Jam and Jeopardy Read Online Free PDF Page A

went inside to have a small glass of the brandy she kept purely for medicinal purposes. If ever she needed
it, now was the time.
    Willie returned in less than ten minutes, just before the police sergeant and the doctor, whose cars arrived one after the other. They parked in the Lane, to save congestion on the High Street,
and walked quickly along to the steps where Mrs Wakeford and her stalwart, rather excited, protector were waiting.
    Sergeant Black took charge immediately. ‘Something wrong with Miss Souter, eh? Doctor, you’d better give me a hand to break down her door.’
    ‘No, no.’ The woman clutched at his sleeve. ‘There’s no need to break in, her back door’s never locked. You can come through my house, to save you going all the way
round by the road. You’ll just have to go over the fence.’
    ‘Right you are, Mrs Wakeford.’ John Black was slightly puzzled. If she knew that Miss Souter’s back door wasn’t locked, why hadn’t she gone in herself to see what
had happened to her neighbour? Still, the old woman had a reputation for quarrelling with everybody, so they may not have been on very good terms.
    Mabel watched him striding over the low fence which separated the gardens, and waited for him to try the handle of Janet Souter’s back door. Her legs were shaking, and her heart was
beating twenty to the dozen.
    ‘It is open,’ the sergeant said. ‘I’d be obliged if you didn’t come in, though, Mrs Wakeford, nor you, Willie. Just the doctor and myself, in case
there’s anything . . .’
    James Randall smiled apologetically to her, then followed John Black into Miss Souter’s kitchen. Almost immediately, the sergeant’s head popped round the door again.
    ‘She’s lying on the kitchen floor, I’m afraid. I think she’s dead, but the doctor’s examining her now. I’d suggest that you both go inside to wait, because
I’ll have to take statements from you, you understand, and it’s cold out there.’
    Willie noticed that his companion seemed to be rooted to the spot, and took hold of her elbow. ‘Come on, Mrs Wakeford, I’ll make you a cup of tea when we get inside.’
    She went with him, as docile as a baby, and collapsed inelegantly into an armchair by her fireside. ‘She’s been murdered,’ she whispered.
    The boy’s mouth and eyes sprung wide open. ‘M . . . murdered?’ This would be something to brag about to his pals, if it were true – that he’d been there at the
finding of a murdered woman. Slowly, his features returned to normal. ‘How d’you know she’s been murdered?’
    ‘I just know.’
    It struck him that she might be suffering from shock, and hot, sweet tea was the remedy for that, as he’d learned at the first-aid class he’d attended after school a few months
ago.
    He went through to the kitchen, and felt quite important as he filled the kettle and ignited the gas with the torch that hung at the side of the cooker. He even began to whistle while he looked
in the cupboard for cups, but he stopped the tuneless noise when he remembered what had happened next door. Murder! He might get his photograph in the papers. ‘Boy alerts police to murder of
woman’, the headline would say.
    When he returned to the living room with a loaded tray, he found that Mrs Wakeford was still sprawled in the same position as when he’d left her.
    ‘She’s been poisoned,’ she informed him in a low voice. ‘That arsenic she had was too big a temptation . . . and she told everybody about it.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Willie nodded eagerly. ‘I heard some folk saying what she needed was a dose of her own arsenic. But that was only talk,’ he added heartily.
‘None of them would really have done it.’
    ‘Somebody did.’ Mrs Wakeford stirred her tea for the third time, then laid the spoon down on the tray because the boy had not given her a saucer.
    ‘I came straight over,’ announced Sergeant Black, appearing from the passage. ‘I’ve left the doctor with