The Art of Murder (The Village Detectives) by Fiona Walker

Author:Fiona Walker
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Boldwood Books
Published: 2024-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

Early the following morning, Phoebe read back through her new scenes and deleted everything she’d written in the past forty-eight hours. It was too amplified, too frenetic, a spandex suit away from Marvel. More than ever, she craved Dee Jekyll’s dry wit and Annie Logg’s eager pedantry. And more than that, she longed to get Si Locke off her conscience.

Pulling on full running gear for the first time in weeks, Phoebe went further along the towpath than she had on previous mornings, but found no blue boats with sports car canopies, although there was a little boathouse hidden amid willows perfect for a Dorothy De’Ath mystery. Her mind fizzed with plots involving illicit trysts in glossy wooden river boats, drowned lotharios and poisoned mistresses.

Anger had its uses when penning cold-blooded cyanide assassinations and stiletto-bladed crimes of passion, imagining one’s real-life adversaries as victims. And setting her stories in a pre-clickbait era took Phoebe far from the Twitter storm that had sunk her journalism career.

By the time she and Felix left her beloved wild moors to move south last year, she’d killed off most of her trickier former colleagues and neighbours. Now she had Inkbury to plunder, although she’d met few locals so far, lying low in the big, borrowed house isolated behind its high walls.

She doubled back, retracing her steps of the previous day, over the bridleway bridges into the village, past the church and along Witch’s Broom to Three Bridge Lane.

She stopped in surprise in front of Davis and Locke. The bereavement notice had gone. The hours etched in gold on the glass were ‘10 a.m.–6 p.m., or by appointment’.

She checked her watch; it was quarter past eight. Yet the sign in the door had been turned to ‘Open’.

It was an invitation she couldn’t refuse.

She tied up the dogs and went in with a clang of the bell.

‘Congratulations,’ a deep voice greeted her, ‘you are my first rubbernecker.’ Not looking up, Oscar Davis was sitting in a wingback chair by the desk in his tweed three-piece suit, leafing through a leather-bound book, horn-rimmed half-moons on the end of his nose, moustache bristling beneath.

‘Good morning,’ Phoebe said politely.

He snapped the book shut, glaring at her over his glasses. Then he started in surprise. ‘Who are you?’

‘I thought you were open?’

‘Not press, surely? I told all your lot to get lost.’

‘I’m not press. I’m⁠—’

‘Please God, not a fan.’ He shuddered, the dark hangdog eyes wide and white edged.

‘I’m Phoebe Fredericks from Hartridge Court.’ She took Mil’s advice reluctantly. ‘We haven’t met.’

Blinking slowly, he set his book aside and stood up. ‘You are one of the two women who found Silas?’

‘I’m so sorry. I wanted to call in and see you sooner, but I wasn’t sure⁠—’

‘My dear, I’m only too grateful you have! And it’s I who should be apologising. You and your friend risked your lives trying to save him.’ His eyes glistened.

‘It really wasn’t that⁠—’

‘Can I offer you something to drink: tea, coffee, anything stronger?’

Phoebe sensed the gears spinning in

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