Flitting and Sipping

Hello, and welcome to my 2025 Blogging From A To Z April Challenge! This year, I’ve written you a complete murder mystery novelette. The setting is rural England, a few years after WWI. The extra challenge that I set myself for this story is that the first murder will not take place until the letter “M”–halfway through! And the second murder will happen at “S.” There may be murders after “S,” of course, but they are less structural or foundational or something.

And now, without further ado…

Flitting and Sipping

Penny slipped out for a walk that afternoon. She thought she’d done this unobserved—but there was Reggie, bobbing up over a hedge, smiling at her.

“Miss Grimsby—Penelope,” he said, looking casually aristocratic in well-worn tweeds. He smiled, and his eyes crinkled when he did so, making his face look full of friendly laughter. It was pretty devastating.

“Penny,” she said, smiling back.

“Off on a walk? May I join you?”

“Sure!” They walked in silence for a time.

“Hey,” Penny said at last, looking round at the rose-covered cottages lining the cobbled village street, “these are beautiful. I hate to be a pesky tourist, but do you know anyone who’d let us have a look inside?”

“Oh, I really don’t think—” Reggie began, speeding up slightly as he spoke.

“What ho, Reginald! Come in here and have some tea! Bring your friend!” Called a feminine voice from a rose-smothered doorway.

Reggie smiled feebly. “Oh—ah—looks like there is someone after all. Coming, Wilhelmina!”

Penny took a good look at this Wilhelmina as they went up the crazy paving through her gorgeous front garden. Forty-something, abundant black hair, big womanly curves, and a knowing twinkle in the eye she turned upon Reggie. She had It, Penny reflected—she had all the It she could fit. In the most demure and lady-like way possible, but—It, no question.

“Hi,” Penny said. “I’m Reggie’s cousin Penny. From America.”

“Uncle Jack’s girl,” said Reggie.

“Well, come in, Uncle Jack’s girl—let’s all have some tea,” said Wilhelmina, and led them into the dark interior of the cottage.

“Thanks,” said Penny. “I was just telling Mr. Grimsby—”

“Reggie,” said Reggie.

Wilhelmina snorted. “Yes, do call him Reggie, Miss Grimsby—”

“Call me Penny,” said Penny.

“—Penny—it’s so much cozier. But what were you telling—ah—Reggie?” Wilhelmina asked, with every appearance of interest and a savage undertone.

“That it would be lovely to see inside one of these cottages. But I think he felt a scruple about butting in,” said Penny, lobbing the ball back as best as she could without being absolutely sure what game she was playing.

“Reggie—you silly boy!” Wilhelmina said. “You know you’re always welcome here. Never hesitate to knock on my door—with any little friends you have with you, of course.”

“Thanks, Mina,” said Reggie, looking uncomfortable. Penny felt uncomfortable herself. “Little friends” had been quite the escalation.

And then they had tea. Wilhelmina did not seem to want them there, but she also did not seem at all anxious that they should go. Finally, she sent Reggie, in the most pre-emptive way, out into the garden to chop wood for her.

“Are you going to marry Reggie, Miss Grimsby?” Wilhelmina asked, as soon as Reggie was out of earshot.

“What?”

“Just answer the question, please. It’s rather important that I know.”

Penny blinked. “I hardly know him!”

“Oh, you think that matters, do you?”

“And he’s a good bit older than me. Not that that always matters, either, but—” Penny found to her annoyance that her cheeks were suddenly flaming.

“He is forty-five—as am I. And I’m sure that if you decided to marry him, it would be quite simply arranged. You’re young, you see—and rich. And Reggie would very much like to marry someone young and rich.” She blinked something away. “He’s very good-looking. You’re not attracted?”

“Isn’t he already engaged? That girl I met last night—Geraldine Camphor? Dr. Camphor’s daughter? The girl with the lisp?”

Wilhelmina sighed. “Is it a lisp, exactly? I think it is called something different when it is a problem with Rs. But yes, they are engaged. For the moment. But I think you would find that that obstacle would melt away, if you were to express an interest. Miss Camphor has only one of the necessary qualifications, you see—she is young, but not rich. And here comes Reggie, back again! Reggie, dear, we were speaking of your fiancée.”

