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

beatnik,’ said Amaryllis. ‘Is that all he does, then? How does he make a living out of it?’
    ‘I think he works at one of the universities,’ said Christopher. ‘In the south. He’s English, certainly. But he seems to be able to manage Scottish history all right.’
    ‘What about those other people? The Friends? What do they do? Is it like PLIF?’
    ‘Of course not!’ said Christopher indignantly. ‘They don’t have the broad concern for local affair and – um – community wellbeing that we used to have. They’re only interested in following up their own narrow interests. Some of them very narrow. Bruce, for instance – he’s chaired several local organisations before. The Community Council. The Round Table. He’s an expert on late medieval pottery. Then there’s Tamara. She’s keen on Celtic mythology. And Karen. Mature student from Stirling - ancient history, I think. I can’t remember any more of their names. My brain’s run out of space for trivia.’
    ‘There isn’t much ancient history in Pitkirtly, is there?’ said Amaryllis. She was starting to get the old familiar feeling of restlessness. Sitting in the chair made her feel trapped. She wanted to get up and wander about, tail somebody, interrogate them until their brain was tied in knots, plant a bug in Jason Penrose’s room and break in there in the middle of the night to retrieve it...
    But of course, none of these were things a respectable local councillor would do. She sighed. Transforming herself into an upstanding citizen was going to be hard work.
    Christopher didn’t seem to notice the sigh. Of course she had long ago given up expecting him to be sensitive to nuances.
    ‘Jason thinks the Romans might have popped in here at one time,’ he said.
    ‘Popped in? Did the Romans recognise the concept of popping in? Weren’t they more likely to come barging in and decimate the local population, then build a great big fort somewhere?’
    ‘Decimate doesn’t mean what you think it means,’ said Christopher.
    ‘How do you know what I think it means?’ she countered.
    They glared at each other. There was a soft knock on the door.
    ‘May I come in?’ said a soft voice.
    ‘Just a minute!’ said Christopher, and got up and unlocked the door, still glaring. A woman drifted into the room in a cloud of faded Paisley pattern and the subtle scent of lavender.
    ‘Christopher, darling,’ she said weakly, her hands lifting as if to embrace him and then falling limply by her sides.
    ‘Tamara,’ he said, still glaring.
    ‘I’m sorry, am I interrupting?’ she asked faintly.
    Amaryllis opened her mouth to say ‘yes’ before realising she shouldn’t, partly because it wouldn’t be polite but mainly because she wanted to eavesdrop on what this woman had to say to Christopher. She closed her mouth and left it to Christopher to deal with it.
    ‘Not exactly,’ he said, which was just what Amaryllis would have expected him to say if she had ever envisaged those circumstances.
    Tamara wandered over to a chair and let her body droop and undulate until she was sitting on it. Amaryllis saw that she wore some weird pendants round her neck – Celtic style jewellery, or amulets or something – and, in defiance of the season, she had odd stringy sandals on her feet. But perhaps she had wellies for outdoors and changed into the sandals once she crossed the threshold of the Cultural Centre.
    There was something not quite right about the woman. She looked to Amaryllis’s cynical eye as if she might be playing a part that she should never have been cast for. Apart from anything else it seemed unlikely that anyone could survive in this day and age with the die-away airs of a Victorian invalid.
    ‘Amaryllis, this is Tamara from FOOP,’ said Christopher.
    Amaryllis nodded at the woman. She wasn’t going to say ‘pleased to meet you’. Not even for the sake of her recent political ambitions would she bring herself to lie outright to people like