Choked off (The Falconer Files Book 2) Read online

  CHOKED OFF

  ANDREA FRAZER

  The villagers of Stoney Cross were bustling about like hyperactive ants. In gardens, houses, and the village hall, figures flitted to and fro, making last-minute preparations for their 'Great Event': the first Stoney Cross Arts Festival, which was due to commence on Saturday. The enlisting of a local radio presenter to advertise then review their efforts had added an extra frisson of excitement.

  But the delight soon turns to dismay when the broadcaster, Marcus Willoughby, actually moves into a house in Stoney Cross the day before the Festival. He turns out to be someone from various people’s pasts; someone whom they had hoped never to see again, and who greets them with recognition – and malice – in his eyes. To those he had never met before, he simply proves to be a smarmy, spiteful bigot, who proceeds to take great delight in verbally shredding their artistic efforts.

  When he is found dead at his desk in his new home, no crocodile tears are shed. His demise is even presented on air, during his pre-recorded radio show Marcus having been 'choked off' for good while in full flow. His arrival in the village had obviously caused a few already guilty hearts to beat faster, and precipitates the hasty confessions of dark deeds thought long since buried. Into this welter of emotions is dispatched DI Harry Falconer, his erstwhile Acting Detective Sergeant, 'Davey' Carmichael riding shotgun, as they enter 'bandit' country once more.

  Choked Off is the second instalment of Andrea Frazer’s

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Andrea Frazer

  Originally published by Accent Press All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by AmazonEncore, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonEncore are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781477878828

  This title was previously published by Accent Press; this version has been reproduced from Accent Press archive files.

  Falconer Files, a detective series chock-full of picture-postcard villages, dastardly deeds, and a delightful slice of humour.

  The Falconer Files by Andrea Frazer

  The Falconer Files

  Death of an Old Git

  Choked Off

  Inkier than the Sword

  Pascal Passion

  Murder at the Manse

  Music To Die For

  Strict and Peculiar

  Christmas Mourning

  Grave Stones

  Death in High Circles

  Falconer Files – Brief Cases

  Love Me To Death

  A Sidecar Named Expire

  Battered To Death

  Toxic Gossip

  Driven To It

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  The Residents of Stoney Cross :

  Culverwell, Lydia – amateur pianist

  Horsfall-Ertz, Harriet ‘Squirrel’ – dog-lover and hoarder

  Jephcott, Delia – flautist living with Ashley Rushton

  Leighton, Summer – young dancer

  Lyddiard, Serena – working in the health service

  Markland, Camilla – harpist, married to Gregory

  McKnight, Peregrine – joint tenant of The Inn on the Green

  Palister, Sadie – sculptress

  Pargeter, Fiona – amateur singer, married to Rollo

  Radcliffe, Tarquin – joint tenant of The Inn on the Green

  Ravenscastle, Rev Benedict – vicar, married to Adella

  Rushton, Ashley – living with Delia Jephcott

  Templeton, Christobel – amateur poet, married to Jeremy, romantic novelist

  Westinghall, Felicity – romantic novelist, married to Hugo, also a writer

  Willoughby, Marcus – radio presenter who is new in the village

  Wingfield-Heyes, Araminta ‘Minty’ – painter

  Sundry Exhibiting Artists:

  Carstairs, Emelia – pastels

  Fitch, Lionel – oils

  Solomons, Rachel – watercolours

  Officials:

  Detective Inspector Harry Falconer

  Acting Detective Sergeant Ralph ‘Davey’ Carmichael

  Sergeant Bob Bryant

  PC Merv Green

  WPC Linda ‘Twinkle’ Starr

  Superintendent Derek ‘Jelly’ Chivers

  Dr Philip Christmas

  Contents

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  FOREWORD

  A Few Notes on Stoney Cross – Then and Now

  The village of Stoney Cross is situated some four miles from Castle Farthing and nine miles from the town of Carsfold. Five miles in the other direction is Market Darley.

  Just over a hundred years ago Stoney Cross had been a perfect centre for the community that had lived in its environs. It had its own school, church and chapel. The forge, with its blacksmith and farrier, attended to the needs of the farmers’ one-horsepower four-footed engines, the High Street for the demands of their wives and households. It had a mill for flour and a flat field for recreation on its outskirts. At Starlings’ Nest, a local doctor held surgery twice a week for the inhabitants’ physical problems, and the reverend gentleman at The Rectory took care of their spiritual needs.

  The village, then known as Stoney Acre, this being before the Great War (the 1914 to 1918 one, not the Napoleonic, also referred to as the Great War of its time), was a small but busy commercial centre, its highways and byways frequented by horses, carts and carriages. For two hundred years its inn had been a staging-house for coaches, and on its side were stables for the tired horses, above its bars, rooms for the weary travellers.

