Blue Murder

Welcome to our feast of seven great holiday crime stories, including one from TP Fielden, author of The Riviera Express series! Well-known local sleuth, Miss Dimont and her trusty photographer, Terry, are on the terrace with a corpse...

- TP Fielden

Even by the time Miss Dimont arrived, it still looked pretty chaotic. In the drawing-room there were books strewn across the floor, an overturned table, a couple of broken glasses which had clearly been crushed underfoot with their contents leaving dark stains across the Aubusson rug.

But now there was a stillness in the air; the people had gone.

Out on the terrace of the sprawling cliff top mansion lay the reason for their hasty exit. A huge red stain like a pool of arterial blood had left an elegant parabola on the ancient stones.

It wasn’t blood – Miss Dimont could instantly tell – even though the body which lay beyond it was most certainly beyond resuscitation.

There he was, the much-adored Hector Roundtree, elegant tweed suit still clinging to his rangy body in just the way his tailor would have approved. A blue nosegay fresh in his buttonhole, his clear eyes looked sightlessly at the clouds above, which looked back down in disbelief at his inert form.

Hector’s mouth was open as if he were about to reveal the identity of his murderer but even if he’d managed to blurt it out with his final breath, the name would long since have been blown over the cliff top by the summer breeze. Time had passed.

Miss Dimont had beaten Terry, who’d driven up to Tall Trees in the Morris Minor, by a good five minutes – Devon lanes being what they are, especially in summer, a car is something of a liability. But with Herbert, Miss Dimont’s trusty moped, it had taken less than seven minutes from the offices of The Riviera Express to the murder scene. She felt quite pleased about that.

But then Terry loped through the door like an angry panther, grabbing at the Leica camera hung round his neck like a savage’s necklace.

“Out o’ the way,” he snarled at Judy, and with justification – she always got in the way in an emergency.