Murder in the Cotswolds Read Online Free

clutch.”
    “Calm down,” said Kate. “These are just routine enquiries. Constable, I’d like you to get Mr. West to show you the various vehicles he’s mentioned. Come back and collect me here when you’re through.”
    “Right you are, ma’am.”
    “Hey, I’ve got to get back to the stables,” West protested. “There’s work to be got on with.”
    “Sorry, but we need your help,” Kate said. “The work will have to wait for a few minutes.”
    It suited her to be left alone with Linda West. A cosy woman-to-woman chat might provide some useful background info on the Larimers.
    “I’m afraid we interrupted your early-morning cuppa,” she said, with a glance at the teapot. “Don’t let me stop you having it.”
    The younger woman took the hint. “Want one?”
    “Thanks, I wouldn’t say no.”
    They both sat down at the table. The tea was black and stewed, tasting vile. You ought to get danger money, Kate.
    “How long have you been working for Mrs. Latimer at the Grange?” she asked.
    “About four years, ever since Ted got his job here.”
    “Just you? It’s a big place.”
    “You can say that again. There’s a couple of women come to clean in the mornings. Betty Rudge and Marlene Harper. Sometimes I have to do evenings, too, when they have guests for dinner. She always does the cooking—did, I mean. Reckoned she was a cordon bleu. But all the dishes she messed up she left for me to see to. And of course I had to wait table for them when they had people there.”
    “What was Mrs. Latimer like to work for?”
    “A right nit-picker, like Ted said. Just a speck of dust, a glass not polished ... you know. I earn every penny of what I get paid.”
    Kate nodded sympathetically. “What about Mr. Latimer?”
    A pause for thought. “Oh, he’s all right. Good sort, really. Likes a joke—when his wife’s not looking.”
    “Made a pass at you sometimes, did he?”
    Kate watched Linda’s mind working. In the end, she couldn’t help boasting. “He’s a man like all the rest, isn’t he? Quite a looker, really. Younger than her.”
    Kate smiled the right sort of encouraging smile. “How did the Latimers get on together?”
    “Well, he had to toe the line with her, didn’t he? She had all the money.”
    Linda had been nervously twisting a ring on the third finger of her right hand. It was an elaborate diamond and amethyst cluster.
    “That’s a lovely ring you’re wearing,” Kate commented.
    “It’s mine. You can ask Ted if you don’t believe me. My aunt Daisy left it to me when she died. She specially wanted me to have it.”
    A curiously over-defensive reaction, Kate mused. She decided there was no more to be got out of Linda at the moment, and stood up to leave.
    “By the way, I don’t think you’d better go over to the house until after Mr. Latimer gets back from London.” She didn’t want anything touched until it had been checked over. “You have a door key, I suppose?”
    “Course I do.”
    “And do the other two women also have keys?”
    “No, only me.”
    “Well, let them know that they won’t be needed this morning, will you?”
    The two men returned just as Kate was leaving, and Ted West slouched past her into the house with merely a grunt.
    “No damage, and no unmatched tyres on any of the vehicles I’ve been able to see so far, ma’am,” PC Farrow reported as they walked back to the patrol car.
    “Oh well, we couldn’t have expected to get that lucky.”
    A Range Rover appeared at the entrance to the stable yard. The driver, spotting the police car, changed direction and pulled up beside them.
    “What’s going on here?” he demanded, not getting out.
    Kate introduced herself and PC Farrow. “Who would you be, sir?”
    “I’m the Hambledon estate manager, Bruce McLeod.” The name matched the faint Scots burr in his voice. “Is something wrong?”
    “You haven’t heard about Mrs. Latimer then, Mr. McLeod?”
    “Heard what?”
    “That she’s been