Hamish MacBeth 01 (1985) - Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton

Author:M.C. Beaton
Format: epub, mobi

Day Five

A counsel of perfection is very easy advice to give, but is usually quite impracticable.

—Maxwell Knight, Bird Gardening

Alice started to dress hurriedly, although it was only seven in the morning. She wanted to escape from the hotel before they were besieged by the press again. They had started to filter in gradually, and by late evening they had grown to an army: an army of questioning faces. Alice’s juvenile crime loomed large in her mind. If Lady Jane could have found out about that, then they could too. Normally Alice would have been thrilled to bits at the idea of getting her photograph in the papers. But her murky past tortured her. Jeremy had been particularly warm and friendly to her the evening before. She felt sure he would not even look at her again if he found out. The major had howled at the hotel manager over the problem of the press, and the manager had at last reluctantly banned them. He was thoroughly fed up with the notoriety the murder had brought to his hotel and had hoped to ease the pain with the large amount of money the gentlemen of the press were spending in the bar. But guests other than the major had complained, guests who came every year. And so the reporters and the photographers were now billeted out in the village, most of them at a boarding house at the other end of the bay.

Alice was just on the point of leaving the room when the telephone began to ring. She stared at it and then suddenly rushed and picked it up. Her mother’s voice, sharp with agitation, sounded over the line. “What’s all this, luv? Your name’s in the morning papers. You didn’t even tell us you was going to such a place. We’re that worried.”

“It’s all right, Mum,” said Alice. “It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I know that, luv, but that woman that was murdered, her photo’s in the papers and she was around here last week, asking questions. Said she was writing a piece on young girls who had made the move to London and their reasons for doing it.”

She must have got all our addresses from Heather, thought Alice with a sudden sickening lurch of the heart. Heather even sent me the names of the other guests, sort of to make it sound social.

Her voice shrill with anxiety, Alice asked, “Did she find out anything about me being in court?”

“You was never in court, luv.”

“Yes. ‘Member? It was when I broke Mr Jenkins’ window and he took me to the juvenile court.”

“Oh, that. She didn’t ask me and I don’t suppose anyone around here remembers a silly little thing like that. She talked to Maggie Harrison, mind.”

Alice held tightly on to the phone. Maggie Harrison had been her rival for years. If Maggie could have remembered anything nasty about her, Alice, then Maggie would have undoubtedly told everything.

“Are you there?” Her mother’s voice sounded like a squawk. “I’m in a call box and the money’s running out.

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