Murder at the Seaside: A 1920s Cozy Mystery by Catherine Coles

Author:Catherine Coles [Coles, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inspired Press Limited
Published: 2024-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

“Please tell me you are close to finding little Josephine,” Aunt Em said, looking every one of her years. “I just can’t bear the thought that she is out there without adequate care.”

“And love,” Evelyn added. “Everyone who meets her loves that child but, of course, none more so than her parents. She must be missing her loved ones dreadfully.”

“I’m sure Tommy will come back from Pickering with all the answers.” Grace gave a small smile. “He’s so very clever.”

“I should warn you, my dear.” Evelyn looked at her sister-in-law with dread. She desperately didn’t want to talk to her about the hotel manager, but she had no choice. It was almost inevitable that Tommy would return to the hotel with more questions than answers after speaking to Mabel Benson. “Mr Williamson took Miss Benson back to her home.”

Grace ducked her head. “What does that have to do with me?”

“I am reliably informed that the man dared to kiss you yesterday.”

Aunt Em gasped. “The audacity of the man! He’s hotel staff. How dare he!”

“I would hope we would all be suitably outraged if the man in question was the Prince of Wales himself. A man’s station should not matter when he has overstepped propriety.” Evelyn spoke with no censure. After all, her initial reaction had been exactly the same as Aunt Em’s.

“What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” Aunt Em looked at Grace, the sympathy in her expression at odds with her words.

“He did kiss me,” Grace whispered. “I wasn’t expecting him to do that.”

“I understand he was whispering in your ear directly before he did that?”

“Oh, Ev!” Grace held up her hands to cover her burning cheeks. “How can you know that?”

“Come now, dear,” Aunt Em said. “You know that Tommy and Evelyn know everything. And what they don’t know, they soon find out. It really isn’t worth trying to keep secrets when they are around.”

“He’s very handsome,” Grace said with a slight smile.

“He’s a scoundrel!” Evelyn retorted, finding it hard to keep her patience with her sister-in-law. How could she not see how terrible his behaviour had been? “Your brother will be rightly furious.”

“We don’t have to tell him, do we?”

“Did you not listen to a word I just said?” Aunt Em patted Grace’s knee. “The sooner you tell the entire story, the better.”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with Josephine’s disappearance.”

“It might have nothing to do with Josephine’s kidnapping, but the fact remains that we cannot let the incident be swept underneath the carpet. Mr Williamson has quite exceeded what is expected of a gentleman.”

“Out with it!” Aunt Em urged. “How did you come to be in a situation where the man had an opportunity to steal a kiss?”

“We were talking about books,” Grace admitted. “He’s very clever, you know. He knows ever such a lot about literature.”

“This is what I find so difficult to understand,” Evelyn said. “How did you start conversing in the first place? How did he even know how much you enjoy books?”

“I was in the library one day,” Grace said.

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.