Frozen in Crime

Chapter 5 Where's Rudolph when you need him?

Jemima was too quiet

In many situations she would talk too much, rambling away about her latest craft project, or reminiscing about the time her mother saw off a couple of hooligans armed only with a kitchen whisk, but now she sat at the kitchen table with her hands folded neatly in front of her and her eyes looking into the middle distance but only seeing what was inside her head.

Amaryllis had persuaded her to put on an extra cardigan and to drink two cups of tea and nibble at a custard cream biscuit, but she knew there was only one way that things would get any better, and that was for Dave to walk through the door, announcing that he had popped in to see an old friend on the way back from Rosie's and lost track of the time.

'Can you think of anywhere he might have gone?' she asked one more time, knowing the answer would be the same.

'No.' Jemima shook her head, still staring blankly at the kitchen wall. 'The only person he knows out that way is Rosie.'

Amaryllis almost itched to get out there and start searching, but the rational part of her brain told her she couldn't do anything on her own. On the other hand, looking after an old woman in distress was not her forte. She was a woman of action - someone who had actually been considering only the day before whether to give up on her comfortable, soft existence and try to do something that would make a huge difference to humanity.

Now all she wanted to do was to help this one individual. From the sublime to the ridiculous, her more adventurous self sneered. Don't call Jemima ridiculous! snapped back the more sympathetic, caring side of her nature that had come to the forefront since she had lived in Pitkirtly. The adventurous self rolled its eyes. Caring! Give me a break!

It was just as well that Christopher arrived before the two sides of her personality went into a permanent huff with each other.

Christopher took one look at Jemima and said quietly, 'So you haven't heard anything yet?'

'No,' said Amaryllis.

She was absolutely not the kind of woman who expected a man to solve all her problems, from the small, such as how to catch a spider and put it outside where it could run free without causing her to have a heart attack, to the enormous - how to remove herself from the CIA's most wanted list. But she couldn't deny that she was pleased to have Christopher here to share the problem with.

'Hello Jemima,' he said, sitting down at the kitchen table opposite her. 'Got any tablet? I need to soak up the Old Pictish Brew in a hurry if we're going to go and dig Dave out of a snowdrift.'

For some reason this brought Jemima back to reality with a bump. 'That's a silly question, Christopher. What sort of Scot would I be if I didn't have tablet in the house with New Year just round the corner? Just you sit there and I'll get you a cup of tea to go with it. You'll need something hot inside you too if you're away out in all this awful weather.'

Amaryllis still wasn't entirely sure that Jemima was quite herself yet, but this bustling Jemima who was ferreting around in the cupboard for tablet and a new packet of custard creams was a million times better than the one who had sat still as a statue and stared at the wall. What she'd be like if Dave never came back just didn't bear thinking about.

Amaryllis closed her mind to that possibility. But she drew Christopher aside and said to him in an undertone, 'How are we going to find Dave in this weather without any transport?'

'The landlord of the Queen of Scots,' he said succinctly.

'What about him? Has he got a team of highly trained huskies?'