Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
They didn’t even have to call Roy since he was loitering by his car in front of Kingfisher Cottage.
“There you are,” he said as they approached. “I assumed you wouldn’t be far away.”
“You’ve got my number,” Lily pointed out. “You could have called.”
He rolled his eyes. “I tried that.”
“Oh.” Lily took her phone out and grimaced. “It’s on silent.”
“Got time for a quick word?” he asked.
“Your ears must have been burning,” Clara told him. “We wanted to speak to you too. Let’s get inside and put the kettle on. Maybe I can rustle up a bit of lunch too.”
They filed up the steps and through the house to the kitchen. Lily and Roy sat, while Clara bustled around making drinks and pulling sandwich fillings from the fridge.
“We’ve been asking questions,” Lily said to Roy. “But we’re getting nowhere. We had dinner with the Westons last night and I really can’t believe any of them started the fire.”
“None of the neighbours show any hint of suspicion,” Clara added.
“This is what I wanted to talk to you about,” Roy said. “You’ve been assuming it had to be one of the neighbours, but what if you could rule them all out?”
“How could you know for sure?” Lily asked.
“I can’t. I only mean hypothetically. Because whenever I’ve looked into it, none of them seemed suspicious to me either. At least apart from Martin sleeping through the commotion that night.”
“He wasn’t there,” Lily said. “We talked to him and he admitted to having an affair. Samantha knew, but kept quiet for Nancy’s sake.”
“He was with someone else?” Roy asked. “Someone who could verify his whereabouts?”
Lily nodded. “So he says. I believed him.”
“If it’s true, it rules him out as a suspect.”
“What did you mean about ruling them all out?” Lily asked.
“If it wasn’t any of the neighbours, who else might it have been?”
Clara paused in making cups of tea. “I’ve no idea.”
Lily drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “Who else would have wanted the sale to go through? There must have been other people who’d benefit from it who we haven’t thought of.”
Clara looked at her questioningly.
“Maybe a local business owner,” Lily mused.
Clara shook her head. “They wouldn’t have benefitted from it. I remember there were even some grumblings at the time. Marcie, for example, was worried that the new development would put her gift shop out of business.”
“Exactly,” Roy said gravely. “There’s only one road into Malporth. The building work would have caused chaos for anyone living here.”
“The village would have been turned into a building site,” Lily mused. “Surely no one other than the people who’d been offered money for their houses would want the sale to go through.” Lily frowned deeply. “Why would someone who was against the development start the fire?”
Roy started to speak, but Lily slapped a hand on the table as the answer came to her.
“What if we have it all backwards?” she said in a rush.
“How do you mean?” Clara asked.
“Several people have said that Mum was having doubts, and that she was thinking of selling.” She tried to recall what she’d heard. “Samantha said part of the reason was that she liked Richard Harper, and thought his proposal was a good one.”
When Lily caught Roy nodding along with her theory, her whole body tingled with adrenaline.
“You weren’t the first person to point the finger at Harper Developments, were you?” she asked Clara.
“No,” Clara said, the gentle lift of her eyebrows expressing that she knew what Lily was getting at. “You think someone started the fire in order to point the finger at the developers.”
Lily nodded. “Whoever started the fire probably didn’t know about the chemicals in the house.
They wouldn’t have expected it to get out of hand so quickly.
” She ran her teeth over her lip. “For all we know, they planted evidence inside to incriminate Harper Developments. If it looked as though Richard and his company were to blame, my parents wouldn’t have agreed to the deal. ”
Roy clasped his hands in front of him. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“If we’re going with this theory,” Clara said, shaking her head, “it could have been any local business owners or any resident. Anyone who didn’t want the village turned into a building site.”
Lily slapped a hand across her forehead. “That throws things wide open.”
“Not really,” Roy said. “It’s got to be someone who still lives here now, since they wrote you a note to lure you to the jetty.”
“That’s true.” Lily looked questioningly at Roy. “Do you know how many people still live in the village?”
“Not that many.” He cleared his throat. “And of those few people, only one was guarded when I spoke to them today.”
“You already spoke to people?” Lily asked.
“Everyone was open to chatting with me… except Marcie.”
Lily felt a cool prickle at the back of her neck. She looked at Clara. “I still think it’s odd that she hasn’t come to speak with you in person. And I don’t really understand why she didn’t tell you when I first arrived in the village. She promised you she would, and then she didn’t.”
“She explained why,” Clara said. “I don’t agree with her reasons, but I think I understand them.”
“What if she was just keeping an eye on the situation – waiting to see what I’d do? When she heard I’d been poking my nose into the past, she gave me a warning…”
Clara cocked her head, eyeing Lily dubiously. “You don’t seriously think Marcie lured you down to the jetty? She was the one who fished you out of the water.”
“Maybe she didn’t want me dead – just wanted me gone. Saving me took all the suspicion off her, but isn’t it actually suspicious that she was there to pull me out? The same as she was there after you fell.”
“No.” Clara shook her head. “No way. She’s my friend.”
“Once she’d pulled me out of the river, she told me I should leave the village and not come back.”
“For your safety,” Clara argued.
“You have to keep an open mind,” Roy said, eyeing Clara sympathetically. “She seemed very agitated with me today.”
“What did she say exactly?” Clara asked.
“That she was working and it was inappropriate to speak then.”
“There you go,” Clara said indignantly. “I think she has a point.”
“There were two people in the shop,” he said. “She was hardly rushed off her feet.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” Clara paced to the window. “Marcie wouldn’t do any of this. I really can’t believe it of her.”
“I need to speak to her,” Lily said, rubbing her eyebrow. “What if I just outright accuse her? She might crack.”
“I have another idea,” Roy said levelly. “How about we involve the police? I still know a lot of people on the force. I can talk to a few people I trust and figure out the best way to approach this. If you tell them about the note and what happened at the jetty, they’ll take it seriously.”
“And you’ll tell them your suspicions about Marcie?” Clara asked frostily. “She saved Lily, and you want to get her into trouble?”
“I know you don’t want to believe it could have been her, but I’m telling you she’s been acting suspiciously.” He looked at Lily. “And I think that if she’s interviewed, she’ll trip herself up.”
“You might be right,” Lily said. “But I’d still rather talk to her myself.”
Roy frowned. “I would strongly advise you against it. Let me talk to some of my old colleagues. I can feel them out, and then we can decide what to do.”
Hesitantly, Lily nodded.
Roy left immediately, keen to talk to his ex-colleagues in person, but promised he’d call as soon as he could.
“I don’t like it,” Lily said to Clara while the two of them tucked into cheese toasties. “The police will probably just put the culprit on high alert, and we’ll never find them.”
Clara pushed her plate away after only a few mouthfuls. “If they question Marcie, that’ll be the end of our friendship. How will she forgive me for that?”
“She won’t know it was anything to do with you. But don’t you want to be absolutely sure she had nothing to do with this? They might just clear her name.”
“I don’t need them to. There’s no way she was behind any of it.”
Lily’s appetite vanished, and she gave up on lunch too. “Do you know any good beaches nearby?” she asked.
What she really wanted was to discuss everything with Flynn, but complaining to him that she didn’t fully trust the police to do their job probably wasn’t tactful. She’d take her comfort from the sea instead.
“If there’s one thing we’re not short of around here,” Clara said. “It’s good beaches.”