A Devil of a Time by Mona Marple

Author:Mona Marple [Marple, Mona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-21T23:00:00+00:00

9

WEDNESDAY

I ended up in a spit-and-sawdust pub after a forty minute walk. I’d passed at least seven bus stops I could have waited at. Something about the idea of a bus, cold and claustrophobic, unsettled me and I’d continued walking until the chill had worn through my layers and reached my skin.

The pub crept up on me without fanfare. I was almost past the door before I realised that the dim amber glow coming through the windows was more than a regular house. I backtracked a few steps and pushed the heavy door open. The inside was quiet and mainly filled with solitary drinkers, men whose tough lives were written across their faces. This wasn’t a wealthy part of town. It wasn’t an area that was being invested in for future opportunities. It was a neighbourhood where the men worked hard physical jobs and deserved a quiet pint afterwards.

I gave a nervous smile to the barman as I realised that I was the only woman in the place. If he cared, he didn’t show it. He wiped his hands on a stained tea towel and waited, silently, for my order. In fact, the only noise in the place was the dull throb of the TV pinned to the wall, broadcasting a news station. Nobody paid attention to it.

“Orange juice, please,” I ordered. He grunted as if that were a ridiculous drink to order, but my money was as good as anyone else’s and he reached into a fridge below the counter and pulled out a carton of juice.

I paid with a fiver and he returned me more change than I’d expected, which ended our transaction. Just to make it perfectly clear he wanted nothing more to do with me, he stood at the furthest part of the bar and picked up a fresh newspaper. His nose buried in the sport section, I took the hint and skulked away to a spare table.

My head throbbed; a pounding that had begun the second I’d left Bev Bird and her menagerie of glass animals. It was wrong. Dreadful, really. A mother wasn’t supposed to inherit her dead daughter’s treasures.

I took a breath and pulled a notebook and pen from my handbag, then laid them out carefully on the table. I glanced around surreptitiously but none of my companions appeared to have even noticed my presence. The bar man, safe from any unwanted conversations, had turned his attentions to wiping glasses dry.

I had become too attached to the case. As tragic as Candice Bird’s murder was, I had been sent here to solve a different case. My loyalties had to be to Jonny Rotten. Even if I was pretty sure he deserved the low opinion most people had of him.

It was time to cut the emotion out of the equation and think with my head.

I decided to make a list, because lists always made everything better. On the fridge in my tiny London flat, back in the future, I had a magnetic notepad that contained a running list of things I needed from the supermarket.

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