Murder in the Cemetery: A Lady Margaret Turnbull Cozy Mystery Book (International Cozy Mystery Series 3)

  Murder in the Cemetery

  By

  C T Mitchell

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2015 by C T Mitchell

  Cover and internal design © Wood Duck Media

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems – except in the case of brief quotations in articles or reviews – without the permission in writing from its publisher, C T Mitchell.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. We are not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

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  REJECTION

  “A nerve wrecking thriller that centers around a disturbed young man”

  “Real enough that it seems like it could be pulled from today's headline”

  “Hold onto your seats! This short read packs a punch”

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  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Excerpt from Murder in the Village

  About the Author

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  Chapter 1

  A muffled scream was all the emanated from Valerie’s beautiful mouth as the knife pierced her heart. Here, nestled in the heart of the last resting place of so many, Valerie was finally given what she deserved.

  A few rats scattered about in the corners, hopefully not to be seen, and the whole place smelled of mold. The air was still, but cool, and felt good on his arms as he moved her around.

  Valerie’s dress, purchased not long ago for fear she ever wear the same thing twice, was immaculate as it should be, except for the large stain down the front. She looked like a doll, like a museum doll in a pleasant little house of horrors, and he was happy to have helped her meet her end on a day when she was wearing green. It made the whole scene more exciting, somehow, not that anyone else would ever see it.

  His tormentor for as long as he’d had memories, Valerie would torment no longer and her assailant breathed a sigh of relief as he adjusted her body to its last resting position. On the outside, she looked better than him in every way, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. His miserable existence was because of her, with her out of the scene, perhaps now he could find a new way in life.

  Her hand fell when he placed it across her lap, so he laced her fingers together and she looked as though she were thinking about something. By the time he was finished with her hands, and had adjusted the last bit of her skirt, her face had fallen a bit. She no longer looked frightened or surprised.

  Dear Lord, why was she surprised? She had to have known this day was coming. It should have happened ages ago, but he was suppressing his will to see it through. Still, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Now, though, her face looked calm. It looked pleasant, even. And he reached up and pressed on her cheeks with his fingers until there was a slight smile on her beautiful face.

  Never again would she hear someone tell her how beautiful she was. And she was, to be sure, with porcelain skin and silky hair, but the inside didn’t match the hypocrisy of it all drove him up the wall.

  No one else seemed to be able to see how cruel she could be. It made him relatively sad that the truth of her character would never see the light of day, but it didn’t matter. Down here in the cool, damp dwelling place of busy rats and those who’d had their chance at living, at least she couldn’t hurt him anymore.

  The man stood, wiping the sweat from his thick forehead, and trudged up the stairs into the light. The smell of the crypt soon left his nostrils, and he strolled through the cemetery, blood still dripping from the knife he held loosely at his side.

  Chapter 2

  Bangalow, New South Wales, Australia is probably one of the most serene communities in the county – having nothing to do with its name. A village like many others throughout Australia, is boasted a hotel and pub, a church, a small dance hall adjacent to the elementary school, and a small, well-appointed cemetery.

  Lady Margaret Turnbull, one of the most popular town citizens, was the owner of the bed and breakfast in town called Lawler’s Loft. Lady Turnbull moved to Banaglow after the passing of her husband, an internet millionaire, and has lived there for the last ten years.

  When her husband passed in the UK, Lady Margaret turned her talent to cooking classes and running the bed and breakfast because it gave her the freedom to do what she loved, and also the freedom to be an amateur sleuth; something else this busy body loved to indulge in.

  The latter was very much to the dismay of Inspector Tom Sullivan of the Lismore Police Department. Lady Maggie always loved a good mystery, and unfortunately for the entire police department’s detective team, she was very good at solving them.

  Maggie had decided to go for a walk that morning since there were more people than normal bustling around in the gathering rooms of her guesthouse. Someone’s family reunion was in town, and the lot of them were not Maggie’s type of crowd.

  A nice, leisurely stroll through the neighborhood, though, provided all the entertainment anyone ever needed. With only twenty minutes of walking, one could get to just about anywhere in town they needed to go. Maggie especially loved this about Australia, that each section of the cities were divided up into miniature towns that held everything a full sized town would have.

  You didn’t even need a car here; you could really just walk everywhere. It was wonderful, and Maggie enjoyed it immensely. The warmth of the autumn sun on her back reminded her of vacations with her husband, and something tugged at the back of her throat. She was nearing the town’s cemetery, and could see someone standing just inside the far gate near a tree. The breeze from the ocean teased the last leaves on the tree.

  When Maggie neared the entrance of the little cemetery, she noticed that her dear friend Jennifer Langley was visiting a gravesite. It was probably her late husband’s site, he had died two years ago from a heart attack and it left her shaken.

