An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson Read Free Book Online

nightmare!’
    Catching Josephine’s bemused expression, she made a face of studied ennui and hurriedly brought the call to an end. ‘Anyway, dear, I must go. We’re seeing Johnny soon and you know what he’s like – he’ll want to go straight to Ophelia’s death-scene and we haven’t even got a costume for the poor girl to live in yet.’
    ‘Were the Crummles in town for the gala week, then?’ Josephine asked wryly as Ronnie replaced the receiver and picked her way through mounds of upholstery cloth and calico to wrap her friend in a hug.
    ‘Something like that,’ Ronnie said, laughing and leading her over to the breakfast table. ‘It is lovely to see you, you know. Lettice and I were saying only the other day that you’ve spent too long up in dry old Inverness this time.’
    Smiling, Josephine heaped sugar into her coffee. ‘It’s good to be here,’ she said. ‘At least in London I don’t feel I need to apologise constantly for having a hit. The English are much more generous-minded than the Scots.’
    ‘Oh, all small towns are the same, dear. It doesn’t really bother you, does it?’
    ‘Honestly? Yes, I suppose it does a little. It’s all this “grocer’s daughter made good” business, as if I’ve no right to a life down here with different friends and a different outlook. For them, it’ll always be barrow first and pen second.’
    33

    ‘Hang the lot of them, then. Any more trouble and Lettice and I will come and sort them out. They won’t know what’s hit them.’
    ‘Don’t make rash promises – I haven’t told you about the woman who runs the post office yet.’
    ‘Talking of formidable women,’ Ronnie said, still laughing, ‘I feel I should warn you that the Snipe is in a foul temper today and not exactly on her best form. We used the advance from Hamlet to treat her to a new gas cooker because she’s always complaining that she misses her old Eagle, but she hasn’t quite taken control of the regulo yet. God knows what we’ll get for breakfast.’
    A curse of confirmation emanated from the small back room that the Motleys had transformed into a makeshift kitchen and the door crashed open to reveal a stout woman of indeterminate age who had obviously already used up what little patience she allowed herself each day. Employment in a household which thrived on colour and changing fashions had cut no ice with Mrs Snipe: her uniform
    – black alpaca dress, bibbed apron, worsted stockings and house slippers – was as familiar up and down the country as that of a policeman or nurse and, apart from the length of her skirt, she could easily have been serving toast to a Victorian household.
    ‘If you were hoping for kidneys, you can forget it,’ Mrs Snipe announced in what would, at any normal volume, have been a west country burr. ‘It’s cockled ’em with the heat. I expect you wanted fish, Miss Josephine, but the fact is there isn’t any, so it’ll have to be bacon and eggs, and you’ll be lucky to get those by the time that thing’s finished with ’em.’
    Josephine was not easily intimidated, but there was something about Dora Snipe which turned the normal guest and housekeeper relationship on its head, so she smiled and nodded and accepted what was on offer. Her familiarity with Number 66 had not made her any less wary of the Motleys’ cook. The sisters had never known life without her, yet Mrs Snipe had remained an enigma throughout the thirty-odd years that she had been with the family, first in Cornwall and now in London, where she ‘did’ for Ronnie and Lettice and was housekeeper to their cousin, Archie, to whom she was devoted. As she banged a rack of perfectly browned toast 34

    down on the table and returned to the kitchen to beat her new arrival into submission, the front door slammed and there was a squeal of joy from the hall. ‘Darling, how absolutely gorgeous to see you! We’ve been so looking forward to your visit, and don’t you look