A Brush with Death: A Penny Brannigan Mystery - By Elizabeth J. Duncan Page 0,1
taking in the overflowing bookshelves that filled one wall, side tables, a small walnut writing desk, and a pair of matching wing chairs that had once been 1950s brown but had been recovered in a 1970s floral chintz. Then, setting the notebook down, she wandered over to the writing desk.
She picked up a small figurine of a stooping man clad in a brown robe and turned it over. Royal Doulton. Scrooge. She set it down, smiled, and inclined her head slightly. Emma had loved Christmas and had always been generous with her gifts. Scrooge, of all things!
She tugged on a drawer and heard a slightly metallic, rattling sound as something inside shifted. The drawer moved a couple of inches and then stuck. She pulled on it again, harder this time, and under protest, it slid all the way out. Sitting on top of a dog-eared Reader’s Digest, beside a magnifying glass with a tortoiseshell handle, was a scratched and dented tin pencil box. Wondering if it was a gift from one of Emma’s long-ago pupils, Penny picked it up and turned it over. The bottom was painted a distinctive green, and the cream-colored top featured a sketch of St. Paul’s Cathedral with a pencil in the same shade of green as the base of the tin. The Harrods logo occupied pride of place on the top left corner of the lid.
Noting the box was missing a hinge, she pried it open. Inside, she found a tattered ten-shilling note, a National Westminster Bank plastic bag containing a commemorative coin marking the 1981 wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer, a key, a concert ticket stub, a square key fob featuring the octagonal red MG logo, and a black-and-white photo.
She set the box down, picked up the photo, moved closer to the window, and turned slightly so the light fell on the image she was holding.
Gazing back at her was what appeared to be a young Emma wearing black eyeliner and false eyelashes. She smiled shyly at the camera but with a secretive, subtle confidence, her eyes slightly closed against the sun. Her blond hair had been elaborately styled in a towering bouffant, with curls trailing down her cheeks and she was wearing a sleeveless mini dress with two rows of white buttons down the front. In her arms she cradled a black-and-white fox terrier puppy.
Penny’s lips moved slightly as she noted the dark nail polish Emma was wearing and then turned the photo over. In Emma’s precise, schoolteacher handwriting was written Winnie, Menlove Avenue, Woolton, 1967.
Penny replaced the photo in the tin, snapped the lid shut, and set the battered pencil box back in the drawer.
What am I to do with things like that, she wondered. This was going to be harder than she’d thought. Not only prying into every nook and cranny of Emma’s life but also having to sort through her things and probably get rid of most of it.
She took a sip of lukewarm coffee, had a spoonful of soggy cereal, and then headed upstairs to get dressed.
At the top of the stairs she paused at the doorway to Emma’s old bedroom. The day before, emotionally drained and physically exhausted, she had taken a long nap on Emma’s bed, but now, in the cold light of morning, she knew she would never sleep in the bed in which Emma had died. Getting rid of it would be easy. As part of the cottage makeover, she had promised herself a fresh, serene new bedroom.
And that pleasant thought brought her to Gareth. She wondered what he was doing and decided to ring him to see if he could come over and give her a hand. The job might go better with two, and he’d be much more objective. None of Emma’s stuff would mean anything to him, and in his line of work, he’d had plenty of practice going through other people’s belongings in a detached, clinical way.
Just as she was about to duck into the spare room in search of her mobile phone, it rang. She smiled when she saw who it was.
“Oh, I was just thinking about you,” she said, “and wondering if you’d give me a hand sorting out all this stuff.”
A few moments later she laughed and ran down the stairs to answer the door.
He bent his head to enter the cottage and then, in one easy, wordless moment they wrapped their arms around each other. He held her for a few seconds