Three Little Maids Read Free Page A

sepulchral whisper over the counter. ‘I wonder if she’s anyone we know?’
    Viviane felt an icy chill freeze down her spine despite the sunny warmth in the library. ‘What body, Miss Wilberforce?’
    The sisters exchanged conspiratorially glances. Thora nodded and continued for her sister. ‘Fred Hill, the hotel porter, told us all about it when he brought in our morning newspapers. His sister’s boy, Jimmy Barty, Fred said came across the body on the cliff top while on the way to work in the Fish Market. He’s still at school to get his A levels and it has shaken him up dreadfully.’
    ‘Poor boy,’ Alice said. ‘One can only hope he can forget what he saw, Mrs Gordon.’
    ‘A girl’s body. She was murdered?’ Viviane said temporarily lost for words.
    ‘Oh, yes. We believe so. The full details will be released later , I dare say, by the police.’ Alice said finding another book in her shopper to put on the counter. ‘I want to renew this one, Mrs Gordon, please.’
    The two elderly ladies, who were permanent boarders in a seaside hotel, were a fount of local information and gossip. Viviane usually listened to their small talk with some amusement and only half her mind switched on. This news didn’t make pleasant listening but it was intriguing just the same. It was like a 100-watt bulb had just lit up in her head. She’d been a policeman’s wife for seventeen years and she’d missed listening to Bill’s daily accounts. Although he kept bits from her that he thought she shouldn’t know.
    ‘Has she been identified yet? Does anyone know who she is? Is she a local?’
    ‘We don’t know any more than what Fred told us.’ Alice shook her head regretfully and the bunch of shining artificial red cherries bounced on the small pale green straw hat that perched on the white hair fluffed up like a dandelion clock around her small pink face. ‘I wonder if it was an assault or murder?’ her voice sank down again to a whisper. ‘You can never tell can you with so many holiday makers in town at the moment.’
    ‘It could be a suicide, or an accident I suppose,’ Thora said also in a low hushed voice. ‘These silly young girls do such foolish things, don’t they?’ She sighed heavily. ‘They can take ‘morning after’ pills on demand. Then there are pills they can buy in discos. Hard drugs, you know? They can be so dangerous.’
    ‘It could be a sexual assault that went wrong, dear,’ Alice said picking up her basket. ‘Perhaps her drink was doped... And she was taken there by someone last night?’
    ‘If she was so young she wouldn’t be served with a drink in a pub.’ Viviane intervened. ‘I would have thought that she knew and trusted her date to go there late at night with them.’
    Thora nodded solemnly. ‘Everyone knows that the cliff path near Lovers Leap is dangerous, especially at night. Everyone local that is - -’
    ‘Perhaps she was a girl staying on holiday here. Perhaps in the Caravan camp. It’s not so good for the publicity and tourist business but I’m sure that the police are dealing with it efficiently. Someone will come forward soon to identify her soon. Don’t worry, ladies.’ Viviane assured them with a smile that belied the unease that she was feeling at that moment.
    The sisters wandered off together down to the fiction shelves. Sometimes, Alice took a fancy to reading true crimes from the non-fiction. She often chatted about them in depth to Viviane; how she thought that she’d met Heath, the lady killer, in London just after the Second War and mentioned often how her father, Colonel Willard Wilberforce, had been present at the Nuremberg trials for war criminals.
    The two sisters seemed inseparable. They were, Viviane suspected, living on a tight, fixed income in the White Rock Hotel. Thora watching over Alice with such loving care, Viviane didn’t like to think what would happen to the one left behind when the inevitable happened.
    Viviane snapped out quickly