Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unpredictable Events
    Unpredictable Events
    Unpredictable Events
    Ebook259 pages5 hours

    Unpredictable Events

    By Cecilia Peartree

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This is the 13th book in the Pitkirtly Mystery series, set in a fictitious small town on the Fife coast in Scotland. Not a million miles from Culross, and yet rather different from it.
    Christopher finds that going away on holiday is a lot more trouble than it's worth, while a wedding in the Cultural Centre isn't without its problems. Amaryllis tries to keep a low profile as she teases out secrets from the tangled threads of everyday life, and Christopher's sister Caroline allows obsession to lead her into danger.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCecilia Peartree
    Release dateMay 29, 2017
    ISBN9781370716531
    Unpredictable Events
    Author

    Cecilia Peartree

    Cecilia Peartree is the pen name of a writer from Edinburgh. She has dabbled in various genres so far, including science fiction and humour, but she keeps returning to a series of 'cosy' mysteries set in a small town in Fife.The first full length novel in the series, 'Crime in the Community', and the fifth 'Frozen in Crime are 'perma-free' on all outlets.The Quest series is set in the different Britain of the 1950s. The sixth novel in this series, 'Quest for a Father' was published in March 2017..As befits a cosy mystery writer, Cecilia Peartree lives in the leafy suburbs with her cats.

    Read more from Cecilia Peartree

    Related to Unpredictable Events

    Titles in the series (26)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Camilla The Down To Earth Duchess

      Jul 13, 2022

      Camilla The Down To Earth Duchess
      14 min read

    • Article

      Dalgliesh

      Oct 21, 2021

      Dalgliesh
      1 min read

    • Article

      Wise old Mrs Merrow

      Jul 27, 2020

      Littlesea was everything the description said: a white stone cottage with beams and higgledy-piggledy walls and steps away from a tiny quay in a private bay. It would have been the perfect spot for honeymooners had it not had just the one single bed

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Coming Out

      May 11, 2020

      The Coming Out
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nature's Way

      Jul 12, 2023

      Nature's Way
      4 min read

    • Article

      Rebecca

      Aug 18, 2021

      Rebecca
      3 min read

    • Article

      SAPPHIRE & STEEL

      Aug 14, 2019

      SAPPHIRE & STEEL
      7 min read

    • Article

      London Life

      Jun 2, 2021

      London Life
      3 min read

    • Article

      London’s Frost Fairs

      Nov 6, 2020

      London’s Frost Fairs
      2 min read

    • Article

      We love September

      Aug 19, 2021

      We love September
      3 min read

    • Article

      I Walked Off 9 Stone!

      Dec 20, 2022

      Breathing in the fresh air and taking in the beautiful scenery, I felt so proud. It was August 2021 and my husband Chris, then 48, and I were on an epic hike in Newquay. We had already walked several miles through the countryside and along the coastl

      4 min read

    • Article

      The PROMISE

      Aug 18, 2021

      The PROMISE
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Mystery Of The Falls

      Aug 27, 2021

      PERHAPS the most obvious example is Picnic at Hanging Rock, Joan Lindsay’s Gothic pastoral about a group of girls who venture to the top of a mountain and fall into a kind of metaphysical sleep. But it’s as much a tradition, the story of uncertain wo

      3 min read

    • Article

      She Who Must Be Obeyed

      Jul 18, 2021

      She Who Must Be Obeyed
      5 min read

    • Article

      The History Detective

      Sep 1, 2022

      As a crime historian, I love investigating historical cold cases, as they can offer a real insight into our ancestors’ lives, and the history of crime, as well as enabling me to play detective in working out what might have really happened in a case.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Andrew Caldecott

      Jul 17, 2019

      Andrew Caldecott
      3 min read

    • Article

      Wild Prospects

      May 4, 2023

      Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt of Urquhart & Hunt won Best in Show and Gold at last year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show and were named Homes & Gardens’ Garden Designer of the Year 2022. This month, they discuss the importance of hedges as the green veins of

      4 min read

    • Article

      Time For Tea

      Jan 31, 2024

      Time For Tea
      9 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Nov 18, 2022

