Married to Murder by Lynda Wilcox

Author:Lynda Wilcox
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: British sleuth, Whodunit, Female sleuth, Amateur sleuth, Cozy mystery
Publisher: Lynda Wilcox
Published: 2016-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

It was a couple of days before I got around to tackling the research that Jerry had asked me to do, and then only because KD called and gave me the morning off.

“Don’t bother coming in today, dear. I’ve had a wretched night and now have a pounding headache. I’ve taken some painkillers and am going back to bed for an hour.”

She refused my offer to go and mop her fevered brow, so I wished her a speedy recovery, said I’d see her the next day, and put the phone down.

After another cup of coffee, I switched on the laptop and put pad and pen to the side, wondering who the supposedly elusive Mr de Wynter was and why Jerry had given the job of finding him to me.

When the machine was ready, I fed the name into a search engine and waited. Jerry hadn't seemed confident that I'd find anything, but within a couple of nanoseconds several hits showed up on my screen. At first convinced that the subject of my search was Jerry's cousin Martin, what I now read soon disabused me of that notion.

Martyn de Wynter was a stage magician and conman who, in 2001, pulled off the greatest disappearance since Shergar. Some magician indeed. It took a lot of diligent searching and a fair amount of back-tracking to uncover the fact that he had been born William Naismith in 1952 and that he'd made a career out of a childhood interest in magic. That and preying on gullible old ladies. Charged with fraud in early 2001 and due to face prosecution, he'd simply vanished. Pouff!

I logged on to the Crofterton Gazette's website and ploughed through the archives, discovering that de Wynter had been arrested by Detective Constable Farish. Ah-ha! So that explained Jerry's interest, but not his worrying about the man's whereabouts now. What was I missing?

You can hide behind a pen name, KD had said. I dithered for a moment, then picked up the phone and called my boss, hoping she was feeling better.

“I'm doing some research for Jerry, and I wondered if you could help. It involves a personal question.”

“Go on.”

“The other day we were talking about pen names. Is any part of your real name Kathleen Davenport?”

I held my breath. Silence.

“Yes,” she said. Just that.

“All right, thanks, KD.”

“You're welcome.”

She put the phone down and I immediately called And So To Wed.

“Well, I suppose so, yes,” Jenni Carpenter said, when I asked for the afternoon off. “No doubt you have a lot to do for your wedding.”

I didn’t disabuse her of the notion, nor did I admit that I couldn’t face the thought of another boring afternoon in her office.

I leaned back and stretched my arms above my head, twisting my neck left and right to ease the tension that had built up, then went back to my notes on de Wynter. Jerry, presumably, already knew much of what I’d found and what he wanted now was de Wynter's current whereabouts. That proved

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