Model Murder by Nancy Buckingham Page A

please?”
    “Mrs. Sanderson-Browne—that’s Browne with an e. ”
    “This morning,” said Kate, “my colleague spotted a dress in your window. White silk crepe with a dragon embroidered on the bodice. It’s not there now. Have you sold it?”
    The woman had been eyeing Pippa’s uniform with a certain distaste, but now she sensed a sale and beamed.
    “That particular model has been sold, and no wonder, at the snip of a price I was asking. But I have plenty of other very attractive dresses. I’m sure I could fit you up. It’s for some special occasion, is it?”
    Kate dashed her hopes. “I’m not here to buy. This is official police business. I’d like to know how you came to acquire that particular dress.”
    “Why?” She bridled. “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”
    “I’m afraid there almost certainly is.”
    “Oh dear! Well, it was brought in here and offered to me, like most of the things I sell. I don’t have to go looking for stock. I turn down far more than I buy.”
    “Who brought it in, Mrs. Sanderson-Browne? And when?”
    She ruminated, fingering the tie of her silky blouse. “It would have been, let me see, Thursday. No, I tell a lie, it was yesterday. Friday morning. I’d just been along to the bank, so it would have been around eleven o’clock. The woman had never brought in anything before, but she had some nice things. Very nice things, in fact. I hope you aren’t going to tell me they were stolen?”
    “Are you saying that you bought some other items from her, too?”
    “Oh, yes. Several.”
    “Then I’d like to see them, please.”
    Resentfully, she went around the shop plucking things from racks and display stands. When she’d finished there was quite a pile on her glass-topped counter. Almost everything tallied with the list missing from Corinne Saxon’s wardrobe that she was presumed to have packed for her trip.
    “We’ll have to take all these things with us,” Kate said. “We’ll give you a receipt, of course.” Cutting across the outraged protest, she went on, “What can you tell me about the woman who sold them to you?”
    “Not very much. She was short and dumpy, a bit on the common side, to be frank. She told me the clothes belonged to her sister, something about her getting married again and going to live in the tropics where they wouldn’t be suitable. I remember thinking the two sisters can’t have been very much alike, because the one I saw wouldn’t have come within a mile of getting into these things.”
    “Yet you accepted her story without question?”
    “Now listen, I can’t be expected to go into the credentials of everyone who walks into this shop. I paid out good money for these things —in cash—so what’s going to happen now?”
    “That depends. Think carefully, please, is there anything you remember about this woman that might help us trace her?”
    “I told you already, I didn’t know her.” But there was a note of uncertainty in her voice and Kate persisted.
    “Was she local, do you think? Was her face in any way familiar to you?”
    Mrs. Sanderson-Browne considered, while fastidiously plucking an invisible speck from the sleeve of her blouse.
    “Well, since you ask, I did get a slight feeling that I’d seen her around somewhere. But for the life of me I can’t remember where. Maybe she works in a shop.”
    “What kind of shop might it be? Try to visualise her against a background.”
    Her head-shaking suddenly yielded to a triumphant nod. “Hold on, I think I’ve got it. Not a shop, a market stall. Yes, that’s it. I’ve seen her at the Thursday markets here in Marlingford. I close for lunch, you see, and I usually go along to the market for fresh fish and vegetables. Her stall is right up at the end, near the Electricity showrooms. I’ve never bought anything from her, though.”
    “What sort of things does she sell?”
    “Knick-knacks and bits and pieces. Bric-a-brac, I suppose you’d call it.”
    “Right.