Murder at the Meet Read online

  Bruce Beckham

  __________

  Murder at the Meet

  A detective novel

  LUCiUS

  Text copyright 2020 Bruce Beckham

  All rights reserved. Bruce Beckham asserts his right always to be identified as the author of this work. No part may be copied or transmitted without written permission from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events and locales is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition first published by Lucius 2020

  Paperback edition first published by Lucius 2020

  For more details and Rights enquiries contact:

  [email protected]

  Cover design by Moira Kay Nicol

  EDITOR’S NOTE

  Murder at the Meet is a stand-alone crime mystery, the fourteenth in the series ‘Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates’. It is set primarily in Borrowdale in the English Lake District – a National Park of 885 square miles that lies in the rugged northern county of Cumbria.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Murder in Adland

  Murder in School

  Murder on the Edge

  Murder on the Lake

  Murder by Magic

  Murder in the Mind

  Murder at the Wake

  Murder in the Woods

  Murder at the Flood

  Murder at Dead Crags

  Murder Mystery Weekend

  Murder on the Run

  Murder at Shake Holes

  Murder at the Meet

  (Above: Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates)

  Murder, Mystery Collection

  The Dune

  The Sexopaths

  Contents

  Glossary

  Preface

  Prologue – Mary

  1. The Dig

  2. Case Files

  3. The Bowder Stone

  4. Mrs Tyson

  5. Scordy an’ Scran

  6. Press Conference

  7. Nick Wilson

  8. Aidan Wilson

  9. Megan Nicolson

  10. Patrick Pearson

  11. Sean Nicolson

  12. Memory Lane

  13. Helix Unwinds

  14. All Saints

  15. Café Conversation

  16. The Cumbrian Kitchen

  17. All That Jazz

  18. The Meet

  19. Casting Off

  Next in the series...

  Glossary

  Some of the Cumbrian dialect words, slang and local usage appearing in ‘Murder at the Meet’ are as follows:

  Allus – always

  Alreet – all right (often a greeting)

  Arl – old

  Bab’e – baby

  Bairn/bairdens – child/kids

  Bait – packed lunch/sandwiches

  Beck – mountain stream

  Bellwether – the leading sheep of a flock

  Bleaberry – bilberry

  Claggy – mucky

  Clout – hit/smack

  Cowp – tip over

  Crack – chat, gossip

  Cuddy wifter – left-handed

  Dale – valley

  Deek – look/look at

  Donnat – idiot

  Dub – pool

  Fer – for

  Foily – smelly

  Gannin’/Garn – going

  Gill – ravine

  Gimmer – young female (lamb)

  Girt – great

  Guddling – groping

  Hause – mountain pass highpoint

  Heaf – open land to which a flock becomes attached (‘heafed’)

  Hogg – a lamb that has finished weaning

  How – round hillock

  In-bye – walled pasture near the farmstead

  Int’ – in the

  Jewkle – dog

  Kaylied – inebriated

  Kezzick – Keswick

  Ken – know

  Laddo – lad, boy

  Laik – play

  Larl – little

  Lonnin – lane

  Lowp – jump

  Lug – ear

  Marra – mate (friend)

  Mash – brew tea

  Mesen – myself

  Nicky – rum-flavoured date & ginger tart

  Nobbut – only

  Nowt – nothing

  Offcomer – outsider

  Ont’ – on the

  Oor – our

  Ower – over

  Owt – anything

  Pagger – fight

  Pattie – deep-fried mashed potato mixed with, for example, fish or cheese

  Pikelet – small thin crumpet

  Roding – twilight display flight of woodcock

  Scop – throw

  Scordy – tea

  Scran – food

  Skinful – enough alcohol to make one drunk

  Tapped – mad (insane)

  Tarn – mountain lake

  T’ – the (often silent)

  Tha/thee/thou – you

  Theesen – yourself

  Thy – your

  Tod – fox (also Cockney: alone)

  Twat – to hit

  Uns – ones

  Us – me

  While – until

  Wukiton – Workington

  Yat – gate

  Yon – that

  PREFACE

  The Shepherds’ Meet

  Stretching back into the mists of time (one Cumbrian year being worth ten in London or New York or Tokyo), shepherds from adjacent dales have informally gathered in advance of November tip lousing to hire out their prize tups and return to their rightful owners those yowes that have strayed during the course of the season. Tups are rams and yowes are ewes and tip lousing is setting the former loose among the latter, so that the hardy lambs are born in April, when the first flush of grass begins to green up the brindled Lakeland fells.

  Over the centuries the autumn shepherds’ meet has evolved into a more organised annual occasion, with competitions for sheep, dogs, hand clippers, fell runners and stick makers. At the bigger events – called country fairs – there may even be Cumberland wrestling. There are stalls selling traditional delicacies such as gingerbread, rum butter, mint cake and sticky toffee pudding; and artisan pottery, jewellery and knitwear. Shepherds and their kin meet and compete in an atmosphere of friendly rivalry – and retire afterwards to the local inn to celebrate their success or bemoan their bad luck over a pint or two of good cask ale.

