Tall Men and Strangers, an Abigail Button Cozy Mystery Romance #1

About the Book

Abigail (Abi) Button is thirty-one, and in spite of kissing a few frogs she has yet to find her prince. On the lookout for a tall, dark stranger (but not too strange) she realises he has been living locally all the time. It’s just that she has not really noticed Jack Thornley until she meets him in her road late one evening, standing by an emergency ambulance.

Abi’s elderly neighbour is Ivy Smith, and she’s ninety-one. She gives Abi a small silver key, telling her to keep it secret from her nephew Jack who is helping to care for her. What the key opens, Abi has no idea.

Ivy worries that she hears someone moving around her house at night, when she should be alone. Abi tries to reassure her by saying it’s only the old house settling at night, or noisy neighbours, but Ivy Smith is unconvinced. Soon Abi is unconvinced, too.

As Abi’s friendship with Jack develops, he invites her to his local church where she meets Danny Wells. Much to her embarrassment she remembers kissing Danny at school. Old memories start to surface, threatening to put the relationship with Jack in jeopardy.

A cozy mystery romance taking place in a small English town, told by Abi Button.

Tall Men and Strangers

An Abi Button Cozy Mystery Romance #1

by

Lizzie Lewis ©2020

This eBook ISBN: 978-1-912529-48-3

Also available as a paperback

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912529-54-4

Published by

White Tree Publishing

Bristol

UNITED KINGDOM

wtpbristol@gmail.com

Full list of books and updates on

https://whitetreepublishing.com/

Tall Men and Strangers is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this abridged edition.

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Book

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

Epilogue

More Abi Button Books

About White Tree Publishing

Chapter 1

I’ve not kissed many frogs, and it comes as no surprise that not one of them turned into any sort of prince. I’ve also kissed a couple of toads, and a slimy slug ‒ of which the least said the better. To misquote Jane Austen, It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that it is the dream of every girl to meet a tall, dark stranger. As long as he’s not too strange, of course.

I’m calling myself a girl, because at thirty I think I still belong in that category. Okay, thirty-ish. Thirty-one to be exact. I’m not thirty-two until next month.

I met my tall, dark stranger for the first time six months ago. His name is Jack. Jack Thornley. I’d seen him coming and going a couple of times at the house of an elderly lady a bit further down my road, but we didn’t get a chance to speak, and he’d not really registered on my mind as being a possibility.

The elderly lady’s name? Ivy Smith. She turned out to be Jack Thornley’s aunt. The first time I noticed Jack properly was late one evening when I became aware of a flashing blue light blasting through my downstairs curtains at about ten o’clock. Being nosy, purely in the interest of supporting the neighbours, I poked my nose out of my front door and saw an ambulance outside one of the houses. And the tall, dark-haired man was talking to one of the ambulance team.

Being a little bit more nosy I went as far as my small front gate. Then filled with a desire to offer maximum neighbourly assistance, should it be needed, I went closer to the house. And that was when Jack spotted me. He clearly recognised me, because he came forward with an expression that was half concern for whatever the reason there was for the ambulance, coupled with a friendly smile.

I think I’ve seen you around here before, he said. It’s my Auntie Ivy. He pointed to the house. It’s her heart.

Is she...?

Dead?

I nodded, feeling surprised that he was even questioning what I might mean. After all, with an ambulance outside I was hardly going to ask if his aunt was about to go on a cruise.

I’m Jack, he said, coming closer. Jack Thornley.

I’m Abi, I said, wondering whether to shake his hand. Abi Button.

I shook his hand with a mix of enthusiasm and restraint, if such a thing is possible to achieve. Abi Thornley, I found myself saying, but surely only to myself. Mrs Abi Thornley. Yes, it sounded good. I’m a bit of a traditionalist about these things. What was I thinking of? Here was an old lady, possibly dead, and I was contemplating marriage to a man I’d only seen a few times before, and never spoken to even once.

It’s touch and go, he said solemnly.

That was a relief. A double relief. Not only was his aunt still alive, but I obviously hadn’t been talking out loud.

She’s ninety-one, he explained. Too old for more heart surgery. It’s only her medicine that’s keeping her alive. I’d better go in. You can come as well if you like.

I have to admit to a horror of the dead, or the nearly dead, but keeping close to Jack Thornley was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. I’d already scoped out his left hand, lit by the flashing blue lights, and there was definitely no ring. I’ve heard that men do the same with women. I’m sure they do, although a wedding band on a woman’s hand doesn’t always seem to be a deterrent ‒ if what my married friends tell me is anything to go by.