      Fiction
      3 min read

    • Article

      Serenity

      Jan 19, 2022

      Serenity
      9 min read

    • Article

      Margaret, Mustique & me

      Nov 26, 2020

      Margaret, Mustique & me
      2 min read

    • Article

      LeTteR Bocks

      Aug 4, 2022

      ◻PLEASE find attached this trademark from a box of eggs, which appears to show a chicken lifting its leg to crack off an eggy one. Susan Butcher, Australia ◻FORMER Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for meeting an ex-KGB agent without h

      13 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Unpredictable Events

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Unpredictable Events - Cecilia Peartree

      Unpredictable Events

      Cecilia Peartree

      Copyright Cecilia Peartree 2017

      All rights reserved

      Smashwords edition

      Cover photograph: Ian Ogilvy Morrison

      Contents

      Chapter 1 The Watcher at the Harbour

      Chapter 2 ‘I’m on the Train’

      Chapter 3 Giving the Bride Away

      Chapter 4 The Catering Crew

      Chapter 5 Christopher at the End of his Tether

      Chapter 6 Above and Beyond

      Chapter 7 Riotous Impulses

      Chapter 8 Wanted

      Chapter 9 A Family Conference

      Chapter 10 A Good Reason for Staying

      Chapter 11 Another Longest Day

      Chapter 12 Family Matters

      Chapter 13 Crime Scene

      Chapter 14 Caroline Reverts to Type

      Chapter 15 Another mission for Kyle

      Chapter 16 A Little Light Sleuthing

      Chapter 17 Christopher Has Fun

      Chapter 18 Domestic Problems

      Chapter 19 The Hive Mind

      Chapter 20 What Will We Do Today?

      Chapter 21 A Busy Morning at Work

      Chapter 22 Triple Trouble

      Chapter 23 The Chase

      Chapter 24 Entertaining Mrs Campbell

      Chapter 25 Surprises for Two

      Chapter 26 An Afternoon at the Movies

      Chapter 27 Kyle stays out late

      Chapter 28 Keep on Keeping on

      Chapter 29 Caroline Goes to Sea

      Chapter 30 Some Woman

      Chapter 31 Partying on Down

      About the Pitkirtly Mystery series

      Chapter 1 The Watcher at the Harbour

      There were two people arguing at the far end of the harbour wall. Their voices carried easily through the calm, quiet night air.

      ‘... nothing to do with anyone else!’

      ‘... sure there’s some rule...’

      ‘You’re not the guardian of the river! Why don’t you just go home and go to bed?’

      ‘... stopping you from doing something you’ll regret..’

      ‘The only thing I regret is that you’re still here. Just go away and let me get on with it.’

      The woman’s voice was louder and more aggressive. She was the one the watcher in the shadows was most afraid of bumping into. Everybody in town knew she wouldn’t let things rest until she got to the bottom of them. And she was completely ruthless in her pursuit of people she didn’t like the look of, people she thought might harm somebody she knew.

      The watcher shuddered. According to local reports, Amaryllis Peebles was more of a danger than the police were. But as for her friend Christopher Wilson, he was well-known as a pushover. It would be easy enough to pull the wool over his eyes, if it came to that.

      ‘Why don’t you go home and have a hot drink?’ he was saying now. He was clearly quite agitated, his words ringing out louder and louder across the water of the harbour. If he wasn’t careful he would wake up the man who lived on one of the old fishing-boats, and that would be a nuisance.

      ‘A hot drink?’ screamed Amaryllis. ‘Do you think every single problem in the world can be solved by having a nice cup of tea?’

      ‘All right, calm down,’ said Christopher. The watcher could almost picture him glancing round uneasily, as if worried that there were witnesses to this meltdown. If only he knew...

      ‘Calm down?’ Amaryllis shouted. ‘Christopher, there’s a time to calm down, and a time to get het up. A time to shout and a time to keep quiet. A time to refrain from – oh, whatever.’

      ‘I don’t think it says anything about shouting,’ said Christopher, his voice dropping to a level at which the watcher could only just make out the words.

      There was a rattle and a thud from somewhere – it was hard to tell what direction the sounds came from, distorted as they were by the water – and a third voice yelled, ‘Keep it down, guys, OK? Trying to sleep here.’

