The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8) Read Online Free Page A

Amaryllis.
    ‘Threat of violence? Blackmail?’
    She shook her head.
    ‘Battering to death with flowers?’
    ‘No. The flowers thing was just a one-off, anyway… Who was that just now?’
    ‘Who was what? Oh, Bruce! He’s in charge of FOOP. I’m afraid they seem to have sort of taken over the place for now. I’m hoping they’ll get bored and move on before they do any real damage.’
    ‘No, the other one. With the pretty blue eyes.’
    ‘Ah! Jason Penrose. He’s a famous historian. Or so they tell me.’
    ‘Nice legs,’ commented Amaryllis.
    ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ said Christopher coldly. ‘I think he’s better-known for his blog and more academic writings. According to the FOOP lot, anyway.’
    ‘What is this FOOP thing? I haven’t had time to check them out, what with the Christmas market and everything.’
    Christopher frowned. ‘You mean you haven’t been snooping around in the dark or bugging their secret headquarters?’
    ‘I’ve given up all that,’ said Amaryllis, trying to sound loftily superior. She wasn’t sure if that tone worked or not. She planned to practise it a bit more in the hope it would help her once she was a local councillor. ‘I’m strictly legit now.’
    ‘Hmm,’ he said. She had the sense that he wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘Do you really want to know about FOOP?’
    Amaryllis operated on the principle that no piece of knowledge need ever be wasted. She sometimes pictured herself as an information bag-lady, wandering around aimlessly, listening to people’s conversations, reading their correspondence and picking up the odds and ends they let drop. Perhaps she should have allowed the service she had worked for not long ago to transfer her and her skills to GCHQ. But after some thought she had recently decided her days of risking life and limb for an ungrateful nation were over. Perhaps it was a kind of spy burn-out. Better to give into it than to head for meltdown in the field, where on certain types of mission it could have happened quite literally.
    She expected her skills to come in useful in politics, anyway. All that training wouldn’t be wasted.
    ‘Of course I want to know about FOOP,’ she said, opening her eyes wide to indicate extreme interest. ‘And about that man with the nice legs.’
    ‘You’d better move to a chair,’ said Christopher, coming round to the other side of his desk, where there were two chairs with padded seats that he offered to visitors he liked. The ones he didn’t like were just left to stand. It seemed to work. ‘It’s a long story... Do you want a coffee?’
    ‘No, thanks. Giancarlo takes care of all my coffee needs.’
    He blinked. She wondered idly if she might be able to make him blush too if she tried just a little harder.
    She gave in and moved to the chair opposite him.
    ‘They call themselves the Friends of Old Pitkirtly,’ said Christopher. ‘They’ve colonised the Cultural Centre on the pretext of consulting records, and they persuaded Jason Penrose to come up here to do whatever he does when he visits places. Make some fantastic historical discovery. Take people on walks to see it. Get himself filmed doing it all. That kind of thing. He runs a blog. Very popular, apparently.’
    ‘Popular?’ said Amaryllis. She certainly didn’t have time to sit around reading people’s ramblings about themselves. There was enough to do in real life without that. Reading blogs would be like sentencing yourself to stand in a virtual online corner, trapped by some crashing bore who only wanted to talk about trains, or his poetry, or something.
    ‘He writes about local history and posts pictures of himself posing on field trips,’ said Christopher.
    On the other hand, thought Amaryllis, pictures of Jason Penrose in jeans and leather jacket... ‘What’s this blog called? So that I’ll know to steer clear of it.’
    ‘It’s called You Dig,’ said Christopher dismissively. ‘With a question mark.’
    ‘That’s a bit