Found Guilty at Five Read Online Free PDF Page B

before we talk about the work schedules, I’d like your help on an urgent matter. I expect you all noticed Jamie with a new girl at the wedding. She plays the cello, with him accompanying her, and they give concerts an’ that.”
    “Yeah, we noticed, Mrs. M. She’s a little bobby dazzler!” said Dot Nimmo. “Looked a bit shy, though. They make another good pair for you, Mrs. M!”
    Trust Dot, thought Lois. Straight in with both feet. “It’s just a working partnership. He accompanies other musicians besides Akiko,” she replied.
    “She looked like a foreigner to me,” Hazel whispered to Andrew Young, who alongside cleaning and handyman jobs, was a qualified interior designer and combined the two jobs successfully.
    Lois, who prided herself on her acute hearing, said shortly that Akiko was indeed from another country, but this had nothing to do with anything. Then she told them briefly about the missing cello, and asked if they could keep their eyes and ears open for any clues as to its disappearance or its present whereabouts.
    “Sunday night, did you say?” Andrew asked.
    “Yep. After about one o’clock, early Monday morning in fact.”
    Andrew shook his head, but said he’d keep a lookout. The others were quiet for a moment, and then Hazel said that as it happened, her farmer husband, John, was around the village at that time, cursing and swearing, chasing a sizeable calf that had somehow escaped and led them a merry dance all evening. “I could ask him, Mrs. M, but he came straight to bed from the barn.”
    “Never mind about calves,” said Dot dismissively, “why would anyone want to steal a boring old instrument thing? My hubby, Handy, used to say it was the sound of a cat’s innards scraped across . . .”
    “Maybe,” interrupted Lois, unable to repress a smile, “but it is serious, Dot. Akiko’s cello is very valuable, and she’s in a dreadful state without it. Anyhow, I know you’ll all do your best. Now to work. I’ve asked Gran to bring me a sandwich, so you’ll have to forgive me while I munch. I have to skip proper lunch, as I’ve a lot to do this afternoon.”
    *   *   *
    “N O NEWS SO FAR?” L OIS HAD FINISHED THE MEETING EARLY, and went into the kitchen as Derek and Gran were about to start eating. The mood was grim. Derek said that he had had a good look round the garden and outbuildings of Meade House to make sure nobody had put the cello away for safety, then forgotten it. But even allowing for the excitement of Josie’s wedding day so recently, and minds in general being taken up with the marvellous event, it was still extremely unlikely. A cello was a large instrument, as Lois reminded him impatiently.
    “You’re wasting time on a useless idea,” she said. “As if someone would lug that great thing out of the car and into a shed and then forget about it! No, we should be looking for signs of a stranger in the garden, sometime in the middle of the night.”
    “The police have already done that. And with much more expertise than we have.”
    But the police hadn’t seen the shadow moving round the front. Jamie had mentioned it to Lois just before they left for London. A cello had been hired for Akiko and would be waiting for her. She had wailed that with only a few hours to become accustomed to it, she would not be able to play her best. Jamie had tried hard to reassure her, but nevertheless knew that she was right. It would be like asking him to play a Beethoven sonata on a cottage piano in the Albert Hall.
    Now, Lois went quietly out of the front door into the garden. Jamie had asked her if all her chickens were safe, and she had been surprised that he was worried about such a small matter compared with the drama of the stolen cello. Then he had told her about the shadow and said it must have been a fox on the prowl. She had agreed, knowing that a vixen came round regularly in the hope that she had failed to shut up the henhouse.
    But was it a fox or a swiftly