Chapter Ten
By the time they met Arthur and Constable Lexington at the Shorn Sheep that evening, Georgie was beginning to feel weary.
Investigating crimes in small villages was not for the faint-hearted—there was a lot of tea to drink, and scones to consume, and sheep to visit.
(The last agenda item, strictly speaking, had nothing to do with their investigation, but Sebastian had been determined to meet Ernest, and so a lengthy detour to the village green had been necessary after bidding Mrs. Penbaker adieu.)
Sebastian, meanwhile, seemed the very picture of vigorous good health and cheer; despite the damp weather, his hair maintained a jaunty curl, his skin glowed alluringly, and his shoes remained astonishingly unmuddied (though this fact had been rendered less astonishing when Georgie had witnessed him furtively produce a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and bend to wipe at a muddy splatter that had had the audacity to besmirch the expensive leather).
Arthur and Lexington arrived together, with Arthur looking visibly disgruntled.
“Hello,” she said cautiously, sipping at her half pint of cider. Next to her, Sebastian was lounging insouciantly in his chair, scanning the room—no doubt keeping an eye out for any potential romantic conquests once the evening’s business was concluded.
“George. Fletcher-Ford,” Arthur said, nodding at them as he shrugged off his damp jacket and slung it across the back of a chair. “Pint of bitter?” he tossed over his shoulder at Lexington, who nodded by way of reply. Georgie filed away this fascinating piece of information in her mind.
In a minute, Arthur was back, clutching a ginger beer for himself and sliding Lexington’s beer across the table to him; Lexington accepted the pint glass with a nod at Arthur.
“Did you learn anything interesting?” Georgie asked, once Arthur had settled into his seat.
He shook his head, looking vaguely disgusted.
“Lots of chatter about Penbaker being a bold visionary for all of his schemes to draw tourists—nice bit of revisionist history, there,” he added with a snort.
“But, in short, nothing that gave me the slightest suspicion that anyone I spoke to might be a murderer,” Arthur concluded. “What about you?”
“We,” Georgie said conversationally, “have decided to go on an expedition to Bramble-in-the-Vale tomorrow.”
The effect of these words was instantaneous; Lexington, who’d been about to take a sip of his drink, froze with his glass raised halfway to his lips and offered an eloquent grimace; Arthur, who had taken a sip of his ginger beer, choked on it and proceeded to cough quite dramatically, not subsiding until Lexington reached over and thumped him helpfully on the back.
Once his lungs were clear, Arthur said, horrified, “Why?”
Sebastian, who had watched all of this with keen interest, now turned an inquiring gaze to Georgie. “Is this village home to a prison?” he asked. “Are its inhabitants known to be petty thieves? Do they steal horses? Murder puppies?”
“Worse,” Georgie said darkly. “They’re charming.” She shook her head and took a sip of her cider.
Sebastian blinked, then looked from Georgie to Arthur to Lexington, who all gazed back at him solemnly. “More charming than… here?”
“Have you forgotten all of our corpses?” Lexington asked dryly. “Bramble-in-the-Vale is lacking in homicide victims.”
“And our shops aren’t as adorable,” Arthur added. “And far fewer of their names involve puns.”
“We don’t even have a bookshop,” Georgie put in, offering the final piece of information that should settle this debate. “No small village can be truly charming if it’s lacking in a bookshop.”
“You’ve a library,” Sebastian pointed out. “With a book club, even!”
“A murder-themed book club,” Georgie reminded him.
“Why the devil do you want to go to Bramble-in-the-Vale, though?” Arthur said, looking horrified anew at the very notion.
“We want to speak to the council chairman,” Georgie explained.
“It has been brought to our attention that they seem to be benefiting rather nicely from our little crime spree—loads of the Murder Tourists are staying there instead and popping over here to look for dead bodies before returning at the end of the day.”
“A good thought,” Arthur said pensively, reaching for his ginger beer.
“What do you intend to do?” Lexington asked, a bit skeptically. “Just march into the council office and demand an audience?”
Georgie and Sebastian exchanged a sheepish glance.
“Er,” said Sebastian.
“More or less,” said Georgie.
“I feel the need to remind you that we’re meant to be investigating discreetly,” Lexington said, giving them a stern look.
“What if,” Arthur said slowly, “I came along, and made as if I were writing an article about the village.”
“Why would The Woolly Register be writing an article about Bramble-in-the-Vale?” Georgie asked, distaste practically dripping from her voice.