      ‘Sorry,’ called Christopher.

      ‘Try ear-plugs,’ advised Amaryllis.

      That must have been the last straw for Christopher. He hunched up his shoulders and started walking away from her, back along the wall. The watcher huddled further into the shadow of the doorway. It didn’t look as if Christopher would come in this direction, but even so....

      A faint pattering like raindrops falling on water was followed by a loud splash from the end of the harbour wall, at about the same time as another thud and a rattle. Presumably the man who had been trying to sleep was having another go.

      The splash hadn’t been loud enough to be Amaryllis falling into the water, much though that outcome might have been wished for by some people, and indeed she was still there, perched right at the end of the wall, staring downwards.

      The watcher stored up the moment for future reference. You never knew when these oddments of information might come in useful.

      Chapter 2 ‘I’m on the Train’

      Christopher wondered whether to close his eyes, but decided he had better stay alert for unexpected occurrences.

      So far that day almost everything had been unexpected, from arriving at the station to discover that his niece Marina, previously the most sensible teenage girl in the world, had transformed herself almost overnight into a small-scale tyrant who seemed to spend every waking hour arguing with her mother, to the fact that their seat reservations had mysteriously moved into a different coach and they had had to evict a very old man in order to claim the table Caroline had insisted on.

      In between times, there had been the lengthy wait for the train on a platform that turned out to have been the wrong platform all along, and the mad rush to the other side of the station with all the items of luggage that Marina and Caroline seemed to consider essential, plus Christopher’s own sensible holdall.

      ‘I’m on the train,’ Marina was saying into her phone, grimacing horribly. ‘Yes, we’ll be away for a whole week.’ She emphasised the last two words as if they referred to a unit of time similar in length to the last ice age.

      Christopher had some sympathy with this, as he had a strong feeling that their holiday in Cornwall would almost certainly seem as long as that.

      Caroline waved a plastic bag under his nose. ‘Cheese sandwiches? Or would you prefer ham? I made them myself. Marina doesn’t eat mayonnaise, so it’s the only option really.’

      Marina frowned at her mother. ‘Ssh, Mum,’ she said, covering the phone with her hand temporarily.

      ‘Sorry,’ whispered Caroline. She turned back to Christopher. ‘Cheese or ham? Or would you like a doughnut? I’ve got some in my bag.’

      ‘I’ll just wait until the trolley comes round, thanks,’ said Christopher. ‘I could do with a coffee.’

      Caroline’s face fell. ‘Oh, dear, I should have brought a flask... I never thought of that.’

      ‘It’s fine,’ said Christopher. Maybe he would have to close his eyes after all. They might think he was asleep then. He tried to stretch his legs out under the table, and kicked something.

      ‘Ow!’ said Marina loudly.

      ‘Be careful, Christopher,’ said Caroline. ‘Marina does ballet, you know. We don’t want anything happening to her legs.’

      He closed his eyes.

      The trouble with that was that if he stopped thinking about his immediate surroundings he would have no alternative but to think about what was happening at the Cultural Centre, and the only reason he had agreed to go on holiday with Caroline and Marina was that he wanted to forget about all that. By the time they got back it would all be over, and things would have returned to normal. That was the way he liked them.

      At least Kyle would be there to keep an eye on the place and to make sure crazed wedding revellers didn’t burst into the office and disturb the McCallum Archive, which Christopher was only now beginning to get into some sort of order.

      He couldn’t think why anybody would want to hold their wedding in the Folk Museum in the first place. When Mr Miller had told him the Council had put the building on their list of places where people could get married, he had just ignored this news, fondly imagining it was just a box-ticking exercise because nobody would dream of taking advantage of it. But of course the Prestonfield family, apart from Kyle, seemed to be collectively immune to reason and sense of appropriateness. It was just bad luck that one of El Presidente’s nieces had decided to get married in the quirkiest, most unlikely venue she could find.

