Free Death of a Hussy by MC Beaton Page A

you start earning your keep by helping Mrs Todd with the preparations.’
    She strode out, tottering slightly on her very high heels.
    A few minutes later, there came the harsh sound of revving from the garage. Alison crossed to the kitchen window and looked out.
    Maggie drove out of the garage. The entrance to the bungalow garden was narrow and flanked by two gateposts. As Alison watched, Maggie scraped the car along one of the gateposts on her way out. Alison let out a whimper of pain as if the car were a pet dog which was being tormented.
    Mrs Todd’s calm Scottish voice sounded behind her. ‘I think we’d better be getting on with our work, Miss Kerr. I do not need the help but it would be as well to keep herself happy on her first day back.’
    Alison moved through the housework, feeling as though she were one mass of pain. That precious car that she had polished and waxed and oiled! Tears began to run down her face. She prayed to all the gods to strike Maggie Baird down.
    ‘Come on now, lassie,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘If I was you, I would be getting the local papers and looking for a wee job. Take ye out o’ the house until you get on your feet.’
    ‘How can I take a local job when I haven’t a car?’ sobbed Alison.
    ‘If ye’re that desperate,’ said Mrs Todd grimly, ‘ye’ll walk. It’s only fifteen miles to the village.’
    But fifteen miles to town-bred Alison seemed impossible. She had done it once to go to ask Hamish about driving lessons. But to do it every day!
       
    It comes as quite a shock to the respectable female to find that quite ordinary and decent-looking men frequent tarts. When Alison first met Maggie’s four guests she was surprised to find that, with the exception of the failed pop singer, they all looked normal and ordinary. The fact that Maggie, in the old days, had been what would have been called a high flyer or good-time girl did not cut any ice with Alison. She had read Maggie’s manuscript and knew what she had got up to between the sheets – or in the woods, or up against walls, or on yachts – and did not realize that Maggie’s less exotic liaisons had all been pretty normal and regular.
    Crispin Witherington, the owner of the car sales room, was middle-aged, like the others. He had that glossy artificial look which comes from a lot of gin and saunas. He was slightly balding, with black restless eyes, a small button of a nose, and a prim little mouth. He was expensively if tastelessly dressed, his double-breasted blazer with some impossible crest draped across his stomach and the flowered handkerchief in his breast pocket matching his flowered tie.
    James Frame, from the gambling club, was tall and willowy and rabbity looking. He had a strangulated voice and appeared to cultivate a ‘silly ass’ manner which he fondly imagined to be upper class. He had patent leather hair and smelled strongly of expensive aftershave.
    The pop singer remained frozen in the age of Sergeant Pepper. He had grey shoulder-length hair, small half-moon glasses, a denim jacket and jeans, a flowered waistcoat with watch chain, and red leather shoes. He spoke with a strong Liverpudlian accent, nasal and irritating to the ear and somehow slightly phony as if he had adopted it during the Beatles era.
    Finally, the advertising man, Peter Jenkins, was tall and fair with a thin, clever, rather weak face and a drawling voice. In normal circumstances, Alison would have been impressed by him, but as it was, Maggie’s bedroom antics came between her and her assessment of the four men although not one of them had featured in the memoirs.
    The men all talked about their surprise at getting Maggie’s invitation and how marvellous she looked, while Maggie flirted and cajoled and flattered, exuding that air of maternal warmth that she seemed able to turn on at will. They all, with the exception of Maggie who had a salad and Alison who was too distressed to feel hungry, ate their way through an enormous