The Lavender Lady by Faith Martin

Author:Faith Martin [Martin, Faith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe book cosy mystery and crime
Published: 2019-12-07T22:00:00+00:00

chapter and then turn it off and concentrate on the business at hand.

And if she’d stopped to think about that, she might have realized that, subconsciously at least, she wasn’t expecting anything to happen during the hours of broad daylight, despite Corwin’s assurances that phenomena weren’t restricted to the hours of darkness. So, perhaps it was because of that, or perhaps because she was so engrossed in her favourite form of fiction, that it took a little while to come to Effie’s attention that she was actually smelling something.

Something floral and very familiar, in fact.

Lavender.

For a second, Effie simply froze where she was, staring down at printed words that no longer mattered. Then her head shot up and she looked wildly around and about her, an icy sensation spreading its way up her spine and leaving her feeling as if a cold hand was clutched around the base of her neck.

But just one quick, manic, wild-eyed look informed her that the room was totally empty. Of course it was. There was no ghostly figure of an old woman standing by her bed, or lying beside it, which was how Claudia had been found. There was no moaning, or mist, or rattling of chains.

Effie blinked, and her breath shot out of her in a noisy exhale.

Her heart was pounding though, making her feel slightly light-headed.

Automatically, she half-rose, her legs feeling a little jellied at the knees and alien beneath her. OK, Effie, get a grip, she told herself firmly. There’s nothing and nobody here. Although twilight had fallen, the room was still perfectly visible.

OK, what should she do now?

Be calm. Be sensible. Do your job.

She found herself, ridiculously, nodding like one of those toy dogs in the back of car windows. She’d also been unknowingly holding her breath again, because suddenly she was obliged to take a deep breath.

Along with being so sensible, it would probably be a good idea to breathe as well, girl, a mocking little voice piped up somewhere in the back of her head.

Slowly putting away her book, she forced herself to reason things out. OK, first things first. Was she simply imagining it? That was the most likely explanation, of course. Just because her conscious mind hadn’t been thinking about Claudia, or about being in the same room where the woman had been found dead, that didn’t mean to say that her subconscious mind hadn’t been at work. In fact, she would hardly be human if it hadn’t been, right?

So perhaps her mind was playing tricks.

Slowly and carefully she drew in another breath through her nose. No. There was no mistaking it. Effie could definitely smell lavender.

Her eyes shot around the room, frantically seeking its source. But there were no bowls of potpourri, no bars of soap or talc or anything else like that in the room. Of course not — she knew from listening to the others that all such sources of possible contamination had long since been removed.

OK. So perhaps someone had secreted a

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