The Mysterious Disappearance of Marsha Boden

Chapter Five

Hi everyone

Thank you for sticking with me on the writing of what I hope to be the first of many novels that I have inside me bursting to get out.

I hope you are enjoying the two chapters that I post each week, on Wednesday and Saturday. Please get in touch if you have any comments.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Miss Moorcroft had never seen so many police cars in her entire life.  She peered out through her cottage window and when she could stand it no longer, scooped up her shopping bag, purse and keys and decided she needed another pint of milk. 

She got no further than the corner of High Street when a policeman squatting down behind a marked car called out to her authoritatively, “You can’t go any further.  Please go back to your house and stay inside.  I repeat.  Go back to your house and stay inside.”

The spinster froze on the spot and didn’t know whether she was going to be shot.  The police marksman must have seen the look of terror etched on her face and said, “Do not be alarmed.  Please walk slowly and calmly back to your house and stay inside.  You will be informed when it is safe to come back out.”

It seemed that her legs wouldn’t work and she was rooted to the spot.  She looked a sorry sight dressed in a plaid skirt, thick stockings, stout walking shoes and a grey twinset and pearls clutching her National Trust reusable shopping back as if her life depended on it. She knew she had no choice but to follow the policeman’s instructions, but she was desperate to make it the few yards to Tiddy’s so that she could find out what the heck was going on.

When she eventually managed the short walk back to her cottage, she locked her front door and made a bee-line for the hallway where she perched on the old green velvet telephone bench-table and started ringing around her neighbours to see what she could find out. Kitty trotted through after her and in an attempt to get her owner’s attention, started weaving in and out of Miss Moorcroft’s legs purring loudly, clearly put out because she wasn’t paying a blind bit of notice, but just kept wittering on, on the telephone.