Death Drinks Darjeeling (A Helen and Martha Cozy Mystery Book 4) Read online

  Death Drinks Darjeeling

  Sigrid Vansandt

  Copyright © 2016 Sigrid Vansandt

  All rights reserved.

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  “For verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you know little of it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.”

  —Leonardo da Vinci

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 1

  Noyes, Minnesota

  August, 1995

  In the next room, low voices whispered back and forth like two human snakes hissing and spitting at each other. Tommy's seven-year-old mind imagined the serpents coiled up facing one another with cold, flat eyes and heads that weaved and searched for the best place to sink their poisonous fangs.

  It went quiet, and this should have been comforting, but it was like waiting for the Earth to split open and swallow him up. And it would. Hushed voices got louder until the sound he hated most finally came, like so many times before — the thuds of his father’s fists hitting something soft and his mother’s screams begging for him to stop. Their human storm grew, twisting and surging ever upwards like a cyclone hell-bent on ripping the old house apart from the inside out.

  This was always the worst part. Putting his hands over his ears, he curled up into a tight ball, trying to hide deep within the soft comfort of his blankets. He would have to wait before removing the pressed palms from his ears. With his eyes squeezed shut, he hoped to hear the slam of the front door which always followed Mama’s crying, comfortingly signaling the end of the horror.

  But this time the storm within the house continued to grow louder. With each blow of his father’s fists, his mother’s cries became weaker and weaker… then nothing. Tommy carefully lifted one hand from an ear, and hearing nothing, his body relaxed. It was finally over. Outside, through his open bedroom window, a gentle rain began to fall lulling him off to sleep.

  He awoke the next morning with the sun streaming across his bedroom in rays of dusty light. A fresh breeze caused the gauzy window curtains to lift gently and fall in a hypnotic dance. For a few minutes, as he lay in his bed comforted by the kisses of sunlight, air and warmth, he enjoyed the pleasure of watching the light play and mingle in moving pools on the room’s wooden floors. The house was quiet, peaceful. Then, he remembered.

  Throwing off the bed covers; he ran to Mama’s bedroom. She wasn’t there. He called for her, and the house echoed his calls back to him. The screen door in the kitchen banged, making him jump. It must be her, he hoped, and ran towards the sound.

  “Mama,” he cried like a cub in the wilderness trying to bring her to him.

  Tommy’s two young feet slapped the floor as he ran down the long hall. Rounding the corner into the kitchen, he stopped dead in the doorway. At the table in the corner of the room, drinking a cup of tea, was his father. Tommy could smell the tea’s floral scent. The dark-haired head turned to look at him. Tommy didn’t move. His father didn’t move and as their eyes met, the hair on the back of the boy’s neck began to rise.

  Standing in the far corner of the room was his Uncle Max. Both men seemed to be made of stone, their facial muscles frozen. Max’s muddy overalls and the sweat stains under his arms made the boy wonder. Neither man, that he could remember, ever worked outside. As they studied Tommy, he watched their faces turn dark. A coldness creeped up his bare, small arms making each tiny, golden hair raise and tingle with warning.

  Then like a loving kiss, a breath of air close to his ear whispered, “Run! Run!”

  He made it to the front door and then the dirt road out in front of his house. Tommy ran deep into the tall cornfields, and headed to the tiny border-crossing town of Noyes. Once there, he crawled into an empty boxcar and hid.

  The train crossed into Canada later that day and Tommy dropped from the train at Morris, Manitoba.

  For two days, he watched a nearby farmhouse that seemed to have only an older woman living in it. Hunger drove him in, and when he finally approached the simple dwelling, the kind-faced woman asked him his name. He couldn’t answer. He had no voice. It had dried up with the loss of everything he knew.

  Dirty, hungry and still wearing his pajamas, Tommy hung his head, waiting. The woman told him her name was Eloise. He saw her looking at the bruises up and down his arms. Taking him in and feeding him, Eloise gave him clothes she said were once worn by her own child who died of pneumonia many years ago. That night and for many more, he slept in a trundle bed beside her on the floor.

  As time went by, when people asked Eloise about him, she told them he was her sister’s grandchild from England. No one argued and no one came looking for him. It was a good fit for them both, a child without a mother and a mother without a child.

  The winter came and went. He began to talk again and tell his story. Eloise said he must stay quiet about the events of the night he’d heard his mother beaten. The right time would come. All things done by man circle back on themselves sooner or later, she told him.

  It was her justified fear of the evil that wanders the world sometimes, so close to us that on any given day, in any room we inhabit, it can reach out and touch us, that kept Eloise from ever going near Noyes or talking to others about the night of Tommy mother’s death.