  They had lived very long, happy lives together, but Jennifer still had a lot of life in her. She had finally gotten her visits down to once a week or so, and talked about the visits often in the quilting club that met at Lawlers Loft on Monday mornings.

  Maggie often overheard, and took part in, these conversations. It was like talking to someone with a newborn child. Only another parent can really understand what they’re going through. Maggie would go to her friend and stand with her as she talked with her husband, it was the least she could do and was something she’d expect of anyone else.

  Making her way through the little gate, Lady Turnbull noticed that the door to one of the mausoleums was ajar. It was open enough to get her attention, and she decided to take a look into it when she was finished. After all, that family reunion certainly didn’t need her presence, and she was in no hurry to return.

  Jennifer was especially cheerful this morning, and spent about half an hour recounting several good times she’d had with her husband to Maggie. Maggie listened intently, and hugged her friend as she was leaving, although she had been secretly eager to get over to the open mausoleum the whole time.

  When she came up to it, finally, she pushed it forward and it creaked under her palm just like an old m
ovie. Maggie felt like a grown-up Nancy Drew, and she grinned a bit as she propped the door open enough to light the first few steps. After that, she used her mobile phone to light the way.

  It was cold and dark in the crypt, but nothing out of the ordinary for Lady Margaret, as she lived for this sort of mystery. Something about the way the hairs on her arm stood up a bit told her that she would find something unpleasant down in the bottom of the tomb. Unless someone was servicing it, there was really no good reason for it to be open.

  Down the steps, just at the end where two large tombs of what Maggie assumed to be a husband and wife buried next to each other, was the body of a beautiful woman in a lovely green dress. Well, lovely, except for the giant red stain down the center. The woman’s face was left untouched, and her mouth was turned up in a gentle, yet awkwardly out of place smile. Except for having obviously been stabbed in the heart somewhat recently, she looked as though she might have been pleasantly sleeping.

  Maggie walked quickly over to her and ran her fingers through an outside portion of the blood on the woman’s gorgeous dress. It was still very wet. Maggie knew that Detective Sullivan would be displeased that she’d touched the body, but she always played by the rules. Just this once, she wanted to bend the rules a bit and gather more information before hand. She’d risk the lecture just this once.

  Not normally one to be shaken by such a sight, for some reason the death of this particular girl struck Maggie as a very sad thing. Her insides were beginning to knot up, so she stood for a moment at the young woman’s feet. She took a few steps back and tried to take in more of the scene.

  The young woman’s Italian-made shoes, which Lady Margaret recognized in an instant as being delightfully overpriced and a status symbol for many of the upper class women, were caked in mud. Though her face was beautiful, and Maggie hadn’t noticed it at first glance, her make up did appear to be smudged from tears.

  And her lips, bright red with lipstick, were actually bleeding. The woman had bitten her lower the Lismore Police Station. Constable Donaldson answered on the first ring, and listened to Maggie’s discovery. Her instructions, as always, were to wait at the scene and touch nothing until a police officer or two could get there.

  Twenty minutes later, she had given her official statement to Constable Donaldson and another officer of the law and was free to go home. Maggie walked home unnaturally slow, wishing she had something stronger than sherry waiting on her in the cabinet at home. A shot of whiskey to ease her shaky nerves wouldn’t be out of the question, today. She couldn’t quite figure out why the image of the young woman had upset her so, but she didn’t care for it.

  Chapter 3

  Maggie poured some cooking sherry into a tea class and sipped it as she strolled through the kitchen of her sprawling colonial home. She could still hear the sounds of the large family reunion out on the verandah and she shook her head a few times to clear the noise from it.

  “Why was the woman smiling? Why did she look like she was having a good time?” Maggie asked herself. There was no way in hell that girl was having a good time being stabbed in the heart. Something was amiss.

  By the fourth time the image of the girl’s laughing face haunted Maggie’s mind, she heard someone knock at her door. It was Detective Tom Sullivan, the man who was always reluctant to admit what a huge help she was in solving cases, but always seemed to keep coming back for more.

  This time, though, Maggie secretly wished he would ask her to stay out of it. This time, she would listen. Tom took his usual cup of tea when she offered it to him, and he made a mental note of the way her hands shook when she handed it to him.

  “You okay, Lady Margaret?” He asked, taking a sip. She nodded but said nothing. “Okay then,” he said hesitantly. “Well, we’ve found out that your victim is named Valerie Chambers. Ready for the run down?”

  Chills ran down Maggie’s spine, but she nodded because she knew that’s what she normally would have done. At the moment, she was acting on instinct, and her instinct told her that she should be interested…so she faked it.

  Tom opened his small notebook with a flick of his wrist and began reading. “Thirty eight years old at the time of her death. Single. Lived in Clunes, New South Wales. Owned and managed a spa and beauty parlor for the past ten years.

