The potting shed murder, p.1
The Potting Shed Murder, page 1
Also by Paula Sutton
Hill House Living:
The Art of Creating a Joyful Life
PAULA SUTTON
THE POTTING SHED MURDER
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS
KENSINGTON BOOKS
kensingtonbooks.com
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Welcome to Pudding Corner . . .
Meeting the villagers . . .
Locations in the story . . .
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
JOHN SCOGNAMIGLIO BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
900 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Copyright © 2025 by Paula Sutton
Published in arrangement with Little Brown Book Group Limited, an Hachette UK company
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
The JS and John Scognamiglio Books logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.
ISBN: 978-1-4967-5481-3
First Kensington Hardcover Edition: June 2025
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025930758
ISBN: 978-1-4967-5483-7 (e-book)
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To my family—my life, my love and the reason behind my move to beautiful Norfolk.
To my Aunt Helen—who encouraged my love of big dreams and my wild imagination.
To Mary—who gave me my start into selling vintage; the beginning of everything.
Welcome to Pudding Corner . . .
Oh, the humble and peaceful English country village. This paragon of beauty, this model of excellent living. The eidolon of safety and calm that serves as the exemplar of all things wholesome and good.
Who can help but extol the virtues of the sleepy and quintessentially English wilderness that forms this clustered settlement of quaintness . . . A veritable paragon of innocent and simple virtues that have lain unchanged—and unchallenged—for generations . . .
A lovingly maintained village green, a centuries-old church steeple, a kindly family doctor and an ever-present vicar . . . Who can resist the draw of this harmonious, cake-filled community spirit, full of friendly watchfulness, benevolent advice and sweet tea—and not forgetting the unrelenting kindness behind the quietly twitching curtain.
This gloriously unmodified, uninterrupted and unvaried way of life—this reflection of all that is great and—sometimes—good. This bucolic green and pleasant land where lies are unheard of, envy is absent, no one harbors a secret, and strangers—that know their place and stick to the rules—are always made welcome . . .
Welcome to a place where nothing bad could possibly ever happen. Welcome, my friends, to Pudding Corner.
Meeting the villagers . . .
Daphne Brewster: New to Pudding Corner, having relocated from urban south London to rural Norfolk. A kind and inquisitive do-gooder who takes the side of the underdog, the village’s Vintage Lady and amateur sleuth.
James Brewster: Affable husband to Daphne, who is disapproving of her detective predilections.
Imani Antoinette Brewster: Daughter and eldest of the Brewster children.
Archie Brewster: Twin son to Daphne and James.
Fynn Brewster: Twin son to Daphne and James.
Byron: The Brewster family pet; a characterful miniature dachshund named after Lord Byron, the 1800s poet.
Aggie: Short for Agnes; Daphne’s vintage beloved car, a 1969 Morris Traveller.
Marianne Forbes: A snobby and entitled ex-Sloane Ranger raging at the supposed injustice of her lack of financial clout and village social status.
Timothy Forbes: Long-suffering husband of Marianne, content with the simple life—unlike his other half.
Tarquin Forbes: Marianne and Timothy’s son.
Charles Papplewick: Headmaster of the village school, Pepperbridge Primary School, allotment enthusiast—and murder victim.
Augusta Papplewick: Headmaster’s wife, self-appointed guardian of parish social and moral standards—and soon-to-be widow on a mission for revenge.
Doctor Ptolemy Oates: Jolly neighbor to the Brewster family, expert in local history and McVitie’s Fruit Shortcake lover.
Minerva Leek: Quiet and unassuming friend of Daphne, outcast from the village.
Silvanus Leek (known to his friends as Silver): Young son of Minerva, best friend to Imani Brewster.
Nancy Warburton: Formidable village gossip and proprietor of the Pepperbridge Convenience Store.
Patsy Warburton: Younger sister to Nancy and fellow gossiper.
Mrs. Freestone: Official editor of the Village Pump, a monthly newsletter for the parish.
Reverend Gerald Duncan: Local vicar.
Mrs. Musgrave: The headmaster’s secretary.
Inspector Hargreaves: Local police inspector dreaming of exciting cases beyond bucolic village life.
PC Maxine Clarke: Ex-pupil of Pepperbridge Primary School, now a local PC.
Locations in the story . . .
Pudding Corner: A charming hamlet in West Norfolk. Home to Cranberry Farmhouse and the Brewster family.
Pepperbridge: A larger village next to Pudding Corner, and home to Pepperbridge Primary School.
Cringlewic Heath (commonly known as Cringlewic): A small domestic enclave situated in the middle of Cringlewic Woods and bordering Oxwold Overy Estate.
