The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)
Faith Martin
CHAPTER ONE
Jenny Starling pulled her rather distressed-looking but nearly always reliable cherry-red van to a halt on the crest of a hill and turned off the engine. She removed the ignition keys and put them in the pocket of her lightweight linen jacket, then walked to the edge of the road and looked down at the winding River Thames below.
It was July, and in the fields the barley was just beginning to think of changing its mantle of green for a more mellow hue. The sun shone high and powerful overhead, and somewhere in the distance a church clock struck one. She hoped that it was the church clock in the village of Buscot, which, so her map assured her, was positioned just down the road.
Beside her, in a hawthorn thicket, a yellowhammer whistled merrily for his bread and cheese, whilst corn buntings trilled cockily from the highest bushes in the hedges that ran in patchwork lines across the valley. Dog roses and wild poppies bloomed like mad things.
Jenny took a big breath of fresh air and smiled with satisfaction. It was nice to leave the city of Oxford behind every now and then, although she was quite content with her present job as head chef at St Baptista’s College.
What she wasn’t so happy about was the two weeks’ holiday she was being practically forced to take. Union rules, or so the college bursar had said.
She sighed glumly.
Jenny didn’t particularly approve of the — to her mind — somewhat ludicrous habit her fellow holidaymakers had of flocking to some foreign coast every summer in the hope of turning lobster red in the sun. She didn’t find the prospect of getting sand in her shoes exactly appealing, she objected to children depositing sticky ice creams on chairs and benches, and, most of all, she disliked having to eat somebody else’s cooking. All of which meant that Jenny inevitably stayed firmly put during the annual summer migration of the great British public, and usually became thoroughly bored in the process.
Which was why she was always on the lookout for the odd strictly temporary job, to tide her over during the slow, boring weeks of her supposed vacation time.
She straightened her majestic shoulders with another sigh. Wallowing in the pastoral beauty around her was all very pleasant, she supposed idly, but she had an appointment at 2:15 with a certain Mr Lucas Finch, who was in need of a cook for the weekend, so she couldn’t dawdle about indefinitely.
A light breeze lifted a few dark glossy curls across her broad forehead as she walked back to the van. At six feet tall, and with a figure that could best be described as Junoesque, she had some difficulty in squeezing her curvaceous frame behind the steering wheel and not for the first time promised herself that she’d look around for a bigger van. One that could hold even more of her catering equipment, and perhaps even come with power steering, air conditioning that worked and, best of all, more leg room for plus-sized drivers!
She steered the old van (which now had painted on one of its panels a very twee scene of unicorns and fairy-tale castles, courtesy of her artistically frustrated mother) slowly down the narrow country lane. She hadn’t passed a single vehicle since turning onto it, and it had a little-used and rather forlornly neglected air.
She had gone only about half a mile down the hill when, coming up the other way, she noticed a man on a rusty and badly squeaking bicycle, who was pedalling away with something less than enthusiasm. A moment later she pulled up in front of him and once again switched off the engine and got out. Her van’s ancient internal combustion system was apt to be very loud and noisy and wasn’t above giving the occasional backfire, which tended to make people jump. Herself most of all. The cyclist’s head was well down as he attempted to urge his squeaking steed up the hill, and at first he simply didn’t realize that she had stopped right in front of him. A bag of what looked like groceries lay firmly strapped across the handlebars, which were wobbling rather alarmingly.
Jenny coughed. Loudly.
The man’s head jerked upwards and the handlebars corkscrewed, promptly pitching him head-first off the saddle. He landed, rather artistically Jenny thought, right at her feet. He looked as if he was coming up to retirement age, with a small white moustache and more wrinkles on his face than a candlewick bedspread.
She quickly moved her considerable frame into action and went to see if he was all right.
‘Hell’s bells and buckets of blood,’ the man muttered, but the lack of heat in his tone made it sound more like a greeting than a curse. No doubt, Jenny surmised, pedalling for miles on a reluctant bike in the hot summer sun would sap the passion out of anyone. But at least he wasn’t hurt.
As she knelt down beside him, the man rearranged himself so that he was sitting on his bottom (as opposed to his elbow and nose) and stared at the fallen bike in the road. The front wheel was still spinning jauntily, if rather uselessly.
‘Damn useless piece of junk,’ the cyclist huffed. ‘I’d be better off walking.’
And then, as if suddenly remembering the cause of his downfall, his head turned and swivelled sharply upwards, the visor of his cap shading his eyes. What he saw was a wonderful figure of a woman. She was dressed in a very long, very sensible summer dress of cornflower blue with a matching jacket that perfectly complemented the shade of her large and quite beautiful eyes.
The man blinked.
The last time he’d seen a woman of this shapely size was in the far-gone days of his youth when women had hips and breasts, and the hourglass shape that made a man’s mouth water.