Murder At Frog's Hollow by Karen Thurecht

Author:Karen Thurecht
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shawline Publishing Group Pty Ltd
Published: 2023-01-03T04:17:22+00:00

Half an hour later, Hamish and Rita were seated at the kitchen bench watching Wallace knead dough. His big hands moved quickly and expertly. The terrier sat on a seat by the bench watching him closely, alert in case some dough magically came his way.

‘I’m at my wit’s end,’ said Hamish. ‘I am no closer to knowing who killed Ah Chit.’

‘Go back to the beginning,’ said Wallace. ‘Tell me about each of the people surrounding Ah Chit before his death.’

‘There are the employees at the factory,’ began Hamish. ‘However, they say they were treated well by him. No one there seems to have any reason to wish him dead.’

‘Sam Hung profits by his death,’ said Rita. ‘And we now know he was unaccounted for at the time of the killing.’

‘Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one,’ said Wallace, pounding the dough.

Hamish brushed away a cloud of flour that rose in front of his face.

‘There are plenty of people who had reason to wish him dead,’ said Hamish. ‘Foong May hated him. Although I doubt she’d have the strength to kill him herself.’

‘The next step is to either build a case around Sam Hung as the killer or eliminate him,’ said Wallace, passing a small blob of dough to the terrier. ‘Find out where he was that night at ten o’clock.’

‘Bellamy says he questioned him. He insists he was at the Pearl. Others maintain he was at the Pearl the whole evening.’

‘If he wasn’t there, someone will have seen him elsewhere,’ said Wallace.

Hamish remembered the boys on the street selling papers. They said they saw a figure in black but no one asked them about Sam Hung. Even if the boys who raided Foong May’s garden didn’t see him, some of the others might have.

‘Come on,’ said Hamish, suddenly jumping to his feet. ‘We’re going to find the newspaper boys. If Sam Hung was out there, one of them will have seen him.’ The terrier didn’t shift his brown eyes from the dough now being thrown into ceramic bowls to rise.

Rita also eyed the fresh dough longingly.

‘You can enjoy Wallace’s fresh bread later,’ said Hamish.

Rita grabbed her hat and gloves and followed him. ‘We just climbed this wretched hill,’ she said. ‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow?’

‘No, it can’t,’ said Hamish. It was his turn to tug at her arm. ‘No one has asked the boys if they saw Sam Hung in town that night.’

They walked back down to Queen Street first. It was quieter now that the crowd of shoppers and workers were snugly in their homes awaiting the evening meal. The night crowd were not yet out.

Queen Street was where most of the boys would be at this time of the evening, hoping to catch the workers on their way home. They would scatter throughout the remaining streets and Frog’s Hollow later in the night when the revellers were leaving the pubs and gambling dens.

Hamish spotted Batten and Davy first. The boys greeted them enthusiastically and Hamish handed over a coin for a newspaper.

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