Free Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn Page B

… FILTHY … PERVERTING YOUTH … CORRUPTING SOCIETY …”
    He read no further but dropped letter and envelope in the wpb.
    Who was harassing him? Some prude from the Victorian Dark Ages, who didn’t understand the need for modern literature to expand its horizons—yet who used pretty vile language in his denunciations. Perhaps the person, unnamed by Brigadier Lomax, who had tried to persuade Piers’s landlord to eject him from the cottage?
    Piers found himself actually shaking with anger. It was an unfamiliar emotion. His set prided themselves on a cool, sophisticated approach to life, reserving the passions for the imaginary characters in their books. A bad review meant merely that the critic was jealous or deluded—not worth getting hot and bothered about.
    But the letters had Piers hot and bothered. Though he did not for a moment repent or regret what he wrote, their vicious nastiness unsettled him and—ultimate sin—made it difficult for him to concentrate on his work. Who in blazes was writing the confounded things, depriving a waiting world of another masterpiece from his pen? He’d like to wring his—or her—unenlightened neck.
    Murder … there was a thought. Perhaps he should throw in a good juicy murder, a crime of passion. No need to sink to the level of a detective story, ending tritely with a confession and an arrest.
    His anti-hero would bump off the prudish old maid who interfered with his seduction of the luscious dairy-maid, Piers decided. Now, how to set up the dreadful deed so that he would not be caught?
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    The usual pre-lunch rush came to an end. Mrs. Burden said to her plump, pasty-faced daughter, “Watch the shop for a minute, Win, I’m going out the back.”
    â€œI have to mind the exchange, don’t I,” Winifred said sullenly.
    â€œIt doesn’t exactly keep you busy, with so few telephones in the village! If someone rings up, of course you have to help them, but just keep an eye on things in here.”
    Without waiting for an answer, she went out of the back door. What was the name of those pills she had seen advertised? “Peevish, anaemic girls needed,” the advert started. Something about pale, fretful, cross, can’t get on with Mother. It sounded just like Win. Dr. Williams’ Pink Pills, that was it. She’d get hold of some, put them in Winifred’s bedtime cocoa if the girl wouldn’t take them.
    Still and all, she had worse problems than a surly daughter.
    Inside the lean-to W.C. built on behind the shop, she latched the door securely and threw the bolt for good measure. From the pocket of the pink seersucker overall she wore in the shop to keep her frock clean, she took a cheap white envelope.
    What had young Master Derek’s auntie wanted, asking all those questions? Was she really just interested because she was a writer, or had she guessed something? Several envelopes just like this one had gone to Lord John. Whatever the horrible letters inside said, he surely’d never tell his sister-in-law, but he maybe had let drop a hint by mistake.
    Had Mrs. Burden led Miss Dalrymple to suspect she was getting them, too? For just a moment, it would have been that easy to confess, but she’d pulled herself together all right. If anyone found out …
    Times were hard, and making ends meet was harder. She had a daughter to provide for. Alfie was a fat lot of help, so
pleased with himself for making sergeant he stayed on in the regular army when everyone else’s husbands got demobbed. He hardly ever sent a penny home.
    So what if she did forget to take her thumb off the balance and shaved half an ounce off a pound of cheese now and then? She only ever short-measured them as could afford it. It wasn’t as if she got much custom from the Willoughby-Joneses, either, having all their groceries delivered from Ashford.
    Anyway, how did Mrs. Willoughby-Jones know her maid