Read Online Just Desserts by Jan Jones - Free Book Online Page B

alertly at the mention of Lowdale. ‘Call me Penny, please. I’ll be happy to take it. What are you entering for the show?’
    â€˜Cakes. Loaves. Some of my hedgerow jam. To tell the truth I was going to give it a miss this year, what with the ice cream taking off, but your Lucinda gave me a rare talking to about use-it-or-lose-it and the money for library books benefiting us and the kids. Billy and Grandad still say I’m mad, but she’s right. You have to support the show, don’t you? Otherwise it folds. I’m having a trade stall too, so I ought to have faith in my own products being placed. It all gets the word out there and helps in the long run. Here’s Mrs Ingle’s address. London. Funny to think of her and Auntie Elsie getting up to all those antics, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Very strange,’ said Penny.
    â€˜Talking of London,’ said Leo casually. ‘I was in Hendon with my boy at the weekend and went to the Air Museum. They had a plane just like the one that crashed up here. Tiny thing, compared to today’s aircraft. Tell me again what Jack Scrivener said about that night?’
    Grandad Fell’s eyes unfocused. ‘It would have been round about this time of year, but dark and overcast. No more harvesting that day, so there we were in the Drovers when Jack comes in. That was a surprise in itself, because he didn't usually turn up until near closing. He might get caught for a round otherwise! ‘Plane’s come down,’ he said, jerking his head up the road. He said he didn’t hear it at first, what with the noise of the waves crashing, but then he looked up and saw a dark shape, then it seemed like a bit of it flew off, then there was this hissing boiling burst as it came down in the tarn.’
    â€˜A bit flew off?’ said Leo. ‘That wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper.’
    The old man cackled. ‘That would be due to Jack Scrivener having a win on the football pools next day and being rare confused when it came to the questioning.’
    Leo grinned. ‘It happens. There must have been a number of you in the pub. Did you not go up to the crash as soon as you heard? To see if anything could be done?’
    â€˜Jack said the tarn had swallowed the plane. He’d told the police. Nothing more we could do, so we got on with giving Andrew Collins a good send off.’
    â€˜You knew it was him? How?’
    â€˜We thought it must be, it being his cousin’s wedding next day and him having been borrowing aeroplanes to fly home since the beginning of the war.’
    Leo flashed a glance at Penny. So it was what they’d thought. Andrew Collins had ‘won’ a plane for the weekend and the flight had gone wrong.
    Penny, however, had seen the sly amusement in the old man’s face earlier. ‘Jack Scrivener doesn’t sound like the sort of chap who’d have a lot of money to spare for the football pools,’ she said. ‘Did he do them often?’
    The old blue eyes met hers. ‘Just that once, lass.’
    â€˜I knew it,’ said Leo as they left. ‘The aftermath of the crash was fixed. I knew that miserable, niggardly paragraph in the paper didn’t ring true. Normally you find a character like Jack Scrivener and you can’t shut them up.’ He stared at Penny, not really seeing her. ‘But why?’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Planes came down all the time in the early fifties. Pilots borrowed them illegally because that’s what they’d got used to. Why was this time different? Why would the authorities cover it up instead of making an example of Collins? Can we go to the tarn again?’
    There was wry understanding in her face. ‘Sure.’
    They drove the short distance to peaceful, serene Long Tarn. It was completely quiet. Dogs frolicked on the far side. There were kids skimming stones by the water’s edge. Any place less like the setting for a