      Christopher wasn’t sure if he was still awake or dreaming as he began to picture the bride picking her way down the improvised aisle formed of Folk Museum display cases, with the assembled throng perching on those folding chairs that were so uncomfortable and so prone to folding themselves up again when the occupants least expected it. He hoped El Presidente himself had been able to find a proper chair to sit on. If he plummeted to the floor at a crucial moment, they would never hear the end of it. He would probably find a way to carry out his threat to close the place down.

      Caroline nudged him awake. ‘Trolley’s coming.’

      The day became a sequence of recurring scenes: buying a coffee from the trolley, spilling half of it, apologising to people, listening to the clicking of Marina’s fingers as she presumably communicated with friends on her phone, refusing Caroline’s increasingly desperate offers of food, being afraid to stretch his legs in case he kicked somebody, half-dozing off so that imaginary pictures of wedding guests destroying the Cultural Centre were superimposed on the reality of the train interior.

      He woke up with a start.

      ‘Bristol,’ said Caroline, nodding in apparent satisfaction. ‘Nearly there.’

      Christopher wondered if his sister had ever looked at a map of Britain. As far as he could recall, it was quite a long way from Bristol to – wherever they were going. Somewhere in Cornwall.

      ‘Where are we going again?’ he enquired, stifling a yawn.

      ‘Cornwall,’ said Caroline.

      ‘Yes, but whereabouts in Cornwall? The south coast? The north coast? Somewhere in between?’

      ‘It’s near Penzance,’ she said. ‘Just a village, really. On the coast.’

      He stared at her. ‘What made you think of going there?’

      He heard Marina muttering something. It sounded a bit like ‘Alzheimer’s’ but he was almost sure it couldn’t have been that.

      Caroline blushed.

      ‘I read a book about the place, and it sounded really nice,’ she said at last.

      Well, there was nothing to be ashamed about in reading a book, Christopher thought.

      ‘Was it Rebecca? Or one of the Poldark series?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Go on, show him,’ said Marina. She sounded as if she was trying not to laugh.

      ‘Oh, all right!’ exclaimed Caroline crossly. ‘There’s no point in trying to have a private wee read with you around, is there?’

      Marina went back to prodding the buttons on her phone, while Caroline delved into her bag and brought out a slim pink case with a picture of a very fluffy cat on it. Christopher blinked. He had expected to see a paperback book.

      She took something out of the case and switched it on, handing him the thing as it sprang to life.

      ‘It’s an e-reader,’ she said. ‘I’ve got three hundred books on it.’

      Christopher was impressed. He had never thought of Caroline as a great reader.

      ‘I think Jemima’s got one of those too,’ he commented.

      ‘Look, click there and you’ll see all the books,’ she told him.

      ‘It’s in colour,’ he said, feeling stupid as a selection of brightly coloured book covers appeared on the screen. He peered at them. Most of them seemed to show pictures of blue skies, sometimes with a scattering of unthreatening white clouds, above yellow sand and impossibly blue seas. He could understand why Caroline liked them. The images were about as far from the reality of a Scottish summer as you could get.

      ‘That’s the one, there.’ She pointed to one of the covers, which was almost identical to the others except that there was some sort of a golf course in the foreground instead of the gift shops and cafés that occupied that space on the others.

      ‘The Little Putting Green Near the Beach,’ he read. ‘A Feel-Good Heart-Warming Story about the Kind of People You’d Like to Have as Friends.’

      At the other side of the table, Marina’s face contorted in what might have been disgust but what, Christopher thought, was probably suppressed hilarity.

      ‘The little putting-green?’ he said blankly. He glanced at a few of the other titles. The word ‘little’ featured in quite a few of them. And sometimes ‘girl’.

      ‘It’s a really nice story,’ said Caroline. ‘This girl inherits a derelict putting-green from her long-lost father and goes to Cornwall to get it up and running again... I thought we could have a go at playing on the actual putting-green from the story,’ she added wistfully. ‘I haven’t been putting for years.’

      ‘Are you sure it’s really there?’ said Christopher after a pause during which he weighed up the potential pitfalls of saying nothing and experiencing one of Caroline’s massive tantrums when she discovered the famous putting-green was purely fictitious, as against breaking the news to her in easy stages and perhaps starting the holiday with her in a bit of a huff.

