Three Little Maids(9)
‘If you want to know more about him.’ She looked at Turner. ‘You’d better ask your Sergeant here. He’s dealt with Jason Perkins before. I think the boy’s got a wild streak in him. His mother Pam went to Glastonbury had a fling while she was there with a foreign musician. Afterwards she dumped the baby on his gran, June Perkins, and buggered off. And as far as I know she’s never come home since to see her kid.’
Kent put down his empty cup, stood up and Turner closed his note pad. ‘Thank you Stacey, Mrs Flitch. You’ve both been a great help.’
‘I hope you won’t need to call again, Inspector,’ Kathie Flitch said seeing them out. ‘I’ll be keeping an eye on Stacey in future. She’s too trusting for her own good and I wouldn’t want her to become another victim.’
‘We hope that we catch Angela’s murderer before he can hurt anyone else. If Stacey should remember anything else, anything at all; you will let us know won’t you, Mrs Flitch?’
She nodded and turned round to put her arm round her daughter. ‘You can count on it, Inspector.’
‘I think Kathie Flitch had Angela summed up all right, Turner. We’ll have to see the boy, Jason Perkins. You’d better fill me in about the lad. We must find out how long he’d been fooling around with Angela. You’ve got to hand it to those kids. Even if he suspected the worst, Carey wouldn’t think of looking in there for his daughter.’
Turner saw Kent’s concerned face as they walked down the garden path. ‘Mrs Carey’s the one I feel sorry for, guv,’ he said, opening up the wooden gate. ‘She probably thought the sun shone out of her Angela’s eyes. And all the time she was having a high old time in their Funeral Parlour with one of her father’s youngest employees. If Carey found out it was being used as a knocking-shop he’d give Perkins the sack, I reckon.’
Kent chuckled. ‘He’d hardly say a prayer for him.’
4
Another Friday regular took her place at the library counter and by then Viviane had shaken off the goose bumps that Esmeralda parting words had given her earlier. Mrs Perkins, in her late fifties, with her tight bleached blonde curls, in a pink and blue flowered shift dress that wrinkled up into creases over her heavy hips and stomach and natural high parlour in her plump cheeks, arrived breathlessly through the glass doors.
She spilled out a large pile of paperback romances from her shopping trolley down onto the counter with a loud sigh of relief and a smile in her creased washed out blue eyes.
‘Good morning, Mrs Sherlborne.’
‘Good morning, Mrs Perkins.’
‘How ever do you manage to look so slim and cool? You’re so lucky, dear. You don’t pile on the pounds like I do,’ June Perkins remarked cheerfully as she sorted out the romances on the counter. She was an avid reader of romance. Employed as a cleaner by Mrs Frost as a cleaner at the White Rock Hotel, she was highly recommended by her employer as most dependable and thorough in her work.
A bottle of Irish Stout peeped from her trolley; her usual nightcap. That, plus her fondness for strawberry chocolate creams, which she’d confessed once to Viviane that she sandwiched between bread and butter slices as a supper time snack; no doubt made her a lost cause for Weight Watchers.
Viviane chuckled and fibbed wickedly; ‘I’ve put myself on salads for lunch and no biscuits or cakes between meals, Mrs Perkins. I want to get into a new summer dress I’ve just bought myself. It’s a jolly good incentive when I feel like eating cream cakes. So, how are you today?’
Oh dear, this inquiry was fatal. She should have known better. Anything concerning June Perkins’ wellbeing and good health in general inevitably resulted in a report on her latest ailment which varied from week to week on her library visits. Today, it was a large boil that troubled her.
‘An’ it’s awful painful,’ she whispered over the counter. ‘I’ve had to sit on a rubber ring. Doctor Winters said I’ve got to take them antibiotics for a week.’ She made an agonized face. ‘An’ would you believe it, the injection he gave me was almost as painful as the boil.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs Perkins. I hope it clears up very soon.’
It had been suspected gall stones last week and fluid on her left knee the week before that. They were mostly inclined to make bets now on what part of her sensitive anatomy was likely to fall foul to a dreadful complaint next.
But apart from that she often entertained them with what she thought were with the best sexy parts from the latest romantic novels she’d read. June Perkins was the ideal romantic critic. She much preferred the heroes, she said, with the dark good looks, passion filled eyes and hot Latin blood. The French, Spanish and Italian men passed muster with her as far as she was concerned. ‘And the Yanks aren’t bad because they’re pretty mixed bunch,’ she said.