Free Quest for a Killer by Alanna Knight Page A

children clinging to her skirts, which they were finding handy to wipe their running noses.
    ‘Hello.’ I smiled and gave the prepared story I had given Amy’s sister.
    ‘Oh, Amy would have wanted that, very devout she was. Didn’t go to Mass as much as she would have liked, but she was a good Catholic. Lots of holy pictures and the Sacred Heart on the wall…’
    I presumed they were in the bundle on its way downstairs to the pawnbroker.
    ‘Are you Catholic?’ I asked,
    ‘Me? No. But I didna’ hold that against her. Good-living girl, and getting married too.’ Pausing, she shook her head. ‘With so much to live for, I still canna’ understand why she did it, wanted to end it all. Didna’ mak’ any sense to me.’
    ‘There hadn’t been anything worrying her?’
    She frowned, said uneasily. ‘Such as?’
    ‘Well, a quarrel with her fiancé – about their wedding arrangements. These things do happen at the last minute…’ I hesitated, ‘or one of them meets someone else—’
    ‘Never that! Mind you, I think her friend Belle was trying to persuade her against this chap. There were plenty of arguments before—’ Biting her lip she left the rest unsaid.
    ‘She would have told you, then, if anything was wrong?’
    For a moment she looked bewildered. Then she shook her head. ‘She once said I was more like a sisterthan her own kin.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I shall miss them both, that I will. Many the cups of tea and a good laugh we shared.’
    Screams and altercations from behind her indicated that all was not well with the remaining bairn.
    She looked panic-stricken. ‘I’ll have to go. But yes, miss, you tell your nuns they can have a Mass for Amy.’
    My next call was on Belle’s grandfather who occupied a one-roomed ground floor flat in a similarly dismal tenement across the street. He answered the door firmly enough on crutches. Obviously he was now used to the loss of his right leg.
    I said I was from the convent and he invited me in, hardly waiting to close the door before saying that his granddaughter would never have topped herself.
    ‘I have a bit put away and I wanted her to come and live with me – we could have found somewhere a bit more comfortable than this. She would have none of that. A fine lass but with a will of her own. We got along fine most of the time, right fond of me she was, always remembered my birthday, came in to see me each day just to cheer me up. But she said she could never ever live in the same place with me – that I would never understand her.’
    Pausing, he shook his head. ‘I gave up trying. Lasses are different to what they were when I was young.’ He sighed with a despairing look around the shabby room. ‘I can do without lectures on the way I live, I manage fine on my own.’
    Glancing towards the sideboard, I noticed the bottleof whisky and had already identified the strong smell of spirits. An old man’s consolation.
    ‘Belle and this chum Amy she thought so much of were good Catholics. Not like me: I lapsed long since,’ he added, indicating the proud photograph on the sideboard.
    Corporal Will Sanders, a young soldier with two medals in a glass frame.
    ‘Killing Russky soldiers, who were just like ourselves, worshipping the same God and all that sort of thing, put an end to religion for me. Never set foot in a church since the day I came home. Not even when my lass, her ma, died.’
    A shake of his head. ‘She never knew her father, scarpered when she was a bairn, but Belle and me got on well, right enough, though sometimes we had rows – she didn’t approve of me taking a drink or two.’
    There seemed nothing more to say and expressing my condolences I prepared to leave.
    He followed me to the door and thanked me for coming. ‘I think Belle and her chum would want to have Requiem Masses said for them.’
    He looked at me intently, almost pleading. ‘I still don’t understand it. She came and visited me just hours before…before