Peggy Parsons is a Meddlesome Old Bat

By F J Shindler

Graffiti on her fence and a bottle of milk that goes missing from her doorstep are only the beginning for Margaret Parsons. A septuagenarian with a sparkling brain, the renowned writer of mystery novels spots a mysterious figure creeping from the house opposite her own in the very early hours. It’s enough to set the wheels of her mind in motion.

But are the two events even connected?

A speight of burglaries in the area might just be the link, until a man is murdered close to the train station in the middle of the night. Even worse, the main suspect turns out to be a good friend of someone Margaret cares for dearly.

Her own best friend is Moira, a coarse, scatty, over-the-top sixty-eight year old woman whose raucous approach to life was Margaret’s saviour after being widowed so brutally years before. With Moira’s help, and the assistance of Tom, a kindly policeman, Margaret endeavours to uncover the truth. But in doing so, uncovers a web of lies surrounding her husband’s so-called accident.

F J Shindler.

• Language: English
• Publisher: F J Shindler
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224694020

F J Shindler

F J Shindler was born in Manchester, England, but subsequently lived in various parts of the country before moving abroad. He now lives in a very hilly, very rural part of the Czech Republic in an old, though charming former farmhouse.The author of the ever-expanding short story series, ‘The Doctor Goodier and Harry Mysteries’, F J Shindler’s debut full length novel is the first of twelve interrelated works in the ‘Klub Päris Fantastiline’ series. Written in adult noir fiction form, Book one, ‘The Ninth Case File’, is set in 1966 and is titled ‘Mikey’.

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Copyright 2024 F J Shindler

This work is the product of  imagination.  The places, establishments, institutions, and events cited herein either do not exist, or are used fictitiously to enhance the plotline.  Any resemblance to events or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely unintentional.

All rights reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the permission of the Author and Publisher. The work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

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Table of Contents

Title

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

About F J Shindler

Other Works

Web

1

Sunday 10th March

‘Peggy Parsons is a meddlesome old bat!’

For the umpteenth time that morning, Margaret Parsons agonised over that dreadful statement. Sprayed in fluorescent canary yellow across her recently painted fence, her pristine battleship-grey boards were now completely ruined. Margaret wasn’t the type to nurse a grudge, but there was no doubt in her mind as to the identity of the culprit. Moreover, she felt sure she knew why it had been done, too. As her good friend, Moira, had voiced only a few days earlier, ‘not everyone likes old people’.

Both had been discussing the realities of old age with Arthur, Moira’s recently turned forty-year old nephew. Ordinarily an agreeable and undemanding companion, a bad day, together with a general dissatisfaction with his job had left him depressed and bemoaning the years he still had to go before retirement.

Being retired isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, his aunt was telling him. "Aches and pains are a given as we get on, as are weird creaks, clicks and grinding noises from joints, especially when bending and lifting. As for the haemorrhoids and the farting..!"

Aargh, too much information, Arthur yelped.

He cupped both hands over his ears while scrunching his face.

And it’s not uncommon for a few condescending twerps to treat you like you were gaga simply because your face is more wrinkled than theirs, she went on, pointing a red varnished fingernail at a certain somebody behind his back. "Just because our sexy bits go earthward doesn’t have to mean our brain cells follow suit."

Then again, Margaret intervened, kindly, "being a pensioner isn’t all bad news, is it, Moira? Being old can actually have its advantages."

Really? Arthur queried, a question borne more of escape from aunt Moira’s scrutiny than genuine interest.

Oh, yes, Margaret went on to explain. "Having doors opened for you for one thing, and seats given up because you look like you’re at death’s door. Acts of kindness like that should be welcomed or rewarded, not sneered at or rejected. And before you say another word, no, I absolutely do NOT consider such offerings in any way demeaning or offensive to my sex. The more the merrier as far as I’m concerned. Afterthought caused her to add, Kindness, I mean. Not sex."

Oh, I don’t know… Moira mused, tossing a naughty wink in Margaret’s direction.

"Unfortunately, that isn’t the modern way, Margaret," Arthur protested, in a kindly way.

His head was down again, spindly fingers scribbling spidery notes into a long red and black ledger.

"Then let the moderns bloody well struggle for themselves if they prefer, Moira stated, bolstering her friend’s reasoning. They won’t be so high and mighty in a few years’ time, when their joints are dried up and rickety like mine! I get cramps in my arms just pulling the lids from those ridiculous tins these days."