  The meet unifies what is a disparate community – outwith the village life in the fells can be isolated and lonely. Of course, such congregations bring together not only old friends and relations, but occasionally old enmities too, when ancient clan rivalries long buried resurface for reasons of a modern making. But such is the social significance of the meet to its dale, and neighbouring valleys, that it inexorably casts into close proximity people who might rather avoid one another, and thus calls to mind affairs that might better be forgotten.

  PROLOGUE – MARY

  Twenty-two years earlier

  Cummacatta Wood. Ever since she was a little girl Mary Wilson has been coming here. It is an enchanted place, with its nooks and crags and rocky glades, home to fell sprites that she was sure she glimpsed on more than one occasion as they crept down from their caves to bathe in a slow pool – a dub – of the River Derwent, or to glean fallen acorn peduncles to make their pipes. The other kids from Balderthwaite would tease her when she told them, wide eyed with wonder and bursting with the news, a posy of sky blue harebells gripped in her little fist, their fairy-hat blooms t
rembling with her excitement. They demanded she prove it, show them – but of course, she could not. Jake Dickson was the ringleader – two years older than she – although they were all in the same class at the village school. Larl donnat, he used to call her, ‘little idiot’ in their local twang. And Meg Atkinson was always egging him on, trying to please him, conniving to bring the other lasses in against her. Only Sean Nicolson took with her – but at that time two years of a gap meant he couldn’t stand up to Jake in a pagger. In the end she stopped telling; she knew what she saw, and she understood the fell sprites would never show themselves to such spiteful infidels.

  On reflection, Cummacatta Wood is not really a wood at all – at least, not this actual spot that is marked out by name, now that the National Trust have put up their signpost. It is more of a rising heath with here and there a cluster of birch or gorse or hawthorn. It is the northern fringe of the Bowder Wood, the great swathe of oaks that cloaks the steep-sided fells at the pinch point, the winding pass into upper Borrowdale, the crags of High Spy rising two thousand feet to the west, the more modest Grange Fell to the east, with its many lumpy prominences, King’s How, Jopplety How, Swanesty How. Mary knows these names as well as the townsfolk know their streets. Else how would you find your way about, or give directions to reach a yowe that was cowped?

  And down in the Bowder Wood is the Bowder Stone, the colossal tilted boulder the size of a house that, legend has it, dates from the days of the Viking rule, when folk worshipped the Norse god Baldr, brother of Thor and son of Odin and the goddess Frigg. Sitting comfortably in class, Mary loved to hear these tales of ‘history’; stories of how the fierce Vikings came and settled as peaceful farmers and brought their Herdwick sheep, and gave names in their colourful language to features of the landscape that folk still use today. Such as their own hamlet of Balderthwaite – Baldr’s meadow – nestled upon the narrow floodplain that was Bowderwater once, a ribbon lake like Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lake further down the dale, until Baldr used his magic to clear the glacial choke and drain the lake, to expose rich and fertile farmland for his flock. Baldr left only the great Bowder Stone, as a reminder and symbol of his power.

  Mary Wilson has parked near the Bowder Stone. She could have walked up from the village; she is a fit young woman, only just turned thirty, over the birth and proud of her figure – but the extra mile would waste a quarter of an hour she doesn’t have, and the dog can get straight off the lead – although he prefers the open spaces of Cummacatta to the Bowder Wood, rabbits rather than squirrels being more his bag. Not that there aren’t plenty of squirrels about as Mary lets the Lakeland Terrier loose; it being September they’re caching acorns; overhead there’s a telltale rustling in the still-green oaks, and the occasional fruit carelessly dropped, a patter in the crisp leaf litter that has the dog’s ears pricking.

  Mary thinks it’s her favourite time of year, although she wonders if that’s because the baby came last September – the twenty-third – “bang on the equinox” someone said, as though it meant something. The weather was as warm as this then, too. She certainly doesn’t need the bright pink headscarf she’s kept on. It could be a summer’s day, no wind – only the sun slanting low through the boughs like it does in spring, illuminating the hover flies, hundreds of tiny golden guardian angels that chart her progress through the great green cathedral. And it’s as quiet as a church; the songbirds have finished their business until the days begin to lengthen again.

  And unlike in summer she’s got the place to herself. The little gravel parking area for the Bowder Stone was deserted. That’s also because of the meet. The few holidaymakers that are still kicking about, and everyone who’s anyone, are down at the village. The fell runners are due back soon. They say there’s a young lad from ower Buttermere who’s favourite to win the men’s race. Folk’ll be jostling to see that, for sure – to watch Jake Dickson put in his place; he still thinks he’s God’s gift! And any minute now old Walter Dickson and his creepy sidekick, that big oaf Pick Pearson, will be staggering back from the Twa Tups with the list of show winners scrawled on a split beermat in his indecipherable writing, leeway to change his mind should someone grease his palm as he passes. Some canny entrants might have put a pint behind the bar for them. She glimpsed them through the snug window when she took a short cut to fetch her car; they looked more interested in their ale and Meg’s push-up bra than the judging. And what gives Pick Pearson the right to be understudy to the chief judge? Why Walter chose him to succeed him – well that’s a talking point in the Tups when neither is there. It’s not as though they’re related – leastways, not directly that she knows of. And what does Pick ken of sheep – compared to Sean? Quiet, reliable Sean – a man whom contestants would trust to give them a fair crack of the whip. He’d glanced up from his hand clipping demonstration as if he were telepathic; she hadn’t needed to slow and feign to retie her loose headscarf. Sean with his sad blue eyes. He’s by a head and shoulders the best exhibitor – everyone knows that. So what was that about Pick Pearson sidling up to her stall – saying she could be chosen if she played her cards right? What did that mean? As if she didn’t know.

