Jam and Jeopardy Read Online Free PDF Page B

he couldn’t ignore it. In the middle of phrasing his next question in his mind, he became
aware that young Willie Arthur was standing, eyes like saucers, drinking in every word that the woman had uttered.
    Clearing his throat, he said, ‘Willie, thank you very much for answering my questions so well, but I needn’t keep you here any longer. And Mrs Wakeford has just made a statement
which must be kept absolutely confidential, so you must never breathe a word of it to anybody. Do you understand?’
    ‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Willie’s blissful expression revealed his pleasure at sharing a secret with the police.
    ‘And Willie,’ John Black added, when the boy turned to go, ‘remember, I’m trusting you.’
    ‘Yes, sir. You can depend on me. Scouts’ honour.’ His tousled head was held high when he went out.
    The sergeant turned to the woman, who was sitting on the edge of her chair nervously. ‘Now, Mrs Wakeford. Tell me everything you know.’
    ‘If anybody in Tollerton had to end up murdered, I’m glad it was that Miss Souter.’
    ‘Derek! That’s not a nice way to speak of the dead.’
    ‘She wasn’t a very nice person, Sergeant.’
    ‘Even so!’ Police Sergeant John Black drummed his Biro on the counter, and the young constable recognised this sign of deep thought and kept quiet, waiting for the profound utterance
which should follow.
    Sure enough, in a few minutes, the Sergeant looked up from his contemplation of the blank form in front of him. ‘You’re right, though, Derek. She wasn’t a very nice
person,’ he declaimed, with all the wisdom of an oracle.
    Derek Paul smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s a soul in the village that’ll be sorry she’s . . .’
    ‘I wouldn’t say that. She aye made big contributions to all the kirk appeals.’ Black had obviously tried to find at least one saving grace in the character of the dead
woman.
    Derek snorted. ‘My mother said Miss Souter was trying to buy her way into heaven, for she wouldn’t get in any other way, but she made such a song and dance about it, it
wouldn’t work.’
    ‘There’s aye some sort of appeal,’ the sergeant said, ruefully. ‘My hand never seems to be out of my pocket. If it’s not Oxfam, or a disaster or Save the Children,
it’s the Fabric Fund, or the Organ Fund, or some other kind of Fund.’
    ‘And she went to the kirk every Sunday.’ To the young constable, a non-church-goer, like most of his age group, this was the final proof of a depraved mind.
    ‘If you went a bit oftener, lad, you’d have more Christian charity.’ Black looked down again. ‘I’d better get this report made out. Name of deceased . . .
Miss Janet Souter. Address . . . 2 Honeysuckle Cottages, Ashgrove Lane, Tollerton, Grampian Region. Age . . . How old would you say she was? Eighty?’
    The young man grimaced cheekily. ‘Nearer a hundred, I’d say, by the way she spoke sometimes.’
    ‘Oh no. She wasn’t as old as Mrs Gray down the Lane, and she told the postie it was her ninetieth birthday last Tuesday. I’ll put down eighty, anyway.’
    There was silence while the sergeant finished completing the form, then he straightened up. ‘I’d better go back to her cottage and have a proper sniff round. I got such a shock when
I found her lying there, nothing else registered, and that business with Mrs Wakeford absolutely shattered me.’
    ‘Is this your first murder case, Sergeant?’ Derek was rather excited about it, because nothing very interesting ever happened in the area.
    John Black frowned. ‘We don’t know yet if it is murder. The doctor was positive it was a heart attack, then Mrs Wakeford said the old lady had been poisoned. Everything would
have been plain sailing, if it hadn’t been for that.’
    ‘So you’ve to wait for the result of the post-mortem to find out the exact cause of death?’
    ‘To confirm the doctor’s diagnosis, I hope. Where’s my hat?’
    The sergeant’s cheesecutter had a habit of finding new