Murder by the Sea Read Free Page B

might carry him if he’d fallen off a boat, but how did he get all the way across Kent from Folkestone if he came by tunnel?’
    ‘All I know is they think it was dumped,’ said Harry. ‘Don’t blame me.’
    ‘And don’t worry about me,’ said Libby, looking virtuous. ‘Fran and I won’t be involved this time.’
    Fran was watering the pots in her tiny yard outside the back door the following morning when she heard a knock at the front. Leaving Balzac, her beautiful black and white long haired cat, to investigate the watering can, she went inside, wiping her hands on a tea towel.
    ‘Mrs Castle?’ The young woman on the doorstep was small, slight and brown haired. Little brown mouse, thought Fran.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’m Jane Maurice from the Nethergate Mercury .’ ‘Oh?’ ‘Yes. I wondered if you’d been invited by the
    local police to investigate the – um – murder that
    was discovered yesterday?’
    ‘Murder? Yesterday?’
    ‘You’ll have heard it or seen it on the news? And it was in the Mercury this morning.’
    ‘I don’t take the Mercury ,’ said Fran, ‘and if you mean the body discovered on the island yesterday, I didn’t know it was murdered.’
    ‘The police think it might be,’ said Jane Maurice.
    ‘That’s why I thought they might have consulted you.’ She was fidgeting now, obviously having expected to be invited inside. But Fran was having none of it.
    ‘I can’t think why anyone should have consulted me, especially about a body.’ She made as if to close the door. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me –’
    ‘But Mrs Castle –’ began Jane, trying to step forward.
    ‘Thank you, Miss – er. Goodbye.’ Fran closed the door and leaned back on it, her heart thumping. How had that happened?
    She went slowly back to the yard, where Balzac greeted her with a chirrup. It was that last case, she thought, bending to stroke his head. Her part in it had been discovered by the local paper and her name had appeared more than once as “Inspector Connell’s special investigator”. Neither of them had confirmed it, and eventually, the paper had stopped including her. But they remembered, obviously.
    As a reluctant psychic, Fran had been useful to the local police force once or twice, with a certain amount of help from an over-excitable Libby, but she wasn’t comfortable with any of it. Libby would have had them setting up a psychic detective agency if she’d had her way, but Fran just wanted to be an ordinary person in an ordinary house now that she had Coastguard Cottage. Besides, one of her children was due to visit this weekend, complete with censorious husband, and she didn’t think they would approve of anything even slightly out of the ordinary.
    ‘Did you see that item on the news last night?’
    said Libby later, on the phone. ‘Harry said that on the radio they said it was an illegal immigrant.’
    ‘Yes, and I had a reporter round here this morning.’
    ‘You what?’
    ‘Some girl from the local paper came round to ask me if I’d been consulted by the police.’
    ‘Oooh!’ said Libby. ‘You’re famous!’
    ‘Oh, stop it, Libby. You know I’ve never wanted any of this. You’re the one who always wants to go charging in to investigate things.’
    ‘If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be living here, would you?’
    ‘I’d still have Coastguard Cottage.’
    ‘But you wouldn’t know the rest of us. Or Guy.’
    ‘Once I was living six doors down from him, I expect I might have met him,’ said Fran. ‘He said he’d have wangled an introduction somehow.’
    ‘Oh, so you’ve talked about it?’
    ‘Of course. I admit that my – er – involvement with you and Ben has somewhat changed my life, but I think Guy and I would have met anyway.’
    ‘Oh, OK.’ Libby thought for a moment. ‘So what did you say to this reporter? Did you tell her we’d actually been on the spot?’
    ‘No, of course not. And don’t you go getting in touch with her, either.’
    ‘No, I