Death in an English Cottage: Book Two in the Murder on Location Series Read online

  The woman who’d been talking to him looked at me, seeming to notice me for the first time. Alex said, “Kate, this is Elise DuPont, our producer.” I figured she was in her fifties. Lines radiated from the corners of her eyes, around her lips, and traced along her forehead, but unlike so many women I had worked with in L.A., who were airbrushed, coiffed, and moisturized to the hilt, she hadn’t taken any pains to hide her age. It seemed she’d embraced it—or perhaps ignored it. Her faded dark blond hair, which was twisted up into a loose knot on the top of her head and skewered with a pencil, was streaked with gray. She wore a puffy black vest over a black shirt with frayed cuffs and didn’t have on any makeup or jewelry. She bent her head over a stack of folders.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m really looking forward to this project.” I extended my hand, but she didn’t take it.

  “Good. You’re finally here.”

  I glanced at Alex, uncertainly. “I came directly from the airport.”

  “Yes, well, it would have been better if you’d been here last week.”

  Melissa suddenly became very interested in her phone, and Felix murmured something about the loo and slipped away.

  Alex sent me a don’t-worry-look. “Elise, I told you Kate had to wrap up things in L.A. She couldn’t get here before today.” His voice was mild.

  Elise looked up suddenly. “Yes, how is L.A.?” Her mouth pinched, deepening the lines around her lips. “Still sunny and hot and filled with artificial people?” Her clear gray eyes fringed with stubby lashes focused on me for the first time.

  “It’s very plastic-y at times, yes.” I had that wary and unprepared feeling I got when I dreamed that I was back in grad school and arrived at class only to realize it was the day of the final, and I’d forgotten to attend all semester.

  She studied me a moment more, and I wondered if I had enough of a balance on my credit card to cover a return ticket to L.A., but then the corners of her mouth turned up in a brief, insincere smile. “You can start with this.” She handed me a folder. “Lilac Cottage.”

  Alex rested his arm on the table. “Kate probably wants to get settled in. She hasn’t even been to her room yet.” A trace of censure laced through Alex’s words.

  It was nice he was standing up for me, but I didn’t need him to do that.

  “No, it’s okay.” I took the folder. “I got some sleep on the plane. What do you need?” I was obviously on trial, and I wasn’t about to give Elise any ammunition to use against me.

  “Full scouting report. Can we use it for one of the interviews?” She paused to consult her paper. “One of the scholars—I forget which one, lives there and said it would be most convenient.”

  I opened the folder. “Rafe Farraday,” I read.

  At my tone, Alex tilted his head. “Do you know him?”

  I slapped the folder closed. “No. Not personally. I know of him. He’s quite the online celebrity.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He teaches several popular Internet classes.”

  “That’s right,” Elise said. “The good-looking one with the following. Personable, funny, and the camera loves him. Yes, thank God we got him. We don’t want to lose him. He’s the one with the exclusive material, which we’ve used as a spine for the first episode. Do everything you can to make that location work. We want to keep him happy.”

  “Of course. When do you want the report?”

  Elise looked at me as if I’d grown a third eye. “As soon as possible.” Her phone rang, and she picked it up, but didn’t answer it. “I understand you worked for Kevin Dunn.” Her phone continued to shrill as she said, “I don’t know what kind of work environment he allowed—lax, I imagine—but you’ll find we do things efficiently and professionally.” She nodded once, a dismissal, and answered her call.

  Despite feeling like I’d been gutted, I pinned a smile on my face. Defending Kevin would do me no good here. Melissa sent me a sympathetic look. “Call me when you’re settled in. We’ll get a drink.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.” I glanced at Alex. “Right now, I think I’ll check in and then get started.” My blood thumped quickly through my veins, and I knew the best thing would be for me to leave while I could still keep my thoughts to myself.

  “I’ll help you with your luggage.” Alex followed me out of the restaurant portion of the inn to the tall check-in desk. “I’m sorry about that. Elise isn’t usually so snappish. It’s this weather—we were supposed to start filming. The weather looked great up until the last minute, and we don’t have any rain cover for today. We’ve had to reschedule everything. It’s been a nightmare.”

