Read Small Town Suspicions (Some Very English Murders Book 3) for Free Online

business.”
    “Oh.” Penny let her breath out in a long exhale. Things
weren’t looking too good for the young arts graduate. “Has there been any
progress on Alec’s cause of death?”
    “Not yet,” Cath said. “But I hope to have more news when I
come round tonight. I expect a bottle of wine to be chilling in the fridge.”
    “It’s proportional to how much information you bring me,”
Penny informed her. “You might have to make do with a flat lemonade…”
     
    * * * *
     
    The rest of Monday was a strange, unsettled sort of day.
Penny had resolved to talk with Francine about her plans, but when she got
home, Francine was out. She’d left a short note about “following her heart”
which Penny took to mean that she was browsing around the pleasant shops of the
cathedral city of Lincoln, which lay to the north of Upper Glenfield. Penny
felt relief and also let down, as she had steeled herself for the expected
confrontation.
    Instead, she applied herself to her website. There were
some enquiries to respond to, and some new images to upload. This was only semi -retirement,
after all.
    Then she prepared some watercolour paper for painting on
later. She soaked the large, thick sheets in the sink and laid them on flat
wooden boards, sticking the edges down with brown gum tape. As the paper dried,
it would shrink and tighten, creating a perfectly level surface that was ideal
for a watercolour wash.
    She kept glancing at the clock and then the door, willing
Francine to come home so she could get it all off her chest. Kali picked up on
her jumpiness and walked in circles in the kitchen, getting underfoot and
looking concerned. Eventually Penny had to go into the back garden and play
fetch for a while, and it was more for Penny’s own sake than Kali’s.
    When she returned to the kitchen, she saw on her phone that
she had missed a call from Drew, and she felt even more annoyed. She called him
back right away but it went to voicemail. She tried to leave a message but it
ended up being a garbled “Yeah hi, I was in the garden sorry, call me, if you
can, whenever, hope you’re all right.”
    She hadn’t seen Drew for a while. He had been so busy and
she was starting to realise that his priority was his work. She didn’t want to
be second fiddle to anyone.
    Yet all through her working life, she hadn’t put her own relationships
first. Men had had to fit around her schedule, and mostly, they grew tired of
waiting for commitment, and drifted away. Now the boot was on the other foot,
and she didn’t particularly like it.
    I have got to make an effort if this is important to me ,
she thought, but he has to meet me halfway on this. But I need to tell him
so.
    Penny started chopping the vegetables for the stew, and she
still felt out of sorts.
    So much for my gentle early retirement, she thought. Are people designed to operate at a certain level of stress? Am I making all
this hassle up, just for my brain to have something to fret about?
     
    * * * *
     
    Francine didn’t return to the cottage until early evening.
She bounced into the kitchen, and declared that the smell of the stew was “the
finest thing I have ever smelled!”
    “I thought we might have it with some fresh bread,” Penny
said. “Are you ready to eat?”
    “You don’t need to cook for me,” Francine said, taking a
seat at the table expectantly.
    “While you’re a guest in my house, I will,” Penny said.
“But you can get up and lay the table. You know where the cutlery is.”
    “Of course!” If Francine noticed Penny’s snippy tone, she
gave no sign of it. She leaped to her feet and began to dig around in the
drawers. “I’ll butter the bread, too, if you want.”
    “Sure. That would be helpful.”
    They moved around the room in a careful dance, and Francine
chattered about her day. It wasn’t until they had sat down to eat that Francine
paused for long enough that Penny could say, “Er, Francine, so what are your