Free Murder on the Tor: An Exham on Sea Cosy Mystery (Exham on Sea Cosy Crime Mysteries Book 3) by Frances Evesham Page B

let her head drop between her knees until the faintness passed. Libby was still mad at Max, but at least he wasn’t dead.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Catriona
    Jemima Bakewell kept a bottle of whisky in a corner cupboard in her kitchen. It took Libby only a few minutes to track it down and pour a big slug into a cup of tea, add six lumps of sugar and carry it through to the tiny sitting room. The school teacher pulled a plaid blanket tight round her shoulders and sipped. “I knew something like this would happen. It’s all coming horribly true.” She looked thirty years older than last time Libby saw her.
    The room was stuffed with mementos from Miss Bakewell’s travels. Busts of Greek philosophers jostled with photographs showing the teacher in various locations. Libby studied them while the woman drank her tea. In one picture, Miss Bakewell wore a sun hat and waved a trowel, surrounded by the open trenches of an archaeological dig. Another showed her walking in the Greek islands, while in another she was with a group of middle-aged ladies wearing flowery skirts and cardigans, and enjoying a bottle of red wine under azure skies.
    Books cluttered every spare inch of space in the room. A Latin dictionary and a well-thumbed copy of the Aeneid leaned against a leather-bound version of the poems of Catullus. It was clear Miss Bakewell loved her subject.
    Max remained silent, letting the teacher recover from the shock of the explosion at the professor’s house. He raised an eyebrow at Libby and she nodded. He said, “I think it’s time you told us the truth, Miss Bakewell, don’t you?” Taken aback by the sharp tone, the woman licked her lips, eyes larger than ever behind the tortoiseshell spectacles. Max persisted. “Tell us what you mean. What’s coming true?”
    The teacher’s lip trembled. “The curse. I thought it was all nonsense, but it isn’t. It’s catching up with us.”
    Libby leaned forward. “ Us? Who do you mean by us ?”
    The woman’s eyes flickered between Libby and Max, seeking sympathy, but Max’s face was stony. She wasn’t getting away with evasions this time. Her shoulders slumped. “ It’s the beads. They’re causing it.”
    “What rubbish.” Max snorted. “They’re old and possibly valuable, but that’s all.”
    Libby held out a hand. “Wait, Max. Let’s hear what she has to say.”
    The woman’s hands trembled, coffee spilling on her tweed skirt. “It’s all in the paper.” She took a newspaper from the table. “Here it is.”
    Libby recognised the picture. “It’s the same photo you emailed, Max, from the excavation.” She took it from Miss Bakewell’s shaking fingers and read aloud. Beads from Glastonbury Lake Village discovered near Dear Leap Stones.
    She frowned. “I’ve heard that name, somewhere.”
    Miss Bakewell had stopped trembling. The light of an educator shone in her eyes. “The Deer Leap stones are a pair of ancient standing stones, said to mark the entrance to a tunnel leading to Glastonbury Tor, eight miles away.”
    “According to the newspaper,” Libby was scanning the story, “a man called Roger Johnson was out for a walk last week when he found an amber bead beside the stones. Being a local man, he knew about the archaeological digs and the stories about a tunnel, and contacted the newspaper. They’re going to have the amber dated.” She looked up from the paper. “Here’s a picture of the bead. What do you think, Max? Is it one of ours?”
    Miss Bakewell removed her glasses, breathed on the lenses and scrubbed at them with a scrap of handkerchief. “A warning,” she whispered. “That’s what it is. From all those years ago.”
    Goose-bumps prickled the skin of Libby’s arms, but Max snorted. “Come on. There must be millions of amber beads lying around in jewellery boxes across the country. Amber’s not a precious stone and anyone could have dropped it. I bet it’s nothing to do with the necklace, anyway,”
    Libby cleared her