  “Is it just me she hates or all people from L.A.?”

  “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “Seriously, she’s stressed, and she took it out on you. I’m sorry about that. We do need you here.”

  “It’s not your fault.” I was calming down—that instinctive fight or flight impulse was fading, and I said with a grin, “Wait. Yes, it is. You got me this job.”

  “Guilty. Don’t worry about Elise. It takes her a little while to warm up to people.”

  “I’m not sure about that. And what was that dig about Kevin? He was a great boss, one of the nicest people out there—and completely professional.”

  Alex shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe they knew each other.”

  A pair of feet appeared, trotting down the stairs, then the stocky, bulldog-like body of Doug Owens, the owner of the inn, came into view. “Ms. Sharp, welcome back.”

  “Thank you, but please call me Kate.”

  He came down the last of the steps and paused, his hand resting on the newel post. “I’ve got some bad news about your room.”

  Most of the cast and crew were staying at a golf resort in the nearby town of Upper Benning, but the resort was full, so Alex had booked me a room at the Old Nether Woodsmoor Inn.

  I squinted. “There was a mistake and you’re booked, too?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. No, a pipe burst this morning in the room above yours. Water came through the ceiling and everything is soaked. Bed, carpets, furniture. Everything. It will be several days before it’s habitable again.”

  “Oh. Well. Surely there’s an open room somewhere close. If not here, then another village nearby. Looks like I’ll have to rent a car after all,” I said with a glance at Alex.

  Doug shook his big head, looking like a groggy dog waking up after a nap. “No. Everything’s booked for miles around. I’ve gotten calls yesterday and today from other villages checking to see if we had openings because they’re full up. High season, you know. Everyone wants to get out of the city and enjoy the beautiful countryside.”

  A crack of thunder made us all jump. We exchanged rueful smiles.

  Alex shifted his feet. “I don’t have much room, but you’re welcome to stay with me. I’ll take the couch.”

  “Oh I couldn’t put you out like that,” I said quickly. I didn’t even have to think about it. I really couldn’t do that. I wasn’t exactly sure where Alex and I stood. We were business associates, of course, but there was something else, an undercurrent that I felt and had fought against during the last time I was in England. I never mixed business with pleasure. I had rules about dating guys I worked with—well, one rule: don’t do it. But since Alex had called and pitched the job working with him, I’d been reconsidering my hard and fast rule. Not that I was sure that what Alex and I had would lead to anything romantic…we certainly got on well—aside from our little tiff about the rental car—but maybe it would turn out as more of a friendship thing. One thing I knew for certain was that moving in with him would not help me sort out what was going on.

  Doug’s glance pinged back and forth between us, and he must have sensed that I wasn’t waiting to be talked into staying with Alex because he clapped his hands together. “In that case, I may have a solution.” A sharp, high-pitched sound penetrated the din coming from the restaurant “H
ere it comes now.”

  The piercing sound continued and resolved itself into a series of sharp dog barks. The yipping increased in volume and cadence as the door to the inn opened, and Beatrice Stone stepped inside, her short pale brown hair plastered to her forehead. Two mops of fur laced in and around her yellow galoshes, then strained at their leashes and raced toward us.

  “Kate, I knew you’d be back.” Beatrice’s square, rather plain face had a smile of welcome on it.

  I’d met Beatrice during my first visit and realized that despite her brusque and to-the-point manner, she genuinely cared about the people who lived in the village. In her role as Lady Stone, wife of Sir Harold, a baronet, she looked out for everyone in Nether Woodsmoor as well as she could. She and Sir Harold lived in Parkview Hall, the local “old pile” as Alex called it, a huge country estate with elegant Georgian lines—columned portico, miles of exquisite rooms and galleries, all set in beautiful, naturally landscaped grounds. It had gone to the top of our scouting list as our number one choice for Pemberley when we’d been looking for movie locations, and Alex had said it was now to play the same role for the documentary that would recreate some scenes from Austen’s books.

