The Wickenham Murders by Amy Myers

Author:Amy Myers [Myers, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2018-05-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

‘Rested?’ Peter looked at her keenly as she arrived at the Manor next morning. Georgia was hardly surprised he asked. She must have looked a fright. She had slept badly again, probably because she spent much of the night walking in through the front door of Hazelwood House, just as it had appeared in Terence Scragg’s drawing. She had felt like Gretel, entering the unknown to meet the wicked witch, and yet once inside there had seemed nothing to fear. There had been merely a jolly family Edwardian Christmas, a la Hollywood, in progress, with a large Christmas tree and benevolent father handing out gifts. There had even been one for her, a painting of Wickenham Manor, for which she was ecstatically grateful – in her dream. However, when she left the Hazelwood House, much relieved, it always called her back again, but the next time she entered there was no sign of benevolent father or presents. Instead Zac leapt out at her from behind a door. ‘Didn’t you expect me?’ he would say with his hurt look. ‘I’m always here.’ Then he’d smirk . . .

‘I can see you’re not,’ Peter continued. ‘We’ll go home tonight. Staying at Country Stop is a bad idea for you. You need to keep away from this current mess or you’ll lose track of the past.’

‘Suppose they’re related,’ she said reluctantly. The nightmare about Hazelwood House still loomed in her mind, and she tried in vain to convince herself she was making too much of one simple painting in Scraggs’s portfolio. She told Peter what she had found in Terence’s room, surprised he hadn’t badgered her immediately for this information. ‘Interesting, don’t you think?’ she managed to conclude, hoping against hope that he’d pooh-pooh her fear. If there were more to it than coincidence, that brought Terence Scraggs’s murder closer to her.

‘Very. As you say, why bother to paint from a postcard a house long gone?’

‘Is that a rhetorical question, or do you want an answer?’

‘Answer please,’ Peter requested.

‘He had some interest in the house, either architectural, or more probably because it had some significance for him.’

‘Hmm.’ Peter mused on this. ‘Remember the car he drove?’

‘You can’t make a thesis out of that. Suppose he borrowed it. Suppose it belonged to his mum.’

‘Get real. It’s not a mum’s car.’

‘You don’t know his mum.’ Georgia was irritated. Peter was always doing this, playing with his own pet theories, and then goading her to the point where she’d have to cry: ‘Where’s your evidence?’

This time Peter didn’t carry the clash any further, which was again unusual. Instead, he helped himself to some more coffee, and remarked, ‘Georgia, would you be interested to know I had a pleasant drink in the bar last night with a marketing rep for a shampoo and hair products distributor?’ She looked at him warily, but he was serious. ‘He had black curly hair, and a sharp profile,’ Peter continued, ‘as did your former husband, but—’

‘It wasn’t.’ Georgia slumped back in her chair in relief, as her tension slipped away.

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