Extract from The Murder Affair by Alice Castle

When Bookouture did a shout out for participants for their latest blog tour, we weren't in a position to sign up to review. Instead to offer our support we agreed to host an extract from The Murder Affair, the latest in the Beth Haldane Mystery series from Alice Castle but first a little about the book.

In a quiet little village, mourners gather for a church funeral. But some of the tears flowing are fake – and Beth Haldane suspects foul play…

On a rainy afternoon, Beth Haldane accompanies her elderly mother Wendy to the funeral of her boyfriend and local councillor Len. But as they gather in the church, Beth can’t help but notice how many women are there who look just like her mother.

As the service begins it soon becomes clear that all of the women thought they were Len’s special someone – and one of them even claims to be his distraught wife. Wendy suspects foul play and immediately asks Beth to investigate.

As Beth begins to speak to the women she has to ask, was one of Len’s many disgruntled girlfriends out for revenge? Why was Len borrowing money from the ladies he romanced? And why did his work for the local council seem so suspicious?

Then, Len’s secretary Bella is found dead amongst the dahlias in a planter. Beth starts to suspect Len was involved in something far more dangerous than she’d assumed but what did Bella know about his business that led to her unfortunate end?

With the village rumour mill in full swing, fingers start to point at Wendy. After all, distraught Wendy is telling everyone who lends her an ear that Len was murdered – and she saw Len the very evening he was found dead. The clock is ticking for Beth to clear her mother’s name before it’s too late!

Chapter One

Beth Haldane had never felt more uncomfortable. Her toes were being squeezed to death in unaccustomed court shoes, she was wearing slithery ten denier tights instead of her trusty jeans, and she was swamped by a black silk shirt hastily borrowed from her best friend, Katie. Worst of all, her left leg had completely gone to sleep. 

Ouch! Suddenly the numb feeling in her calf was replaced by crippling pins and needles. She shifted on the rock-hard pew, but hadn’t taken the highly polished wood into account. She shot forward, almost braining herself on the little ledge built into the row in front. Her black-edged order of service went flying and a pile of hymn books fell to the tiled floor with an almighty clatter, echoing all the way to the vaulted ceiling of the church.

There was a loud tut. Her mother, dressed in heavy mourning including a thickly veiled hat that Beth thought preposterous, started telling her off waspishly. Her sharp tones cut right through the organ music burbling away gently in the background. Heads turned all over the church as Wendy really got into her stride. 

‘For goodness’ sake, Beth. I can’t take you anywhere, can I? Just sit still, will you? And stop fidgeting. You’re making a total exhibition of yourself.’

Beth smarted at the injustice. Wendy was the one now drawing attention, as the congregation twittered and nudged each other all around them. But the debacle didn’t end there. She peered under her pew, and saw her service sheet had ended up lodged beneath the feet of the woman behind, a well-preserved fifty-something matron. The lady had a wonderful peaches and cream complexion but the red eyes of someone who’d been weeping for days. 

Beth gestured apologetically to her, and the woman passed over the now-crumpled leaflet. On the front was a photograph of a devastatingly handsome elderly man, clutching a pipe in his hand. He had the aura of a film star from the golden years of Hollywood, perhaps because the picture was in black and white – or perhaps because of the unmistakably roguish twinkle in his eye. The words In Loving Memory of Len Broughton were printed underneath. 

Then the lady who’d passed the leaflet glared, as Beth’s mother turned to see what was going on now. She apparently had no trouble at all in recognising Wendy Haldane, despite the thick veil. She hissed at her, ‘You! I don’t know how you have the effrontery to show your face here.’ 

‘What on earth was that about?’ Beth asked her mother in a low voice as they whipped round to face the front. ‘What did that lady mean?’ 

Wendy shushed her and then proceeded to ignore her daughter, busying herself by scrutinising the order of service with the dedication she usually reserved for a winning hand at Bridge. At that moment the organ snapped out of its background mode and started up with a thunderous anthem, and the small, round and balding vicar of St Matthew’s shuffled forward and coughed in a vain attempt to get everyone’s attention. He opened his mouth to speak, but had to wait until the organist had come to a final, deafening crescendo that seemed to shake the very walls of the ancient church, before he finally said a few words of welcome. 

Beth’s leg was feeling better now, and she took the opportunity to have another look around. As her mother had insisted they arrive incredibly early, sweeping into a pew only a couple of rows from the altar, Beth hadn’t realised quite how full the church was. But it was standing room only. Surely even when she had been pressganged into coming here for Christmas services as a child, it had never been this full? And wasn’t it a bit strange that so many of the congregation were women of a certain age – her mother’s generation? Funny, also, that so many of them were sitting alone. 