“Yes,” said Penny, feeling a spark of rage shooting through her as she smiled. “Let’s go call on her next, shall we?” She got up from the tea table. She didn’t stop walking until she was outside in the street again—and it was only when she stood blinking in the sunny summer air that she realized that she’d utterly failed to notice any old-world charm that the cottage may have contained.

 

*

“Weggie,” cried Geraldine, “and Penny! How nice! Do come in!”

Reggie smiled down at Geraldine. “Hello squirt,” he said, giving her an affectionate hug. “We were seein’ the local sites and whatnot, and thought we’d take in your bijou residence.” The doctor’s house was actually fairly substantial, but, Penny supposed, to Reggie, almost any house would seem small.

Geraldine smiled. “Come and see the tea table. I always think it looks specially nice when it is all covered in cakes and things. Daddy, Reggie and Penny are coming to tea!” And Geraldine shooed them into a room bright with afternoon light. Dr. Camphor waved a friendly sandwich at the interlopers, and rose to his feet, eating the sandwich on the way up.

Another man also rose to his feet with the doctor, and managed it rather badly.

“Why, Stephen!” cried Geraldine, “I didn’t know you were here!”

“Found him hovering about the place—portrait of a man who wants to come to tea but hasn’t been asked,” said the doctor. “No, don’t blush, my lad—if you haven’t figured out by now that you’re always welcome here, that is entirely your own fault.”

Stephen blushed against the doctor’s orders and stammered out something about “just passing by, you know—what?”

“Now he’s making it sound as if I kidnapped him,” said the doctor.

“Oh—but I didn’t—I mean—delighted to come to tea—very kind—oh, I say!”

“Stop teasing Stephen, father!” said Geraldine. “Or else he won’t visit anymore. We like it when you visit,” she said to Stephen.

“That’s the very point I was trying to make to the lad,” said the doctor, sounding faintly martyred.

“That’s right, Stephen old thing,” said Reggie, sitting down comfortably. “You’ll be one of the family soon—right, Ger, old girl?”

Geraldine beamed and kissed Reggie’s brow. “We’ll have it in the Spwing.”

The doctor grimaced at this announcement. Penny turned to him.

“This afternoon tea gag,” said Penny. “We don’t go for it across the water. What do you think of it, from a medical perspective? Any good in it, or is it all bunkum and extra pounds? I know if I have more than one of these cakes it’ll ruin my appetite for dinner.”

The doctor looked at Penny, seemingly quite genuinely startled. “Do you know,” he said, “I’ve never considered afternoon tea from a medical perspective before.”

Penny grimaced. “Sacred rite, eh? I’ve put my foot in it, I guess. Forget it.”

“Not at all.” Now the doctor was smiling. “It’s an interesting question, and if I were more than a humble GP, I might even find it worthwhile to formulate an answer. But, being a humble GP, all I really need to know is that there is absolutely no way of stopping my patients from doing it, and it would therefore be a waste of mental energies to try to determine whether or not they’d be better off if they did. And I don’t think that having a few of these sandwiches would really spoil your dinner, you know.”

“Is that your medical opinion?” Penny looked into his eyes. They were brown, and seemed to twinkle.

“It is.” And the doctor served her two little sandwiches with deft movements.

“But you don’t have all of the facts of my case, doc,” said Penny solemnly. “This isn’t our first tea. Reginald here has been showing me the village.”

“Oh? And where else did you call in?” asked the doctor.

“I say,” said Reggie. “Do you fish, Penny? If so, I could—”

Penny ignored Reggie’s look of appeal. “We had tea at Wilhelmina’s cottage,” she said. “She was real interesting.”

Geraldine was looking daggers at the tablecloth. “I’ll bet she was,” she said. She turned the daggers on Reggie. “So tewwibly sophisticated, isn’t she? And how nice for Weggie to have a fwiend of his own age to talk to.” And then she burst into tears and ran out the French windows into the garden. Reggie followed, murmuring explanations and endearments.

“Now I have put my foot in it,” said Penny.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “you did it beautifully.” And he gave her a little pink cake.