A Market for Murder Read Free

Even she doesn’t seem to really know why.’
    Maggs had already gone to the car, parked just outside the gate. She tooted the horn now, summoning Den. ‘Gotta go,’ he grinned. ‘Her Ladyship won’t wait.’
    ‘You have to be firm with her,’ the undertaker advised, for the hundredth time. The relationship between Maggs and Den, now approaching its first anniversary, had not always run smooth. Most people winced at the punishment the tall mild-tempered man took with apparent equanimity. He even seemed to like it.
    ‘See you then,’ he threw back over his shoulder, as he trotted down the path from Drew’s office. Karen came to the front door of the adjacent cottage and waved, but Den didn’t see her.
    ‘He’s in a hurry,’ she called to Drew, as the elderly Fiat pulled away.
    Drew locked the office door, and hopped over the low fence dividing his work premises from his home. ‘Maggs waits for no one,’ he said. ‘Why – did you want to talk to him?’
    ‘Sort of. Did he say anything about the supermarket bomb?’
    ‘Only that he was glad it didn’t concern him.’
    ‘You saw the police here, I suppose?’ She looked him in the eye, and he realised she was perturbed.
    ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘When?’
    ‘Damn it, Drew. You must have seen their car. They parked it across the gateway. They asked me a whole lot of questions, because I was there at the time of the bomb. Whether I’d seen anyone I knew.’ She chipped irritably at afingernail, staring unseeingly at it, waiting for her husband’s response.
    ‘So which is the bit that bothers you?’ he asked mildly.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. It felt scary, that’s all. I mean – supermarkets are a sensitive subject around here. They didn’t seem to understand that, and I didn’t want to be the one to explain it to them.’
    He pulled her to him, and rubbed gently between her shoulder blades. ‘Nobody expects you to,’ he chided. ‘You’re still in a state of shock, that’s all. They should have been more careful than to come blundering in less than two days after it happened. I bet they never asked how Steph was, either.’
    Karen shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t,’ she pouted.
    ‘Then they don’t deserve your help. Let them work it out for themselves. You’ve got enough to worry about.’
    She wriggled away from him, making an exaggerated expression of anger at the blundering police.
    ‘Yes, I have, haven’t I,’ she agreed. 

CHAPTER TWO
    Three towns in the area provided venues for farmers’ markets, with Bradbourne hosting theirs every other Tuesday. Seven stallholders presented themselves this week, arriving before eight o’clock and setting up their displays. Geraldine Beech was, as always, at hand, fielding questions, complaints, disruptions and disasters. The area designated for the stalls was not ideal: Bradbourne had an old town centre with narrow streets. Its Market Hall was firmly under the control of the mainstream traders, selling picture frames, sweets, books and Taiwanese toys. No way would the ‘organic brigade’ be permitted access to those portals. They therefore clustered at the widest part of the main street, down at one end where there was a sort of square. Unfortunatelythe square was bordered by shops selling meat, vegetables and bread. The competition with the farmers was all too obvious, and all too full of animosity.
    Lukewarm support from the Town Council had provided ‘no parking’ cones, and very little else. Once the local shopkeepers had realised this, they blithely disregarded the cones and parked their vehicles obstructively on the square. Geraldine Beech, undaunted, arranged the stalls between and beside the cars and vans, blocking them in on occasion. By the time everything was set up and the first shoppers drifting up, tempers were frayed and emotions running high.
    Oswald Kelly, who kept ostriches and sold their meat, and was therefore inevitably known to all as ‘Oswald-the-ostriches’, always