Ivy Smith’s house is on the other side of my road, in the middle of a long brick terrace, each house built with a small bay window. The row of houses was constructed in the nineteenth century to house workers at the nearby cotton mill. The mill is long closed, and the houses are now privately owned. They are a mix of the well maintained and the not so well maintained.

Facing them on my side of the road is a small area of wild woodland, with railings to protect the residents from the wild bears that live there. Just joking, but I used to think there was a strong possibility of bears jumping out at me when I was really small ‒ and not so really small.

My house is on the other side, at one end. It has an open space directly opposite, now used as a children’s play area, and behind my house is the rest of the woodland that is open to everyone. That’s where wildlife comes from that visits my garden. I have an infrared camera that senses movement, and records anything passing, including foxes and the occasional hedgehog. I’m certainly not a natural history expert, but running the video on my computer passes the time when I’m bored. More of that later, because the camera helped solve a major mystery.

My other hobby is cryptic crosswords, which I hardly ever complete. Well, actually I don’t think I’ve ever completed one, and end up finding the answers on the internet. My friend and business partner Melanie Upton calls it cheating. I tell her I do it for research into the thinking behind the mind of the person setting the clues. But I do have to confess leaving the newspaper with the completed puzzle on one of the coffee shop tables, folded to reveal my handiwork.

My house was originally the house of a mill foreman. Although small, it is detached, with a large bay window on the ground floor, as would have befitted a man who held a position that was superior to the manual workers who had the small bay window. At the moment I’m living on my own, but that may change soon.

I was born in the house, and it was only when I reached my teens that I realised there were social distinctions between any of the houses in the road. At the far end of the road, also on my side, set back in its own garden is a much larger house that would have belonged to the mill manager.

That house is built up from the ground, with stone steps leading up to the front door. There’s a basement with barred windows that you can see from the road, because the front garden has been cut away to let the light in. When it was new, it must have been an impressive dwelling ‒ but no longer.

The man who lives there now is called Mr Isaac Newton. Yes, for all I know he might be the original Isaac Newton. He’s rumoured to be an eccentric millionaire who lived there with his mother. Well, if he’s a millionaire, I’m surprised he hasn’t spent some of his money on looking after his house which has blocked gutters, and buddleia plants growing in the chimney stacks. I’m assuming he’s still alive, but the curtains are never open ‒ they haven’t been open for years and years. Perhaps someone ought to go inside and investigate. But not me.

The old man’s mother died many years ago. When I was at school we used to tell each other scary stories about the house, and dare each other to go there after dark, knock on the door and run away. I don’t think anyone did. Certainly I didn’t. We told each other various tales such as the mother was a witch, a vampire or a zombie who was a prisoner in the basement, which is why there were bars on the windows.

One poor kid even believed the woman sometimes snatched unlucky children who happened to be passing and boiled them alive in the back garden. He didn’t get many backers for that story ‒ although it was on our minds whenever we hurried past the house after dark.

Today, I still get the shivers walking past. Mr Newton never married, but I heard he has nephews and nieces who are lazy, and only visit their uncle whenever they want money. But that might be nothing more than idle gossip. Certainly I’ve never seen any visitors.

That’s the mill manager’s house. The mill owner, of course, had his house well away from the riffraff, on its own estate with numerous trees, and a large entrance gate to a long drive. Judging by the visitors’ cars parked in the driveway, it still belongs to someone with a fair bit of money.

I’m the proud owner of my small detached house. Yes, lucky me. My father transferred the deeds to my name when he took early retirement after collecting a massive golden handshake. He and my mother moved to Spain five years ago, permanently, to a house perched on a hillside. It has a breathtaking view over a small village with red terracotta roof tiles, with the blue of the Mediterranean sparkling in the distance. It’s a house where we spent many happy holidays as I grew up, and being quite a handyman my father turned it from an undesirable wreck into a smart and desirable villa.

He also did considerable work on the house that is now mine, including completely renovating the bathroom. The tiles had been my mother’s choice, and whenever I invited friends over when I was in my teens I was embarrassed by the art deco patterns. But now I love them. Am I turning into my mother already? No, that’s not possible.

Sorry, I got diverted. Back to Jack Thornley, with lips that were unquestionably waiting for a kiss he certainly wasn’t going to get from me just yet. He had already led me into his aunt’s narrow hallway. Trying to look calm, but inwardly feeling sick, I peeped through the open doorway into the back room where the