False Face by Veronica Heley

Author:Veronica Heley [Veronica Heley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

Friday, late morning

Sure enough, miserable faces turned to Bea when she entered the big office. One girl was sniffing into a handkerchief.

Lisa was red in the face. ‘We have a thief here, Mrs Abbot. She’s stolen the tea money from the cashbox.’

‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t!’ sobbed the girl who was using her hankie. ‘I wouldn’t.’

‘You were short of money this week,’ said Lisa. ‘You told us so.’

The girl wailed, ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t steal! I wouldn’t!’

Lisa said, ‘A likely story. Mrs Abbot, do you want me to call the police? There was nearly twenty quid in the tea money, and we wouldn’t have known anything was missing only that we were short of biscuits this morning and I opened the box and there was nothing there.’

Bea felt a trickle of icy air pass down her spine. She shivered. She knew exactly what had happened. She had a mental picture of Molly getting herself locked into the office the previous night, unable to get out through the door to the street. Hari had rescued her eventually, but Molly had had plenty of time to look around. She’d known where the tea money was kept, and that Lisa often forgot to lock the drawers in her desk.

What a brat Molly was! Selfish, amoral …!

Bea said, ‘You’ve picked on the wrong girl. I’m afraid Molly got locked in down here last night and went looking for money. We allowed her to stay the night upstairs because it was late and she said she had nowhere else to go. I’ll have a word with her in a minute about it.’

She moved closer to Lisa and said in a low voice, ‘Lisa, you keep the tea money in your top desk drawer, don’t you? It doesn’t look to me as if that drawer’s been forced open. Was it locked up properly last night? Did you leave it open by mistake?’

‘I … yes, I always … Well, perhaps … we’re all at sixes and sevens.’ Lisa washed her hands over and over.

‘Quite!’ said Bea. ‘It would be a good idea to double check in future.’ And to the room at large: ‘Now, I’m going up to have a word with Molly. There was no thief here except for her. All right?’

They were not mollified. An older woman said, ‘This is all very upsetting. When we heard about Jolene … She was only a child, really … and now she’s dead! It’s a shock. She was very silly in lots of ways … Oh yes, she was!’ She overrode objections from one of the more soft-hearted women. ‘But no, she didn’t deserve this, and it’s only natural that we should be upset that a girl we knew has lost her life.’

Bea liked that. She marked the woman down as someone to watch. Bea accessed the computer in her mind. Vera, that was her name. She’d come to them a month ago. She was married, had had various part-time jobs over the years, but was now looking for something more permanent as her grown-up children had departed for university.

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