Oh, I know, Margaret agreed, with a horrified frown. "Mackerel tins are the worst. The way they flick under your wrist just when you least expect it? Give me a good old-fashioned tin opener any day."

The ensuing conversation about tin designs aside, Margaret already knew to her cost that her friend was right. Not everyone likes old people.

***

Margaret was the type of woman who noticed things. Not only that, but she had been blessed with an above average intellect, a faculty enjoyed regardless of her advancing years. She attributed that to her grandmother’s ‘early to bed, early to rise’ philosophy. Instilled as a very young girl, the practice prevailed even now. She would wake from her slumbers between four and four-thirty every day. She didn’t consciously decide to rise at that time, nor was there a specific reason to be up and about either. And it wasn’t as if some thing or some one actually roused her. It simply was what it was. The ancient Westclox alarm was there, ticking away on the bedside cabinet as it always did. Its key was turned religiously seven times every evening, just before settling down to read enough of her latest library book to close her eyes. And there the clock would sit, its alarm never once set or tested.

The day before yesterday, a gloomy, mist-laden Friday morning, Margaret pulled back her dark green bedroom curtains in time to see a mysterious figure closing one half of the double gate to number twenty-four, the black and white mock-Tudor semi directly opposite her own. The act pulled her attention for a number of reasons, not least the furtive manner in which he or she leaned over as the gate was eased shut against its partner, a deliberate attempt to do so silently, Margaret imagined. Of greater interest to her astute thought processes was the way the figure glanced around nervously, head flitting between both ends of the road, left and right, up and down; abrupt movements done in quick, short bursts.

Margaret thought of chickens.

Suddenly, the head lifted and stayed, inquisitive eyes squinting in the ineffectual light thrown back from a street-lamp a little further along.

‘A man!’

For reasons she didn’t fully understand herself, Margaret retreated into the sanctuary of her darkened bedroom. But not for long. Had he seen her, she wanted to know? Had she moved quickly enough? In the time taken to pluck up the courage to take a peek, the man was haunching the collar of his jacket high against his ears and was already starting to his right, in the direction of the junction at the top end of St James’ Road. It was as her seventy-four year old eyes fought to focus that he stopped dead, wheeled his head around and looked straight up at her window.

Margaret gasped at more or less the same instant that the whooshing, thundering pounding noises arrived deep inside her ears.

Blood pressure tablet! she sang, in mellifluous tones. Arms waving madly, she ran as best she could to the small medicine cabinet on the bathroom wall, singing "blood pressure tablet, blood pressure tablet at a pitch unusually high for that time of the morning, even for Margaret."

***

They were something new, the tablets. From the moment she was able to make decisions for herself and right up until Boxing day, Margaret actively avoided medications of any description, apart from the odd aspirin, that is. But the banging in her head and the whistling in her ears were becoming a distraction. It didn’t take Doctor Peyton long to determine the cause. And in spite of her protestations during and after the examination, or the excuses she tried to put forward as he wrote the prescription, in the end the choice was simple. She either started taking the tablets immediately, or she and her caked up arteries should prepare for the inevitable.

Doctor Peyton was nothing if not to the point.

Tablet swallowed and slightly more at ease because of it, she breakfasted in the new conservatory; her usual hard boiled egg and a single slice of cold buttered toast, but minus her customary three shakes of salt.

Doctor’s orders! she instructed, military fashion, just as she had said every morning since starting the medication.

Reflected in the sliding glass door as she sipped the last of her tea, she saw that it was almost five-thirty, albeit the wrong way around, naturally. The clock on the microwave oven was on the far side of the kitchen, but being able to read its bright green glare back to front had been a challenge mastered soon after the kitchen was opened out and the conservatory built on.

Margaret lifted weary slippered feet along a sculptured grey-green hall carpet to fetch the milk from the front porch. It was almost light now, though not quite so light as to see clearly across the road. She raised her chin as best as her semi-seized neck muscles permitted, keen eyes seeking a clear line of sight through the tall, though leafless Fuchsia at the corner of her small, but private front garden. Somewhere at the back of her mind, a note was made that a good pruning was in order. When, at last, she found a gap wide enough to see through, she saw to her consternation that the gate to number twenty-four appeared to be open again. More conspicuous when she looked to her feet, however, was the absence of a single milk bottle on her threshold, full or empty!

What on earth…? she murmured.

Stepping outdoors while wearing slippers was as sacrilegious as sacrilegious could