Five Six Pick Up Sticks (Grasshopper Lawns) Read online

'Until we get the report back on how she died, we’re not treating it as suspicious. But in view of what she told the dispatcher, we would like to know who else has died lately?' McLuskie persisted and the administrator narrowed her eyes in thought, then pressed a button on her intercom.

  'Megan, dear, can you find me the termination files for the – I think for the last year should do it?'

  'Are there so many deaths?' Kirsty was horrified but Harriet Blake smiled reassuringly. She was a heavily-built woman, unflatteringly dressed in a severe pin-striped jacket and skirt, and her face, in repose, looked stern. Her smile, however, was particularly charming and more in keeping with the soft silk tie of her spotless white blouse.

  'Oh no, my dear, but I don’t like to rely on my memory – I’m nearly retirement age myself, you know, I find it best to work with records. I know of two, only one of them recent, but poor Betsy could be meaning someone further back. Thank you, dear;' as the other entered with a slim sheaf of three files and put them on the desk. 'Three? Oh dear – oh, that’ll be Angus, will it?'

  'Mebbe you could join us?' McLuskie looked up at Megan.

  'I’ve left Josie on the desk;' she glanced at Harriet uncertainly.

  'Josie gets a bit fidgety.' Harriet explained, a bit apologetically. 'She’s absolutely fine to cover Megan for a few minutes at a time but we’d normally get one of the others for Megan’s lunch break, for instance.'

  McLuskie conceded that Josie’s relief outweighed Megan’s participation and she left the room. He looked at Harriet with his brows up. ' Any volunteers you can get, eh?'

  'Oh no.' She separated the three files on her desk. 'Several of the residents take it in turns to work a standby shift, they get house credits for it which can be very useful.' She shot him a quick glance under her rather heavy brows.

  'House credits can be spent on drinks at our little pub, or meals here, you know. Most of them are on quite tight budgets, so it frees up cash. Some of the residents work part-time in the kitchen, or helping out generally. We couldn’t run this place to the standard we do without them, either – it all works out very well. Josie’s delightful, and very popular with callers, but she’s easily distracted. If there isn’t much going on she gets bored and if too much happens at once she gets flustered. We work to people’s strengths, but also to their limitations. Now, the most recent first. Moses McKenzie died only a week ago. It was very sad – he choked to death in his apartment, and although there are panic buttons all over the place he never reached one, so nobody went to his aid. I don’t think that can be what Betsy meant, because choking – well, you can’t murder someone that way, can you? Nobody could force someone to choke.'

  She selected the death certificate from the papers in the file and passed it over for inspection.

  'Then there’s Betty Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor she liked to be called, but most people called her Betty. She died in August of pneumonia, but she was in the hospital by then. We have a Frail Care centre here in the house, with a fine matron, but you can’t take chances with pneumonia, you know. They call it the old man’s friend, but Betty wasn’t old. Not yet seventy. It was very sad but again, I can’t see it could have been murder?'

  Another death certificate passed across the desk, exchanged for the first, which was carefully re-filed.

  'And Angus Burns;' she flicked swiftly through the bottom file, her heavy brows drawing together. 'Oh dear. There was an inquest for Angus, because he took an overdose of his sleeping pills, and his friends insisted it couldn’t have been deliberate. The procurator fiscal eventually signed it off as misadventure rather than suicide. Betsy could have meant Angus although she never even met him, she moved here after he died.' This time the returning death certificate was exchanged for the procurator fiscal’s report, which McLuskie flipped through before handing it to Kirsty.

  'What did you think at the time?' he asked Harriet, who lifted her heavy shoulders very slightly.

  'I don’t have as much to do with the residents as Megan does, she’s the best person to ask. I did know Angus, because he was a rip-roaring old character, hugely popular, had some wonderful stories, but he was getting a little doddery, well over eighty. The life he’d had, so full of adventure, going on safari in Africa and sailing to Australia – I did think he had wanted to escape the indignities of extreme old age, so I assumed it was suicide. But as I say, I didn’t know him as well as his friends did, and they were very convincing at the inquest. Back in the day being a suicide would have meant he couldn’t be buried in a churchyard – that doesn’t matter nowadays, but the stigma of suicide still matters to some. I was glad when the coroner came up with a misadventure verdict.'

