Peering through the crack between the curtains, Sgt Carroll could see nearly all the villagers crammed into Miriam Marsden’s front room, including (to his surprise) the ‘Lord of the Manor’. Scribbling names in his notebook, tunnel-visioned into his task, he didn’t hear footsteps approaching him, and when a large hand descended on his shoulder, he…
Hattie sat in the dark at the wheel of her little red car and decided she might just hate the village, everything, and everyone in it – every man, woman, and blood-splattered child, the teeny-tiny shops, the little thatched cottages, the duck pond on the village green, the Lord of the Manor, the ‘Big House’,…
Tom stood silently, firm in the knowledge that no-one would need to use the telephone, for anyone who was anyone was already busy – ensconced in his Grandma’s living-room, for heaven-only-knows what reason, but surely not a good one.
Mrs McAlister rose, taking every eye with her as she did so. The uppermost wisps of her iron-grey hair were only level with the Baron’s shoulder, but she nonetheless presented a formidable countenance as she addressed him, nary a quaver in her voice.
The door opened violently as the man strode into the room, ignoring Miriam’s plaintive cry of distress, and scanned the faces of the gathered crowd, bristling with rage.
Miriam rose from her perch on the arm of the sofa, and walked towards the front door, her movements robotic, and her breathing rapid. Every eye was on her, and every footstep seemed to land unnaturally loudly; the sound of her slippered feet heightening the tension in the room as she neared the door.
“It’s been bad enough having that young police sergeant around asking questions all the time, but now we have to put up with young Tom (no offense meant, Miriam) and that walking catastrophe, Hattie Hercules? How on earth are we going to cover our tracks from three of them?”
The little blue-painted door slammed in its frame for the second time in as many minutes, causing Mrs McAlister to wince at the rattle of roundy-glass windows and the stun of silence which followed. She “tsk”ed under her breath, rolled her eyes, and strapped on her apron – this was a Situation with a capital…
Sergeant Carroll’s eyes narrowed as he watched the pretty brunette retrieve her phone from the floor and gather her bags and chattels around her once more, before shaking her hair from her eyes and shouldering her way through the door of the Post Office Cafe. Her body language suggested a big, overblown greeting in the…
Harriet P. Hercules, intrepid reporter (because there always is one), notebook and pens at the ready, camera to hand (well, iPhone), on the brink of a piece of masterful investigative journalism, reporting for business to uncover a story so sensational, her career would skyrocket – absolute dead cert!