  This, however, is exactly where her story stops, if you’ll believe it. No one at the Station has been able to find a trace of her existence before she moved to Clunes….which I find very strange.”

  Maggie nodded. “Strange, indeed.” Her silence afterward told Tom to continue. When he started to, she raised up her finger to stop him. “No wait…why would a beautiful, well dressed woman wander into the Bangalow cemetery in the middle of the night?

  “Perhaps she came with whoever killed her to look at a tomb? To look at the tomb she was found in, maybe? Maybe she was forced into it. Who knows?” Tom shrugged when Maggie didn’t say anything else, and then continued on with more theories. “Maybe she came to Bangalow to re-kindle an old friendship, and then things took a turn for the worse?”

  “—wait right there, Tom.” Tom grinned. He loved when Maggie interrupted him with her theories, though he would never admit it to her. “You may be right on any of those accounts, but she wouldn’t have done any of those things in the middle of the night. That’s not something a lady would do.”

  “Clunes is only 15 kilometers from Bangalow. Do you think she may have a special male friend here? A love interest, perhaps” Maggie enquired.

  Chapter 4

  Tom didn’t know, but no one seemed to have any information on her, or anyone fitting her description who had relocated in the last ten years.

  “Well I’ve definitely never seen her face before. And she has such a striking one—or she did—that I would have remembered it, I think.”

  “Didn’t you say you knew the Pemberthy’s?” Tom asked. Maggie had mentioned during her statement that the tomb the woman was found in belonged to the Permberthy’s, who had been semi-frequent guests of her cooking classes at the bed and breakfast.

  “Yes, I did. And I know what you’re thinking. They had a boy and a girl, but they both drowned in a boating accident years ago. They were twins, and their bodies were never found. That was my first thought, as well.”

  “Well, I had one of my detectives look into the matter, because quite frankly, the manner of death for the parents was some cause for concern.”

  “Follow me,” Lady Margaret said. “And keep talking, I’m listening. I’m just going to grab something.” As Maggie tried to picture what the Pemberthy’s children would look like, an image of Valerie Chamber’s face Kept popping into her head, interfering with all other thoughts. Frustrated, she marched up to the little attic of the bed and breakfast, Detective Sullivan trailing behind her.

  “So anyway, Jane and Charles Pemberthy, as you probably know, because they were in your cooking classes, died relatively closely to each other, time frame wise. Within a year or so of each other, they each had a stroke. I remember it striking me as odd, kind of like Johnny Cash and June Carter. It’s sweet, but it doesn’t happen all the time. What are you looking for up there?” Tom steadied the attic ladder Maggie had pulled down, when she didn’t answer him, he just kept talking.

  “Valerie’s face is really haunting me, Tom. I can’t remember exactly what Mrs. Pemberthy looks like…” She backed down the ladder and tore out a paper from an old cooking school yearbook. “Can you do me a favor and run this through some fancy science machine and let me know if this looks anything like what Carol looked like.”

  “Carol, their daughter, yes?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you have something that can do that, don’t you?”

  “I can do you one better, I’ll run the pictures through the aging program and let you know what the Pemberthy’s daughter would have looked like, had she grown up. I’d imagine we’ll at least get close that way.”

  After Tom left, Maggie decided to take a walk around he
r property. Stretching her legs and a bit of country fresh air would do her good; and her mind wonders. The reunion had quieted down and had given her time to think. Unfortunately, all she could think about what Valerie’s face. It was so haunting how she’d been smiling.

  The next day, Tom let Maggie know that her hunch was correct, as usual. For some reason, though, Maggie didn’t delight in it as she usually did. Valerie was, indeed, Carol Pemberthy, all grown up.

  The medical examiner also confirmed that the young lady had had some facial reconstruction surgery, though Maggie couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. The woman had good genes; she would have been gorgeous either way.

  It was certainly a twist in the case. As far as Maggie could tell, all they would have to do would be to retrace her steps from the day she supposedly drowned in the river. Her body was said to have been washed down stream, which was verified by someone on the scene. What happened after that was the big mystery.

  “What about her brother?” Maggie asked as Tom picked her up to take her to the police station that morning. She’d insisted on driving and he reminded her that it would be very hard to catch her up on things while they were in two separate cars. Detective Sullivan had mastered the fine art of talking hands free on the mobile phone while driving, but Maggie still insisted that it was very dangerous.

  “Do you think he survived?”

  He did, but he doesn’t use the name Pemberthy. He goes by Thomas Kilkane these days. The Lismore Police Department is looking for him right this moment. From what I can tell, though, he doesn’t really fit the profile of a killer.

  Most of what he has going against him are minor robberies and such. And even those are just from being poor and down in life. Not something we’d really classify as dangerous. One of the times he was picked up, he was asked if he was a drug addict. He joked that it was a luxury he couldn’t afford! I thought that was a pretty clever way of saying no.”