A Terrible Village Poisoning


 A Terrible Village Poisoning
 
 
 Cover
 
 
 Title Page
 
 
 Dedication
 
 
 Chapter One
 
 
 Chapter Two
 
 
 Chapter Three
 
 
 Chapter Four
 
 
 Chapter Five
 
 
 Chapter Six
 
 
 Chapter Seven
 
 
 Chapter Eight
 
 
 Chapter Nine
 
 
 Chapter Ten
 
 
 Chapter Eleven
 
 
 Chapter Twelve
 
 
 Chapter Thirteen
 
 
 Chapter Fourteen
 
 
 Chapter Fifteen
 
 
 Chapter Sixteen
 
 
 Chapter Seventeen
 
 
 Chapter Eighteen
 
 
 Chapter Nineteen
 
 
 Chapter Twenty
 
 
 Chapter Twenty-One
 
 
 Chapter Twenty-Two
 
 
 Chapter Twenty-Three
 
 
 Chapter Twenty-Four
 
 
 Epilogue
 
 
 Acknowledgements
 
 
 Canelo Crime
 
 
 About the Author
 
 
 Also by Hannah Hendy
 
 
 Copyright
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Cover
 
 
 Table of Contents
 
 
 Start of Content
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 For Liliya, Maxym and Reuben. Some of my favourite niece and nephews!
 
 
 Chapter One
 ‘Please tell me we’re at least on the right road, Clem,’ Margery demanded as she gripped the steering wheel tight, squinting through the rain as it hammered onto the windscreen. ‘Gosh, we really couldn’t have picked a worse day to leave for holiday, could we?’
 ‘You can’t be serious; it’s just a spot of rain!’ Clementine scoffed from the passenger seat, where she was wrestling with a large paper map. ‘It’s not as bad as that day the vending machine broke and we couldn’t get our crisps after work, is it? Or the time Ceri-Ann set your eyebrows on fire trying to wax them.’
 Margery sighed, but she had to admit, it was not as bad as drawing your eyebrows on every morning. She tried to concentrate on the road. They had left the motorway and were on the dual carriageway, finally nearing their destination. Well, they would be if Clementine could start paying attention to the map. She had refused to bring the GPS with them, saying she couldn’t trust something that knew where they were all the time, which she had said while uploading a destination-tagged post onto Facebook on her phone. Margery was kicking herself for letting her leave it in their kitchen, still in the box. She had vaguely known how to get there. It had all been plain sailing – until they hit the last big services on the motorway, anyway, and since then she’d been lost.
 ‘What’s the town called again?’ Margery asked nervously, peering at road signs as they zoomed past them. Clementine turned the map around, frowning.
 ‘Well…ahh…I’m not entirely sure. Something-on-the-something or by-the-sea. Clumpton-on-the-Wibble, maybe?’
 ‘Well, can you ask your phone?’
 Clementine rolled her eyes, but pulled her phone out of her pocket anyway. Fellow dinner lady Ceri-Ann had given Clementine a few lessons on phone management in the very few moments of downtime they had at work, and Clementine was getting much better at using it. The photographs she took were usually in focus now, and it was rare her thumb made an appearance at the edge of the shot. She could even send a text message. There had been a time when she was so bad at using the phone keyboard that she would only send one dot for yes and two dots for no. Woe betide you if you asked a rhetorical question. What with the computer lessons at the library that Margery kept dragging them along to, they were practically computer scientists now.
 ‘No can do,’ she said, turning the phone screen to Margery’s face. Margery batted it away so she could keep the car on the road. ‘No signal. Don’t worry, though, I’m sure it’s around here somewhere; I’ll know it when I see it!’
 Margery rolled her eyes. Clementine was always knowing things when she saw them, which usually ended with them being completely lost. Especially as neither of them had ever been to St Martin’s-on-the-Water before. They usually spent their summer holidays off work sitting in the garden on the deckchairs that lived in the shed the rest of the year, after Clementine had removed the spiders from them.
 After a very long stretch where Margery continued to drive straight, occasionally looking over to Clementine in worry, and Clementine busied herself with fiddling with the buttons of the radio, they finally came to a sign Clementine recognised.
 ‘Turn off here, Margery!’ she said, clapping her hands in glee, sending the map flying off her lap, where it balled itself up into an unsalvageable pile. ‘That sign is for the hotel! The Boar’s Head.’
 Clementine was right. She pulled off the road and the car bounced along the country lane, the small wheels of the Nissan Micra not quite up to the task. The signs were easy to follow now she had found them and soon they were driving up to an old stone building and around the back into a large car park, narrowly missing hitting a woman in the purple waxed coat pruning the shrubs at the front of the hotel.
 The wind whipping around Margery’s head was very distracting as they clambered out of the car, and she felt glad she had remembered to pack her good raincoat. The sky above did not look promising at all. It was much too dark for a summer’s afternoon; the clouds had knitted together to become one, threatening to spill at any moment.
 Still, Margery couldn’t help but feel a sudden burst of excitement, even as another gust of wind slammed the door shut. Two blissful weeks on holiday with her wife. Lucky them. They wouldn’t let a bit of rain dampen their spirits – or the hen party and wedding food they had been roped into organising for their deputy head, Rose Smith. Next week, Margery’s entire team of Education Centre Nourishment Consultants – who all preferred to be called dinner ladies,