  The truth of what happened to the boy’s mother blurred with the years. It became a faded, indistinct memory that seemed to sleep quietly in the unmarked and untended grave along with Patricia Keenes. Or did it rest?

  Dark deeds have a way of finding the light, and children never forget the loss of a loving parent taken away from them much too soon.

  Chapter 2

  Marsden-Lacey, Yorkshire

  Present Day

  Martha Littleword sat on a met
al chair in The Traveller’s Inn outdoor seating area. She was an attractive woman in her forties with long, wavy, red hair that fell to the middle of her back. Shaped like an hour glass, her well-proportioned bottom was anything but comfortable on the teetering, hard surface, and it was all Merriam’s fault.

  Positioned behind a flower-festooned waist-high rock wall, she sipped her black tea from a dainty rose-painted cup while watching who came and went along Marsden-Lacey’s High Street. Occasionally, someone would approach the community center across the street causing Martha to raise her head ever so slightly over the geraniums, impatiens and draping petunias to get a better view of the new individual. Special attention was given to anyone who entered the center’s main doors.

  She’d been stationed in her hiding place for about twenty minutes when she saw Old Grimsy, a contentious village pot-stirrer, slinking up the street hugging the center’s outer wall. He slipped into the entrance like a sulky dog with his tail between his legs. Martha raised her eyebrows and made a surly harrumph sound, then picking up a shortbread cookie from a pretty china plate and began nibbling it with indifference.

  No sooner had Grimsy disappeared within the center’s doors, than Martha zeroed-in on another pedestrian’s approach. Sarah Carmichael, with her back arrow-straight and her bosom thrust out, strode down the High Street in the manner of a conquering Attila the Hun. Inwardly cringing, Martha lowered her head so to not be seen by Sarah, who was a true force to be reckoned with.

  On one occasion, as the captain of the women’s rowing team, Sarah had come to blows with a referee who had disqualified her because she’d made indecent gestures at a rowing competition’s finish line. No one crossed Sarah, that was unless it was the next man who Martha saw meandering up the center’s side alley.

  Bartholomew Llewellyn, a local drunk who’d been tossed out of every pub in Marsden-Lacey at least twice for stirring up fights on Saturday nights, turned the corner of Magpie Alley running straight into Sarah’s ponderous bosom. Bouncing off and stumbling backwards with a look of awe plastered across his face, Bartholomew struggled to right himself. From Martha’s vantage point she saw Sarah pointing a commanding, yet threat-filled finger at the now laughing Barty. In true Sarah fashion, she took him with her left hook and laid poor, dumb Barty out on the sidewalk like a pancake.

  “I’m not surprised,” Martha muttered under her breath.

  Bartholomew looked nervous and unsteady as he worked his way back into a standing position. His eyes searched the street as if making sure no one had seen him flattened by the female version of Rocky Balboa.

  “You look like a hunted man, Bartholomew,” Martha murmured into her cup. “Go on. Get inside there, along with the other crazies.”

  She sighed as the rattle of the teacup in its saucer resonated with some deeper emotion within her.

  “Probably shouldn’t be seen talking to yourself,” came a voice behind Martha. She jerked and dribbled her tea into the saucer and her lap. Grabbing her napkin, she dabbed at her chin while turning around to see Chief Merriam Johns grinning behind her.

  “People might think you’re a little… what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah, I know…” He bent down and whispered into her left ear, “Crazy.” Righting himself, he chuckled out loud.

  Other people in the Inn’s outdoor area turned around, smiling to see what the Marsden-Lacey Chief of Police was finding so amusing. Johns waved at everyone and sat down beside Martha, patting her hand.

  “Merriam,” Martha said through half-gritted teeth, “you’re on thin ice right now. I’m not sure I even want to talk to you. This entire chastisement,” she said the word like it tasted bitter in her mouth, “of yours is a rather sad indictment of your true underlying nature.”

  Johns leaned back in his own undersized chair and folded his arms across his chest. His eyes studied the other side of the street and as Martha watched, they shifted to look at her. For a moment his expression melted into one of momentary adoration and then back to one of stoicism when she, too, began to smile.

  “A chastisement?” he asked softly.

  “I’ve been watching who’s going into the community center. Do you have any idea who those people are?” Martha said in a low whisper. “They’re aggressive, malicious village troublemakers. I’ve spent most of my time in Marsden-Lacey avoiding them. In fact, Merriam, I’m rather afraid of them,” she said, making her voice break at the end to give a nice effect.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she watched to see if Johns would take the bait. A broad, smile spread across his face and he leaned in to give her a kiss on her cheek.

  “Know what?” he asked in a soft, affectionate tone.

  Her lips pursed in an annoyed way.

  “What?”