“We could bring the Murder Tourists,” Sebastian said, straightening in his seat.
“Excuse me?”
“The Murder Tourists,” Sebastian repeated. “Miss de Vere and Miss Singh—we met them in the tearoom today, don’t you recall?”
“I do,” Georgie said. “Why would we bring them with us, though?”
“Well,” Sebastian said reasonably, “if they appeared to be touring the village, and Crawley here was reporting on—I don’t know—the phenomenon of all the Murder Tourists visiting, you’d just need to make sure this council chairman became aware of it, and he’d practically be running toward us.”
“Hmm,” Georgie said.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Arthur said thoughtfully.
Lexington shook his head. “If this somehow ends in all of you getting arrested,” he said darkly, “just know that I will not be getting you out of prison.”
“That’s the spirit!” Arthur said, clapping him on the back.
And Georgie did not think that she imagined his hand lingering slightly longer than necessary.
“This,” said Miss Singh, for at least the third time since alighting from the train, “is so charming!” She looked around, wide-eyed, seemingly captivated by the sight of the improbably adorable high street, strung with colorful bunting and populated by a gaggle of giggling children, several attractive villagers clutching baked goods, and some sort of pop-up string quartet that appeared to be serenading the passersby, for God knew what reason.
“Ridiculous,” Georgie muttered, staring around her with a jaded, suspicious eye.
The weather was vastly nicer than it had been yesterday; she had awoken early to the sight of sunlight streaming through her turret window, and had taken Egg on a morning walk that the beagle had enjoyed with a veritable spring in her step.
The sky was clear—virtually cloudless, and with that particular shade of blue that signaled dry air, no hint of rain or even humidity that could ruin a perfectly good hair day.
Georgie had spent more than her usual amount of time dressing that morning, at last selecting a green sailor dress that had caused Sebastian, when he first spotted her at breakfast, to proclaim, “Why, Georgie, you look entirely ravishing,” which had made her scowl by way of reply.
They had collected Miss de Vere and Miss Singh from the Sleepy Hedgehog, where they were staying, and then met Arthur at the tiny village station and boarded the ten o’clock train; Bramble-in-the-Vale was only one stop down the line, and they’d disembarked ten minutes later, blinking in the morning sunshine and soaking in the sight of a village that looked precisely like Buncombe-upon-Woolly, if Buncombe-upon-Woolly had been an illustration in a children’s picture book, rather than a real place.
“I say, are those rival cheese shops next door to each another?” Sebastian asked, looking delightedly at the Great Stilton and the Grand Gloucester.
“Yes,” Georgie said, sighing. “They’re owned by an elderly pair of twin brothers.”
“How charming,” Miss Singh said, clapping her hands delightedly.
“I know,” Georgie said darkly. “It’s unnatural.”
Beyond the competing cheese shops, there was also a soap shop (featuring a wide selection made with Cotswold-grown lavender), a bookshop, an art gallery, and an ice cream shop, as well as the usual array of butcher–baker–grocer–et cetera that characterized any village high street.
“You’re frowning,” Sebastian said, glancing down at her. “I don’t mind—it is my favorite of all your expressions—but I don’t know if you’re precisely giving off genial goodwill in a way that will encourage confidences from the locals.”
Georgie, who had immediately begun to smooth her expression the second Sebastian had proclaimed her frowns to be his favorite, attempted a cheerful smile.
“A bit grimace-adjacent,” he advised, and she tried again. “Better.”
Thus armored, they struck off down the high street toward the center of the village.
It was a Saturday and the entire village buzzed with cheerful energy.
Miss Singh and Miss de Vere stood out in their London finery—Miss Singh was wearing a polka-dot skirt suit, and Miss de Vere a pink silk dress with a decorative lace collar and diamante buttons—and Sebastian looked to be some sort of annoyingly handsome storybook prince come to life, in his white linen suit, but they did not stand out quite as much as they did in Buncombe-upon-Woolly, because Georgie quickly realized that Bramble-in-the-Vale was absolutely overrun with tourists.
She was impressed in spite of herself; this undoubtedly was what Mr. Penbaker had been aiming for with his various schemes, but never quite managed to accomplish.
And, begrudgingly, she acknowledged that Bramble-in-the-Vale radiated a similar quaint village appeal, just in a slightly more attractive way.
It was as though Buncombe-upon-Woolly were a rough sketch, and Bramble-in-the-Vale the finished painting.