Read Online Souvenirs of Murder by Margaret Duffy - Free Book Online Page B

twenty years.’
    â€˜And your husband is rector here?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    â€˜Did you know the deceased?’
    â€˜Yes, but not as a friend. He was on the PCC and other local organizations.’
    â€˜What kind of person was he?’
    â€˜From what I knew of him not a very pleasant one. He would buttonhole one for information on this and that matter without even a good morning or a thank you. No manners at all.’
    â€˜You mentioned to us before that several people – five, I think you said altogether – had spoken to you, worried that because they’d had words with him they might be suspects. May I have their names?’
    Elspeth frowned. ‘I’ll have to think about that for a moment. It was before we went on holiday. We were away when it happened, you see.’
    I hid a smile. She had forgotten for a moment the real identity of the man to whom she was speaking. I have never been able to fathom whether it is the easy manner inviting confidence, or hypnosis, that results in witnesses and others telling him everything they know. With those who could be described as real criminals there is an entirely different approach.
    â€˜Shall I write them down?’ Elspeth offered. ‘I’ll find it easier to remember if I do.’
    I gave her the pad and pen and she wrote busily. ‘That’s the five but I have an idea there was someone else,’ she mused a couple of minutes later, giving us our coffee. ‘An unlikely person.’
    â€˜Unlikely?’ Patrick queried.
    â€˜Um.’
    â€˜Where were you when this person spoke to you?’
    â€˜I’m not sure. Oh, I know! It was in Sainsbury’s in Bath. That’s right, I saw Miss Trelawney and she told me that Melvyn Blanche had threatened to take her to court over her trees. She’s their neighbour and has what amounts to a small arboretum at the end of her garden. She’s a very knowledgeable lady about plants and trees and the ones she has are rare and lovely varieties. He told her he wanted most of them cut down as they took all his light.’
    â€˜Do they?’
    â€˜Not at all! They’re to the north east of his property so actually shelter his place from cold winds. She was very upset, as you can well imagine.’
    â€˜Is she on the cleaning rota?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yes, she is. Oh dear!’
    â€˜But an unlikely person to commit murder?’ Patrick queried.
    â€˜She’s gentle,’ Elspeth said. ‘A real lady from an old landed Cornish family. Vulnerable and the kind of person to be easily bullied.’
    â€˜Would she have had the trees felled just because of what he’d said?’
    â€˜Oh, no. They’re her children. I have an idea she talks to them.’
    â€˜ Not easily bullied then.’
    â€˜All right, in every other respect,’ Elspeth corrected.
    â€˜Were you ever invited to the Blanches’ place for dinner, or drinks?’
    â€˜Oh, no. I don’t think they ever entertained.’
    â€˜Do you know if there are any children?’
    â€˜I can’t remember them mentioning any. They’re not the kind of people you ask personal questions of.’
    â€˜Do you know anything about this black magic sect?’
    â€˜No, you’ll have to ask John when he comes back as he’ll have gone into Bristol by now. He deals with that. I don’t want to know about things like that.’
    â€˜But you must hear rumours,’ Patrick remarked gently. ‘The WI, the Mothers’ Union . . .’
    â€˜All I know is that it involves incomers. And we’re not talking about batty females who roll naked in the dew and concoct potions to cure warts but real Satanists.’
    â€˜Shame about no naked females,’ Patrick murmured, grinning at her and thus breaking the spell. ‘How terrorized by me were you on a scale of one to ten?’
    She thought about it.