‘Do you know any of these ladies? Looks like there could be some Bridge Club friends. And look, over there, isn’t that Mrs Hill? Your neighbour?’ she whispered to Wendy. ‘Look, she seems so sad. And goodness, I don’t believe it, that’s Angela Douglas. Crying!’ Beth stared, transfixed, at the sight of the usually poised and elegant head of the College School, Dulwich’s fiercely academic girls’ academy, sniffing unabashedly into what looked like a black-trimmed handkerchief. Next to her was her deputy, stocky Bernie Troughton, with a face like thunder. Beth caught her eye for a second and looked away hurriedly. 

‘Beth, do be quiet, the poor vicar is trying to make himself heard,’ Wendy said out of the side of her mouth. Beth thought mutinously he’d have a much better chance if he would just speak up a bit. They were virtually at the front, horribly close to poor old Len Broughton’s coffin, loaded down with the massive (and in Beth’s view totally inappropriate) wreath of scarlet roses that Wendy had insisted on ordering at vast expense from Bartley’s in Dulwich Village. Despite this, Beth could hardly hear the Reverend Timothy Bainwright as he mumbled his way through the funeral service. It wasn’t all his fault, though. As he started yet another prayer, Beth realised the background noise of weeping, coming from various different corners of the church, really wasn’t helping. 

She turned to her mother and asked her very quietly, ‘What’s going on, Mum? Why are all these other ladies crying?’

Wendy hushed her furiously again, then said crossly, ‘How should I know? You never liked Len, anyway.’

This was so unfair, and Beth felt she had no choice but to point it out. ‘I hardly had a chance to dislike him! I didn’t even know you were going out with him until he died. You didn’t say one word about it.’ 

In fact, Wendy had been more than usually aloof for the past couple of months. But this hadn’t been, as Beth had hoped, because she’d finally stopped her passive-aggressive games with her only daughter and settled into enjoying her retirement. No, she’d been seeing this Len Broughton instead, gadding about the village like a teenager – until his sudden death. 

Wendy took no notice. ‘Just because he didn’t have a Dulwich accent, and a Dulwich background,’ she hissed scathingly. ‘I never took you for such a snob, Beth Haldane.’

‘I am not a snob! I never met Len, I’ve no idea what accent he’s got – er, had,’ Beth started to protest. But then a lady, this time in the row in front of them, turned and fixed Wendy with a peculiarly malevolent stare. 

‘I don’t know how you dare show your face in this church. And now disrupting the service with all this bickering, while I’m trying to remember the love of my life…’ the woman hissed, red-rimmed eyes boring into Wendy’s.

‘The love of your life? He was the love of my life, I’ll have you know,’ Wendy shot back at top volume, all her strictures to Beth about silence in church apparently forgotten. 

Beth just had time to feel disgruntled on behalf of her poor dad. Surely he, father of Wendy’s two lovely children, should have been in pole position? Were his long years of patient servitude now worth nothing? But then there came a high-pitched voice from the other side of the aisle. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ A trim woman in her late forties shot up. ‘Len was my boyfriend!’

All over the church, more women got to their feet and started yelling. If it hadn’t been a funeral – and if her mother hadn’t been in floods of tears – it would actually have been an amusing ‘I’m Spartacus’ moment. As it was, Beth watched on, aghast. The vicar, looking thoroughly discombobulated, shifted from foot to foot, wringing his hands. Then there was a flurry of movement as one of the ladies shoved her way out of her pew and rushed up the aisle. For a moment, Beth wondered whether she was going to attack Wendy, or maybe even the poor little reverend, but she didn’t pause, flashing straight past Beth and her mother on vertiginously high heels, and throwing herself right on the coffin where it stood by the altar. 

Wendy was instantly on her feet. ‘Don’t you dare squash my roses! And get off my Len.’

It was the signal for general mayhem to break out. At the back of the church, the owner of the village deli thwacked the lady next to her round the head with her black patent clutch bag. Closer to the front, the granny of one of Beth’s son’s friends picked up one of the embroidered hassocks and hurled it at her neighbour. As Beth looked on in astonishment, a large black cartwheel hat bowled up the central aisle of the church and came to rest against the coffin. Then, to Beth’s horror, Wendy started making her way to the end of their pew. Surely she wasn’t going to chuck herself into the mêlée? But she was pushed back down by another woman striding up to the altar.

‘How dare you shove me like that? What right do you have—’ Wendy started. 

‘I have every right,’ the woman said as she turned to face the congregation, standing right in front of the little vicar and blocking him entirely from view. Her tailored black suit was the perfect contrast to the expertly highlighted blonde hair swirling around her shoulders, and the light breaking through the stained glass windows glanced off long diamond earrings and the tears glittering in her eyes, as she announced, at the top of her voice, ‘I am Len Broughton’s wife.’