‘Poor boy,’ Alice said. ‘One can only hope he can forget what he saw, Mrs Gordon.’
‘A girl’s body. She was murdered?’ Viviane said temporarily lost for words.
‘Oh, yes. We believe so. The full details will be released later, I dare say, by the police.’ Alice said finding another book in her shopper to put on the counter. ‘I want to renew this one, Mrs Gordon, please.’
The two elderly ladies, who were permanent boarders in a seaside hotel, were a fount of local information and gossip. Viviane usually listened to their small talk with some amusement and only half her mind switched on. This news didn’t make pleasant listening but it was intriguing just the same. It was like a 100-watt bulb had just lit up in her head. She’d been a policeman’s wife for seventeen years and she’d missed listening to Bill’s daily accounts. Although he kept bits from her that he thought she shouldn’t know.
‘Has she been identified yet? Does anyone know who she is? Is she a local?’
‘We don’t know any more than what Fred told us.’ Alice shook her head regretfully and the bunch of shining artificial red cherries bounced on the small pale green straw hat that perched on the white hair fluffed up like a dandelion clock around her small pink face. ‘I wonder if it was an assault or murder?’ her voice sank down again to a whisper. ‘You can never tell can you with so many holiday makers in town at the moment.’
‘It could be a suicide, or an accident I suppose,’ Thora said also in a low hushed voice. ‘These silly young girls do such foolish things, don’t they?’ She sighed heavily. ‘They can take ‘morning after’ pills on demand. Then there are pills they can buy in discos. Hard drugs, you know? They can be so dangerous.’
‘It could be a sexual assault that went wrong, dear,’ Alice said picking up her basket. ‘Perhaps her drink was doped... And she was taken there by someone last night?’
‘If she was so young she wouldn’t be served with a drink in a pub.’ Viviane intervened. ‘I would have thought that she knew and trusted her date to go there late at night with them.’
Thora nodded solemnly. ‘Everyone knows that the cliff path near Lovers Leap is dangerous, especially at night. Everyone local that is - -’
‘Perhaps she was a girl staying on holiday here. Perhaps in the Caravan camp. It’s not so good for the publicity and tourist business but I’m sure that the police are dealing with it efficiently. Someone will come forward soon to identify her soon. Don’t worry, ladies.’ Viviane assured them with a smile that belied the unease that she was feeling at that moment.
The sisters wandered off together down to the fiction shelves. Sometimes, Alice took a fancy to reading true crimes from the non-fiction. She often chatted about them in depth to Viviane; how she thought that she’d met Heath, the lady killer, in London just after the Second War and mentioned often how her father, Colonel Willard Wilberforce, had been present at the Nuremberg trials for war criminals.
The two sisters seemed inseparable. They were, Viviane suspected, living on a tight, fixed income in the White Rock Hotel. Thora watching over Alice with such loving care, Viviane didn’t like to think what would happen to the one left behind when the inevitable happened.
Viviane snapped out quickly though from her blue reverie when Esmeralda Randall came in briskly through the swing doors like a sharp North East wind, five minutes later, and filled the library with her sweetly cloying scent of Patchouli and Ashes of Roses. A peacock blue silk turban swathed her fizz of hennaed red hair, and her long beaky nose, sallow skin and deep set sloe black eyes were sharply complimented by the vivid slash of cardinal red lipstick on her generous mouth.
This morning, long strings of heavy amber beads clinked and chinked around her thin neck, and her ankle length blue silk dress blazed with the brilliant parlours of the red and orange poppies printed on it. Once seen never forgotten was true in Esmeralda’s case. She read the Tarot cards in a brightly painted booth on the pier next to the candy floss stall and was Viviane’s aunt’s oldest friend.
‘Good morning, Esmeralda, the Mary Higgins Clark’s novel you reserved has just come in.’ Esmeralda shared the same taste in books as Alice Wilberforce and took out mainly suspense and crime fiction.
‘Thank you, Viviane. I felt sure that it was here waiting for me and it will save you a phone call, won’t it, dear. And by the way, I’m not living in my flat at present. I’m having gas central heating put in at last before the winter sets in and the rooms decorated too.’