  'And Miz Campbell – how was her health? If she hadn’t phoned us, would you have called us when she was found?'

  'Yes I would.' Harriet Blake said decisively. 'Betsy Campbell was, apart from her increasing deafness, a hale and hearty woman in her early sixties, one of our best bakers, and as fit as a flea. She not only joined the aerobics class here every day, she was a great walker and hasn’t had so much as a sniffle all winter. I am extremely surprised, and disturbed, to hear of her death.'

  'One last question,' Kirsty leant forward. 'If you’ll permit – you said you were near retirement age yourself. Would you want to live here?'

  'I already do.' Harriet smiled thinly. 'The Administrator position includes an apartment on the third floor of this house, but I know what you mean, would I want to stay on as a resident when I retire. I certainly would if I could. However, it isn’t cut-and-dried – there’s a waiting list of nearly a hundred approved applicants, you know.'

  She glanced from one to the other. 'Grasshopper Lawns was founded, and is still largely funded, by a Trust set up by a very wealthy businesswoman who, as she approached retirement age, was determined to spend her leisured years in the company of interesting people. The place is unique, and we get hundreds of applications every year. To be approved, you have to be without family,' she bent her index finger down, 'you have to have led an unusual life, or had unusual experiences,' second finger down, 'and you have to be in good health, mobile and independent. Many applicants are only in their fifties. Then you get interviewed by at least three members of the admissions board, and if they rubber-stamp your application you get added to the approved list. She was still here when I became Administrator about eight years ago, and she insisted the admissions board included not only the Trust staff but five representatives from the residents. Every application has to be signed off by at three people, at least one of whom has to be a resident. Four years after coming here I applied for an eventual place and I am an approved applicant, but not even close to the top of the list. So, yes, I would become a resident if I could, but I may end up having to go elsewhere.'

  'She was fibbing a bit there.' Kirsty said quietly to McLuskie as they made their way back to the ground floor to see Megan, and he shot her a quick sidelong look.

  'Aye, I thought so too, couldn’t put my finger on it but if she knows, or suspects, someone is knocking residents off, I reckon she’d not be so keen to live here, eh?' He gave a short laugh. 'What do you reckon her unusual experiences were? She’s a dead ringer for my English teacher at school, couldn’t be more conventional. Bet your aunt isn’t.'

  'Oh aye.' Kirsty grinned reminiscently. 'Aunt Edge is a corker. Lived all over the world, widowed twice and left comfortably off each time, but also made a packet writing TV dramas until she retired – she’s not one who has to work for house credits, she’s absolutely rolling. And a wicked sense of humour, too. She’s top, my aunt.'

  'I was thinking,' McLuskie glanced across, 'we don’t know yet if it’s a case. But if it is, mebbe your aunt could give us a bit of background on the place? Or were you planning to play the whole thing down so as not to alarm her?'

