Small Town Shock (Some Very English Murders Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

but it stayed
runny.”
    “There are shops here. There’s no need to make jam. And
there’s lots to do. Yesterday I found a dead body.”
    That stopped the conversation in its tracks. Penny smiled
to herself. You weren’t expecting that, were you?
    Francine cleared her throat and said, “Are you joking? It’s
a sick kind of joke.”
    Penny felt guilty. Poor bubbly Francine. Why did happy
people bring out the worst in Penny’s nature? “I’m sorry. No, I’m not joking. I
found a dead man out in the fields. I called the police and everything.” She
was about to ramble on, but she stopped herself. Suddenly, Penny was struck by
the lack of people she could talk to. She wanted to spill the details she’d
heard about the poor man, and his brother, and how he hadn’t been to darts and
that must mean something… but she couldn’t say all that, not to Francine.
Francine was so keen and eager to be her friend and somehow, it just put Penny
off.
    But it was nice to talk to someone from her past. She had
to acknowledge that.
    “Are you all right?” Francine asked with genuine concern at
the news and the sudden silence.
    “Yes, yes, of course I am.” Penny was surprised and
slightly embarrassed to hear a catch in her voice. She cleared her throat and
repeated it. “I am fine. I coped.”
    “You always cope with everything!” Francine said in
admiration. “I wish I was like you. I don’t cope. I have a big blow-up with
stress, and then carry on.”
    Maybe that was the way, Penny thought. She was about to
answer when she heard Kali erupting into barks from the other side of the
house. She could hear Francine asking about the noise, and she made her hasty
excuses to finish the phone call.
    “Thank you for calling … I really have to go … the dog, you
know…”
    I should have asked her about her life, her job, her mood,
Penny thought as she went to find out why Kali was so upset. It turned out to
be a moth battering itself against the window. Penny rescued it carefully and
let it fly free in the back garden. Then she stood at the back door, leaning
against the frame, looking at the rapidly growing grass. Kali came out to sniff
the bare flower borders.
    Now she’d shaken Francine off, she illogically wanted to
talk to her again.
    I must be going daft, she thought. I never wanted to talk
to her in London. She was too loud and silly and flippant.
    Too much like the person I once was … that I want to
recapture.
    I’m jealous.
     
    * * * *
     
    The call from Francine would have upset her equilibrium
except Penny had to acknowledge that she had precious little equilibrium to
start with. When it got to five o’clock she decided to take the dog out for a
walk again. She had soon learned, moving out of the city, that in this rural
area, the evening meal was eaten earlier than London, and it wasn’t called
dinner. No, five o’clock was teatime. Sometimes it was six, depending on where
family members worked. But things certainly seemed quieter on the pavements,
even if the roads were busy, and she wanted to see if it would be a better time
to walk Kali.
    She snapped on the lead and gave the dog a pep talk in the
hallway before leaving. She knelt down and stroked Kali’s shoulders. “You must
behave,” she told her. Kali hung her head. “You need lots of exercise. How can
I give that to you, if you lunge after every dog, barking like a monster? It’s
no good. I don’t want to look like a terrible dog owner. So are you going to
behave?”
    Kali licked her lips and turned her head away. Penny
narrowed her eyes. Dogs couldn’t feel guilty, so what was she trying to tell
her?
    I need to find a library and learn some dog body language,
she decided. She stood up and peered out of the front door. It was cloudy and
overcast. It was daft, but she welcomed bad weather. It made it far less likely
that she would encounter other dogs and their owners.
    “We had better get this sorted by the summer,” she said to
Kali as