Dying to Know by Keith McCarthy Read Free Book Online Page A

through the shop window. I would have left then, but for the fact that I then caught sight of the brooch.
    It was near the front but to the extreme left, displayed on a felt board with other items of jewellery. It had a central emerald cluster with two surrounding rows of diamonds, all in an ornate silver setting and, although it was difficult to see from a distance of about eight feet, it looked old.
    It also looked like one that had belonged to my mother.
    One that had been stolen from my house six months before.
    I think Lightoller’s a fence. Dad’s words came back to mock me. Could he be right?
    I wondered what to do. Presumably the premises were empty and Lightoller was back in his house, in which case I might have been best served by going to the police. Except that I wasn’t completely sure if I was correct, if that really was my mother’s brooch. If I waited, though, it might go, never to be seen again.
    Perhaps Lightoller was in . . .
    I knocked on the glass of the door, peering in, looking for a response.
    Nothing. I knocked again, peered in some more, still saw nothing; so, before leaving, I tried the door handle.
    Which turned and opened the door.
    Surprised, for a moment I just stood there. Perhaps he had left the premises and forgotten to lock up behind him. Perhaps, though, he was asleep in the back room, spread out upon an ancient ottoman, handkerchief covering his face, as dust-covered as his wares. I called out, listened, then stepped inside.
    A musty smell smote my nostrils, as if these were more than mere antiques, these were artefacts from the other side; moreover it struck me as cold, giving the whole place a Dickensian air, with Little Nell waiting in the back to make an entrance. I nearly knocked over an ugly, cumbersome-looking vase merely by opening the door, and was almost stabbed by an African tribal spear that was lying against the back of a winged armchair.
    I did not call out again, because I thought then to get a closer look at the brooch without hindrance. It was difficult to get at, as it lay behind an Ottoman and a large box of metal toy cars, but by putting one knee on the Ottoman and stretching over the box, I could look at it more closely.
    It was, without doubt, my mother’s brooch.
    I stood up, and looked around.
    â€˜Mr Lightoller?’
    When there was still no reply, I began to make my way to the back of the shop, taking great care not to knock anything over, gaining the impression that it had all been laid out as a series of booby-traps to catch the unwary. ‘Mr Lightoller?’
    At the back of the shop there was a door with frosted glass in its top half, and beside this there was a rather striking stuffed grizzly bear on its hind legs. There was no writing on the glass but it was obviously an office door and behind it the light was on. I knocked on it and called out his name again.
    No response.
    I grasped the handle, twisted and walked in.
    You’ll already have guessed, of course, what I found.

EIGHT
    M asson ignored me for the first hour that he was present at the murder scene. He arrived about thirty minutes after my 999 call and about ten minutes after the first, uniformed officers. I had gone at once to the grocer’s shop and asked the woman if I could use their phone; she had looked doubtful until I explained why; then she looked nothing less than prurient. Then I hung around outside while the grocer and his wife kept peering into Lightoller’s shop, perhaps afraid that he might come back to life, or that his murderer might still be lurking, possibly in the suit of armour.
    For Oliver Lightoller had been murdered and, when I say ‘murdered’, I mean well and truly done in. Somebody had run him through with a sword; they had done this so enthusiastically that it turned out that he was pinned to the chair. Mr Lightoller bore a surprised expression on his rather corpulent features, his eyes wide (and not clouded), his