Chapter 1
My name is Libitina Shelley Holmes, but I go by the name Shelley. Libitina means - wait for it, ‘Roman Goddess of funerals and death’ and you ask why does she work in a cemetery? My name predetermined my destiny.
I am not sure if my parents liked me or wanted me, so I asked my mother why they called me Libitina Shelley Kelly.
“We liked the sound of it,” was her answer. They were excellent parents, despite their choice of name. My brother had it worse. They called him Richard Hedley Kelly and his nickname was “dick head”.
Then I married a man named Robert Holmes. May he rest in peace. The police officer who investigated Robert’s death was Darryl Beech. He had the nerve to imply I conspired to kill my husband.
Because my name is Shelley Holmes, my nickname became “Sherlock”. So, in keeping with my nickname, I named the stray black cat that graced my doorstep one Friday the 13th, “Watson”.
Watson is now seven. He appeared from no-where on an anniversary of my husband’s death. My husband and I were good together for 25 years, but we could not have children.
Watson and I often watch “Who done it” TV and read murder mysteries in our spare time, making us knowledgeable in that department.
A friend gave me my other cat, Crumpet, a year or two after my husband died, to keep me company. She is twelve and has pretty tortoise shell markings and loves to join me for breakfast, where she nibbles on a small piece of crumpet lathered in butter. That is how she got her name. This is our morning ritual. As you will see, I am a creature of habit.
I have been working at the Perilgate Cemetery for seven years now. It is a large cemetery with a crematorium in the city of Tymesup.
You would think it is a depressing place to work, but it is quite the opposite. My fellow work mates have a wicked sense of humour, and if you overlook the headstones, the grounds are serene, with trees, grass, gardens and some wildlife. There is very little life in the cemetery except the occasional rabbit and plenty of birds. Speaking of flying, you won’t find me anywhere near the place after dark when the residents come out to play and do their Michael Jackson Thriller dance. I could probably handle Casper and his friendly friends, though.
I often walk in my lunch break and nothing unusual has occurred for the past six years. This year, for some reason, I stumbled upon dead bodies.
You might consider this a normal hazard of working in a cemetery, but usually the dead bodies that are in coffins or caskets with their cause of death already determined.
They were not the bodies I stumbled across. The ones I encountered were of the freshly dead variety and in relatively good shape compared to the other residents.
I was reintroduced to Darryl Beech when I stumbled upon the first suspicious death in a string of deaths.
