Tibby loved misty mornings. Good thing that Moorwood had plenty to spare. Nestled as the village was in a valley with a wide river running through it, nearly every morning was shrouded in a steamy haze. She liked drinking her coffee in the back garden, taking a seat on the dewy patio furniture and enjoying how mysterious every common thing looked. Moorwood was far from magical during the day, but right now, at the first breach of darkness, there were secrets in the air.
This morning, she could hardly see to the fence on the far side of the garden. She was peering at the leaves of her espaliered pear tree, watching them reveal themselves in the mist, when a branch twitched. A bird, no doubt, lighting on a twig.
It happened again. Tibby blinked and stood up as if that would help her see better. There—again. The branch was shaking quite violently, and there was no possibility that it could be a bird. Perhaps it was another kind of animal, but she didn't think so. Tibby placed her coffee cup firmly down on the table and balled up her toes inside her house slippers.
Grabbing a handy pair of secateurs, she marched across the grass. Seven strides and she'd reached the pear tree, which had stopped shaking just moments before. She gripped the top of the fence and heaved herself up.
Nothing. Not an animal, not a mischievous neighbour boy, not a tourist who happened to take a liking to her pear tree. Just an impenetrable wall of grey mist. Gingerly setting herself back down on solid ground, Tibby brushed aside the leaves to peer between the fence slats. The only sign of activity was a few scruffed marks in the dewy grass where feet might have stood a moment before.
A shiver ran down her spine, and she thrust the secateurs into her apron pocket. It was silly to make so much of so little. It had probably been a passerby rifling the leaves to see if there were any ripe pears. That's all.
Retreating to her coffee, which was growing colder by the moment, she gulped down a mouthful before stepping back into her cosy lounge.
A man lay sprawled across her pink hooked rug.
Tibby didn't drop the mug, or scream, or faint. She froze and nailed the figure to the floor with her eyes. One twitch from him and she'd slam the mug into his skull. One . . . two . . . three. No movement. She spoke, her voice coming out higher-pitched than she'd expected, 'Who are you? What are you doing here?'
Some part of her brain finally registered that the man was dead. His face was turned away from her and hidden by masses of dark hair, but the position of the arms and legs was distinctly unnatural and very, very still.
Giving the body as wide a berth as possible, she slid along the wall, climbed over the back of the sofa, and ran to grab her phone from the kitchen. She tried three times to dial 999, then finally punched the right numbers and heard a calm voice on the line.
'There's a body in my lounge. I don't know who it is or how he got there, but he's on my rug, and I'd appreciate you getting someone over here immediately.' After answering a dozen questions that were no doubt routine to the police force but decidedly un-routine for Tibby Carmichael of Moorwood, Lancashire, she was torn between slamming the phone down in frustration and clinging to it as if it were the only thing keeping her from falling apart.
How would you continue this story? Leave a comment below!
No comments:
Post a Comment