Read Found Guilty at Five for Free Online

moving person? A flower bed ran alongside the narrow drive, all the way down to the gates. If the car had been parked next to it, anyone trying to open a door would have had to tread in the exposed earth. Derek had recently dug out a spreading collection of lupins, saying they were smothering everything else, and the soil was loose.
    It was difficult to remember exactly where the car had stood, but she spotted a small puddle of oil. Jamie had said his old Cortina had an oil leak, which he planned to get fixed. From that tiny patch, Lois could imagine fairly accurately the position of the parked car. She walked very carefully and kept a lookout for prints in the grass. A couple of steps from the oil, she stopped and stared down into the flower bed. She could see a tiny flash of blue, a thread caught on a rose thorn. It could easily have been from Derek’s jeans, torn out as he was digging. But from memory she could not be sure it was the same blue. She gingerly lifted the thorny stem and pulled gently. A single thread, faded blue. She found a dog bag in her pocket and delicately inserted it. Then she folded the bag and returned it to her pocket.
    “Afternoon, Lois! Enjoying the garden, I see. Well, it’s good to make the most of this lovely weather. Have you got five minutes?”
    It was Cowgill. Of course it was Cowgill. He was a genius at turning up at the wrong moment. How much had he seen of what she was doing? Nothing, she guessed, to give him an opportunity to mock her ferretin’ methods.
    “Yes, I can give you five minutes. I’m due up at the hall for yet another conference with the Norringtons. He’s bursting with new ideas, and she tries to put the brake on all the time. I feel like pig in the middle. Still, it’s all good business for New Brooms.”
    “Shall we go inside, or do you want to talk out here?”
    “Oh, let’s go into my office. This village is full of nosey parkers. It’ll be all round the gossips that Lois Meade is about to be arrested.”
    “Right,” said Cowgill, when they were safely in Lois’s office. “I won’t waste your time but come straight to the point. How much do you know about Akiko Nakamasa?”
    Lois sighed. “I thought it would be that. The answer is not a lot. We met her for the first time at the weekend. Jamie had told us about her, of course, but only that she was playing the cello, with him on the piano. I guessed from her name that she was Japanese, but until Saturday I had no idea what she looked like.”
    “She looked like a very pretty girl, what I saw of her,” Cowgill said. “Did she tell you where she came from? I mean
exactly
where she is living?”
    “I asked her, natch, but she just said she was living in London. North London, I think it was. I didn’t want to quiz her and annoy Jamie.”
    “Mm. We are having trouble tracing anything to do with Miss Nakamasa. She is supposed to have been a student at a music college, but there are no records of her attending any of the main ones in London. We are still checking smaller colleges in a wider area. How did Jamie meet her?”
    “He was giving a piano recital somewhere, and she was in the audience. She buttonholed him afterwards, I reckon, and that’s when it started. Our Jamie has an eye for a pretty girl. Did you notice her hands? Very small and delicate. It’s amazing she can get to grips with that big old cello. They’re both playing at the Wilmore Hall tonight. You could go along and talk to her there. After the concert would probably be best. She’ll be keyed up enough beforehand, what with losing her precious cello and having to play a strange one with not much time to practise.”
    Cowgill was silent. He was thinking about Jamie Meade. The lad had always been the odd one out in Lois’s family. Very talented, but modest and charming with it. He knew Lois adored him, and so far as he was aware, there had never been any lapses in his reputation for being a hardworking, honest young man.