Official Town Business (Fox & Oakby Murder Mysteries Book I)

A Smoking Fuse

By the time Imogen, dishevelled, roused by the alarm, and properly dissatisfied with the night of restless sleep, was down to the kitchen, the Mayor was already gone. Imogen made breakfast, woke up the children, and the usual morning phantasmagory began.

At the end she only had about ten minutes of peace, when all four little mouths were occupied with eggs and toast. Imogen took a giant sip of her coffee and leaned back in the chair. Her eyes roamed the cork board on the wall, where the fastidious Mrs. Lewis had all sorts of pieces of paper pinned neatly in rows with identical little pins. Among the bills, receipts, and magazine cut outs, Imogen noticed something most fascinating.

"Philip," she addressed the older son of the Headmistress, "that drawing on the wall, the small one, with a fox and a canary - who drew this?"

The boy glanced and answered, after swallowing the mouthful of his brekkie, "Mrs. Roberts, the cleaning lady. She always doodles. She makes cards for holidays, like Christmas. And she used to leave us funny pictures of book characters. And she always draws foxes, loves them I reckon."

The boy went back to the food, and Imogen rose and walked up to the board.

Her eyes ran the lines of the drawing. It was made with a ballpen, whatever the cleaning lady had had under her hand probably. The fox was drawn mid-jump, and a wreath of leaves and branches was weaved around it. The lines were precise, confident, and astonishingly good for a rushed doodle of an amateur.

Imogen tilted her head, and thought very very hard. In seven seconds she was absolutely certain that she had seen exactly this unique manner of mixing hatching and stippling, and exactly this unusual depiction of the fox's muzzle and tail - and in two sets of circumstances. Firstly, she'd walked by a very similar fox, for many years in a row, in a large linocut displayed on the second floor of the Fleckney Woulds Comprehensive, in the Headmistress' wing hall dedicated to the sole exhibition of the 'school's most talented and accomplished graduate' Mrs. Patricia Fitzroy. 

And secondly, a smaller version of the same drawing, in China ink and watercolours had been hung on the wall of the aforementioned Mrs. Fitzroy's 'Trophy Room' - and had been probably 'bagged' as an evidence in the investigation of her murder.

"Imogen, I think we're late for school," Kathy said behind Imogen's back, shaking her out of her thoughts.

Imogen looked at the clock on the wall, gasped, and dashed back to the table. They were indeed late.

***

When she arrived to the Town Hall, after leaving Brian and Killian with the sitter, and dropping off the older kids at school, the Mayor's door was closed, and she could hear his lower voice behind it.

"What's happening, Imogen?" Mrs. Harris hissed, her eyes jumping to the mayoral office. "He hasn't come out from there, and I think I've heard him growl. I've never seen him like that..."

Imogen chewed her bottom lip.

"Has he had coffee?" she asked.

Mrs. Harris shook her head, her curled bleached hair thrashing around her head. 

"No! He hasn't asked for anything! And he's pacing inside, see?"

Mrs. Harris pointed at the shelf on the wall that had been famous for the folders wobbling on it whenever someone was stomping inside the office too enthusiastically.

Imogen took a measured breath and went to the coffee table. She made an extra large cup, with extra sugar and cream, picked up a plate with a few pastries, and went into the lion's den.