at the last Preston exit.

She went back to the TV but had lost interest in the programme. She was recalling what she knew of Phyllis's family. Her husband Francis had, quite unexpectedly, inherited his father's barony when his two older brothers and his nephew had drowned in a boating accident in Spain. Then he had died shortly afterwards and her son Martin was now Lord Weston. She had met Martin some years ago, at his wedding to Susan. They had two children, a boy and girl, and Phyllis, proud grandmother, sent her photographs of them at regular intervals.

Martin was a farmer, and after Francis died Phyllis had gone to live with him and his family at Crags Farm. There was, she thought, some ancestral mansion somewhere, but they did not appear to have moved there to live. Well, she would find out all about it soon enough, but what Phyllis thought she could do to solve the mystery of Susan's death she could not imagine. It was too long ago, over nine months, and apparently the police had been satisfied it was an accident. But if villagers who had known Martin all his life were starting to suspect him, no wonder his fond mother was in a panic. Why should it all blow up now, months later? Her only task, she could see, would be to calm Phyllis's nerves. There was unlikely to be any evidence she could find now, that the police had overlooked. However, it would be pleasant to visit the country. From her one previous visit for one of the children's christenings, she recalled the wild Lancashire fells, and a pretty stone-built village. London in mid-summer was stiflingly hot. Elena, her daughter, was out of the country so she could not go and stay with her by the river. She began to plan what she needed to take with her, and how best to accomplish the jobs she needed to do before leaving home, in between wondering what on earth she could do to help Phyllis.

*

'What has happened to the roses?' Catherine Fellows asked, scrambling out of her car and glancing towards Rose Cottage on the far side of the village square. The house looked clean and spruce, and two men were erecting a brash new fence where there had once been a straggling privet hedge, but the roses had been ruthlessly stripped from round the door.

It was more a village triangle than a square, she thought. It was a cross between a village green, with a small pond, a few swings and a couple of benches, and a town square edged with the most important businesses. Most of the shops, the post office and two tearooms, were on this, the longest side. The church was opposite with the two rectories, the old one sold off and the new, smaller modern one tucked into what had been a huge garden, the Spinner's Arms, and a few houses. At the pointed end was the village hall, and at the other, where the main road came in from the south, were a filling station, a few more shops, the bank, an estate agent's, and the old forge, converted into a pottery and souvenir shop. At each corner smaller roads branched off.

'The new owner, old Tom's nephew, is renting it out, and thinks he can charge more if he smartens it up,' the elderly woman who'd stopped alongside replied. 'Nice to see you again, Catherine. How are you? Are you here for a holiday? Staying with your brother, I suppose.'

Catherine shook her head. Which of Miss White's questions should she answer first? The woman had always been a ditherer, and she had got worse as she grew old. 'No, Miss White, not just for a holiday. I'm back for good, and staying with Larry and Jill until I can find somewhere of my own.'

She smiled down at the woman who now seemed so small and shrunken, and Catherine herself was only of average height. When she'd been in Miss White's infants' class her teacher had seemed huge.

'It'll be nice to have you home again. Are you coming in the shop?'

Catherine knew she had better explain. Miss White was always curious, and persistent when she wanted to know something.

'Yes, I stopped for a birthday card I forgot to post before I left London. And I'd better get some envelopes and stamps, I suppose. There are lots of official letters to write, telling people I've moved, you know. I left in more of a hurry than I'd expected, when the flat was sold right away and the buyers wanted to move in quickly, as they had just come back from abroad.'

They walked into the shop, which was both post office and newsagents, and joined the short queue. Two of the women smiled at Catherine, murmuring greetings, asking how she was, but all studiously avoiding commenting on her recent widowhood. Not so recent, she corrected her thoughts. Robert had died over a year ago, but she'd only been home once in that time, and hadn't seen many people then.

It was a familiar reaction, she'd discovered. People wanted to give condolences, but preferred not to do it in public, too embarrassed and afraid of upsetting her. They took refuge in platitudes about the weather, or the state of farming. In London it had been the latest disruption to public transport they'd fallen back on.

'So who's renting Rose Cottage?' Catherine asked when the first flurry of greetings had subsided, and she'd explained again she was here for good.

'A man all the way from Essex, they say, but so far we've only seen him when he came to visit it.'

'I hope he doesn't mean to use it just for holidays,' Martha Kirkham, the post mistress, said as she counted out the change for a customer.

'It's not likely, if he's paying rent for the whole year,' Martha's husband Bill said from where he was sorting the birthday card rack. 'There are plenty of cottages he could rent just for a few weeks at a time.'

'He didn't look old enough to be retired,' another of the woman said.

'I heard he was a widower,' Hazel Prentice said, as she turned from the post office window.

She flicked back her long red hair, a mannerism Catherine remembered from schooldays. Hazel had once confided she'd read in some magazine that it drew attention to a good profile, and she considered hers was a classic one. Hazel, after two divorces, had returned to the village and rumour had it she was looking for husband number three.

'I wish he hadn't got rid of the roses. They looked so pretty, and in summer they were the first thing I looked for when I came back.'

At that moment a large, sleek car drew to a halt outside the Spinner's Arms and a tall, slim man clambered out. He strolled towards Rose Cottage and after talking briefly to the workmen erecting the fence, went inside the house.

Moments later a small furniture van appeared, and Rose Cottage was hidden from view.

Hazel craned to see. 'Talk of the devil. There he is. I thought it had been rented furnished. Looks like he's brought some of his own stuff. I'm not surprised, what was there was ancient and uncomfortable.'

Martha nodded. 'From the look of that car he's got plenty of money. Handsome, too. No doubt he'll be looking for a new wife,' she added, and Miss White tittered, trying to convert it into a cough.

Hazel frowned at Miss White, then tossed her head. 'He'll have plenty of eager females to choose from, no doubt!' she snapped and pushed her way out of the door, ignoring the two ladies about to enter.

'What's got into her?' one of them asked as they joined the queue. 'Hello, Catherine, nice to see you back where you belong.'

Bill chuckled. 'Hazel doesn't like being teased about being on the lookout for another man,' he explained. 'Not since she made such a play for that fellow who rented The Barn House this spring, who joined the drama group. Now it'll be the new fellow at Rose Cottage.'

'You'd think two divorces would be enough for her.'

'I see he's moving in. Wonder what he's like? It seems odd for a man on his own, from London, they say, to want to live right up north.'

'Maybe he once lived round here, and has come back, like Catherine.'

How different life was in this isolated spot high up in the Pennines, Catherine thought as she wrote her card, posted it, and went back to her car. It had taken twenty minutes for Martha to serve half a dozen gossiping customers. In London there would have been an impatient, foot-tapping, complaining queue, but no one here had minded. They all knew one another, and spent the time catching up on village news. The occasional strangers, tourists who came in for papers or chocolate or postcards, were served by Bill, and departed within minutes.

*

Rather to her surprise, Dodie reached Martin's farm without any problems, mid-way through the afternoon. Phyllis, leaning on two sticks, came out into the farmyard to greet her. Dodie looked at her in dismay.

'Phyllis! You never said your arthritis was so bad.'

'I manage. It's not always as bad. It's good to see you, and I'm so grateful to you for coming. I sometimes feel I'm making a great fuss about a few nasty rumours, and Martin pretends not to mind. But come on in. I'll have the tea made in no