Free The Shortest Journey by Hazel Holt Page A

to
me.’
    ‘Were they old or young?’
    ‘Couldn’t properly tell. It were only a quick
glimpse, and it had come on to rain a bit by then and they were
both wearing macs. He had on a hat, some kind of tweed fishing hat,
and she had a scarf tied round her head. You know how it is when
you can’t see people’s faces.’
    ‘Yes, of course. What sort of car?’
    ‘Some sort of Ford, an Escort I think, black – but I
could be mistaken. I could be mistaken about the whole thing. I
mean, it might not have been Mrs Rossiter at all.’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘Well, this lady were wearing a mac, like Mrs
Rossiter were, but she’d got a scarf tied round her head too, and
Mrs Rossiter, she hadn’t been wearing one of them when I dropped
her off. Though, of course, it weren’t raining then. But you see
how I can’t tell anyone, when it’s all sort of vague. I don’t want
them going on at me and coming bothering the wife again. She’s got
enough to fret about with the boy...’
    ‘Yes, I can see that,’ I said doubtfully.
    ‘Any road, I’ve told you now, m’dear. You see what
you make of it.’
    He bent to pat his dog, which had left my two
investigating a rock pool and returned to her master.
    ‘Good girl, Bess. Well, I must be off, m’dear. The
wife’ll have the dinner waiting. You won’t let on what I told
you?’
    ‘No, of course not. I hope your boy is home
soon.’
    He gave me a sort of salute and went off across the
sands, his dog at his heels.
    I stood in a daze, thinking about what he had told
me. Now Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance seemed much more sinister.
Could she have been kidnapped? Surely not – not in Taunton and in
broad daylight! My thoughts returned to Marion and her husband. A
man and a woman. She knew them, would naturally trust them, happily
get into a car and be driven away – to what? To be murdered? The
death of a frail old lady, with a heart condition, could easily be
passed off as an accident.
    I felt I ought to tell the police, but then Mr Cooper
had told me his story in confidence. If I went to the police now he
would be in trouble for suppressing evidence, or whatever they
called it. Besides, he might have been mistaken. But somehow I knew
that he was not. In my mind’s eye was the picture of Mrs Rossiter,
a man’s hand on her arm, getting into a car. It was a picture that
I knew would stay with me, distressing, haunting even, but I
didn’t, at the moment, see what I could do about it.
     
Chapter Five
     
    I was in the pet shop buying a large bag of cat
litter and other necessities when I ran into Ella Lydgate. Ella is
a civil servant who took early retirement and is thus able to
devote her entire life to animals. Whenever anyone finds a stray
dog or cat – or budgerigar or tortoise for that matter – it’s
always Ella they turn to. As often as not she’s up and about at
five o’clock in the morning crawling under some garden shed in the
pale light of dawn to coax out a terrified half-wild cat. She
boasts that she’s always managed to find a home for every animal
that came to her – though sometimes she has cheated a bit and kept
the really impossible cases herself. Her little house somehow
contrives to remain neat and tidy although she now has eleven cats
and three dogs.
    ‘Hello, Ella,’ I said. ‘Can I give you a hand back to
the house with those?’
    ‘Oh, thank you, Sheila, that would be kind. And while
you’re there I can show you the new photos of Flora and the
kittens.’
    Flora was a tiny little grey-and-white cat I had
found in the woods with two half-starved kittens. I do most
sincerely hope that there is a special hell reserved for those who
are cruel to children and animals. The poor little creature had
obviously been thrown out of a car when her owners discovered that
she was pregnant – I can’t imagine the sort of people who could do
such a thing. With Ella’s help I had housed and fed them and helped
to tame the kittens and she had found them