A Brush with Death: A Penny Brannigan Mystery - By Elizabeth J. Duncan Page 0,78

and Eirlys, picking up on it and clearly uncomfortable, released Mrs. Lloyd’s hand and wiped it with a towel.

“Should I step out for a minute, Penny?”

Penny looked at Mrs. Lloyd, who nodded.

“I hadn’t thought of that, but we don’t want to upset you, Eirlys, love. Tell you what. Why don’t you take a couple of pounds out of my purse and go and get us some nice biscuits, and when you get back, we’ll have a nice cup of tea?”

“What kind of biscuits would you like, Mrs. Lloyd?”

“Whatever kind you’d like. Something with a bit of chocolate on them, perhaps?”

Eirlys jumped up out of her chair and, clutching the money, left on her errand.

“All right, Bunny,” said Mrs. Lloyd, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms. “Get on with it. Tell Penny what you saw that morning.”

Bunny nervously cleared her throat.

“It was very early,” she began, “just before dawn, and I was making my rounds, dropping off the mail to the sub–post offices and clearing the pillar boxes as I went. It was crisp and cold, I remember, and I thought it was going to be a lovely day.

“And while I was in Trefriw to empty the letterbox there”—she looked at Mrs. Lloyd for reassurance—“you know the one, Evelyn, just outside the pub.” Penny and Mrs. Lloyd both nodded. “A car stopped and asked me for directions. It seemed odd to me that someone would be out and about at that time of day looking for the back route to Llanelen.”

Penny thought for a moment and then rose from her seat and went to her handbag. She returned with the photocopy she had made at the library that morning and, pushing the soaking bowl aside, put it down on the table, facing her client.

“Have a look at this photocopy of an old newspaper clipping,” she said. “I know it’s not very clear, but do you recognize this man? Was he the one driving the car?”

Bunny stared at the image of four people, one holding up a piece of art and the other three pretending to judge it, and she then shook her head.

“No,” she said, again shaking her head slowly, “he wasn’t driving. In fact, he wasn’t in the car. I don’t know anything about him.”

Penny sighed.

“But this one,” Bunny said, “this one was in the car and she’s the one who asked me for directions.” She pointed at Millicent Mayhew.

Penny covered her mouth with her hand and looked at Bunny.

“So she did it,” she said softly.

“But she was the passenger,” Bunny continued. Her damp finger hovered over Millicent’s image and then moved on. “This girl,” she said, pointing to the smiling blond woman, “this is the one who was driving.”

Her finger came to rest on Cynthia Browning.

Stunned, Penny struggled to take it in.

“But why didn’t you come forward and tell all this to the police at the time, Bunny?”

“Well, they were all over the radio asking for information, but they always referred to the driver as ‘he,’ so I figured they were looking for a man. I reckoned the police knew what they were talking about and they knew who they were looking for and it was a man. I didn’t see any man that day, just these two women.” She shrugged. “Still, I always wondered about it. Something didn’t seem quite right.”

Penny and Mrs. Lloyd exchanged a quick glance, and then Penny nodded slowly.

She remembered Gareth’s comment a few days earlier when he looked at the tire tracks across the painting—how the boys in the lab would enjoy it. She was certain that women worked in the lab, too. It seemed that policemen still talked like that.

“I see now what it was. It was the times. Back in 1970, the police—mostly men, of course—would just assume the driver was a man, and they would use ‘he’ in their appeal for help.”

She thought for a moment.

“But this happened such a long time ago, Bunny, and you did that route every day. Why do these two women stand out? How is it, do you think, that you even remember them?”

“I’ve thought about that day a lot over the years, Penny. When I heard about what happened to that poor young woman and realized I was so close to the scene, I wondered about it. It just stayed with me. And also, it was my daughter’s second birthday that day, and I was in a hurry because I wanted to get through my rounds early, if I could, so