  It had been renamed Stoney Cross in 1925 when the war memorial was erected, declaring the deaths of so many young male members of its community. About this time, with the decline of the horse, so many fewer men left to work the land and the introduction of machinery, farming changed for ever. The strong, lusty young men who once worked the fields had left a hole that it was impossible to fill, and the machines moved in to take their places, leading to the inevitable decline, and finally closure, of the forge – there was not much money to be made from decorative ironwork. The farrier, too, walked away from his previously busy life in Stoney Cross, never to return.

  Over the next few decades, the fortunes of Stoney Cross fell into decline. People moved away, as small businesses closed due to financial problems, or the lack of an heir to carry on with the business. Many buildings and houses stood empty, as if time had closed over them, encapsulating them in a bubble of the past.

  The school closed down due to lack of pupils, the mill following suit, due to lack of businesses to supply, for it was not just Stoney Cross that struggled in this era. Over time, some of the farm buildings were sold off, as was the land, for new housing after the Second World War, and the chapel ceased to hold services, there being no faithful left to
listen to the fire and brimstone sermons preached within its walls.

  The only things left unchanged were the village green and pond, and the standing stones to the south-west of the village.

  Weekenders started its revival first, buying the smaller outlying properties, then commuters began to move into the more substantial homes, hoping to give their families a healthy life away from the bustle and pollution of more urban areas. Gradually properties were renovated and converted, and Stoney Cross now boasted an old mill conversion, an old school conversion, an old forge conversion, and a refurbished old rectory. The old coaching inn had shaken off its dust and cobwebs, and re-invented itself as The Inn on the Green, with an adjoining restaurant, in actuality the old stables (converted, of course).

  The High Street now housed an arts, crafts and new-age centre, a post office (hanging on by the skin of its teeth), a gallery-cum antiques and curios shop, a tea shop, a village store packed with organic-this and organic-that, and, what seemed an amazing survival but was in fact a new arrival, a hardware and corn-merchant’s. Down Castle Farthing Road, a Chinese chippie and pizzeria (eat in or take out – home deliveries within a two mile radius) nestled none too shyly, its light blazing from under a bushel, like a beacon to those of less formal dining habits.

  The old, flat recreation field was now a football/rugby/cricket pitch with pavilion, and the old village hall, sadly neglected and inadequate, had been replaced with a much larger and grander structure, with the combined functions of Village Hall, Scout/Guide Hut and Sunday school. The village green was home to three benches: a very old one commemorating Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee, one to commemorate the coronation of our current Queen, the third in memory of Princess Diana. On the public open space opposite The Inn on the Green were two ‘Silver Jubilee’ benches, and one of the standing stones had received a brass plaque declaring the start of a new millennium.

  This is Stoney Cross today. It even has signs on all roads entering it reading, ‘Slow – free-range children’.

  (Author’s note: anything in square brackets [] are the author’s own comments.)

  PROLOGUE

  As our story opens, Akela, Brown Owl, and the Sunday school teacher are gathered in the village teashop, casting aspersions on all those involved with the accursed Forthcoming Event. They had been cast out of their normal space for their weekly activities, and were sorely tried, and indignant that this should be allowed to happen.

  In The Old Chapel (converted), Christobel Templeton sat at her Georgian desk, putting the finishing touches to her fiercely calligraphic poetry exhibits. She would, of course, not use these for her recitations, as they would be on display. She was a tiny woman with a mass of auburn-tinged curls, freckles, and big brown eyes, and was at present shooing her cats, Byron and Longfellow, away from the un-dried ink. As she resumed her lettering, her small pink tongue protruded, almost invisibly, from the side of her mouth as she concentrated. She so hoped that everyone would like her little contributions, and looked forward, with an anxious, desperate longing, to receiving praise for her efforts.

  Across the intervening paddock, at The Old School (also converted), Sadie Palister stood stock still, chisel in one hand, mallet in the other, her head tilted slightly sideways as she viewed her creation with a critical eye from behind her horn-rimmed glasses, her view slightly obscured by the wispy fronds of a raven-black fringe. ‘This thing will be finished in time,’ she shouted across her studio to no one in particular, flinging down her tools and tossing a cascade of hair away from her face.

  She stooped to grab an open can of lager from the floor, and pondered anew how to arrange her other, smaller pieces around this monster, for the great event. Smiling wickedly, she took a greedy gulp of the lukewarm flat liquid, and wandered over to her favourite piece, beside which her contact lenses were sitting. These were of a startling blue, and not only helped her eyesight, but transformed her eyes’ natural nondescript colour into tropical pools and, on the whole, she thought, they enhanced her image as a sculptress.

  Oh yes, that must be blatantly in view, considering its title, and considering also who might see it and tie it in to its inspiration, she thought. (This was a thin hope, as she had no doubt that her old enemy would have little time for such small-fry as a village event, but it cheered her to think that this was, at least, a vague possibility – cheered, but chilled her at the same time!)Her gothic make-up crinkled with mischief, as she ran her pitch-coloured fingernails through her night-black hair.

