Walking with Ghosts - A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries) Read Free

down this slope so quickly? The way ahead was shiny and wet – and empty. Very empty. Was it possible they’d passed the group without noticing?
    She glanced over her shoulder. No one there either. Shadows, a flickering candle and driving rain; no stout woman with a pompous air and a walking stick!
    A sudden gust lifted rainwater from an overflowing gutter and made her look up. The equivalent of a bucketful of water fell on to her upturned face. Spluttering and blinking, she wiped her face with her sleeve. A contact lens popped out and fell earthwards, a tiny coracle for some drowning insect.
    ‘Damn!’
    Coming out from behind her hood, she found she was on level ground and on the right side of a large puddle.
    Honey looked back up the slope. Rods of rain streaked across street lamps. She thought she glimpsed the same motorbike she’d seen earlier. Apart from that, nobody and nothing, not even Her Ladyship. Presumably she’d rejoined the rest of the bunch. How, she couldn’t quite figure out. On a night like this she didn’t care.
    ‘Please yourself,’ she said with a sigh, and bent down to retie her shoelace.
    Losing a contact lens was almost as bad as losing a leg; everything was lopsided. Close up wasn’t so bad. Distance was a nightmare.
    A sudden movement attracted her attention further downhill. Some people were jumping in and out of a puddle that had gathered between the alley and the main pavement. The Australian women, no doubt.
    Just as she thought that, a pair of shiny shoes sauntered past. She glanced up and spied a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over the face.
    ‘Good evening,’ she said.
    Whoever it was didn’t answer, which was something of a pity because she was dying to make a comment about his shiny patent shoes.
           Shiny?
           Patent?
           In this weather?
           How come they weren’t wet – sodden even? And how come she hadn’t heard his footsteps? And his clothes weren’t exactly twenty-first century. More like eighteenth … Not a ghost. No. Couldn’t be. Could it? Her blood turned to ice – and the weather had nothing to do with it!
    Taking off like Concorde from Heathrow, she raced and skidded her way over the cobbles crashing into the small group standing in the gap at the end.
    ‘Hey!’
           The blurred figures suddenly became clear. Faces – young faces – looked at her as if she were batty. They had ‘nightclubbers r us’ written all over them.
           ‘I’m sorry. Wrong group!’

Chapter Three
    Having eluded her companion, Lady Wanda Templeton-Jones – formerly plain Wanda Carpenter – headed in double-quick time for the shop with the candle burning in its window.
    Before trying the handle she looked over her shoulder. A lone figure, presumably the hotel woman, was picking her way down over the cobbles towards the main road, concentrating on not slipping. Apart from her, the alley was empty.
    She pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness. The shop smelled of cobwebs and fluff. The candle in the window did little to aid her eyesight. Using her stick to feel ahead of her, she took a few steps forward, squinting into the darkness.
    The sound of a creaking floorboard sounded overhead. She looked up. Anyone else might have been afraid. She was not. Her purpose on coming here far outweighed any fear she might have felt and anyway, it was a matter of honour.
    ‘I need to talk to you,’ she called out. ‘You might not like what I have to say.’
    Her voice sounded thick in her throat but weakened as it bounced off the whitewashed walls.
    Another floorboard creaked. The candle flickered behind her. The shop was empty and had been so for some time, hence no electricity, only a candle. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a flashlight?
    ‘Get going,’ she muttered to herself. She was determined to go through with this.
    She fancied the outline of a door in the corner and made for it. Using her stick