  Mary reaches the kissing gate that leads into Cummacatta. Of course, it’s not a kissing gate at all – but that’s what Jake Dickson wanted her to believe, as if it’s got some connection to the Kissing Cave higher up the fell. And if she’s honest there was a little devil in her that wanted her to believe it, too – that summer’s night a dozen years back. She’d rowed with Aidan, one of many break-ups and make-ups, out at the back of the Tups – she’d stormed off seeing red and before she knew it was following this very path – to her little haven of dusky heath; there were brown owls calling, and Natterer’s bats swooping after moths, and woodcock roding.

  And then she’d heard the footsteps on the path behind her – and panting – and there came Jake Dickson, jaunty in his flashy trainers. He said Meg had sent him after her to make sure she was alright (she’d doubted that) – it would be getting dark before long, you never knew who might be about – what danger lurked. He’d teased her about the sprites taking her. She’d shrugged off his exhortations to turn and walk back with him – but she hadn’t told him to push off when he dogged her heels. Aye – there was a little bit of the devil in her – and, face it, that owl had made her jump, and the bats came too close for her liking; she felt safer with him. Except that wasn’t right, was it? When they reached the gate – where she lingers now – he’d darted ahead – gone through and closed it and leaned back over, a smirk in his eyes. It’s a kissing gate, he’d said. It’s the price to pass. And stupidly – and because she’d had too many vodka-and-blacks – she let herself step too close. Ach! She wants to spit, even now. His tongue, slimy and rough like a sheep’s, and his greedy hands running over her. She thought her heart was going to burst out of her chest. Thank heavens the gate was still between them. She’d pushed him off and turned tail. But she’d never have outrun him. He’d almost caught her when there stood Sean, just beside the Bowder Stone, the driver door of his old hand-me-down pick-up swinging open. He never did say if he’d come looking for her – but he’d been in the crowd at the tables out the back of the old inn.

  She hadn’t stopped to ask questions – she’d just jumped in and slammed the door and slid across into the passenger seat. She saw Sean block the path of Jake. She didn’t hear their exchange. But she saw that now – as young men, not schoolboys any more – that Jake might be two years older, but his advantage had passed. Sean was a strapping shepherd – she’d seem him wrestle down a Herdwick and hold it firm while he hand clipped it. Perhaps it suddenly dawned on Jake he could wrestle him down, too – and that wouldn’t look good in front of her. Sean told her that Jake wanted to walk back. He said he’d drive her – that Aidan had gone home to his Ma’s, and that he’d drop Mary back there – so they could sort things out. And she didn’t protest – oh, why didn’t she? And so he took her. At the sound of the pick-up’s eng
ine, Aidan came to the door to meet her; he wouldn’t look Sean in the eye. And Sean went, his face forlorn. And gossip had it that it was the very same night that Sean succumbed to Jack Daniel’s and Meg’s charms; and a wedding followed soon enough after. No shotguns were needed; Sean did his duty. And so Sean was spoken for. Quiet, reliable Sean – what would he do now?

  The dog yelps to break her trance and Mary sees he’s scrabbling to get under the gate. He must have scented rabbits, or maybe even a tod – but he’s got his collar caught on a bent nail. She stoops to release him, and she notices that her cleavage is exposed more than she’s realised. She’ll have to be careful when she’s back at the stall, how she leans over the trestle table to smooth out a shawl for a would-be buyer. She’d chosen the white peasant top so it would go with any of her coloured scarves that she might model – and, truth be told, drawn in at the waist above her tight hipster jeans it shows off her figure, a little act of defiance, and hope. And it flashes through her mind the folk who might have deeked, in envy or admiration as she artlessly showed off her wares, so to speak. And there’s a strange frisson that she’s not felt for a long time – it even goes back to that feeling of being here at Cummacatta, on her own – when a sprite was about to appear – or that time with Jake Dickson. And she senses a movement – it’s on the other side of the gate – but it’s no sprite – the shoe she glimpses through the wooden slats is human. And she rises and at the same time tugs down the elasticated hem of her blouse, which has ridden a little above her waist. And she looks up expectantly.

  ‘Oh – it’s thee.’

  1. THE DIG

  Sunday, noon, early September

  ‘Daniel?’

  ‘Aye – Jim. Alreet?’

  ‘I am alright, thank you. You sound as though you are out of doors – although I would expect no less, despite this infernal rain. Bassenthwaite Lake?’