Free The Shortest Journey by Hazel Holt

coherently.
    ‘Well, here’s the way it is. I reckon no one wants to
take the blame for the old lady’s disappearance, so they all had a
go at me!’
    ‘Had a go?’
    ‘Well, that Mrs Wilmot saying I shouldn’t have let
her come back on her own. I ask you, ’tisn’t for me to say what my
ladies should do, they wouldn’t like it. And it weren’t as if she
wasn’t all there, if you see what I mean, m’dear – she were quite
sharp, a very nice lady, very friendly. I’ve driven her a couple of
times and she always sits in front with me and chats – not like
some of them, sitting in the back and never speaking a word, like I
were part of the car!’
    ‘What did she chat about when you were driving up to
Taunton?’
    ‘Oh, things in general. Quite a bit about my garden.
She liked a nice garden, always used to comment on those we passed,
what they had in them and such. I think she missed her flowers in
that place. What else? Now, let me think. She were asking me about
my boy Dave. I’d told her about him last time I drove her – he’s
got this muscular dystrophy, you know what I mean? And he’s had to
go into this institution for a bit, just to learn how to go on,
then we can have him home again. Anyhow, Mrs Rossiter, she
remembered and asked about him, very kindly. As a matter of fact’ –
he paused and looked at me cautiously – ‘she gave me a whole tenner
as a tip. I didn’t want to take it – well, it were too much – but
she said it were to buy something to take to the boy when the wife
and I went to see him.’
    ‘That was just like her!’ I exclaimed.
    ‘I never asked...’ he said defensively.
    ‘I’m sure you didn’t. No, she loved children.’
    ‘I didn’t tell that Mrs Wilmot about it, either. Or
Sergeant Page. They might have thought I were up to something.’
    ‘Oh, you saw the police?’
    ‘Sergeant Page came round to my house. Gave my wife a
nasty turn to find him on the doorstep when she got back from
shopping, I can tell you. She thought something had happened to me.
Anyway, he asked me where I’d dropped Mrs Rossiter in Taunton – it
were in Church Square, back of Marks and Spencer. A lot of my
ladies like to be dropped there. Handy for the shopping, you
see.’
    ‘And that was the last you saw of her?’
    He hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Well, there
were something. But nothing I could swear to.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well, I didn’t mention it to Mrs Wilmot. Her going
on at me like that, I weren’t going to say no more than I had to.
Well, you can understand how I felt, m’dear. And that Sergeant Page
– very officious he is, you should have heard the way he went on
that time when one of my braking lights were a bit dodgy. I tried
to explain how it was, but all he’d say were, “The facts, sir,
that’s all I want, not excuses.” All sarcastic. So, you see, I
didn’t think it were no use telling him something I only sort of
noticed out of the corner of my eye, you might say. Not a fact ,’ he said with heavy irony.
    ‘What did you see?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, it were like this, m’dear. I had that tenner
from Mrs Rossiter and while I were in Taunton I thought I’d go and
get the boy some of those special paints – poster paints they call
them – from that art shop round the back of the precinct. Dave,
he’s very keen on his painting. The pictures don’t look like
anything you’d recognise, though his mother thinks the world of
them, but he likes doing them and they say it does him good. Anyway
I puts the car in that car park down by the river and I were just
walking through to that machine for my ticket when I thought I saw
Mrs Rossiter.’
    ‘You thought?’
    ‘Well, it were just a glimpse, through the parked
cars. It looked like she were talking to a man and a woman and then
the man took her arm and they all got into a car.’
    ‘What were they like, the man and the woman?’
    ‘Couldn’t really say, m’dear. They had their backs