Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [51]
Rex gulped back the last of his tea as Phyllis put on her coat. “Where does she keep the book?” he inquired, getting up from the table.
“Now, now, Mr. Graves. Ye’ll get me in trouble fer sure.”
“I won’t. In fact, if you help solve this important case, I’ll make sure you get some of the credit.”
“Oh, aye? I’d be famous then.” Phyllis hastened to tell him that the book was kept in the office and unlocked the door for him.
After what seemed like an eternity, he finally put his hands on the photo he was looking for. When he came out of the room, Phyllis was anxiously waiting for him in the hall, hopping from one foot to the other in her black lace-up shoes.
“There ye are at last,” she said, knotting a head scarf under her double chin. “I’ll be off, then,” she called into a room off the hall. Sports commentary punctuated by loud exhortations in a foreign language escaped through the partially open door.
“There’s only the cook and the waiter in charge here until the Allerdices get back,” Phyllis told Rex. “The waiter is from Portugal and doesn’t speak verra good English. But he manages to communicate fine wi’ the ladies, if ye ken what I mean. Portugal’s playing today. That’s what my old man will be watching.”
“I’d be watching the soccer too, if I could,” Rex said with regret.
“My Vic tapes all the games. I could get a video to you.”
“That’s verra kind, but it’s not the same as watching it in real time, is it?”
“I don’t see why,” Phyllis replied, closing the main door to the hotel behind them. “I catch up on my soaps after work that way.”
“How long have you been working here?” he asked as they crossed the parking lot, reaching her Morris Minor in time for a renewed onslaught of rain.
“Four years, ever since my husband went on disability.”
“So you would recall the drowning incident here at Loch Lochy?”
“Aye, it were dreadful!” Phyllis turned on the ignition and started the wipers. “Poor Mrs. Allerdice were a wreck after that.”
“And Flora?”
“Och, she moped around for months waiting for a letter from her young man in America. Right scared she is she might turn into an old maid—at twenty-one! When yer friend Mr. Frazer stayed at the hotel, she perked up a wee bit. He took an interest in her watercolours.”
“Mr. Frazer is a kind and sensitive man.”
“He is that.” Hunched over the wheel, Phyllis drove with caution, looking left and right. “Can ye credit all this rain? And we were having such a lovely summer.”
“What can you tell me about Mr. Beardsley, the journalist?”
“Keeps to hisself. Doesna like to be disturbed when he’s working, so I only do his room when he’s oot.”
“Is he gone for long periods?”
“I dinna ken aboot that. I do ken he sometimes comes back wi’ mud on his boots. The guests are supposed to remove their wet shoes when they come in, but most of them don’t bother. Now, the Canadians always do because that’s their custom back home. ’Course, Donnie always forgets. But that lad isna right in the heed. Mental age of a bairn.”
The countryside passed them by in a showered succession of pine trees and sheep-populated meadows while Rex pumped Phyllis for information about her employers.
“You can drop me off here by the deer fence,” he said five minutes later.
“But ye’ll get soaked!”
“You wouldna be able to take me all the way anyway. This is a shortcut.”
“Well, off ye go, afore they miss ye over at the lodge. I’ll no say anything to the owners. Here, take my umbrella.”
“No need.” Rex pulled his hood over his head and, thanking her again, ducked out of the car.
As Phyllis drove off, Moira’s cell phone rang in his pocket. Seeking cover under a spreading oak, he fished it out and, flipping it open, saw it was a London number. “Hello?” he answered, cupping his hand over his other ear to hear against the sound of leaves dripping rain all around him. A bedraggled hare shot off into the wet undergrowth by his feet, startling him.
“Thaddeus here,” the caller announced. “I have some information I think you