  Across the High Street in The Old Mill (converted, unsurprisingly), Araminta Wingfield-Heyes – Minty to her friends – bent her small, round figure to the bottom right-hand corner of the large canvas before her, her cropped mousey hair almost touching the not quite dry paint. Better sign it, I suppose, she thought, reaching over to her workstation where her brush rested, in waiting for just this moment.

  In Dragon Lane, at Journey’s End, Lydia Culverwell ran her nimble fingers over the keyboard of her piano in rehearsal for the recitals she would give in the forthcoming event. She had chosen Chopin for her pieces, their sad and romantic themes close to her heart, but at odds with her plain and unremarkable looks. She had had her dull mousey-blonde hair highlighted in anticipation of, maybe, a photograph in the local newspaper, but could do nothing to disguise the undistinguished grey/blue of her eyes – others in the village, not so naïve, guarded their secret solution to this problem jealously.

  As she approached a very tricky section, her ears discerned the unmistakeable ‘ah-ah-ahing’ of her neighbour on the other side of the adjoining wall, obviously warming up with scales, for her own performance. As the intrusive voice searched for a high note it could not quite find, and clung hopelessly to one a quarter of a note lower, Lydia flung down the lid of her ‘darling’ (her pistachio green baby grand), and flounced off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of camomile tea.

  She’d wait for now, until the children of the neighbouring household went to bed, then give them hell with the louder sections of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’. That would teach the bitch to interrupt her when she was ‘in the zone’.

  On the other side of the wall, in The (converted) Haven, Fiona Pargeter’s cat-like green eyes twinkled with victory and, with a shake of her copper-coloured waves, she launched into her proposed solo for her performance. That had shown the bitch next door that she wasn’t the only one around here with a musical bone in her body. As her voice soared higher and higher, she thanked God that her husband Rollo was a sufficiently accomplished pianist to accompany her – how she would have hated to go round on her knees to beg for Lydia’s services.

  Casting this unpleasant scenario from her thoughts, she let her mind dwell fondly on the fact that Rollo had taken their children George, Henry and Daisy into the village to feed the ducks on the pond. They would not return until tea-time, giving her the rare luxury of peace and quiet, now she had seen off the crashing, mistake-ridden chords of that pretentious cow next door, who would be better off, in her opinion, thumping out melodies for the drunks in The Inn on the Green on a Saturday night.

  Down Stoney Stile Lane, in Starlings’ Nest, the slightly dumpy figure of Delia Jephcott could be discerned, producing a bright tune on her flute, as beautiful and liquid as birdsong. She had no neighbourhood axe to grind and played on blithely, oblivious to the semi-detached rivalry and warfare underway in Dragon Lane. Oh, but she was hungry! But she mustn’t eat anything. No food! Let music be her only sustenance.

  Stopping abruptly and putting down her flute, she darted guiltily into the kitchen and opened the fridge. A girl had to eat, hadn’t she? And it wasn’t as if she couldn’t do something about it afterwards, was it? She just mustn’t make a habit of it, or she’d have a real problem.

  Across the dividing hedge, in Blackbird Cottage, Serena Lyddiard had her earphones in, and was totally absorbed in her graceful dance routine, floating and flying elegantly across the floor of her living room, oblivious to the existe
nce of an outside world, totally caught up in the marriage of music and movement. Her steps suddenly halted, and she pulled her ear-pieces away as she said, ‘Blast your eyes Tar Baby! What do you think you’re doing?’ Her eyes smiled fondly at the big black cat, who had unwittingly offered himself as a Fred Astaire to her Ginger Rodgers, and she shooed him off to go play with Ruby, his red-point Siamese companion.

  On the other side of Church Lane, opposite the church, in Blacksmith’s Cottage, Camilla Markland drew one long, last, lingering chord from her harp and sighed. Her own playing always made her feel emotional. A slightly overweight woman who was constantly on a diet, she was a suicide blonde, dyed by her own hand. She had mud-coloured eyes and, like Sadie Palister, she overcame this shortcoming with the use of turquoise-tinted contact lenses. The sculptress’s little secret was only kept, as long as Camilla’s was safe in Sadie’s bosom. If she, Sadie, ever indicated what she knew, then Stoney Cross would be made aware that Camilla Markland wasn’t the only one in the village who was pulling more than wool over her own eyes.

  In many other dwellings in Stoney Cross, a welter of individuals were painting, mounting or framing their watercolours, oils and pastels. Portraits, landscapes, and a whole variety of other scenes, were all being treated with the respect due to them, as objects that would soon be on public view, and under the scrutiny of the public’s eye.

  In other houses, voices were raised oratorically, practising the recitation of poems, short stories, and excerpts from longer literary creations. All much-loved by their creators, these pieces were being treated like new-born babies, each ‘parent’ hoping that their ‘offspring’ would be praised for their beauty, but with the not unnatural dread that they may be slighted as not pretty enough; that they would be mocked, even, for their lack of perfection.