The Jam Competition Has a Body Count

How it begins

The spoon was wrong.

Vera noticed it while everyone else was looking at the trophy.

In the first photograph, the chief judge held a silver teaspoon with a twisted handle. In the second, taken perhaps twenty seconds later, he held a plain one.

By the third photograph, he was no longer smiling.

Vera closed the image and sat back from her computer.

Outside the village hall, the harvest bunting still hung between two lamp posts. Nobody had known whether taking it down would seem respectful or theatrical, so they had left it flapping in the rain.

Nina arrived with a casserole.

"You don't have to eat it now," she said. "You just have to own something that isn't toast."

Vera moved a stack of lens cloths from the table.

"Look at these."

Nina leaned toward the screen.

"The jam?"

"The hand."

They studied the photographs in silence.

"He put the spoon down," Nina said.

"Where?"

The judging table was visible from end to end. Six jars. Six plates. A folded napkin. No spare spoon.

In the background, a woman held a tray at shoulder height, blocking the view of the chief judge's left side.

Vera enlarged the picture enough to read the label on the nearest jar.

A small pencil star marked its lower corner.

She had seen that star before.

Not at the competition.

At the funeral reception for the garden treasurer, three weeks earlier, an empty preserving jar had stood beside the collection tin. Nina had used it for flowers.

Vera opened the earlier folder.

There it was.

Same label. Same star. Same tiny chip beneath the rim.

Nina put down the casserole.

"Please tell me that's common."

Vera looked at the three photographs again.

The judge's smile. The tray. The changed spoon.

"No," she said. "And I think someone counted on us looking at the prize."