Elizabeth Duncan - A Killer's Christmas in Wales

“A little while ago I was talking to this American woman, Dorothy Martin, her name is, and mentioned the Saunders case to her. She’s solved a few murders of her own, apparently, and she reminded me to look for something that was at the scene that shouldn’t have been, or something that should have been there but wasn’t. And maybe that’s Huw Bowen. He shouldn’t have been there, but he was.”

Penny leaned forward and tapped her finger on the desk. “What if it’s not a thing we’re looking for? Not a some-thing, but a some-one?”

Victoria thought for a moment. “Well, maybe he was just there to pick up his wife?”

“Exactly!” said Penny. “If he’d just been there to pick up Glynnis, then he would’ve parked somewhere in town or met her outside the castle at a certain time. He wouldn’t have been traipsing around the castle, himself. With a guidebook! It was meant to be a day out for her, and he was meant to be at work at the bank.”

They looked at each other.

“So what was he doing there, then?”

Before Victoria could answer, Rhian, the spa receptionist, stuck her head in the door.

“Penny, your one o’clock appointment’s here. We switched her from this morning, remember. Glynnis Bowen.”

Victoria and Penny exchanged quick glances and Penny gave a small nod.

“Right, Rhian, here I come,” she said and, with a raised eyebrow in Victoria’s direction, added, “Now there’s a coincidence for you.”

“So, Glynnis, how are you?” Penny said as she picked up Glynnis’s hand and began shaping her fingernails with an emery board.

“Good, thanks, Penny. Busy, you know, with Christmas and all.”

“Going somewhere nice?”

“No, we stay in town for the holidays. Huw doesn’t get much time off at the bank, and this is actually a busy time of year for him.”

“Oh, I see,” said Penny.

“And what about you?”

“Well, this is my first Christmas in the cottage, so I’ve invited a few friends round for Christmas lunch.” She thought a moment as a new idea came to her. “We’ll meet up in the morning for church, and after the service we’ll go back to mine for a traditional Christmas lunch.”

“That sounds lovely,” said Glynnis. Penny detected a wistful note in her voice and was on the brink of suggesting that Huw and Glynnis might care to join them, when something held her back. Besides the fact that Huw was known to be a dreadful old bore, guaranteed to give the kiss of death to just about any social gathering, she was starting to have serious doubts about him.

“It was appalling what happened the day of our Stretch and Sketch Christmas luncheon, wasn’t it?” Penny said. “And too bad really, as it was your first time with the group.”

“Well, I don’t think it had anything to do with the art group, though,” said Glynnis. “But yes, it was terrible. Just terrible.”

“I was surprised to see Huw there,” said Penny. “At the castle, I mean. Had he come to pick you up?”

Glynnis gave her a sharp look. “Now why you would ask something like that?”

“Oh, no reason,” said Penny, trying to gloss over it. “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

An awkward silence fell between them, and a few moments later Penny tried to put things right. “Anyway,” she said, with false brightness, “have you thought what colour you might like?”

Glynnis let out a little sigh that Penny couldn’t quite decipher. Despair? Despondence?

“Some women like the deep reds this time of year,” Penny suggested, showing a small sample to her client. “Do any of these appeal to you?”

“That one looks good,” said Glynnis, pointing to one.

Penny applied two coats of the nail varnish as Glynnis watched silently. As she finished the top coat, Glynnis spoke in a low voice.

“I envy you, you know. You seem to have everything.”

“I’ve had my ups and downs like everyone else,” Penny replied, “but yes, my life is in a good place right now.” She screwed the top back on the bottle of top coat. “There. All done. They’ll take a few minutes to dry, if you want to make yourself comfortable in reception or in our quiet room. Just be very careful for the next hour or so.” She helped Glynnis gather up her belongings, wished her a happy Christmas, and left her in the reception area.

That is one deeply unhappy woman, she thought as she returned to her manicure table. And that remark at the end, about having everything, what was that about?

Sergeant Bethan Morgan showed her warrant card to the woman behind the counter in the charity shop.

“Oh, you’ll have come about that brooch, I expect,” she said. “I’ll just get it for you.” She opened the cash register, lifted out the change drawer, and removed a small bundle of pale pink silk.

“Here it is,” she said, handing it over. “Valuable, is it?”

“Very.”

“Now, who would do such a thing, I wonder. Pin something like that to the top of our little Christmas tree.”

“That’s what we’d like to know,” said Bethan. “Can you think of anyone who might have done it?”

The woman shook her head. “But before you go, Officer, there’s something else.” She beckoned to Carwyn. “Carwyn, fetch that box that came in today from the bank.”

Carwyn brought out the plastic box and set it down on the counter.

“Mr. Bowen himself from the bank brought this in earlier,” she said. “We were sorting through it and noticed a camera at the bottom of the box. It looked expensive. We didn’t know what to do, and as you were coming in anyway, we thought we’d ask you. Run it by you, like.” Bethan leaned forward to look in the box just as the woman reached into it to pull out the camera.

“Don’t touch it,” Bethan said. “Have you handled it at all?”

“Well, just a little, so we could look at it, like, and then we put it right back.”

Bethan flipped through her notebook and then pulled a plastic bag from her pocket and wrapped it around the camera.

“You did right to let me know about this. This camera was in the box brought in today by Mr. Bowen from the bank, you say. What time was that?”

“Oh, around noon, I think, wasn’t it, Carwyn? At any rate, that Penny Brannigan was still here, and she left around one or a bit before, I think it was, so it was before that.”

“Penny Brannigan was in here this morning, was she?” said Bethan.

“Oh, yes,” said Carwyn. “Volunteering. Got quite a bit of dusting done, actually.”

“Volunteering, is it now.” Bethan smiled.

“Is there something the matter?” asked the woman behind the counter. “I thought there was something odd about her.”

“No,” said Bethan, “she’s all right is Penny. You’ve no worries there.”

She picked up the camera and silk-wrapped brooch, which she also placed in a small bag and prepared to leave. “One more thing,” she said to the women. “You didn’t happen to see the box for the brooch, did you? Red, with midnight-blue silk lining.”

The women looked at each other and shook their heads.

“No, it was just the brooch. No box.”

“Well, if it turns up somewhere, give me a call,” said Bethan. “Here’s my card.”

The two women watched her go and then turned toward each other.

“There’s something very wrong going on here, and we seem to be involved,” said Carwyn.

“Yes,” agreed her companion. “We’d better look sharp.”

As the midafternoon sun bathed the town in a gentle golden light, Penny and Victoria set off from the spa to inspect the window displays of the half dozen or so shops that had entered the competition. Some of the shop windows they passed had been hastily hung with a bit of tinsel or paper chains, but the ones they were to judge had been carefully and creatively dressed with lavish attention to detail.