The Beekeeper's Uninvited Pallbearer
A beekeeper notices an extra pallbearer at her rival's funeral. The stranger disappears, leaving a jar of honey from a hive that was destroyed twenty years earlier.
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How it begins
There were seven pallbearers for a coffin that required six.
Mabel counted twice.
She knew five of the men. The sixth was the nephew from Bristol, whose shoes were too polished for the cemetery path. The seventh walked at the back with both hands free.
He was not carrying anything.
That was the first thing.
The second was the jar.
He left it on the wall beside Mabel's coat, carefully within reach, then stepped behind the yew tree as the vicar began speaking about a generous spirit.
Mabel looked at the coffin.
She and Arthur Peel had disagreed about everything from hive placement to whether a person should put lemon in honey cake. Generous spirit was a generous description.
When she looked back, the seventh man had gone.
The jar held dark amber honey.
Its label showed a little white orchard gate.
Mabel had not seen that label in twenty years.
She picked it up.
Beneath the name of the apiary, somebody had written a date in pencil. The year the orchard burned.
A gust turned the vicar's pages. One of the proper pallbearers reached to help. Mabel kept the jar inside her coat.
At the cars, Jonah the funeral driver checked his list.
"Did you lose somebody?" she asked.
"Not intentionally."
"The man at the back."
Jonah looked toward the yew.
"There wasn't anyone at the back."
Mabel held up the jar.
He did not smile.
The orchard had belonged to Arthur's brother. The fire had taken the hives, the packing shed and most of the explanation for why the brothers stopped speaking.
Honey kept well.
People did not.
Mabel unscrewed the lid.
The smell was wrong for an old jar. Bright, floral, almost green.
Fresh honey.
From an apiary that no longer existed.
Behind her, the nephew from Bristol had stopped beside the hearse.
He was looking at her hands rather than at the coffin.
Mabel screwed the lid back on.
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Outline and characters
Develop this idea
A village-beekeeper mystery can use honey as a clue without giving it impossible forensic powers. Labels, harvest dates, storage and local planting can establish a chain of ownership; keep any laboratory conclusion modest and earned. Mabel's rivalry with the dead beekeeper should complicate her sympathy. For your version, use a different rural craft with a long memory, then connect the current murder to a dispute people have spent years telling differently.
- Mabel counts an extra pallbearer at a rival beekeeper's funeral
- The stranger leaves a jar of honey with an obsolete apiary label
- Jonah confirms nobody hired the seventh bearer
- Mabel traces the jar to a hive destroyed in a disputed fire
- A family member claims the honey was a sentimental gift
- The dead beekeeper's records reveal an altered land boundary
- A second death is disguised as a beekeeping accident
- Mabel identifies what the honey's pollen could and could not prove
- The stranger returns with evidence of the original fire's witness
- Mabel exposes the recent killer without pretending the older feud was simple
Characters
- Mabel Thorne, 63. Beekeeper noticing the extra man at a rival's funeral
- Jonah Reed, 40. Funeral driver trying to identify an unlisted pallbearer
Series possibilities
- Mabel is asked to judge honey entered under the name of a beekeeper who died before the harvest.
