A Brush with Death: A Penny Brannigan Mystery - By Elizabeth J. Duncan Page 0,34

got in his car, and with a gentle wave over his shoulder, drove off.

Penny watched as his car made the turn toward town, and then she returned to the cottage.

“I think things will start to move forward now,” she said to her friends as she rejoined them at the table. “I’m going to call Gareth and see if he’s free on Sunday afternoon. I’m planning a little outing. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but he might like to come.”

She paused for a moment and then continued.

“I’m going to go through the old newspaper microfiche rolls in the library.”

Seeing their puzzled looks, she added, “The Central Library. Liverpool. We know how Alys died. We need to know how she lived.”

Ten

Penny handed her ticket to the conductor and watched as he punched it and then handed it back to her.

“We should be arriving at Chester in about twenty minutes,” he said as he turned away to attend to the passenger sitting across the aisle.

“Thank you,” Penny murmured to his back, as she tucked the ticket in her handbag.

She shifted in her seat and contemplated the green fields that rolled by the train window. Heavy, grey clouds hung low in the sky, shrouding the tops of the hills. It doesn’t look very promising, she thought, glad she had remembered to bring an umbrella. With a small sigh, she picked up the unread Tatler that lay forgotten in her lap and stuffed it into her carrier bag.

She tried to think about her plans for the afternoon, but her mind was reluctant to go there. Instead, her last phone conversation with Gareth played out in an endless loop. He had seemed flat and distant at the start of the conversation, and then it got worse. He had declined to come with her to Liverpool.

“I think I’d rather not,” he had said. “I don’t fancy cooling my heels for four hours while you look through back issues of the Liverpool Echo.”

What he was really saying, she thought, is “I’ve got better things to do.” It had seemed unnecessarily harsh. And what about the time we could have spent together on the journey there and back? Maybe a nice dinner afterward? A creeping feeling of disquiet and unease alarmed and worried her. She felt she had been taking him emotionally for granted, and now, sensing that he was losing interest in her, she realized how much she didn’t want to lose him.

The fields outside the window were gradually giving way to semidetached houses and industrial-type buildings as the countryside was left behind and the landscape changed from rural to urban. The train began to slow and then pulled into the station. She stepped out of the carriage and walked along the platform to the lift that would take her up to the footbridge so she could cross to the other platform to catch the Merseyside train for Liverpool.

She didn’t have to wait long and soon found herself in a crowded carriage. Across the aisle four women sat in facing seats with a table between them. In front of each woman was a pile of coins, and with a lot of shouting and hooting, they played cards. At the signal from one, the cards were quickly put away and a carrier bag filled with groceries came out.

Penny watched in amazement as they then silently began to assemble sandwiches. One woman opened up a tub of margarine and, using a metal knife, spread two slices of white bread. She then handed the bread to the woman beside her, who slapped a piece of grey meat on it and handed it on to the next woman while the first woman spread margarine on two more slices of bread. The third woman placed a piece of sweaty cheese on top of the meat, folded the sandwich together, and handed it to the fourth woman, who added a generous spoonful of coleslaw and then, using the same knife the first woman had used to spread the margarine, cut the sandwich into four and placed the pieces on a paper towel in the centre of the table. No one touched a sandwich until four had been prepared and their little production line shut down. Then, at some unspoken signal, they each grabbed a sandwich and all started talking at once.

How very strange, thought Penny. Wouldn’t it be easier to make the sandwiches at home and just wrap them up and bring them along already made? But she had to admit being grateful for