Oxwold Overy Estate: A large shooting estate owned by an unmentioned character.
Cranberry Farmhouse: The country home of the Brewster family; a late-eighteenth-century farmhouse, complete with an ancient Aga, large attic and cellar rooms.
Wellingborough House: A handsome Georgian house in Pepperbridge belonging to Charles and Augusta Papplewick, having been in the Papplewick family for several generations.
PROLOGUE
The final straw was an argument over a parking space. It had been an otherwise normal and unassuming weekday morning in the life of a busy family of five, bar the fact that, on that particular day, both Daphne and James had been able to drop the children off at the smart south London prep school (which they could no longer afford to pay the fees for) and were now sitting alone in their battered old Volvo Estate.
Life with young children seemed to be comprised of a series of lists filled with ways in which to fritter away money they didn’t have. The twins, Archie and Fynn, had reached the stage where everyone wanted to offer them ballet lessons, chess lessons, violin lessons and piano lessons—all at a price. The eldest child, Immy, seemed to have a museum excursion, a football tournament or a camping trip every other week—again, all at a price. What with that, the school fees, interest rates inflating the mortgage repayments, and scrambling to find the salary for a nanny who took great pleasure in reminding Daphne about the twins calling her “Mummy” for months after Daphne returned to work, meant that negotiating the life of their apparent dreams based on two salaries stuck firmly in the ever-so-exciting-but-financially-unviable media industry was a near-impossible task.
The aim that morning had been to visit the bank on Streatham High Road together, to find out if there was any wiggle room on the mortgage repayments, in the hope of squeezing yet another unaffordable term or two of private schooling from their rapidly dwindling reserves. Once that box had been painfully ticked off—or not—Daphne and James would then go about their daily routines in offices situated at opposite sides of London, only to return when they were too exhausted and strung out to communicate with any semblance of civility or grace—except perhaps towards a bottle of cheap supermarket wine. In that respect, this unfamiliar coming together on a weekday morning felt like a snatched and illicit date.
Having chatted comfortably during the slow traffic along Thurlow Park Road, it had all seemed pretty straightforward until the inevitable circle round the back streets to find a parking space close enough to the main road to warrant not simply driving back home again and walking up to the bank on foot. With increasing impatience, they had driven up and down, across and back again, until the amiable chatter descended into tense silence.
James, the less aggressive driver of the two (in Daphne’s humble opinion), had been moving at a slow and stealthy creep, hoping not to scare off any potential departures into stubbornly taking more time to leave. It was a regular sport in built-up areas such as these just off the South Circular. In an otherwise mundane life, you were forced to take your small wins where you could find them, and hogging a parking space for no other reason than bloody-mindedness seemed high up on the scale.
Daphne had seen the space first. The golden ticket, the pathway to parking nirvana. An empty space on a quiet and narrow back road situated perpendicular to the bank. It was as though the parking gods on Mount Olympus had blessed them—Caerus maybe—the god tasked at bringing about all that is convenient in the moment? Ha, Daphne acknowledged wryly—the exorbitant school fees had brought about that little nugget of information, if nothing else... “THERE!!!” she had screeched, shattering the silence, while she simultaneously jabbed and pointed her finger towards the space, her voice repeating the word with a guttural urgency normally reserved for situations of great emergency. Quick to spy the direction of Daphne’s attention, James had slammed on the indicator and expertly turned the steering wheel, about to glide effortlessly into the awaiting sweet spot. The timing should have been perfect, the location was certainly ideal, and suddenly life—for a few minutes at least—seemed to be back on track.
In that short, sweet moment, all thoughts of overdue bills had left James’s mind. For a brief second or two, his increasingly tired, defeated façade, sallow skin and dark circles—all results of editing news programs throughout the night and minimal weekday hours spent in daylight—were momentarily aglow as he steered the car towards his first and possibly only small win for the day. His eyes were focused directly on the prize, and the prize was only two car lengths away with zero obstacles in its path. He could sense Daphne straining against her seatbelt, willing them towards the empty parking space. It was a done deal. He was her knight in shining armor, her Lancelot, hell—he was Lewis Hamil—
“NOOOOOooooooo!!!!”
He heard the rage in Daphne’s voice before he spotted the other car. It took a moment for him to comprehend the fact that his wife was practically hanging out of the Volvo, mouth furiously distorted and angrily agape, shouting a fury of expletives. It was then that he realized the object of her rage was a group of men in a battered white Vauxhall Astra GTE that had driven in from the high road and headed towards “their” parking space without hesitation. The car bonnets were now seconds from touching, engines revving from opposite sides of the space.
