Free A Well Kept Secret by A. B. King

parts.”

    “And?”

    “Well, as I went up to the bar to get another pint, I heard him talking to Syd, he’s the landlord, and asking questions about Springwater House.”

    “Perhaps he was an old friend of the Doctor’s?”

    “I shouldn’t think so,” said Perkins dubiously. “He struck me as being a bit of a shifty character; you know, one of these blokes with a baby face, yet with something about the eyes that says he could be anything but, if you get my meaning?   Still, probably nothing to it, but a big place like Springwater House, well, I suppose one must always think of the criminal element. We don’t have too much of a problem like that in these parts of course, only I remember wondering at the time if he was a housebreaker or something like that who thought that now the Doctor’s passed on there could be easy pickings there. Hope you don’t mind; just thought I’d mention it so you’d be on your guard.”

    “That’s very good of you, I’ll certainly be careful to make sure the house is secure.”

    “Right, well, I’ll be off then,” Perkins said, straightening up and closing the boot of the car.

    “Yes, and thank you for bringing the box out for me, and thank you also for your warning. If you should see this man again, or hear anything about him, perhaps you would let me know? I imagine you have the house phone number?”

    “Yes, I’ll do that.”

Chapter Four. Monday Lunchtime.

    As the solicitor’s clerk returned to his office, Martin strolled up the High Street, glancing in at the shops as he went. Seen now from the perspective of a pedestrian, Wellworthy struck him as being a place that had somehow been by-passed by the twenty-first century. It was almost like being in a time-warp, and seeing a small country town as it probably looked somewhere in the late nineteen-fifties. There were no large supermarkets in evidence, parking was easy, no glitz, no pop music blaring out from boutiques hawking so-called ‘fashion’ wear, no 'charity shops', and even the ubiquitous wheelie-bins being conspicuous by their absence. Even the people he passed as he journeyed up the road were all perfectly ordinary. Unlike most towns and cities he had visited, there seemed to be very few individuals about who were not ethnically British, and such youngsters as he saw were all what he would class as being perfectly normal and well-behaved, with no hint of the 'yobbish' element that marred so many of the major cities. If one liked the sort of placid, sleepy, semi-rural life that had been relatively commonplace some fifty or so years ago, Wellworthy was obviously the place to be.

    He found the Doctor’s surgery without difficulty, and was not surprised to see that there were a number of people sitting in the waiting room. He spoke briefly to the receptionist, who provided him with a plastic number-disk and told him that the doctor would be free to see him in about half an hour. He thanked her and went out into the sunshine again, not being particularly keen to while away his time listening to people cough and sneeze, or discussing their individual ailments in awed tones with their companions.

    His footsteps eventually brought him to the churchyard he had glimpsed briefly as he had driven through the town on the previous day. It was quiet and secluded, with the huge yew tree he had observed in passing standing only a few yards inside the lych-gate, and looking even more massive when seen close-up. By the look of it the tree must have been centuries old, and the wide sweeping boughs overshadowed most of the ancient churchyard. He entered, and strolled along the stone-flagged pathway, wondering just where his uncle lay buried. Most of the gravestones he passed looked as if they had been standing for centuries, and it wasn’t until he reached the far side of the church that he came upon more recent interments. He looked at each of these in turn, and presently he came to a double plot that he knew