A Death Among the Preserves

The Lower Tilbury Summer Fete had survived two world wars, a flood, and the year someone let the Morris dancers near the cider tent. It had never, in living memory, survived a body. Beatrice Mott noticed the commotion before she noticed the corpse, which she always felt said something unflattering about human nature. A knot of villagers had gathered at the far end of the Preserves and Pickles marquee, and they were doing the particular sort of standing-about that people do when they have all silently agreed not to be the one to touch anything. "Step aside, please. Thank you. Mind the trestle." Beatrice was seventy-one and had taught the infant class at St. Aldric's for thirty-eight years, which meant she could part a crowd with her voice the way other women parted curtains. The body belonged to Mr. Cuthbert Aimsley, regional judge of preserves, three counties, eleven years running. He lay on the grass beside the competition table, one arm flung out, his judging rosette still pinned crookedly to his lapel. Above him the great tiered display of entry jars had toppled. Marmalade, chiefly. Seville orange, by the colour. It had run down the white tablecloth and pooled around his head like something out of a painting Beatrice would not have hung in her parlour. "Heart, poor man," said Mrs. Pfebble, the fete chairwoman, in the tone of someone deciding a thing rather than observing it. "Came over faint, knocked the table, and— well. A dreadful accident." "A dreadful accident," several people agreed, with the relief of a verdict reached. Beatrice did not agree. Beatrice was looking at the marmalade. There were nine jars in a county final. She had counted them herself that morning, helping to arrange the display, because Beatrice counted things the way other people breathed. Nine jars, three tiers, the gold-medal favourite — Edith Crane's celebrated thick-cut — given pride of place at the top. Eight jars now lay broken on the grass and the cloth. One had not broken at all. One sat upright and untouched on the table edge, lid screwed firmly down, as though it had been lifted clear and set aside before the rest came crashing. A man does not, in the act of dying, pause to rescue a single jar of marmalade. "Has anyone telephoned Constable Drupe?" Beatrice asked. "He's coming from the duck race," said the vicar. "Good." Beatrice crouched, knees protesting, and looked without touching. Aimsley's right hand was curled. Not slack, the way she'd expected, but curled, as if around something no longer there. His judging spoon — every judge carried his own; Aimsley's was bone-handled and famous — was nowhere near him. She found it eleven feet away, in the grass beneath the table, as though it had been thrown. "Mrs. Mott." The vicar had crouched beside her, his voice low and kind. "I really don't think we ought to be down here. Constable Drupe—" "The Constable," said Beatrice, "is currently judging ducks. By the time he arrives, half the village will have walked through this marquee and the other half will have a theory." She straightened, brushing grass from her good skirt. "Mr. Aimsley tasted something this afternoon that disagreed with him very badly. I should rather like to know which jar." "You think—" The vicar's voice dropped further. "You think someone—" "I think," said Beatrice Mott, "that someone went to a great deal of trouble to make a murder look like a fainting fit, and very nearly managed it. They forgot only one thing." She nodded at the lone surviving jar. "In Lower Tilbury, my dear, no one — no one — would let good marmalade go to waste. Not even a killer. Especially not a killer." She picked up the jar by its lid, holding it to the light. Seville orange, thick-cut, beautifully set. Edith Crane's hand-written label. Edith Crane, who had won the gold medal eleven years running, until this one. "Vicar," Beatrice said pleasantly, "I think someone had better fetch the Constable rather faster than the ducks allow."