  Beatrice reeled in the leashes, pulling the dogs’ muddy paws away from our shins. “I hear you need a place to stay, Kate. You’re welcome to Honeysuckle Cottage. It’s not much to look at, at the moment, but it’s dry and has clean linen.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You better see it first.”

  Chapter 2

  “WE WERE SCHEDULED TO BEGIN refurbishing it this week,” Beatrice said as we splashed along the high street, our individual umbrellas jouncing against each other. The dogs raced ahead, straining at the leashes as if a steak awaited them at the end of their walk. I noticed that the few other pedestrians gave us a wide berth. We must have been quite a sight. Beatrice’s trench coat flapped wildly in the wind as she juggled the umbrella, the dog leashes, and a basket with her shopping tucked into one elbow. I huffed along beside her, my suitcase bumping unsteadily over the stone sidewalk and kicking up a spray of water. “But of course the builder called this morning. Unavoidable delay or some such nonsense. Turn here.”

  She clicked her tongue and the dogs surged up the incline of a short street lined with a few homes, then we turned again and were on a short lane that ran parallel to the high street with seven or eight stone cottages, each with a small front garden. The lane was slightly elevated above the high street and there were no houses on the other side, so the cottages had a view of the village. Behind them, the ground rose, and a grove of trees marched up the knoll, masking a larger house higher on the hill. I could see gables and a chimney through the treetops.

  Beatrice pointed to the cottage farthest away at the end of the lane where the pavement transitioned to a small footpath that disappeared into a thicket of trees and underbrush. “Alex lives down here on the end in Ivy Cottage. He took it as a temporary rental, but it’s worked into a permanent arrangement. All the cottages are named after plants…Rose, Ivy, Honeysuckle, and so forth. The street is called—rather unimaginatively, I’m afraid—Cottage Lane.”

  Beatrice opened the fifth gate set in the dry stone wall that fronted all the cottages. Like most of the rock walls in this part of England, it was made without mortar. Flat stones were stacked together in an interlocking pattern with several of the heaviest stones placed on top to hold the whole thing in place. I could just make out the worn inscription posted by the gate that read HONEYSUCKLE COTTAGE.

  With the two dogs pulling us forward like they were dragging a sled through the Arctic Circle, we crossed a short stone path and went up the three steps. It took Beatrice a few moments of jiggling the key in the lock, then she threw open the door and commanded the dogs to stay. They promptly circled around the mostly bare room, sniffing and leaving wet paw prints on the dusty hardwood floors as we deposited our umbrellas and my suitcase in a corner.

  “We won’t have a moment of peace with them in here. Out with you.” She unhooked their leashes and pointed to a hallway that led to the back of the cottage. With a symphony of yips accompanied by clattering nails, the dogs disappeared. I heard a door open and close and then there was silence.

  The front door opened into a hallway that ran past stairs to a kitchen. On my right was a small living area with a window that overlooked the front garden. A fireplace bracketed with bookshelves filled the wall opposite the window. Wood beams marched across the ceiling and matched the rich wood of the staircase that lined the short hallway. Dust cloths swaddled three pieces of furniture. I pulled them back and found a sixties-inspired angular couch in white fake leather balanced on angled silver legs, a plastic coffee table, also in white, and a plastic chair shaped like a teardrop with a stingy little cushion on the seat.

  “Awful, isn’t it?” Beatrice stood in the hallway, her arms crossed, the basket still on her elbow.

  I let out a laugh. “I didn’t want to be rude, but yes, it’s terrible. The furniture doesn’t go at all.”

  Beatrice shrugged. “The last tenant had us move the furniture out—it was old. Sagging armchairs, chintz couch, a scarred wooden desk, that sort of thing. Wanted to bring in her own furniture, but apparently she wasn’t extremely fond of her things either since she moved out and left them all here. Hers was supposed to be a long lease—at least a year, but she only lasted a month.”

  I sighed, picturing the cottage with the furnishings Beatrice had described. “I bet what you had was perfect.”

