Small Town Christmas (Some Very English Murders Book 6) (13 page)

“I do have a nippy little convertible,” Linda said. She
seemed ill at ease. There was another awkward pause as she sipped at her drink.
“Alas, I am finding it somewhat difficult to get in and out of lately.”

“You’re not so old,” Penny blurted out, and then wanted to
stab herself with a fork. The tension of trying to make polite conversation
seemed to make ridiculous statements almost inevitable.

Linda snorted. “Not so old – no, not so old. But…”

She looked down.

She was ill.

Penny saw it in a flash. That layer of make-up was to
disguise the ravages of illness or perhaps aggressive treatments; the care
Linda took in her clothing and her presentation was her mask to show the world
that she was all right.

In a low voice, which she hoped was sympathetic because she
certainly felt sympathy, she said, “Linda, is there anything I can do to help?”

Linda sniffed. “Is it so obvious?” she whispered.

“No, not at all.”

Linda’s usually straight shoulders sagged. “There is one
thing that you can do,” she said. “Don’t tell a soul.”

Penny regarded her, and then said, “Right. You can’t take
the bus home, Linda. Let me give you a lift, and if you feel up to it, you can
come over to look at the work I’ve done.”

“But–”

“Yes, I insist. And yes, I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

* * * *

“So if you weren’t doing your Christmas shopping, what were
you doing in Lincoln?” Penny said as they walked to her car.

There was an awkward pause. Penny realised, too late, what
Linda was going to say.

“I was up at the hospital. Usually my husband takes me but
it’s been so regular and he had to attend a family emergency of his own.”

“I am
so
sorry. Ignore me. I have a huge mouth and I
really ought to think before I speak,” Penny said.

“Yes, you ought.”

Ouch. But fair.
Penny fumbled with the car keys and
unlocked the doors, and went to the passenger side to help Linda in.

“I do appreciate this,” Linda said.

“It’s no problem at all.” Privately, Penny was worried that
the half hour journey back to Upper Glenfield was going to be a long, tedious
wasteland of stilted conversation. Still, she knew she was doing the right
thing. She reminded herself that it was a small kindness that meant a lot.

Her prediction was correct. Neither of them spoke for the
first ten minutes as Penny negotiated her way out of Lincoln, fighting through
the one-way system until they were clear of the town centre and into the
still-busy suburbs.

Finally, Linda found something to pick on. “I wouldn’t have
come this way,” she said.

“It’s the way I usually come.”

Linda sniffed. “Oh, yes, you’re not local though, are you?
You should have kept on that road and then turned left. It’s a cut-through past
the airfield. It knocks at least three minutes off your journey.”

“I’m really not so busy that three minutes is significant,”
Penny said. “But I will bear it in mind.”

“I am busy,” Linda said, but there was a tone in her voice
that made Penny glance sideways. Linda’s face was drawn and tight, and she
stared out of the window with a glazed and fixed glare. “Or at least, I want to
be busy. I am supposed to be busy. That’s who I am, you know? Busy, capable,
efficient Linda.”

“You’re retired now, is that right?” Penny asked.

“I am. I was an agricultural secretary for many years.”

“Wow. I haven’t even heard of such a thing.” Penny tried to
imagine what a farm secretary might do. Write down lists of cows? Send letters
to farming magazines?

“It’s big business, around here,” Linda explained, growing
more animated. “The arable farms are huge, far bigger than stock farms in the
hillier areas. The growers have a small workforce because it’s so mechanised
but the actual running of the operations is tightly controlled. A lot of my job
was dealing with budgets and finances. There was also an awful lot of health
and safety, and legal stuff, and keeping up with European standards and so on.
Not to mention working with the supermarkets! Oh, don’t get me started on
them…
”
and she proceeded to rant at length about last-minute order cancellations,
unreasonable quality standards, and pressure on prices.

She gradually ran out of steam at the end of a tirade about
parsnips.

“Well,” Penny said. “That was an eye-opener. No wonder you
are so efficient at everything.”

