you what. I’m going to Llandudno this afternoon, so I’ll pick up a few at the beauty supplier. You can tell me if I’m on the right track. But for today, will you be all right with what we’ve got?” Eirlys nodded and returned to her client.
“Hey, Jude, Penny says we’re going to get some colours in!” she said. “I told you she’d be cool with it.”
Penny smiled to herself and left to meet Victoria at the site.
An hour later, the two women were walking through the green fields that led to the next town, where they would catch the bus to Llandudno. They could have gone to the Watling Street stop in town but decided that the twenty-minute walk through the peaceful countryside would help them focus their thinking and give them time to discuss what they would say to Andrew Peyton when they met him.
“Tell me what he said,” Victoria demanded. “You must have been gobsmacked when you picked up the phone and it’s none other than Andrew Peyton!”
“I was just thinking about him,” Penny replied. “It’s odd how that happens sometimes, isn’t it? I was just thinking about him and the phone went and it was him. I was that surprised I actually had to sit down.
“Anyway, he said he got my number from Thomas Evans, and could I come and see him. He asked if it would be possible to come today.”
Victoria shot her a quizzical look.
“I know. And he apologized that it was on such short notice but said he wanted to tell me something about Alys, so of course I agreed.”
She smiled at her friend.
“And it’s really good of you to give up your afternoon to come with me.”
Victoria stifled a yawn. “Well, what are friends for? And to think I could have been at home sneaking in a nap!”
“But I did manage to get in the question about the exhibit,” Penny continued. “You know, the February exhibit at the Walker Gallery. And he said that no, with Alys’s death, the exhibit did not go ahead. He said he didn’t want to answer my questions over the phone and he’d talk to me when we got there. I’m hoping he might know where her paintings ended up.”
They strolled on, admiring the sheep that grazed peacefully on each side of them. Penny loved and admired the hills that stretched higher and higher, cradling the valley. How many words are there for green, she wondered. Whatever the best one is, it must have been invented in Wales, for nowhere on Earth was there green like this.
Soon they came to the little pub that signaled they had almost reached the neighbouring town. Penny glanced at the letterbox outside the pub and, because it seemed to be almost in the middle of nowhere, wondered if anybody ever used it.
“I daren’t even post my letters to you from the town post office—the post mistress is that nosey. I have to walk halfway to the next town and use the rural box outside the pub.”
They walked on for a few more minutes until the Trefriw Mills bus stop came into view. About ten minutes later the bus arrived, and they hopped on, paid their fares, and found seats. The windows were rather dirty, and they had a difficult time seeing out.
The bus wound its way toward Llandudno, eventually skirting the majestic strength that is the thirteenth-century Conwy Castle, until it arrived at its final stop, the Llandudno Palladium. Deciding to leave the beauty-supply shop errand until later, they strolled the short way to Church Walks, stopping occasionally to admire something in a shop window. In minutes they arrived at the busy street at the foot of the Great Orme that stretches almost from the famous Victorian pier to the cable car station. Home to the occasional pub, the street was comprised mainly of guesthouses catering to summer tourists, most of whom had now departed. Victoria glanced at a piece of paper, scanned the street for the address Peyton had given Penny on the phone, and then pointed at the house they were looking for.
Three stories tall, painted a pale yellow with flower boxes on every window, it was probably built as the summer home for the family and servants of a prosperous Liverpool merchant. By the mid-twentieth century it would have been used as a bed-and-breakfast and within the last decade or so had been converted into small flats. Penny and Victoria climbed the steep stairs to the front door