  Johns stood up, offering her his hand. Taking it, she continued to stare up at him as he lifted her from her chair. Her heart beginning to soar with a giddy excitement. “Could this be the moment?” she thought to herself yet wondering at his odd choice of places to pop the question. She stilled herself for the momentous words.

  He looked down at her, his gaze warm with emotion. Then he spoke.

  “Better not keep Constable Tushing waiting. She’s a hard nose about tacking on time to offenders when they aren’t prompt to their anger management classes.”

  Martha’s mouth dropped open.

  “Why you…!” she hissed.

  “Ah, now darling. Let’s keep a lid on that anger. It’s the reason you’re in the situation in the first place,” he came back before she could finish. “Better be on your way. Tardiness and Tushing don’t mix.”

  Snapping her mouth shut, she sucked air in through her nostrils and shot Johns a boiling, withering look. It took everything she had to restrain herself from delivering her own Sarah-like left hook, but Martha wasn’t about to give Johns any more ammunition to use against her.

  Yanking her hand out of his, she reached down, grabbed her purse and withstood the next intense desire to stomp on his foot. She pushed past him and went through the wooden gate, freeing herself from The Traveller’s Inn’s outdoor dining area. As she crossed the street and picked up steam, she honed in on the community center’s main entrance.

  “It’s only six weeks, darling! You’re going to do great,” Johns called after her retreating figure in an upbeat, but teasing tone.

  Refusing to acknowledge him, she yanked on the brass handle of the center’s door as the sound of his merry chuckling wafted across the street. Nothing, short of a UFO instantaneously appearing directly overhead and Elvis descending on a beam of white light singing “Burning Love” could have made Martha turn around to look in the direction of The Traveller’s Inn.

  “You can kiss my…” she called over her shoulder, but the door to the community center swung shut, stifling her last words and leaving Johns shaking his head with a knowing yet pleased smile on his face.

  “That’s my girl!” he said, and he meant it.

  Chapter 3

  Novalesa Abbey

  The Alps of Italy, 1812

  “I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave from reflection. ’Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.”

  -Leonardo da Vinci

  For May it was cold. Father Orsini, a wiry, grey-haired priest pulled his black cloak tightly around his slender frame. He noted the puffs of white mist his exhalations brought and the number of times the bells in the belfry were tolling. Six melodious peals resonated through the church’s environs calling the monks to Vigils, or morning meditations.

  The priest picked up his speed and moved quickly through the monastery’s medieval corridors, weaving his way like a dark shadow first up one flight of stairs and down another until he came to an ancient barrel vaulted loggia that had known the shuffle of men’s feet for over a thousand years. Time was against him. He crossed himself an
d murmured a soft prayer as he passed a well-tended chapel dedicated to Mary, the mother of Christ, asking her to intercede for him in his mission.

  It was the first time Orsini had traveled so high into the Alps of Italy’s Piedmont region. On some of the higher mountain peaks, snow still clung tenaciously giving the onlooker a sense of the majesty and creativity of Mother Nature. But it was the human machinations of Church and Empire that drove him along the flagstone path towards a meeting with one of the greatest defenders of God and his church, His Holiness, Pius VII.

  A war for the control of Europe’s political, territorial and spiritual integrity was rapidly coming to a cataclysmic showdown. Pope Pius had dug his heels in at Napoleon Bonaparte’s demands to resign Mother Church’s integrity to the power of the French Emperor. Napoleon was reclaiming the Roman Empire like so many conquerors before him, but unlike Alexander the Great, Caesar or Charlemagne, Napoleon wanted to hold the power of the Church in his hands as well. He wanted to be ruler of Heaven and Earth with Pius as a puppet. Napoleon intended to use everything in his political and military arsenal to bring the Church to her knees and put God in a subservient place, firmly at Napoleon’s right hand.

  As Father Orsini maneuvered the ins and outs of the ancient arcade that led through one architectural portal and another, he was also turning and twisting through a mental labyrinth of obstacles and snares he must deal with to achieve his mission. Who could be trusted and who could not? His Holiness needed someone to be his eyes, ears, hands and heart in France. Orsini wasn’t to worry himself over ecclesiastical questions, he was to insure the preservation of God and man’s interwoven tangible history. The greatest treasures known to western society were in danger and Orsini was Pope Pius’ one hope to secure their safety.

  Finding the door he’d been seeking, Orsini climbed the circular, steep steps of the tower with a stoic, deliberate manner born from a half-century of religious forbearance, patient fortitude and deep reserves of faith. A rain fell in a peaceful, slow pattering sound on the clay tiles of the old roof above him. As usual, a guard was stationed at the prison door. Father Orsini waited to be allowed entrance into a room resembling a medieval cell. The guard asked for a blessing and Orsini complied.