A Body in the Village Hall by Dee MacDonald (best business books of all time .txt) 📗

the door and Kate looked out cautiously in case the press were around. She was relieved, and not a little pleased, to see Woody Forrest on the doorstep.

‘I’m afraid I’m here in an official capacity,’ he said ruefully as he came in.

‘I rather suspected you might be,’ Kate said, ‘but that doesn’t preclude you from having a coffee, does it?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, grinning.

She led him into the sitting room where he sat down next to the log burner.

‘This is nice,’ he said, looking around. ‘And warm. It’s so cold out there today and the police station’s not much better.’

Kate headed off to make some coffee and reappeared shortly afterwards bearing a tray with a cafetière of coffee, mugs, milk and sugar.

‘Just a drop of milk, please,’ Woody said, tapping his waistline.

Kate handed him a mug, noting that he looked tired. Probably he’d not slept too well either.

‘This will probably be my last case,’ he said, suppressing a yawn. ‘And it doesn’t look like being an easy one.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’m getting far too old for all this malarkey.’

‘Will you go back to the States?’ I hope not, she thought.

He shook his head. ‘Nope, I’m planning on staying here, for most of the time anyway. I’ve been living over here for so long now that I’m not sure I’d fit in back in the States now. Even if I do have to wear a wetsuit for surfing! But I digress, because now we must get down to the nitty-gritty, as you say over here.’ He produced a file and a recorder from his briefcase. ‘I’m going to take a statement from you, Kate, so just tell me – in your own words – your exact movements yesterday evening.’ He switched on the recorder and said, ‘I’m interviewing Mrs Kate Palmer, who found the body of Kevin Barry.’ He gave the time and the date.

Kate did her best to recount her walk on the beach, omitting to mention Woody’s wetsuited appearance, and how she’d followed the dog’s frantic barking and found the body. She tried to be accurate as to the time but hadn’t thought to consult her watch with the shock of her discovery.

He switched off the recorder for a moment. ‘You can mention that you saw me on the beach,’ he said with a smile. ‘The time of death, I’ve been told, was at least twenty-four hours earlier.’

Kate gulped. ‘But I saw him in Middle Tinworthy on Saturday afternoon,’ she said.

‘Really? Where did you see him?’ he asked.

She told him about her walk round the churchyard and witnessing Maureen and Kevin at loggerheads. ‘It didn’t seem that important at the time,’ she said, ‘but it obviously is now.’

‘It certainly is,’ Woody said.

‘Well, Kevin was desperately trying to persuade Maureen to listen to him, and there was something about a letter he’d written to her and some recording or other, but she was having none of it. He was telling her that he hadn’t been driving the car that killed Lucy but she still seemed to blame him for being there at all.’

‘Would you say that she was acting aggressively?’ Woody asked.

Kate thought for a minute. ‘Well, she picked up what looked like an urn or something and I truly thought she was going to brain him with it, but he moved away quickly.’ Kate stopped and looked directly at Woody. ‘But you don’t think Maureen would…’

‘I don’t think anything. I just note the facts.’ He began to place his file and recorder back into the briefcase.

‘Yes, of course.’

He looked up and smiled. ‘I’m hoping there isn’t a Mr Palmer?’

‘Not for years,’ Kate said, smiling back. ‘I moved here with my sister.’

‘Well, there isn’t a Mrs Forrest either so, perhaps, when all this is done and dusted, you might consent to come out to dinner with me?’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ Kate said.

Angie had been painting in the summerhouse during Woody’s visit and was now crashing about in the kitchen, washing her hands.

‘Couldn’t you have persuaded him to stay a bit longer?’ she asked grumpily as she watched Woody’s silver BMW disappear down the driveway.

‘No, I couldn’t. He wasn’t here on a social call.’ Kate omitted to mention his invitation.

‘Aren’t you going to work today?’

‘No, I’ve been given the day off. Unlike some people I didn’t get my eight hours’ sleep last night.’

Angie softened. ‘It must have been horrible for you, Kate. God knows what I’d have done if I found a body like that – ugh! But what’s scary is that there’s either one person who’s killed twice or there are two separate killers. Either way I’m not going over the doorstep today except to my studio!’

‘Not even to the pub?’

‘Oh, wait a minute, I’ve just remembered we’ve run out of gin!’

‘Correction: you’ve run out of gin.’

‘OK, OK, I’ve run out of gin! Maybe I’ll have to switch to Scotch or something, but the trouble is I don’t even like Scotch! Oh, shit! What am I going to do?’

‘Well, bearing in mind that going teetotal doesn’t appear to be an option, I’m going to finish painting my bedroom this morning so you can have the car if you want.’

‘But do you think I can get to Lidl and back without being murdered?’ Angie appeared to be genuinely worried.

‘It’s a possibility, I suppose,’ Kate said drily. ‘You’ll just have to weigh up what’s more important: the advantage of a bottle of Lidl’s gin against you getting back alive.’

‘It’s a no-brainer,’ Angie said after a moment. ‘I’m off to Lidl. Where are the car keys?’

Nine

As she grabbed a sandwich at lunchtime, Kate was beginning to regret not going in to work. She’d painted the fourth wall of her bedroom, tricky bits and all, while feeling strangely happy. There was no Mrs Forrest! And Woody planned to ask her out! That did a lot to alleviate the horrors of the previous evening but left her feeling restless. She began to move her bedroom furniture around so that the