The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

But how would Mrs. Barber feel if she knew? And undoubtedly she would eventually find out, if she didn’t already know.
    “I know that Mrs. Barber and yourself are quite friendly now. I know you’ve visited the cottage. I would understand if you felt there was a conflict.” His dark blue eyes continued to regard her without a flicker of emotion. Even her masks had more character.
    “I need to think about it. But in answer to your question, about whether I could do it from a photo, yes, I could. But you would need to understand that in order to get the best likeness, I usually have to work with the subject, make a mould of their face, or at least take measurements. There’s no depth perception in a photo.” Her professional persona had stepped in to save the day.
    “I’ll wait to hear then?” He arched a sleek black eyebrow into the shape of a sabre. She nodded. He turned to leave, then in a perfect imitation of Columbo, he paused, and spun round to face her again, catching her off guard. “It was such a shame about Elsa.” His eyebrows drew down, turning his eyes into slits like two squashed Morello cherries. “Her death was so sudden, so unexpected.” His lips parted, revealing an upper row of false teeth, but there was no smile. Pivoting on the soles of his shoes, he vanished.
    Meli stood gaping at the empty doorway for a long time after he’d left. She’d have been less jittery if Saddam Hussein had walked in, accompanied by his two sons, complete with thumb screws and batons. When her legs got tired, she sank down onto her stool. What to make of all that! Had he been threatening her? ‘Her death was so sudden, so unexpected’, his words rang in her head. Was he saying that she too, could have an unexpected and fatal accident? Her blood congealed into something resembling cottage cheese.

    Meli desperately needed to talk to someone, to be somewhere away from the Lodge, somewhere safe. That was how she came to be sitting in Barbara’s bright and warm kitchen, surrounded by the delicious aroma of a lamb roasting in the Aga, mixed with the rich nutty aroma of coffee; dwarfed on one of Barbara’s huge oak chairs. Pressing herself back into the seat, her toes dangling an inch from the floor, she felt so infinitesimal, so forlorn, like a toddler in urgent need of being mothered, which was precisely what Barbara was doing.
    Bless her. Barbara had taken one look at Meli’s face and known instantly that something was wrong. She had taken her straight through to the kitchen, whisking off her apron as she bounced along in front of her, and then poured them both a coffee from what Meli called the Magic Pot, as it never seemed to be empty.
    Staring into the over-sweet coffee Barbara had especially prepared for her, Meli could feel her friend’s grey eyes fixed on hers like two super magnets, trying to draw the reason for her sudden visit straight from her brain cells. She knew the suspense was killing Barbara. She had come here because Barbara was a good friend, and also because she was someone who could be trusted, particularly in this matter. As a relative newcomer to the village herself, Barbara couldn’t have been party to any of the scandalous incidents locked away in the villages vaults. But what to say?
    Before heading for Blue Bells, Meli had spent some time pouring over her treasured notes, and based on the evidence, she had come to the following three conclusions:-
    Elsa had somehow fixed the brakes on the Countesses car, in an attempt to kill her, so Bill would be driven into her consoling arms
    Elsa had had a key cut to the Lodge, and had been using this to come in and steal from them
    Something had triggered Bill into exacting revenge after all those years, by murdering Elsa in the barn, and then he had placed her body inside the farmhouse. Possibly in an attempt to cover his tracks?
    It was all so simple.
    Now Bill was after her, because she was getting too close to the truth.
    But she couldn’t prove any of it, and thinking over the disturbing events of forty-five minutes ago with Bill, Meli sensed that they would probably sound so innocent, so lame if she tried to put them into words. He was a clever, murderous little man.
    Rolling up her sleeves, Barbara rattled her rainbow coloured bangles with a practiced flourish of her wrists, managing to make them sound like an orchestra warming up for the 1812 Overture at the Albert Hall, in an attempt to drag Meli from her reverie. “Come on,