  “Not perfect, but it did match the cottage—in need of a facelift. That’s why we scheduled the remodel.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Refinish the hardwood floors, fresh paint, new fixtures in the kitchen and bath upstairs—it’s only got one bedroom and a small shower—and add a free-standing closet upstairs. It will be a bit of a squeeze, but I think we can do it. Mostly, we’re freshening up the place to make it look like a cottage that a Londoner would rent for a holiday in the country. We’ve done two of the cottages on this lane so far.”

  “So you own all the cottages?”

  “Yes. The first four are for staff from Parkview Hall. We’re gradually updating the others as people come and go, converting them to holiday rentals, part of my campaign to make every part of the Hall pay its way.” She scanned the beams on the ceiling, and I heard a note of something in her voice that made me tilt my head. “Not everyone likes the plan?”

  “No. Some of the staff are very put out. Years ago, if you worked at the Hall, you were provided a place to live along with the salary, but things are changing. The small cottages won’t work for most of the staff now. Families are too big for these cottages, and people are more independent. They want to make their own choices. But of course, not everyone sees it that way. Some people feel they’ve been short-shifted.” She sighed. “But we have to do what we must to keep Parkview Hall open.”

  “Well, I’m glad you have some of them as rentals. Despite the furniture, it’s lovely.”

  “You’d best see the kitchen and bath before you give your final verdict.”

  I followed her down the narrow hallway. “Bit of storage in here.” Beatrice tapped a small door set into the wall under the stairs. A large hutch with drawers and shelves dominated the tiny kitchen. There was barely enough room for Beatrice and me to stand together in the kitchen. It had been updated at least once, probably sometime shortly after World War II. Everything was miniaturized—the sink, the two-burner stove, and the rounded refrigerator looked like something from Barbie’s dream home circa 1950. The prior tenant’s furniture updating spree hadn’t extended to the kitchen. A heavy round table wedged into one corner, its top burnished from years of use, matched the solid hutch.

  “It’s workable for one. I’m not much of a cook actually, so it will be fine for me.”

  Beatrice nodded, and I followed her up the stairs, which opened directly into a room with a brass bed centered below a steep
A-line roof with heavy beams interspersed between a whitewashed ceiling. “The former tenant didn’t love the bed frame, but getting it down the narrow stairs was too much for her.” Beatrice moved to the window and opened a set of interior shutters.

  “Well, I think it’s perfect.” A white bedspread with swirls of embroidery covered the bed. Pillows with a honeysuckle print fabric were propped up against the headboard. The only other furniture was a bedside table with a lamp. A curtain in the same honeysuckle fabric angled across one corner. I pulled it away to reveal a self-standing IKEA storage unit with shelves and a tiny rod for hanging clothes.

  I poked my head into the bath. A row of accent tiles in Pepto-Bismol pink cut through octagonal tiles in black and white that lined the room, which had a pedestal sink and a toilet with a pull chain. I was relieved to see a fairly modern shower insert.

  “I love it.”

  “I’ll delay the renovation until after your show…what do you call it…ends?”

  “Wraps.”

  “Yes, until you wrap. I doubt it will make much of a difference in the remodeling completion date. The builder seems the unreliable type, cancelling on the first day of a job.” Beatrice spoke over her shoulder as she carefully maneuvered down the stairs. I followed her.

  She named a sum for a weekly rental that I thought was more than fair, considering what the weekly rate at the Old Nether Woodsmoor Inn would have been. I knew the production would cover it and be happy about the savings, so I said, “I’ll take it. I’ll talk to Elise about the payment of the rent.”

  She waved away my concern as she picked up her umbrella. “I’ll have one of those nice P.A. people add it to the production’s bill.” She worked two oversized old-fashioned keys off her keychain. “Excellent to have you back in town, Kate. Take these for the night latch locks. Front and back door.”

  “Night latch?”

  “Come see,” she said, and I followed her into the kitchen where she paused by the door that led into the small back garden. “This lock.” She twisted a knob secured to a rectangular piece of metal attached to both the door and the frame. “It’s a spring bolt that locks automatically when the door closes. It opens with the key from the outside.”