“I loved it,” Linda said wistfully. “It must be a family
trait. I totally understand why Clive felt so bereft after he retired, and why
he tried to get involved in everything. But he lacked any graces. His manner
was awful.”

And yours isn’t?
Penny thought. “But you keep busy,”
she said aloud.

“I do. I try. But this blasted illness…”

“And is the treatment working?” Penny asked. It seemed safe
to say something if Linda had already brought it up.

“It is,” Linda said. “To be honest, the nurses are
wonderful and everything is going to be all right.” She spoke with fierce
determination. “I will be better. I
will
. It’s just that I feel so tired
all the time, right now, and it drives me potty.”

“Why don’t you ask for help?” Penny said. “You can’t keep
on forcing yourself to meet everyone’s expectations.”

“I will
not
have people talking about me and I
certainly won’t have people feeling sorry for me,” Linda said fiercely.

“Yes, but–”

“No! Absolutely not. You must not tell anyone, Penny. You
promised me. I can’t stand the looks that people will give me. I must carry on
as always. The police were asking me about where I was, on the night Clive
died. I was asleep! I had literally driven off in a fearful strop after Clive’s
outburst, and parked up in a lay-by, and slept like a log for over an hour.
When I woke up, I felt dreadful, and I drove home and had …”

Penny waited. They were nearly back at Glenfield now. She
peeked sideways at Linda.

“…I had a bit of a meltdown at my husband,” she concluded
in a whisper.

“That’s understandable,” Penny said. “Being ill is so very
stressful.”

“But don’t you see how bad that looks? He told the police
the truth, of course. Well, he didn’t mention my illness. He knows how I feel
about it. We don’t even talk about it at home. I simply won’t. He said to the
police that I had not come home until late, and that I was distressed when I
got home. That’s all he said, but it makes me look guilty!”

You do indeed,
Penny thought. “But surely you
yourself have told the police about your illness?”

“Of course not! I don’t trust a single one of them. They
all gossip. It will be all over town.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Penny said. “They have ethical
standards of confidentiality.”
Which I have never abused in the past
,
she thought, and hoped she wasn’t blushing at her lie. “It will go in your
favour if you tell them the truth.”

Linda snorted. “I don’t believe that. They will probably
add it to their motives that they have already pinned on me. Maybe they think
that I think I would inherit from him or something. I won’t, of course. But the
police are rather stupid.”

“They are not,” Penny said hotly.

“You would say that. You are too close to that Cath
Pritchard. How can you trust being friends with her?”

“Because she is a nice person.”
Unlike you.
“Shall I
drop you at your house?”

“Please. Turn left here. You can drive up to the bottom of
the path.”

Penny gritted her teeth and pulled up outside Linda’s
house. She decided not to remind Linda about the flyers that she wanted to
view. Penny was not in the mood to spend any more time with Linda than she
absolutely had to. She hoped that Linda wouldn’t suddenly remember, and invite
herself over to Penny’s house.

Penny held the car door open for Linda and watched her as
she made her way up the path. She paused at the top, and Penny held her breath.

But Linda just waved, thanked her, and went inside.

I have done my good deed for the day,
Penny told
herself as she drove home.
That probably counts for the week, to be fair.

Good stuff has to happen to me now, right? That’s how karma
works.

 Sadly it doesn’t seem to be how my life works.

“I am taking some time for
me
,” Penny told Kali.

Kali was splayed on her back on the sofa, her belly exposed
to the world. The heating had been on in the house all day and the atmosphere
was toasty and warm. The dog looked unconcerned by Penny’s declaration. They
had returned from a walk just half an hour ago, and now Kali was settling down
for the night.

But Penny was not. It was Wednesday, and it was a clear
night. It was also moonless, and she had learned that a moonless night was the
best time to photograph stars. She had been talking about undertaking some
night photography, and she was determined to do it. She was done with being
helpful to other people – for a few hours, at any rate.

