The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(2)

‘Excuse me,’ Jenny said politely, looking down at the man who happened to be sitting on one of her feet. ‘Could you tell me if I’m anywhere near Buscot?’

The cyclist blinked again. Then, rather reluctantly, he struggled to stand upright, grunting and groaning with theatrical vigour as he did so. He put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. Then winced. Then nodded.

‘Buscot’s just round the bend . . . er . . . love. You can’t miss it.’ Since Jenny hadn’t actually considered the possibility that she might somehow manage to drive through an entire village without noticing it, she gave him a brief smile of agreement.

‘Thank you. Now, could you tell me how to get to—’ she quickly stood up and delved into the van’s small glove compartment and withdrew a letter ‘—Wainscott House?’

The old man, forgetting his various bruises for a moment, gave her a rather odd look.

‘You’ll be wanting Lucas Finch then?’ he asked. His eyes, which the cook guessed were rather short-sighted, narrowed ominously.

Jenny, as a rule, didn’t go about discussing her private business. But since she had — albeit unintentionally — been the cause of his rather abrupt introduction to the tarmac, she supposed that she owed him at least a little something by way of recompense. Besides, she might learn something about her employer. She nodded briefly. ‘That’s right.’

The old man suddenly shrugged. ‘Wainscott House is the last house in the village, right next to the river. Big, square, solid lump of a place it is. You can’t miss that, either.’

Jenny smiled, and almost knocked the poor man flat for a second time. She had, the cyclist mused with a wistful sigh, the loveliest smile he’d ever seen on a woman. Including those of his favourite screen goddesses of yesteryear such as Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake.

Then he shook off such silly maundering and reached for his bike, hefted it onto its wheels and stared glumly down at it. ‘Another two miles to go,’ he muttered and sighed so heavily that Jenny thought he’d pop the buttons off his shirt. He set about readjusting the shopping bag onto the handlebars, and Jenny bent to retrieve a small jar of instant coffee from the roadside verge that had escaped from between the knotted handles of the carrier bag.

He thanked her for it, shoved it back inside, then turned rather abruptly and gave her a very long look. ‘Lucas Finch ain’t all that popular around these parts, love. Just thought you should know that.’

Jenny, who’d just started to lift one foot in the direction of her van, put it very firmly back onto the ground. ‘Oh?’ she asked, her voice inviting confidences or downright gossip.

Jenny had had quite a few experiences with people who weren’t too ‘popular.’ And sometimes, those occasions had ended in murder.

‘Ahh. A bit of a villain, we reckon.’

Jenny’s left eyebrow began to elevate towards her hairline. ‘Oh? How so?’

The old man sniffed. ‘Well, he’s a cockney for a start,’ he said judiciously. ‘Everyone knows what them big city fellers can get up to. You can’t trust even the so-called professional classes neither nowadays. I blame the bankers for the mess everyone’s in now, I can tell you.’

Jenny bit back a smile and the urge to say ‘Don’t we all?’ but nodded gravely. ‘Anything else?’

The man took off his cap to reveal a sparse crop of grey hair, and scratched his scalp. ‘Oh, there’s rumours all right. He reckons he grew up in a poor slum, but now he’s rolling in lolly, got his own business. Well, how did he get the money to start all that up, hey, if he’s not crooked?’ He thrust his jaw out pugnaciously. ‘That’s what we’d all like to know.’ He sniffed again. ‘’Sides, he’s got a parrot. One of them big, colourful things, with a long tail and a vicious beak,’ he added ominously, as if that somehow clinched matters. ‘You just watch yourself, love, that’s all,’ he finished, giving her a concerned look. ‘You just watch yourself.’

Jenny smiled again, and the cyclist reared back. He’d managed to stay a bachelor for all of his life precisely because he’d avoided women with lovely smiles. ‘Well, I’d best be off,’ he muttered hastily and gave his bike an experimental push. It squeaked like a mouse catching sight of a pound of cheddar.

Jenny winced and quickly set off in the direction of the village.

The old man, after a few moments’ thought, turned to watch the woman in the oddly painted old van disappear into the distance. She’d climbed into her seat with that very fetching kind of grace that some very large women seemed to possess. She’d walked well too. Almost flowed across the road.

The man frowned. He rather liked the gal. She looked like a good, honest sort. He only hoped she knew what she was doing, getting herself mixed up with the likes of Lucas Finch.

He shrugged, and pushed his complaining bike all the way to the top of the hill, before remounting it and wobbling his way precariously to the next village but one, where he had his home.

*

Wainscott House was indeed situated less than a stone’s throw from the wide River Thames. Jenny parked her van off the road under the shade of a tall horse chestnut tree, locked it up carefully and walked to the white picket gate.

It was not that she suspected that anyone would want to steal the old clunker, especially since her mother and her paintbrush had vented their spleen upon it. But she did have a lot of cookery equipment stored in it, and it would break her heart to lose it if some drunken louts took the van for a joyride and wrecked it.