Death on the Lake by Jo Allen (early reader books TXT) 📗

yet. There would be drama aplenty in the Neilson household when that day came. ‘And in return I promise I’ll forget I saw your car outside the house when you said you were still in Kendal.’

She nodded him a gracious acceptance, but the conversation terminated as the sergeant strode up the lawn towards them. Beside her, Ollie allowed himself the lowest of wolf-whistles, unwilling to let a sexy woman escape his notice yet not quite daring to antagonise the law. Scrutinising her with care, Miranda judged his appreciation to be well-earned. The woman had curves many other women would have envied but which must send a low rumbling through a red-blooded male. She wasn’t what Miranda herself would have called beautiful, but she had an earthy attractiveness. There was a sensuousness about her that reminded Miranda of Elizabeth, her long-ago best friend.

But Elizabeth was dead and Summer was probably dead too. Am I next? wondered Miranda, as a chill threaded itself around her spine and up to her neck. Could there possibly be a connection? She shivered.

‘Are you all right, Mrs Neilson?’ The detective reached them and must have read Ollie’s body language and found his thoughts unwelcome, but she could look after herself, brushing his smile of welcome aside and turning her back on him. This show of spirit, this putting the bumptious young man firmly in his place, was admirable and Miranda warmed to her. ‘You look pale. I’m so sorry we have to do this. Please don’t feel you have to stay here.’

‘It’s all right.’ Miranda kept half an eye on Ollie, who’d taken a step back and was eyeing the woman up from the rear, now, with obvious appreciation. She wished she dared scowl at him. ‘I quite understand. But it’s so distressing. The poor girl. An accident, you suppose?’

‘I don’t suppose anything,’ the woman said, words that surely came from the dictionary of stock phrases for reassuring the public.

‘But you’re looking for a body.’ Miranda didn’t know why she was harping on about it. It was better to let it go, not to show anything other than a stranger’s shock at an overly-close death.

Ashleigh O’Halloran was looking at her carefully and to her shock Miranda suddenly found herself wanting to tell the woman all about Elizabeth and what she’d done, about how she’d died, and about the guilt Miranda herself would carry with her until the day the past caught up with her. One day, perhaps one day soon, the police might be probing the cold depths of Ullswater looking for Miranda herself. ‘Sergeant O’Halloran.’

‘Yes?’

Thank God Ollie was within earshot. Otherwise she might have done it, might actually have committed the cardinal sin of telling the police the truth they hadn’t asked her for. ‘This poor girl. You will find her, won’t you?’

The detective looked at her again, long and hard, but decided to let it go. ‘I hope so.’

‘And you think she may have had an accident.’ Any question, even an old one, would do to to deflect this woman’s attention.

‘The signs certainly point to that. After all,’ (a hard stare towards Ollie, who remembered in time that it would become him to be humble and composed his face into a suitable expression of sorrow) ‘it does appear everyone on the Seven of Swords had rather more to drink than is good for them.’

‘Bit judgemental there, Ashleigh,’ Ollie muttered under his breath, but if she heard him she ignored it.

‘Perhaps she fell in the water, if she was very drunk.’ Miranda flicked her eyes closed for a second.

‘Perhaps.’

A call from down by the water sent Ashleigh down there at speed, but she’d barely reached the water’s edge before the drama seemed to be over. Her heart in her mouth, Miranda turned to Ollie. ‘For a moment I thought they might have found her.’ But he was shaking his head, as though that thought had never crossed his mind.

Five

Monday morning’s sunshine had turned to afternoon rain, and low cloud had clamped down over the Lowther Valley as Becca Reid drew up outside her cottage on Wasby. Ryan was already there, sitting on the wall with his scarlet rain jacket on and his hood up, and although he was early rather than she late, the abject misery of a man stranded in the Lake District wilderness made her feel bad about herself. She’d thought she’d have time for a shower and a cup of tea, at least, but the long day at work was about to stretch into a long evening doing her cousin yet another favour. A tinge of resentment coloured her good nature, regret at a promise she wished she’d never made. She pulled up the car, opened the door and got out. ‘Sorry Ryan. Have you been waiting long?’

‘Nah.’ He beamed at her. ‘Walked down from Askham. Just got here.’ His Australian accent had a cheerful twang to it. Perhaps, after all, he found the drizzle different and invigorating.

‘Good.’ She walked up the path and Holmes, her cat, streaked out from his shelter into the porch, pressing his nose to the crack in the door while she fiddled with her key. She felt no sympathy for him. It served him right for refusing to come in the morning, falling for the false promise of sunshine. Like Becca herself, Holmes was old enough to know better. ‘You can stand in the kitchen and drip for five minutes while I get changed. Have a coffee if you think you’ve got time to drink it. I’d rather get down to Howtown sooner and back sooner, and George is early to bed these days. But I warn you, if he’s in the mood, he can talk for Westmorland.’

George Barrett, their mutual great-uncle, could lie for Westmorland, too, but at ninety-five his tall tales had become a source of amusement and entertainment for family and friends, as well as for George himself, so she didn’t grudge him the exaggeration. She ran upstairs, changed and ran down again