Free Classic in the Barn by Amy Myers Page B

be married to the heiress of an English farm. Heiress! That’s a joke.’
    â€˜Oh Bea. But you don’t think he’s guilty, do you?’ Zoe asked. And when Bea didn’t answer, she sighed. ‘You always were easy prey for romantic foreigners.’
    â€˜I don’t know what to think. I can’t bloody think. Tomas wasn’t on good terms with Mum and that’s for sure.’
    â€˜Did Guy have a hand in this? After all, he’s Tomas’s employer – although I guess Brandon would favour me over Tomas for the high jump.’
    â€˜Preferably,’ Bea answered flatly. ‘After all, you were there. But why on earth should you want to kill her?’
    â€˜My thoughts exactly,’ I said gratefully.
    â€˜Tomas had been threatening Mum,’ Bea said. ‘He didn’t mean anything by it, though.’
    â€˜Threatening her with what exactly?’ I asked.
    â€˜They had a major row. Tomas got stroppy when Mum told him to get off the gravy train, as she expressed it. I objected. I’m nearly twenty-three, for heaven’s sake. But even Guy admits Tomas got drunk one night and shouted the odds in the pub, about marrying me and getting his own back on my mother.’ Bea’s face was twisted with pain. ‘I’m only telling you this because the police know it, Jack. Otherwise you wouldn’t get a peep out of me about Tomas. I don’t think he’s a murderer, but I have a feeling the police have more on him than just threats. There was some kind of scene at Guy’s place too, one day, when Mum came storming in to protest. I wasn’t there, but I heard all about it from everyone concerned.’
    â€˜Has he been arrested?’
    â€˜He’s being questioned.’ Bea burst into tears, and Zoe, not normally the most demonstrative of girls, put her arms round her.
    â€˜A drink,’ I said hastily.
    â€˜I’m driving,’ Bea hiccuped.
    â€˜ I’m driving,’ Zoe told her. ‘You’re staying with me tonight.’
    â€˜That’s cowardly.’ Another hiccup.
    â€˜That’s sensible, not cowardly.’
    â€˜No.’ Bea was very white. ‘I must go back to Greensand Farm. I want to make sure the barn door is locked.’
    The Lagonda. How could I have forgotten it? Easily, I thought, when its late owner was still stuffing every corner of my mind with the waste and horror of her death.
    â€˜It’s in the crime scene,’ I explained to Bea. ‘The police will keep a twenty-four-hour guard on it until they’ve finished their work there. And, indeed, the farmhouse too. What worries you about the car? That someone might steal it?’
    â€˜No. Because it meant a lot to my mother.’
    â€˜You said she’d never mentioned it to you.’
    â€˜That’s how I know it meant so much.’
    I was humbled. It all came back to knowledge. For all Bea had said, I might not have sufficient about Polly to help her daughter. ‘You’re going to have enough to do without involving yourself in what is the police’s job.’
    She brushed this aside. ‘I have to feel I’m helping her . I know there’ll be mountains of routine work, notifying people and dealing with everyone from the window cleaner to Great Aunt Maud, but I want to be sure. I don’t mean I’m going to stalk the hunt, I just want to think it through and work out why it happened, to be sure that the police are on the right track. Do you see?’
    â€˜I do,’ Zoe said promptly, and the laser beam from her eyes turned on me. ‘And so do you, don’t you, Jack?’
    The laser wasn’t needed. ‘Yes.’
    Bea relaxed a little. ‘I want you to do it, Jack. I just couldn’t bear to talk to people while wondering all the time: was it you? Or was it you?’
    I was with her one hundred per cent. This was going to have to replace my lost future with Polly, even if