Synopses & Reviews
Chapter One
"I want to get to Bamford tonight. Is anyone going that way?"
The voice was well articulated and carried a faintly imperious note. The men clustered around the grimy mobile snack bar turned their heads as one. Even Wally, owner and chef, was intrigued. He placed both palms on the chainsuspended greasy counter projecting from the side of the vehicle, and leaned across to see who'd spoken.
With the shift of his not inconsiderable weight, the little white van quivered and there was an echoing jingle among its contents. A pyramid of packeted snacks slid apart and spread blue, red and green messages across the counter. "Cheese and Onion flavor -- Barbecue Beef -- Chicken Tikka." One fell over the edge to the ground. A customer, at whose feet it landed, picked it up and stuck it in the pocket of his leather blouson jacket. Wally was never so distracted that he missed something like that. He rolled a bloodshot eye and the customer hastily fumbled for loose change and dropped a jumble of coins on the counter. Immediately he returned his gaze to the speaker.
The isolated lay-by was cluttered with parked trucks. Wally's was a regular revictualling stop for the long-distance lorry drivers. He dispensed hot drinks, burned sausages, wedges of heavy pastry stuffed with potato and swede and euphemistically named "pasties," bacon butties and squares of curranty bread pudding. Wally's proud boast was that his food "filled you up." It not only filled, it made the customer feel he'd never need to eat again. Wally's prices were low, his hygiene sketchy, he worked all hours. He saw, as he later told Sergeant Prescott, "life. Just about everyfing."
What he saw on this occasion was agirl he judged about eighteen or nineteen, slender in build, wearing jeans. She also wore a tweedy jacket of the sort Wally associated with the leathery men and women who occasionally descended from the cabs of horseboxes and loudly demanded service as if he'd been the ruddy Ritz. She was standing a short distance away, surveying them all in a critical fashion.
"And," added Wally in the course of that later conversation, "she was a stunner. Just like one of them models. Tall, bit on the thin side, but hair like you never saw. Masses of the stuff." Here Wally sounded a little wistful and passed a hand over his thinning pate. "Wonderful color. Out of a bottle, I suppose. But marvelous, it was. Sort of goldy bronze. She wasn't your usual run-of-the-mill hitchhiker nor your ordinary tart. She had class." He sounded reverential.
Similar thoughts ran through the mind of Eddie Evans. He was on his way home with an unladen lorry. An empty rig was bad business but there'd been a bit of a mix-up and an owner-driver like Eddie, a self-employed one-man band as he termed it, was likely to be out of pocket. The weather had remained dull all day although it was supposed to be springtime. This year winter seemed reluctant to give way to any warmer season. The sun was obscured by a thick wadding of cloud and temperatures were unseasonably low. The trees and hedgerows were only slowly coming into bud, the spring flowers were all late.
The gray mood had permeated Eddie's very being. He'd drawn into the lay-by at the sight of Wally's van, emblazoned with promises of hot and cold refreshments, not because he needed a cup of tarry tea to refresh the body, but seeking enlivening company to refresh thesoul. Other drivers, several of whom he knew, gathered there at this time of day, a little after four in the afternoon. He felt like taking a break and chatting to someone.
He didn't, as a general rule, pick up hitchhikers, male or female. He knew of a fellow who'd had a lot of trouble from doing that. He -- Eddie's acquaintance -- had given a lift to a girl who'd later turned up dead in a ditch at the other end of the country. The police had tracked down everyone who'd seen the kid or taken her along in his cab and there'd been hell to pay. There was no one to run Eddie's business or pay off his mortgage if he was held for questioning and his schedules went out of the window. He ignored the hitchers standing forlornly by the wayside clutching their scraps of card printed with the names of distant cities.
But Wally's tea hadn't dispersed the feeling of depression caused by steely skies and lost business. Instead it had substituted a reluctance to leave the sociable huddle around the van. A simple human need for company led Eddie on this one occasion to break his rule.
Almost without thinking, he heard himself say, "I can take you most of the way, ducks, drop you at the Bamford turning. You'll have to hitch yourself another ride from there."
Faces which had been gawping at the girl, turned to gawp at him instead. They all knew Eddie Evans never took pity on a hitchhiker.
In the silence Wally's tea nm hissed and gurgled. Wally, silent and disapproving, withdrew his head, picked up the coins placed on the counter in payment for the crisps and put them in his elderly, spring-operated till.
The girl was waiting. No one else made a better offer. No one else said anything but theirthoughts hung in the air like the steam escaping from the pressure pot of the urn.
The girl turned to Eddie and said crisply, "Right. Thanks."
She picked up the old khaki haversack...
Synopsis
Meredith drops off a young hitchhiker at the beautiful Tudor home of a prominent lawyer. The next morning, the lawyer is found dead. With her longtime friend, Inspector Alan Markby, Meredith sets out to uncover the ghosts of the past and the mysteries of the present--exposing scandalous secrets that drove someone to madness and murder. Martin's Press.
Synopsis
Meredith Mitchell and her long-time friend Inspector Alan Markby planned to do something special for the weekend--just to break the routine. As it happened, it was murder that changed their plans...
Call the Dead AgainMeredith is hesitant about picking up the hitchhiker on a deserted road outside Bamford, yet with darkness approaching, she just can't leave the young girl alone. But when the stranger is evasive about why she's headed for the beautiful Tudor home of a prominent lawyer, Meredith begins to feel uneasy. And when the lawyer is found dead the next morning, Meredith fears her first instincts were right.
Soon the intrepid sleuths team up to uncover the ghosts of the past and mysteries of the present--exposing some scandalous secrets that drove someone to mischief, madness...and murder.
About the Author
Like her heroine, Ann Granger has worked in the diplomatic service in various parts of the world. She met her husband, who was also working in the British Embassy, in Prague and together they received postings to places as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. They are now permanently based in Bicester, near Oxford.