The Maggie Murders Read Online Free PDF Page A

in
Honiton.
    She’d suspected that Winnie Lowe
had used infirmity as an excuse to spare herself a long interview about her
younger half-brother. At 13 years older than George, she might have had that
excuse, except for the way the nurses had kept talking about her as ‘sprightly’
and ‘the life of the party’.  She certainly didn’t look like an octogenarian;
Jane might easily have placed her in a bracket from late 60s to early 70s.
Winnie had in fact been sitting upright in a wingback chair in the television
room when Jane arrived. The BBC were showing pictures of a beaming Mrs Thatcher
outside Downing Street and Winnie seemed to be remonstrating with an elderly
man to her right who had affixed a red rosette to his lapel and was trying to
sing ‘The Red Flag.’ Winnie, was jabbing a plastic Union Jack (probably left
over from the Royal Wedding celebrations) at him and encouraging other
residents with their flags to wave them vigorously.
    The nurses, thought Jane, if not
Winnie, were probably glad of her arrival.
    She’d been taken to Winnie’s
ground floor room; it had probably once been a study or music room in the
detached Victorian family house which had preceded this private nursing home. A
single bed was along one wall, with a dressing table opposite – though the
table itself was clearly a chipboard one with a white plastic veneer bought
from somewhere like MFI. The two cane chairs and coffee table by the window,
overlooking what once may have been the croquet lawn were the real deal.
    ‘They’re mine,’ explained Winnie
sinking into the left hand chair and fixing Jane with her steely grey eyes,
‘sold the rest when my husband died – they don’t let you take much here.’
    ‘They’re very nice, Edwardian?’
    Jane was putting all her
knowledge gained from Sunday evenings devoted to tea in front of ‘Antiques
Roadshow’ to the test.
    ‘Late Victorian,’ corrected
Winnie with a hint of triumph, ‘they belonged to my mother. There was a dining
set too. That was also sold – it’s not cheap being looked after.’
    ‘You don’t look like you need
much looking after,’ smiled Jane and her compliment was meant. The small woman
in front of her exuded vigour and her eyes gleamed with a combative spirit.
    ‘I’m 80 and lived alone. When
Arthur died five years ago, I was left with a house that was too big for me and
a few friends who liked to play cards every Wednesday; I don’t like playing
cards – but I don’t think a WPC has come to talk to me about my friends, or
furniture.’
    ‘I’m a Detective Sergeant
actually,’ Jane flushed.
    ‘So it’s not just in politics
we’re taking over – I wanted to be a nurse when I was a girl. My father told me
not to be so bloody silly and introduced me to Arthur. He was part of that Lost
Generation and I spent the next half century of my life being lost too;
particularly when I couldn’t give him a son.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Don’t be. I never wanted a
child, yet it seemed to upset everyone else. Forty-four years of being
unhappily married to a bank clerk in Sidmouth – that was my life. I always
thought if I was someone on the telly I’d be Mrs Mainwaring in ‘Dad’s Army’ –
you know the wife they never show you while the men get to have all the fun.’
    ‘I see.’
    She didn’t though.
    ‘So why has a Sergeant come to
see an old biddy like me? Have you found out I did my husband in?’
    For a moment, Jane thought she
was serious.
    ‘I’ve come to break the news that
your brother’s body was discovered earlier this morning in his flat.’
    For a moment there was a pause.
    ‘I don’t have a brother. My only
brother died in Normandy in 1944.’
    She said it with such conviction
that Jane felt like believing her.
    ‘Perhaps I should have said
half-brother?’
    There was still no reaction from
the elderly woman, apart from the tiniest of flickers in her eyes.
    ‘George Albert Kellow, born
September 1st 1916? Lived at 3a, The