She struggled back into many layers of clothing. Linda’s
recent revelations were preying on Penny’s mind. She didn’t like being the only
one who knew about Linda’s illness. She knew she had to respect the woman’s
confidence, of course.

Yet if the information pertained to the murder
investigation, in any way, then she had a duty to tell the police.

And she found Linda’s wilful intransigence infuriating.
After all, if Linda told the police the truth, it would make Linda look like
less of a suspect! Penny shook her head in exasperation. Linda was crazy not to
see it that way.

When Penny went to pull her boots on, Kali shifted off the
sofa and came to see what was going on. She sat and looked curiously at Penny,
wondering if she had to go out for another walk. She was always up for
adventures, but Penny sent her back to the living room.

“Guard the house,” she told the dog.

Kali sighed, snuffled, and curled up on the sofa once more.

* * * *

Penny felt a little jumpy as cars zipped past. She
remembered the incident with the red car very clearly, and she experienced a
contrary sense of relief when she left the main road and started down a dark,
unlit track. It felt safer being away from people.

She told herself that she wasn’t worried about the previous
incident. The police had opened, and perfunctorily closed, the case. It was
deemed to have been an accident, or a random chance event. She would
not
be
changed by it.

She pulled out her head torch and turned it on, and it was
enough to light the way safely.

The lack of clouds made the air very cold. It was going to
freeze, she knew, and already the grass at the side of the track was rimmed
with white. The water droplets in the air froze when they came into contact
with vegetation, creating a magical hoar frost.

She liked the way her torch lit up the sparkling outlines
of white-lined trees, and she pulled out her camera long before she reached the
spot she had been aiming for. She wasn’t going to delve back into the deep
woods, not on her own in the dark, but she wanted to go a little way along the
path towards the badger setts and see if she could take some interesting shots
of dark shadows, silhouettes and the like.

Now that she was away from the traffic, it was silent. At
least, she thought it was silent as she tramped along, her boots crunching on
the freezing ground. But when she stopped walking, the tiny noises of the woods
at night flooded into her hearing. She paused to take it all in.

There was rustling in the undergrowth to her left. There
would be a sudden rush of it, then a pause, then another outbreak of leafy
whispers. She imagined some small creature darting along. From a distance she
heard a cooing sound, which she thought was an owl. There was a thud deep in
the trees which startled her. Something hunting, perhaps, or just an acorn
falling.

She went on, climbing up a raised bank that ran alongside
the path. From here, she could see the stars up above, with the dark tree line
like a smear at the bottom edge. It framed the shot in an unusual way, and she
set up her new tripod to capture the scene.

Behind her, a twig snapped. She stopped and peered into the
dark. She had dimmed her head torch slightly, to let her eyes adjust better to
the lack of light.

There was nothing there.

I am so jumpy
, she thought.
This is madness.
Relax!

She crouched down and began taking some photographs,
adjusting the shutter speed and bracketing the shot. Her preview screen showed
nothing but a dull blackness, but she remembered Jared’s advice and knew she
needed to see them on her computer at home to appreciate her work.

When she was done, she picked up her stuff but kept the
tripod legs extended. She slung her bag over her back and walked on, staying at
the top of the banking. The track was on her right and the trees were to her
left.

Another twig snapped behind her, and this was so close that
she stifled a squeak of surprise. She glanced back, just to humour her own
sense of panic as she told herself,
Look, silly! There’s nothing there!

But there
was
something there.

It was the figure of a person, all muffled and disguised in
a hat and scarf and coat so that she could not even see if they were male or
female. Their arm rose up and there was something long and dark in their hand.

Penny froze for a split second.

It was enough for the assailant to bring the object down
upon her head.

Penny threw up her hand almost at the same moment, and she
moved quickly enough to be able to stop most of the force of the blow as the
object in the attacker’s hand connected with her camera tripod with a metallic
clang. She screamed, then, as loudly as she could, and kicked forward with her
booted foot and caught them on their knee.