Wedding Bells for the Victory Girls by Joanna Toye

Author:Joanna Toye [Toye, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-01-24T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Bill yanked open the front door and looked wildly up and down the street. Seeing a neighbour’s lad on his way back from the corner shop, he whistled him over.

‘There’s been an accident. Go for the nearest doctor – Dr Croft, isn’t it? – to come here, then get yourself round to Brook Street, number 31. Tell the lady there the same, and ask if she can come and help – 31, Brook Street. Got that?’

The lad looked at him with a question in his eyes.

‘All the way to Brook Street?’

‘It’s an emergency … oh, all right!’ Bill fished out a pocketful of change and gave him an extravagant sixpence. ‘Now go! Run!’

From behind him came the sound of Gladys keening over her grandmother’s body. When he went back to the sorry scene, the children turned their uncomprehending little faces to him. Gently Bill raised his wife to her feet, led her into the back room and made her sit down. The children trailed after them.

The sixpence must have added wings to the boy’s heels because the doctor arrived within twenty minutes and when Dora, Lily and Jim got there some time later, it was all over. Florrie’s body had been taken away and Gladys put to bed with a mild sedative. Bill was sitting numbly in a chair while the children tugged fretfully at his trousers, whimpering. Jerkily, Bill relayed that Florrie had fallen down the stairs. Despite her own shock, Dora quickly took charge.

‘First off, those children need to be in bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll take them up. Lily, you can help me. And we’ll look in on Gladys. Jim—’

Jim knew what the next most vital job was on such occasions.

‘I’ll get the kettle on.’

‘And I don’t suppose you’ve had your tea, have you, Bill, with all this going on?’ Dora clucked. ‘Fix him a sandwich, Jim, there’s a good lad. He needs something inside him.’

Within the hour, some kind of order had been restored. Gladys was fast asleep, as were the twins. Bill had eaten, and all four sat round while he recounted the evening’s events. And there were more shocks to come.

‘What do you mean, Dr Croft started acting a bit strange?’ Dora frowned.

‘He was … he said … how did he put it?’ Bill thought back. ‘The circumstances surrounding the death, that was it … they weren’t clear. He had the local bobby come round.’

‘What? The police? He can’t think …?’ Jim sounded sceptical.

But Lily, the great Agatha Christie fan, knew what the police involvement meant. A suspicious death. Method, tick – a simple shove from behind. Opportunity, tick – there was only Bill and Gladys’s word that they’d been together in the kitchen the whole time, and didn’t husbands and wives always give each other alibis? And as for motive, well – living with Florrie Jessop would have made a saint swear, as Dora frequently put it. But to bump her off …?

‘He didn’t believe that Florrie fell? He thinks someone pushed her?’ she asked incredulously.

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