Laura Marlin Mysteries 1: Dead Man's Cove eBook Read Online Free PDF Page B

wheat. You’ll tan up a treat in the summer. How are you settling in with your uncle? I’ve been away on holiday or I’d have stopped in to welcome you to St Ives sooner. I don’t mind telling you we were all agog when we found Calvin Redfern had an eleven-year-old niece living with him. What with him being practically a recluse. And as for that housekeeper . . . ’

    She made a dismissive gesture with her purple mittens. ‘But what do I know. Anyway, how are you finding it?’

    ‘I love it,’ Laura said loyally. ‘School is okay. I’m still getting used to it. There is one very annoying boy in my class, but I just ignore him. As for my uncle, he and I have a great time together and Mrs Webb is a fantastic cook. She bakes the world’s best Victoria sponge cake.’ She didn’t mention that Mrs Webb had not improved on acquaintance and alternated between fake friendliness and a sullen silence. Laura kept out of her way as much as possible.

    Mrs Crabtree’s golden curls quivered with disappointment at this news. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m pleased to hear it. No doubt it’s nice for your uncle to have a bit of company after all this time.’

    ‘All what time?’

    A giant seagull landed on the stone wall surrounding Mrs Crabtree’s garden and she ran at it like a crazed flamingo, arms flapping. ‘These wretched gulls get bigger, noisier and greedier every year,’ she complained. ‘It won’t be Olga Crabtree who’s surprised the day one carries off a small child. Now where was I?’

    ‘You were saying that it’s nice for my uncle to have a bit of company. Has he been alone long?’

    ‘Well,’ said Mrs Crabtree, ‘I don’t know about that. All I know is he arrived here in the dead of night nearly a year ago. Wild-eyed and dishevelled he was. By chance, I was looking out of the window at the time. He’d driven down from some place in the north. Aberdeen, Scotland, people say, but then he doesn’t have the accent.’ She winked. ‘You’ll have to ask him and pass it on.’

    Laura, who felt a bit uncomfortable discussing her uncle with a perfect stranger, was about to retort that under no circumstances would she be doing anything of the kind when she remembered that Matt Walker often found village gossips to be extremely useful in his investigations. For every ten pieces of misinformation they passed on, there was the occasional gem.

    ‘Mm-hm,’ she murmured vaguely.

    Mrs Crabtree was shaking her head at the memory. ‘Would you believe, your uncle rented number 28 sight unseen and fully furnished, right down to the pictures? That’s what the estate agent told me. And from what I’ve witnessed when I’ve had occasion to call on him, nothing’s changed since.’

    ‘What, not even the pictures?’ said Laura, thinking of the ugly seascape in her bedroom.

    Mrs Crabtree gave a triumphant smile. ‘Not even the pictures. Apart from the books and now yourself, it’s as if it was freeze-framed the day he walked in.’

    Laura had been telling the truth when she informed Mrs Crabtree that she loved living with her uncle and had a great time with him. What she hadn’t mentioned was that her uncle had as many moods as the sea and that those great times were few and far between. They were five minutes here, or the occasional meal there.

    He was unfailingly kind to her; that could not be argued. He saw to it that she wanted for nothing - not that Laura asked for much. When he did focus on her, as he did when he escorted her to the gate on her first day at school, presenting her with a lunch box full of treats to help her through it, or on one magical morning when they went for a dawn walk on Porthmeor Beach together and he’d asked her to tell him stories of Sylvan Meadows and related some of his favourite childhood stories about her mother, she felt a strong feeling of kinship towards him, as though he were her father rather than her uncle.

    He was different from every other grown-up