Read Online Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses by Catriona McPherson - Free Book Online Page B

said. I leaned in close across the marmalade pot and milk jug as Alec had, but the dining room at the Crown was hardly twelve feet square and the six breakfast tables were huddled together in the middle of it, leaving room for monstrous sideboards all around, and Miss Shanks’s performance had gathered the crowd’s attention at last, the maid’s little coda doing nothing to disperse it either. Eight pairs of eyes were watching us now, while eight pairs of ears, I imagined, were twitching with fascination.
    Alec shovelled in the last two forkfuls of scrambled egg and tomato, drained his coffee cup and sat back.
    ‘Care to join me for a stroll around the harbour wall?’ he said. ‘And a chat?’
    I dabbed my lips and stood.
    ‘Excellent suggestion,’ I said and we made a poor show of a casual exit, gathering speed until we were fairly trotting through the narrow passageway, making for the front door.
    ‘What in the blazes?’ I said as we reeled out into a perfect late spring morning, the sea sparkling, a light breeze just ruffling the air and a few white clouds scudding across the sky. It was nine thirty and the harbour was quiet, the fleet gone for the day, only a handful of old men, their seagoing days long past now, standing around, sucking on their pipes and watching the horizon through narrowed eyes. It would be hours on end before any boats returned, but I supposed they might be watching for passing ships; at least, for the sake of their day’s entertainment, I hoped so.
    ‘She leapt away in horror last night when she heard you were married,’ Alec said. He had his pipe lit, having come downstairs with it filled in readiness, as usual. ‘But this morning, after finding out somehow – but how? – that you’re here with me, she decides you’ll do?’
    ‘She and Mrs Brown, the housekeeper,’ I reminded him. ‘And what was the parlour maid on about, for heaven’s sake?’ I took out my cigarette case and turned away from the breeze to light one. The convalescent widow was just descending the steps and she gave an ostentatious and surely ceremonial cough, waving her hand in front of her face as though my little puff of smoke were asphyxiating her.
    ‘Hardly a surprise,’ she said. ‘To find you smoking on the street like a flapper!’ Alec bristled but it did not trouble me. Grant, who despairs of my tweeds at times and wishes fervently that I would take up life in London where they are unknown, would be delighted to learn that such a word had been used of me.
    ‘I’ve been coming to the Crown every May for twelve years,’ the widow went on, ‘but I should hesitate to return now.’
    ‘Righty-ho,’ I said. The morning was beginning to take on a tinge of unreality for me.
    ‘I’ve never seen such a display,’ she went on.
    ‘Such a display as two people breakfasting together in a public dining room?’ said Alec. ‘Well, I’m glad we could add to your life’s excitements.’
    ‘A hotbed of gossip and intrigue,’ said the widow. Her companion had come out after her with a shawl, and was timidly holding it out towards her employer, almost jabbing her with it, as though she hoped the fleecy wool would simply adhere to the woman’s coat shoulders without the one of them taking the trouble of donning the thing or the other finding the nerve to apply it to her person in the usual way.
    ‘I require new-laid duck eggs,’ she went on.
    ‘For a digestive condition,’ the companion put in.
    ‘Aren’t duck eggs richer than ordinar—?’ said Alec.
    The widow swept on. ‘And the cook at the school—’
    ‘Mrs Brown?’ I fell on this very slight particle of sense.
    ‘Mrs Brown indeed supplies them to her niece who—’
    ‘Ahhhhh!’ said both Alec and I. Then we frowned, in unison, as though we had been practising.
    ‘—repays the favour, it appears, with gossip about her patrons, carried right back up the hill and spread around. Stop dabbing me with that shawl, Enid, do! Give it here,