MURDER ON A SPRING DAY: A light-hearted English whodunit mystery by Jon Harris

Author:Jon Harris [Harris, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Book Folks
Published: 2024-01-06T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

When Mr Peabody – that is Mr Peabody the planning inspectorate and not Mr Peabody the parish treasurer – entered the shop, Julia rather hoped he had come as a customer rather than in his official capacity. He had patronized the shop on occasion before, after all. However, the clipboard held firmly in both hands didn’t fill Julia with confidence.

He made his way up to the counter. He had a thin face with a rounded chin, thick glasses and thinning black hair on top. A familiar if not friendly face, he stood before Julia with his bolt-upright bearing and bid her a good morning.

“Good morning, Mr Peabody,” Julia returned. “What can I do for you?”

Mr Peabody adjusted his glasses and looked down at his clipboard. “I heard that you have plans to allow another party to buy out the remainder of your lease,” he said.

“Well it’s not decided yet,” Julia said. “They assured me that it was all within the rules though.”

“Oh, yes, certainly,” Mr Peabody said, with the closest Julia had seen him to expressing emotion. “For all Tammerick Property Services’ faults, they do tend to do everything by the book.”

Julia swallowed as that sank in. “What faults are those, exactly?”

“It’s really not for me to say,” Mr Peabody said.

Mr Peabody had a way of being unhelpful, it was never clear to Julia if that was intentional. But either way she doubted if she would wring anything useful out of him. “Well then. If everything is above board with them, what’s the reason for you calling today? Are you here to buy a book, Mr Peabody?” she asked, more in hope than expectation.

“Indeed no,” Mr Peabody said and gave a reedy laugh although Julia couldn’t see the joke herself. “No, I like to get myself ahead of events when I can. I’m just wondering what changes might be required in turning this unit from a bookshop into homes.”

With that, Mr Peabody drifted from the counter, making a circuit around the edge of one of the shelves while looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling.

Julia extracted herself from behind the counter and followed him as he went. “What exactly do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, there are so many things to consider. Entry points. Ventilation. Fire risks, although compared to the flammable nature of your merchandise I’m sure domestic units will be fine.”

Julia was close on his heels as he arrived at the front window and carefully examined the frames.

“But what do you mean? They want to buy this as a bookshop, don’t they?” she asked.

“Yes. Tammerick Property Services wish to buy this as a bookshop,” Mr Peabody said, making a quick note on his clipboard before moving on to look at the doorway.

“So they don’t want to convert it into homes?”

“They certainly do,” said Mr Peabody.

“But you just said…” Julia trailed off, with her finger raised in the air. One of them wasn’t making much sense in this conversation. She suspected it was him but wasn’t certain.

Mr Peabody gave a long sigh and lowered his clipboard to look directly at Julia.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.