  'Alarm Aunt Edge!' Kirsty gave an involuntary hoot of laughter. 'She’d absolutely love it. She’s in number twelve, we can stop by after we’ve talked to Megan. If she’s home, of course
, her social life is ten times more hectic than mine.'

  ~~~

  This is the starter book for the series and is on a permanent promotion price of 99c. It introduces the reader to Edge Cameron and her good friend Vivian Oliver, and their relatively quiet lives at the Grasshopper Lawns–quiet, that is, until the murder of one of their neighbours. They are thoroughly intrigued, especially when their gentle sleuthing starts turning up useful information, but it is only when they meet their neighbour William Robertson, towards the end of the book, and he overcomes Edge’s initial antipathy to new resident Donald MacDonald, that the quartet interaction starts solving murders. The books don’t have to be read in order, but this is the foundation book for the Lawns and, gentle and understated as it is, has remained the most popular book of the series to date with many readers, and is considered the best ‘whodunit’ in that every clue is in plain sight, yet the solution catches many readers by surprise. Reader reaction was also a demand to have more of both William and Donald, who have played a full role in every book since.

  Three Four Knock On My Door – sample chapter

  In Three Four Knock On My Door, it is Sylvia’s handsome devoted nephew Simon, and the enigmatic Dallas from Louisiana, with life-changing news for Vivian, who come knocking.

  CHAPTER ONE - Wednesday 1st February

  Beulah Edgington Cameron, who had been known as Edge to her friends for over fifty years, could fairly be described as a attractive woman who spent quite a lot of time on her appearance, with generally pleasing results. On this first day in February her expensively-streaked hair was caught up in a deceptively casual topknot and her neat figure encased in a heather-mix jersey suit under a camel overcoat, just right for a crisp cold morning in Scotland. The effect was definitely marred by her stockinged feet—and the fact that she was limping painfully, and using an umbrella walking stick for support—as she made her way up the stairs of the main house at the Grasshopper Lawns retirement village.

  At the doorway to Frail Care she stopped short at the sight of Donald MacDonald, her slightly supercilious neighbour-but-one, sitting in the treatment chair and looking more than usually sardonic, while Matron splinted and bandaged his hand.

  ‘Heavens, whatever have you been doing?’ she exclaimed and he shot her an impatient look.

  ‘Ask Missus Hobbes,’ he snapped and with a twitch of his head indicated the woman wringing her hands in the corner, who was looking both distressed and slightly defiant. Edge had seen her once or twice before in the dining room, a pleasant older woman with a kind face and rather haphazard dress-sense, who had moved to the Lawns just before Christmas.

  ‘Oh Mr MacDonald, I said I’m sorry! But I only ever let her off the lead when there are no other dogs in sight. Your dog just galloped up out of nowhere!’

  ‘Oh.’ Edge drew in a breath of understanding and eyed the other woman with more interest. ‘Let me guess, you own the zoomer?’

  ‘The—I own Maggie, if that’s what you mean. But she’s a bulldog cross.’

  ‘Cross?’ He snorted, then winced as Matron tugged at the bandage. ‘She’s insane, not cross.’ Donald, who usually surveyed the world with an air of ironic detachment, wasn’t taking the present situation at all well. Edge found herself liking him more now that his usual calm and immaculate facade was ruffled, and was a little ashamed of herself.

  ‘She’s a real problem, Clarissa,’ Matron said sternly. ‘This is the third time in less than two months that I’ve had to treat someone for a bite. You can say all you want that they are just boisterous nips but this one isn’t. Donald’s finger was dislocated and it’s quite possibly broken as well. You realize I am going to have to report this to Katryn? We can’t possibly have a dog here that attacks every other dog and, for that matter, every person who walks with a stick. I’m sympathetic to the plight of rescue dogs, you know I am, but we have to consider the Lawns first. As for you, Donald, I really would have thought you’d know better than to put your hands into a dog fight.’

  ‘The fight was over,’ Donald said drily. ’The dog had turned her energies toward parts to which I am very much attached. I was trying to keep them that way.’

  Edge snorted with laughter, then took pity on Clarissa’s real distress. ‘Couldn’t you muzzle her while she’s out? That would be safest.’

  Clarissa half-gasped. ‘If you saw what she did to the vet when he tried to put a muzzle on her—’

  ‘Well, I can help with that,’ Edge offered spontaneously. ‘I had a Staffie that needed to be muzzled for the vet. In fact, I’ve still got the muzzle somewhere. It’s very wide so with any luck it will fit her. Matron, we can at least try.’

  Matron looked at Clarissa and softened, then glanced at Donald. ‘If Donald reports the attack to the police, there’s not going to be any trying.’

  He stood up and flexed his splinted hand gingerly. ‘Attacking my whippet was one thing. When I swung her up out of harm’s way, that dog of yours went quite deliberately for my bits. She is a complete bampot, a very nasty piece of work indeed.’

