The Package Included Murder by Joyce Porter Page A

we’re sure!’
    â€˜But you live in Pear’s Hill. That’s only a couple of miles from Wattington.’
    Jim Lewcock never questioned where the Hon. Con had got this snippet of information from. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t help that, love. We still don’t know her.’
    â€˜When did you decide to come on this particular package holiday?’
    â€˜About a bloody week ago.’ Tony Lewcock’s voice was almost as surly as his face. ‘We was all set to go to your Costa Brava but there was some sort of bloody mix-up over the bookings. By the time they’d got things sorted out, this trip was all they could give us that fitted. Believe you me, missus, this isn’t our idea of your dolche vita!’
    The Hon. Con scratched her head. It certainly didn’t sound as though these two yobboes had come to the Soviet Union with the deliberate intention of murdering Penny Clough-Cooper. Still, the attacks might have been triggered off by some accidental and unexpected encounter though the Hon. Con couldn’t quite see Penny Clough-Cooper as a grisly spectre from somebody’s past.
    â€˜Miss Clough-Cooper works for a solicitor in Wattington, you know. Either of you ever had any dealings with him?’
    â€˜No!’ The answer came sharply and independently from either side.
    The Hon. Con was floundering. ‘You sure?’ she asked again.
    â€˜Jesus!’ Tony Lewcock got his cigarettes out and lit one defiantly. It was only when he’d finished coughing his guts up that he continued. ‘Our trade union sees to all that soft of thing for us, lady. The Southern Lathe Operators Brotherhood & Society. They’ve got their solicitor and everything. He’s a right sharp laddie up in London – so why should we start messing around on our own, hiring some bloody country yokel in the next bloody town?’
    Trade union, eh? Well, the Hon. Con was not surprised. She’d always thought that the Lewcock brothers looked like a couple of anarchists. She remembered the passports again. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘I meant to ask you. What exactly is it that you do for a living?’
    â€˜I’m off sick at the moment,’ said Tony.
    â€˜We own a garage,’ said Jim.
    Somebody far more dense than the Hon. Con would have noticed that the Lewcock brothers immediately regretted their simultaneous and disparate answers. There was a moment or two of confusion and the Hon. Con felt instinctively that there was a guilty secret lurking around somewhere.
    â€˜I thought you were supposed to work in a factory,’ she said.
    The Lewcock brothers did it again.
    â€˜That’s right!’ said one.
    â€˜We used to,’ said the other.
    The Hon. Con grinned. Better and better!
    Jim Lewcock tried to sort things out. ‘I was just doing a bit of swanking,’ he explained lamely. ‘About the garage, I mean.’
    The Hon. Con didn’t yield an inch. ‘Oh, yes?’
    â€˜It’s only a matter of time,’ said Tony Lewcock, plunging disastrously to the rescue.
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜Well …’ Tony Lewcock gazed hopelessly out of the window and sighed. ‘It’s a long story, miss.’
    The Hon. Con consulted Big Ben. ‘It had better not be, laddie!’ Her jocular manner struck a gruesome note. ‘We’re due to land in this Bukhara place in ten minutes and I want this whole business settled before then.’
    The Lewcock brothers nervously lit more cigarettes and, after an abortive attempt to swear the Hon. Con to eternal secrecy, came out with their pathetic little story.
    â€˜We did work in a factory,’ began Jim Lewcock. ‘Bromberg & Sons. Making specialised components for the mining industry. As jobs go, it wasn’t bad and the money was fairish. With overtime. But – well – you know how it is. I suppose everybody wants to be their own master when you