Jam and Jeopardy Read Free Page B

yours, then, for it’s Gilbert White’s wife who keeps him out, not his pal.’
    His brows came down. ‘What? Oh, I think you’re mistaken, Miss Souter.’
    ‘No, no, I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen him creeping up the Lane past my house at five o’clock in the morning. A fine carry on, and her a married woman.’
    The man looked as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it, and contented himself by murmuring, ‘I’ll put a stop to it. It won’t happen again.’
    The old woman smirked broadly when he went inside his shop. That was one in the eye for young Master Pettigrew, she thought. When she’d confronted him last week, he’d told her to
mind her own business and threatened to sort her out. Well, he was the one who was going to be sorted out. His father would see to that.
    When she reached Ashgrove Lane, she walked up the garden to her back door; it was quicker than going round the front. Stopping to admire her lilac tree, she wondered why Violet and Grace had not
removed the body of their dog, but probably they were too scared to come into her garden. This was Guild night, though, when they knew she would be out, so they would more than likely grab the
chance sometime this evening.
    ‘I warned them often enough about their mongrel digging holes in my garden,’ she muttered. ‘It serves them right that he got what was coming to him.’
    Her back door was unlocked, because the key was too big to carry in her pocket. She was too forgetful to hang it on a hook inside her coal bunker like she used to, so she didn’t bother.
She supposed it would really be safer not to leave it unlocked all the time – after all, the front door had a yale lock with just a small key – but she’d always been in the habit
of going out by the back. Except on Fridays, when she went to the Guild with Mabel Wakeford. Old habits die hard. Still, there had never been any burglaries in Tollerton, very few crimes of any
kind. The two bobbies here had it very easy.
    She laid her shopping bag on the draining board, and took a flat plate out of the cupboard. Then she unwrapped the piece of mutton, laid it on the plate and placed her mesh, domed meat cover
over it. She didn’t have a refrigerator, silly modern contraptions, but the weather was so cold that the mutton would keep all right till she cooked it tomorrow. She couldn’t do it
tonight, because this was Guild night.
    It was a pity she wouldn’t be able to have her usual steak pie on Sunday, but, on the other hand, she wouldn’t have to make any pastry. She never did much in the afternoons, except
her tapestry, but she found herself dozing more than stitching nowadays, one of the penalties of old age.
    When she finished putting away her groceries, a bag of flour was still left sitting out. She mustn’t forget about it – it was the whole crux of the matter, her very lifeline –
but she’d have her snack lunch before she carried out the most important task of the day.
    At seven-thirty in the evening in Number Three Honeysuckle Cottages, Violet Grant and Grace Skinner, two widowed sisters, were still heartbroken about the disappearance of their Skye terrier.
They were positive that he had been poisoned, but getting him back had had to wait until Friday, the only night that Janet Souter went out. They were too afraid of her to chance going into her
garden at a time when she could see them. It had taken much willpower for them to leave their darling pet so long in enemy territory, but deliverance was close at hand.
    They were both dressed in old grey tweed skirts and dark grey jumpers, but Violet wore a matted green cardigan on top, while Grace had on a black jacket, originally part of a suit, but now
rather the worse for wear.
    They weren’t exactly on the bread line, but they had to be very careful with the widows’ pensions they received from the state, and the small pensions allotted to them by their late
husbands’ employers. What little money