THE JUDGE AT SAINT JANE’S a gripping cozy murder mystery full of twists (Suzy Spencer Mysteries Book 4) by LIS HOWELL

Author:LIS HOWELL [HOWELL, LIS]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thriller and mystery
Published: 2022-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the Lord hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the Lord gone out before thee?

Judges 4:1

Thursday was a beautiful day — not with the confident golden warmth of the previous week, but with a fragile, pale, duck-egg-blue sky, peppered with small clouds. The sun was constant but precious. The leaves glowed orange and crimson, hanging precariously on the spindly branches. Even a breath would send them scattering, but for now they clung on.

Suzy felt so much better. Molly was going into Norbridge for the day to meet her girlfriends for a half-term shopping session, so a driving lesson was off the agenda, thank goodness. Robert had a break from filling in for Linda Finch on parish duties and announced he would tackle the garden before the winds blew up — there was a sense that the rare beauty of the day couldn’t last.

Suzy drove slowly up to the main road and along the Vale towards St Jane’s. Last night she had been heady with relief that Robert understood her suspicions. But they both needed to be realistic. There might be dozens of people in Workhaven and Norbridge who resented Deborah and wouldn’t mourn her death. It was Ellie and the London connection which narrowed the field.

And if both women were pushed to their deaths by the same killer, the person who killed them needed to have had easy access to Ellie’s flat, and — much more difficult — to the hostel.

Presumably Scott Jermyn had visited St Jane’s in the past, because of his enigmatic business meetings with Deborah. Jarrold McHugh was living nearby and could have somehow come into the grounds and gone through the back door and up the stairs. And Geoff Black was in and out, if not a lot, then frequently enough.

Other visitors were few and far between. The counsellors, social workers and GP would all need to log in with Joanne when they arrived. Suzy thought they were mostly women. But women couldn’t be discounted — as Robert had suggested, Joanne herself was a remote possibility. She was very fit, but if you took the Ellie connection seriously, it would take a lot of muscle to tip a healthy woman in her forties over a balcony railing. Suzy thought of Geoff Black, heaving boxes from his garage into his truck. No shortage of muscle there. The idea that he was Ellie’s lover had seemed ludicrous at first, but stranger things had happened.

Suzy reached St Jane’s and keyed in the code. The big gates swung open, but only wide enough to allow a car to creep through carefully. It would be watched on the monitor in Joanne’s office. Even pedestrians needed to be buzzed in. The code was changed every week according to a system devised by Deborah, which only Joanne understood. No one could get into the hostel unannounced — even on foot.

Suzy parked at the front of the house to test the security for herself.

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.