James could tell that his wife—a born-and-bred south Londoner who had only recently begun taking self-defense lessons after a spate of local muggings—had designated herself to take charge of the situation, and before he could hold her back, she was out of the vehicle explaining, in no uncertain terms, why the group of youths needed to reverse their car out. It was a tense standoff that probably only lasted a few seconds—but to James, at least, those seconds had felt like hours. Daphne’s hands were resting on the bonnet of the other car as she leaned towards its windscreen, proving she meant business, and stared directly into the driver’s eyes. She was an immaculately presented thirty-something Black woman with her hair in a low ponytail, a flick of jet-black eyeliner accentuating her deep brown eyes, crimson red lipstick, dressed in kitten heels that needed reheeling and a sample-sale Prada skirt. The type of woman who had been brought up to never complain about her lot and had been conditioned to be quietly polite at all times thanks to her education at an all-girls convent school. She was a woman for whom it came naturally to open doors for the elderly, to inquire about everyone else’s well-being before looking after her own, and certainly never to show emotion—particularly anger—in public. Today, however, she was a woman who was at the end of her tether. A woman pulled in all directions: exhausted, beleaguered, working a full-time job that seeped its tendrils insidiously into her evenings, weekends and holidays, affording her limited time or concentration to extend to her three young children, let alone her husband or that elusive “me time” that she saw plastered across the pages of the very magazine where she herself worked. As Daphne’s hands curled into a furious grip on the car bonnet, her defiance was clearly now far more than a matter of a parking space. It was a matter of personal pride, honor and justice. She was the mouse that had decided to roar . . .
James sat immobilized and in awe, watching his unflinching wife in the midst of her standoff. Not for the first time, he admired her strength, her sass and her conviction. There were not many women in the world who would have been so unbending in the face of such a motley group of youths at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning just off the South Circular . . .
And then, all at once, it was over. The offending car reversed out of the space and, moving speedily and erratically, eventually double-parked on the other side of the road. Daphne turned triumphantly and, at her cue, James slipped quickly into the space—thanking God that he had managed to make it a smooth maneuver. What crushing indignity it would have been to have won the battle, only to mess it up with a forty-two-point turn . . .
Daphne returned to the passenger seat, her eyes alert and her skin flushed. She needed a few minutes to collect herself; her breath was heavy, and her chest moved fast. They watched silently while three of the four youths exited the car opposite them and headed towards the high road. They were all big and burly, and each of them could have taken Daphne down with a quick flick of the hand.
After a few moments of loaded silence, Daphne and James finally turned to face each other. There was a second more of calm before they both burst out laughing.
“Well, Daphne Brewster,” said James, “they really hadn’t reckoned for butting heads with you this morning!”
Daphne smiled wryly. As she had slowly calmed down, she realized how often she was on edge these days. It hadn’t taken much for her to launch headstrong into the confrontation; it had been instinctive. A rage-fueled, fiery response burning within her. An automatic defense against the anger and frustration that she continually felt with her life. Last week she had told off, without hesitation, a group of foul-mouthed and raucous teenagers for not standing when an elderly lady had needed a seat on the bus. She had also recently chased down a neighbor’s au pair for not collecting his dog’s poop—the dog that he was so obviously begrudgingly forced to walk. The rage that she could not reveal at work was slowly bleeding into an uncontrollable urge to right the wrongdoings she witnessed on a daily basis. She despised bullies and was intuitively on the side of the underdog, but this increasingly reckless behavior was getting too much. She was close to burnout, and she could feel it . . . In fact, they both were. Something had to give, and she feared, at that precise moment, that it might be her sanity.
They had been about to exit the car when the three lads returned—however, this time, they stampeded back around the corner with balaclavas over their heads. They crossed directly in front of the Volvo as Daphne and James sat watching openmouthed. As if in slow motion, the last of the three turned to stare momentarily at Daphne. Their eyes locked for a split second—the split second immediately after she had registered the sawn-off shotgun gripped in his hand. It was the first time in her life she had seen a real gun. In that moment, as their eyes met, he communicated to Daphne that she’d had a lucky escape. That morning there had been far more important business at hand than the fight for a convenient parking spot—or perhaps her “brave” little attempt at standing her ground might not have ended so well.
The car opposite, which they now realized had kept its motor running, sped off down the road with all four boys safely inside, just as a heavy-footed, out-of-breath security guard belatedly rounded the corner. His face was red from puffing, coughing and spluttering, his ill-fitting uniform strained against his stomach, and his arm was held aloft as if waving the robbers off. He stopped in front of the Volvo before violently expelling the contents of his stomach onto the pavement next to them. The sound of multiple sirens followed shortly afterwards.
