Magpie Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

Most of the products in the window looked dusty and out-of-date. There was a bookshop and a tea room that only opened during the summer months. Just off the square and before the fire station stood the garage, which sold a range of motor accessories but not anything that anyone would actually want. That was about it and it had been that way for as long as anyone could remember.
    And then Johnny and Gemma Whitehead had arrived from London. They had bought the old post office, which had long been empty, and turned it into an antique shop with their names, written in old-fashioned lettering, above the window. There were many in the village who remarked that bric-a-brac rather than antiques might be a more accurate description of the contents but from the very start the shop had proved popular with visitors who seemed happy to browse amongst the old clocks, Toby jugs, canteens of cutlery, coins, medals, oil paintings, dolls, fountain pens and whatever else happened to be on display. Whether anyone ever actually bought anything was another matter. But the shop had now been there for six years, with the Whiteheads living in the flat above.
    Johnny was a short, broad-shouldered man, bald-headed and, even if he hadn’t noticed it, running to fat. He liked to dress loudly, rather shabby three-piece suits, usually with a brightly coloured tie. For the funeral, he had reluctantly pulled out a more sombre jacket and trousers in grey worsted although, like the shirt, it fitted him badly. His wife, so thin and small that there could have been three of her to one of him, was wearing black. She was not eating a cooked breakfast. She had poured herself a cup of tea and was nibbling a triangle of toast.
    ‘Sir Magnus and Lady Pye won’t be there,’ Johnny muttered as an afterthought.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘At the funeral. They won’t be back until the weekend.’
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘I don’t know. They were talking about it in the pub. They’ve gone to the south of France or somewhere. All right for some, isn’t it! Anyway, people have been trying to reach them but so far no luck.’ Johnny paused, holding up a piece of sausage. To listen to him speaking now, it would have been obvious that he had lived most of his life in the East End of London. He had a quite different accent when he was dealing with customers. ‘Sir Magnus isn’t going to be too happy about it,’ he went on. ‘He was very fond of Mrs Blakiston. They were as thick as thieves, them two!’
    ‘What do you mean? Are you saying he had a thing with her?’ Gemma wrinkled her nose as she considered the ‘thing’.
    ‘No. It’s not like that. He wouldn’t dare – not with his missus on the scene, and anyway, Mary Blakiston was nothing to write home about. But she used to worship him. She thought the sun shone out of his you know where! And she’d been his housekeeper for years and years. Keeper of the keys! She cooked for him, cleaned for him, gave half her life to him. I’m sure he’d have wanted to be there for the send-off.’
    ‘They could have waited for him to get back.’
    ‘Her son wanted to get it over with. Can’t blame him, really. The whole thing’s been a bit of a shock.’
    The two of them sat in silence while Johnny finished his breakfast. Gemma watched him intently. She often did this. It was as if she were trying to look behind his generally placid exterior, as if she might find something he was trying to conceal. ‘What was she doing here?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Mary Blakiston?’
    ‘When?’
    ‘The Monday before she died. She was here.’
    ‘No, she wasn’t.’ Johnny laid down his knife and fork. He had eaten quickly and wiped the plate clean.
    ‘Don’t lie to me, Johnny. I saw her coming out of the shop.’
    ‘Oh! The shop!’ Johnny smiled uncomfortably. ‘I thought you meant I’d had her up here in the flat. That would have been a right old thing, wouldn’t it.’ He paused, hoping his wife would change the subject