Dead n' Breakfast (Tara Trott Book 4) by Vanessa Fletcher

Author:Vanessa Fletcher [Fletcher, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-19T18:30:00+00:00

Roderick Benn was standing in the doorway saying he couldn’t wake Liam Shale up.

“I only shook him. I don’t know how the knife got there,” he said, pale as chalk dust.

“Knife?” asked Tara, her blood turning to a trickle of ice.

“Someone’s stabbed him through the heart. It must’ve happened in the night - when I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything. Mind you, I took a sleeping tablet after all the excitement over the murder. Fancy, there was another murder in the night, just like that Melanie Grinter said there would be,” he said, still ashen-faced.

Tara pushed past Roderick Benn to see Liam Shale for herself. Apart from the knife in his chest he looked asleep. The only suspect Tara could think of was Roderick Benn. He’d had a row with Liam Shale yesterday, he was sharing the same room as him - and the door had been locked all night. No one else could have got inside to stab him. Without saying a word, Tara walked down the steep staircase and didn’t stop until she reached Dennis Parker who was trying to arrange the newly woken guests coming down the stairs into some sort of order.

“Dennis, we’ve got a problem.”

“A dead body?”

“How did you guess?” asked Tara, wryly.

“Who is it?”

“Liam Shale.”

Dennis Parker hissed through his teeth. He squeezed the bridge of his nose and started muttering about paperwork. He took a deep breath. “Go and lock that room. Don’t say anything to anyone. Then, go and ring Dr Adlington. Get him to check Molly over as well. She’s in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. Who was sharing the room with him?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Roderick Benn.”

“I don’t think I need to look any further for a suspect, do you?”

“Not when he was the only one in the room with him all night, no.”

Mrs Acton, Sally and Nancy walked into the dining room carrying armfuls of food. Somehow, Mrs Acton had managed to keep up with them both for once.

Nancy took Tara to one side in the kitchen once she had put the food she was carrying on the kitchen units but Nancy spoke before Tara could open her mouth.

“Mrs Acton is going booloo over that chair. She’s not stopped ranting about it. She said she wished she’d never told you about the larder room now and if that chair’s broken there’s going to be hell to pay. Apparently, she thinks we don’t appreciate the history of the items in there. She says they hold special memories for her of when Manor farm was a real Manor, not a tacky bed and breakfast. She seems quite sore about your plans for the place. They used to hold village fetes in the grounds here, she said, and people came from miles around to join in. It would explain the Punch and Judy set up and the fairground items, wouldn’t it?”

“Mrs Acton and a chair are the least of my worries, Nancy. Liam Shale’s dead.”

Nancy stared at her in open mouthed horror.

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