The Magic Chair Murder by Diane Janes

Author:Diane Janes [Diane Janes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2017-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

NINETEEN

As she rode home in the bus, Fran found that she was able to dredge up hazy memories of the Halfpenny Landing murders. That was what the papers had christened the case, after the name of the house in which the crime had taken place. An ironic sort of name, she thought, considering the value of the lakeside pleasure palace in question. She knew now where she had seen the house in the framed photograph that she had appropriated from Linda’s sitting room. It wasn’t associated with a famous author but with a notorious local murder: a case she had vaguely followed via the newspapers almost fifteen years ago, when she had still been at school.

Here at least lay the solution to the source of Linda Dexter’s wealth and the reason why her sister’s circumstances had been so different to her own … but while resolving one set of questions, it posed a variety of others. As soon as she got home, Fran sat down at her big old desk in the parlour and wrote down as much of her conversation with Mrs Harper as she could remember, then she read it through, making additions and corrections as she went. As she was doing so she heard the faint slam of a car door through the open window and, having raised her head enough to see out of the window, she uttered a word which her mother would have disapproved of. There was a blue Austin 7 parked at the gate and Stephen Latchford had just got out of it. She abandoned her notebook and pencil on the desk and fled into the kitchen. What luck that Ada had taken an extra half day to visit a sick relative, which meant that there was no one to answer the front door and no need for explanations either.

A moment later there was a brisk rat-tat-tat on the front door knocker. If she ignored it, he would have to go away. She waited in the kitchen and, sure enough, the sound came again. Her heart had begun to hammer in her chest. Stupid, she thought, because he will have to give up and go away in a minute. In the meantime, she would cut herself a sandwich for lunch. She had placed the loaf on the breadboard, positioned the bread knife carefully and began to saw through the crust. It didn’t seem to matter how hard she tried to keep it straight, the knife always went off at an angle. What a good thing that Ada wasn’t there to see her making such a hash of it. It was positively embarrassing that she could not manage the simplest of tasks that good servants took in their stride. She was just contemplating a slice which was twice as thick at the top than at the bottom when she was startled by the sound of the kitchen door opening behind her. She gave a shriek, dropping the knife with a clatter, as she turned to see Stephen Latchford stepping into the kitchen.

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.