Threats at Three by Ann Purser Read Free Book Online Page B

team.
    “I don’t know if I should say this,” Floss began, “but I was talking to Kate Adstone. You know she’s got that little toddler, and seems a bit lonely. I asked her round for coffee, just to be friendly, and she was pathetically grateful!”
    “Very neighbourly of you,” Lois said, looking at her watch, “but what has this got to do with New Brooms?”
    “Nothing,” Floss said. “But it has got something to do with Derek’s SOS committee. The subject came up, and I don’t think she connected me with you or Derek. She was saying that Gavin had come home laughing his head off at the committee. A load of no-hopers, was what he had said, apparently. Kate said he had big plans for the village hall, but they certainly weren’t those of Derek Meade’s committee. Then she looked a bit guilty, as if she shouldn’t have told me.” She looked anxiously at Lois. “I just thought you should know. Maybe tell Derek, so’s he can be prepared?”
    Lois nodded wearily. “You did the right thing,” she said. “I reckon Save Our Shed is going to Blight Our Lives for a good while. Thanks, Floss. Anything else you hear, report back to me.”

NINE

    N EXT MORNING DOUGLAS AND SUSIE WERE SITTING AT THE breakfast table, encouraging a reluctant Harry to eat his porridge. “What time did you say you were going?” Susie said, looking at the clock that had been presented to her old granddad when he retired from the railway station in Tresham. He’d been so proud of it, and of his medal pinned on him by the great cigar-smoking leader when he came by train to visit the town. Both house and medal were now Susie’s, left to her in old Clem’s will, and she and Douglas had “knocked through” to the house owned by Lois next door, making a good-sized home in Gordon Street for the newlyweds and their firstborn.
    “Ten o’clockish,” Douglas said. “Check-in time is eleven, and the plane leaves about one. Should be there soon after three. I’ll ring you from the hotel.” He worked at an American company’s office in Tresham, and was off to Italy for a jolly bonding meeting in Venice. It was a bit of a waste of time, in his opinion, but he meant to enjoy himself and make the most of it.
    “Think of me,” said Susie, “talking to this small person here and only ever getting a beaming smile and a load of rubbish in reply!”
    “Mum said she’d call in later, to make sure you’re all right,” Douglas said, and Susie bridled. “Of course I’ll be all right,” she said. “What on earth could go wrong? And there’s always my mum and dad up on the estate.”
    Susie’s dysfunctional parents lived on a run-down estate in the suburbs of Tresham, and were not much good in the way of support for their daughter. Still, she had managed to maintain reasonable relations with them, and they would be better than nothing in an emergency, she hoped.
    What emergency, though? She dismissed the thought. “You’ll be back on Friday, won’t you?”
    “Friday evening,” Douglas said. He was writing now on the back of an envelope.
    “What’s that?” Susie asked.
    “Just working something out. Nearly finished.” He wrote down a number with a flourish, and handed the envelope to her.
    “So?” she said. “Maths for idiots? I can’t make any sense of it.”
    “It’s just to show you I learned something from our visit to the National Space Centre,” he said with mock superiority. “You know it’s Mum’s birthday next week? Well, if she lived on Pluto, where a year is 246 earth years, she would be around two months old, and so not due for a Pluto first birthday for another ten months.”
    “Wow! That’s worth knowing! Come in very handy, that will.” She made a face at him and said she was giving up on Harry’s porridge. “Time we got going,” she said.
     
     
    IN THE BIG GENERAL OFFICE OF WORLDWIDE SOLUTIONS, GAVIN Adstone headed for the gents, or comfort station as some of his colleagues called it. As he stood