Poppy Takes the Lead: Volume 3 (Poppy Mystery Tale, 3) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Alongside her popular DI Geraldine Steel detective novels, Leigh Russell is the author of the Poppy Mystery Tales, a brand new cozy crime series set in an idyllic English village. The stories feature Poppy, a lively puppy who helps her owner solve mysteries. Leigh has an MA in English Literature from the University of Kent. She has been shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award, the CWA Dagger in the Library, and the People's Book Prize. Keen to support new writers, Leigh chairs the CWA Debut Dagger Judges, and is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund. Leigh lives in London.

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Two years had passed since I first set eyes on Rosecroft, my very own cottage in the picturesque village of Ashton Mead, a few miles from Swindon in the Cotswolds. It was hard to believe I had been living there for so long, working at the Sunshine Tea Shoppe. I had noticed the brightly coloured café on my first visit to the High Street. To be fair, the café was impossible to miss, with its dazzling yellow and white striped awning and primrose coloured exterior. Inside, the café lived up to its name, the yellow and white tiled floor and lemon walls continuing the colourful theme. Even the table cloths were yellow and white checked gingham, matching our aprons. The cheerful atmosphere of the café was only partly due to the bright decor. The owner, Hannah, loved baking, and I enjoyed serving customers. It was a sociable and generally jolly place to work and, despite my mother’s disappointment at my choice of career, I considered myself lucky to have ended up there. It was more varied than any office job I had ever done, and much more fun. As for our customers, only the most curmudgeonly could fail to relish their visits to the Sunshine Tea Shoppe, with its warm welcome and mouthwatering array of cakes. Many of them were regulars from the village, but we also had plenty of visits from people passing through Ashton Mead on their way to some destination rather grander than our small village. So what with locals and tourists, we were kept pretty busy, especially in the summer months.
   Hannah laughed at my surprise that two years had passed since my arrival in the village, as she cut the cake she had made to mark the occasion. Her eyes twinkled with glee as she handed me a plate.
   ‘It’s chocolate,’ she said, knowing that was my favourite. ‘I made it especially for you.’
   ‘As long as you don’t expect me to eat it all,’ I laughed.
   Any excuse to scoff her cakes was fine with me, and she was always ready to seize on an excuse to try out a new recipe. As the owner of the tea shop, she knew how important her skill in baking was to the success of her business.
   ‘It’s chocolate and cherry, to be specific,’ she added, as she manoeuvred a fat slice of cake onto my plate, ignoring my halfhearted protest that I had just had breakfast.
   ‘I still can’t believe I’ve been here two years,’ I said, watching her pour the tea.
   ‘You can check your bank statements if you don’t believe me,’ she smiled.
   ‘I’m not complaining,’ I replied. ‘It’s just that the time has passed so quickly.’
   ‘You’re not getting bored with us, are you?’
   I shook my head, smiling at the idea, although there was a time when that would have been a fair comment. Before moving to Ashton Mead I had been living in London, and the prospect of moving to such a quiet place would have appalled me. According to my ex-boyfriend, Ashton Mead was a ‘Godforsaken hole in the sticks’ that no one outside the village had even heard of.
   ‘This place is nowhere,’ he had complained. ‘You can’t spend the rest of your life stuck in this dreary backwater. You’ll die of boredom. You might kid yourself it’s a rural idyll, but how long is that fantasy going to last? It’s a boring place, the people are boring, and you’re bored.’
   But that hadn’t been my impression. I had fallen in love with Ashton Mead and the quaint little cottage left to me in my great aunt’s will, and so far neither of them had disappointed. On the contrary, I appreciated my good fortune. I could never have afforded to buy my own property, let alone one with a garden. Apart from any other consideration, the grassy village was an idyllic home for Poppy, the friendly little Jack Tzu who had been left to me by my great aunt, along with her house. Poppy loved going for walks on the wide grassy slopes leading down to the river where ducks scudded about and swans sailed elegantly under the stone bridge.
   Coming to live in Ashton Mead hadn’t exactly been part of my life plan. In fact, I had not visited the village since I was a small child and had forgotten all about the place until my great aunt had died. At the time, it had made sense to check out my unexpected inheritance, not least because I had just lost my job and was struggling to pay the rent on my flat in London. As soon as I saw Rosecroft, with its trailing plants growing around the door and its soft yellow stone walls, I felt as though I had come home. Used to the noise and bustle of London, I was surprised how rapidly the slow pace of village life had come to seem normal. Working in the café, I got to know the local residents. Compared to the transient population in my area of London, everyone seemed settled and friendly. Even the tourists who stopped off in the village were very welcome, as far as Hannah and I were concerned, since they helped to keep The Sunshine Tea Shoppe in profit. Not all the villagers were happy about so many visitors turning up on sunny days, but all the local shopkeepers were pleased. Hannah’s baking had helped to put Ashton Mead on the map.
   Never having owned a dog before, I had been nervous about accepting the responsibility unexpectedly thrust on me. But Poppy and I had soon settled down together, and I could no longer imagine my life without her. Fortunately, she seemed content living with me. So when I told Hannah my life in Ashton Mead was perfect, it was almost true. Although I was never lonely with Poppy, I sometimes wished there was a man in my life but, considering how disastrous my last relationship had been, I had accepted I was probably better off single. Even my mother seemed resigned to my situation, although she still grumbled about my single status from time to time. She seemed faintly affronted that I hadn’t followed her example, which was to marry and have children at the first possible opportunity. My protestations that life was different for women these days fell on deaf ears, and we had arrived at a tacit agreement to leave the subject alone.
   ‘You’re twenty-six,’ she had said on her last visit, as though that was positively over the hill. ‘Isn’t it time you thought about settling down?'
   I have settled down. I’m very happy here. I couldn’t be more settled.’
   My mother had wisely refrained from persisting in her attack on my way of life, only muttering that she supposed the ‘right man’ would come along sooner or later. She refused to believe that I liked spending my time in a tiny café, serving tea and cakes to strangers. It was my turn to hold back from retorting that working at the tea shop was my ideal job. There was no point. She would never have believed me. She seemed determined to believe I had taken the job, not to pay my bills, but to spite her ambitions for me.
   ‘You’re a clever girl,’ she liked to say. ‘You could do so much better than a dead end job like that.’
   But I wasn’t sure what she meant by ‘better’. My job might not be one she could boast about, but I was certainly happy. Not long after I had arrived in Ashton Mead, Hannah had offered me a job in the Sunshine Tea Shoppe. Just like my move to Ashton Mead, waiting tables in a café had never been part of my life plan, but I had agreed to work there temporarily, just until I found my feet. As it turned out, the job suited me very well, and Hannah and I soon became firm...