  He looked severely at Clarissa, who sat abruptly and put her hands over her face, and shook his head. ‘I’ve got to get Odette to the vet, she might need stitching. Then Joey’s taking me on to the hospital for x-rays and a tetanus shot. If Odette is more badly hurt than I realized, or if the jag really hurts;’

  ‘Of course I’ll pay for everything,’ Clarissa, opening her fingers to peer through, insisted anxiously. ‘Everything! Poor little Odette, she’s so lovely, but you were so quick, you were hauling Maggie away almost the minute she rolled her over.’

  ‘While you ran in the opposite direction,’ he remembered and she shuddered.

  ‘Sometimes it works, sometimes she runs after me. Usually she runs after me.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough,’ Edge offered helpfully. ’A dog will often break off a threat if it thinks it’s being left behind, you know.’

  ‘Thank you, Barbara Woodhouse. Part of the deal is you getting a muzzle on that foul animal. So what brought you panting in here, anyway?’

  ‘Oh!’ Edge glanced down at her ankle, which throbbed sharply. ‘I turned my ankle, and it’s really painful, so I was hoping Matron would strap it for me.’

  ‘The Zack Blacks?’ Donald asked, not unkindly, and she nodded, biting her lip. ‘I thought you were giving up on them after the Burns Night debacle.’

  ‘You said yourself how good they looked, and it was hardly a debacle, Donald, be fair. We were all a bit whisky taken, and I was far from the only person who lost my balance. I thought if I wore them every now and then I’d manage a full evening in them the next time the chance came up.’

  Matron chuckled at the memory. ‘Falling into William’s lap isn’t really falling, there was no harm done. You can’t just give up on Zack Blacks!’ She ushered Edge into the chair that Donald had vacated. ‘Not at that price!’

  Edge shook her head. ‘I picked them up for a tenner on the auction after my niece Kirsty tipped me off they were being sent over as part of the police bundle. But—ouch! yes, there—I may give up on them. Topple me once, more fool you. Topple me twice—’

  ‘Just a light sprain.’ Matron decided, and reached for a stretch bandage. ‘You can switch to a tube once this has to come off, but I’ll strap it up firmly for now. Donald, either finish your Rescue Remedy or get out. You’re making the place look untidy and Joey will be waiting for you downstairs.’ She flicked a glance up at Edge as she started deftly strapping her ankle. ‘He doesn’t suffer from shock, apparently. Or doesn’t believe in Bach remedies. Clarissa had hers but Donald knows better, eh?’

  Donald pulled a face at Edge and left obediently, but Clarissa still hesitated. Edge smiled at her.

  ‘I’ll come up to your place as soon as I’ve found the muzzle, how’s that?’ She stood up and cautiously put weight on her ankle, wincing. Matron told her not to be such a baby, found some disposable slippers to get her home, and waved them both out, Clarissa solicitously
offering Edge her arm.

  ‘No, Matron’s right, I’m being a wuss but I wish I’d had a proper walking stick in the car! This umbrella one really isn’t up to the job. Once I can get to the car, which is at the bottom of the steps, I’m going park on the verge right outside my door rather than walk all of two hundred yards. Not as if I could leave the car in the visitor parking anyway.’

  ‘Oh, were you actually out shopping when it happened? How awful!’

  ‘Collecting a parcel, a nice short outing for the shoes, but I ended up looking an absolute idiot.’ Edge said frankly. ‘My ankle went over, both knees shot out, I dropped my parcel—my friend Vivian, have you met her yet? She keeps telling me I’m past the age where I can wear extravagant shoes. I’m glad she wasn’t there or she’d still be laughing. And the car park was absolutely full, lots of people staring disapprovingly at the Patsy lookalike wearing cocktail heels through the slush to the post office. Now,’ she finished as they reached the parking lot in front of the main building. ’Am I driving you home?’

  ‘Oh, no, no, I have to collect Maggie. I thrust her into one of the runs and rushed up the stairs after poor Donald. I’m such a fan of his, I’ve had a tiny crush on him for over twenty years, you know. I used to drag Arthur to every show he was in, we saw him three times as Kinickie in Grease, and we went to London to see him in quite a small role in Cats. I was devastated when he gave up performing for good, he was touring as Rocky in the Rocky Horror Show at the time. I thought he was world-class. When I realized he was living here, and still gorgeous, I could hardly wait to meet him. I didn’t think it would happen like this, he’ll probably never speak to me again. Do you think he’ll be all right?’

  ‘Donald’s tough as old boots,’ Edge was ruthless. ‘He’s made of whipcord and leather, and he’s not usually such a drama queen. It’s probably the shock; he’ll be fine when he’s had a chance to calm down. Especially when he realizes you’re a fan, I never even knew he’d done fun stuff like Grease, I thought he was just known for set design and choreography. You’ll have to tell me all about it but not now, my feet are freezing.’