      ‘Well, I think so,’ said Caroline. She thought about it for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, well, even if it isn’t, I’m sure the village is really nice.’

      Interesting. Maybe that therapy she had been through last winter was starting to pay off. Or maybe she had been forced to relinquish her role as family drama queen to Marina. Either way, Christopher felt as if he might be able to relax a little on this holiday. He gave the thing back to Caroline, sat back and closed his eyes.

      The bride was in tears as she barged through the narrow aisle between the display cases and approached the groom, who was standing with a glaikit expression on his face that made him resemble the inexpertly stuffed seal just above the Folk Museum door.

      Suddenly, the roof began to fall in on them, and the whole building lurched to one side. There was screaming and wailing.

      He woke up again to find Caroline’s hand crushing his arm. He realised that he had unconsciously tensed up to avoid sliding to one side and off the seat altogether.

      The train had come to a standstill, but at an odd angle. Caroline had slipped towards him a little, and Marina, her mouth open in surprise, had fallen across the empty seat next to her at the other side of the table. Caroline’s e-reader and Marina’s phone slid past him and fell on to the carriage floor as he watched.

      ‘Something’s happened,’ said Caroline.

      Christopher leaned down to pick up the two gadgets and return them to their owners. Marina pulled herself upright again.

      The screaming and wailing, which had somehow escaped from Christopher’s dream and migrated into real life, became more muted, to be replaced with a babble of talk. There was an electronic crackle and somebody spoke on the announcement system.

      ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for this incident. I can assure you that there is no immediate danger, but you must remain in your seats until we can...’

      The rest of the announcement was completely inaudible as people began to collect their belongings and barge down the central aisle towards the doors.

      So much for being able to relax, thought Christopher. He hoped the wedding wasn’t going as badly as this.

      Chapter 3 Giving the Bride Away

      ‘Tiffany’s in tears in the biography section,’ said Kyle’s father urgently. ‘We’ll have to do something, or the whole thing will be a fiasco.’

      ‘More than it already is, you mean,’ remarked Kyle’s mother. She fiddled with the clasp on her handbag. ‘I suppose I’d better go and speak to her.’

      ‘What’s the problem?’ said Kyle, wondering, not for the first time that day, what they expected him to do about it. For some reason his rather indeterminate status as an intern at the Cultural Centre had landed him with far more responsibility for the success of this wedding than he had bargained for. He hoped his mother didn’t go and speak to his sister. That would be all she needed at the moment.

      ‘It’s young Lee’s father,’ said Douglas Prestonfield. He pulled at his tie and succeeded in making it ride up above the ridiculous winged collar. Marie Prestonfield tutted and put a hand up to try and tug it back into place.

      ‘What’s wrong with him?’ enquired Kyle.

      ‘Hmph!’ said Douglas, taking a step back out of his wife’s reach. ‘Probably lying drunk in some doorway.’

      ‘He wouldn’t do that on a day like this,’ said a voice from just behind them.

      Lee Campbell stood there in the doorway of the research room, dressed like the other men in kilt and accoutrements. He didn’t look quite as silly as Kyle felt, but it was a close thing.

      ‘He hasn’t turned up yet,’ Lee continued. ‘My Mum’s just texting him now.’

      ‘Where was he staying?’ said Kyle. ‘Maybe one of us should go round there. In case he’s slept in.’

      ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ said Douglas as Kyle took a step towards the door. ‘We don’t want to lose track of you too.’

      ‘He and his girl-friend were renting a cottage along the coast,’ said Lee. ‘I’m not sure where exactly. But we’ve got his mobile number.’

      ‘We’ll be running late in a minute!’ said Marie Prestonfield. She glared at her husband. ‘Douglas, can’t we do something?’

      ‘We’ll go and speak to Tiffany,’ said Douglas.

      They made their exit, leaving Kyle and Lee together in an uneasy silence.

      ‘So you work here now, do you?’ said Lee, tapping his fingers on one of the computer keyboards.

      ‘Sort of,’ said Kyle.

      At this moment he wished fervently that he didn’t work here. Not only did he know Christopher was trusting him to make sure nothing terrible happened to the building and its contents during the wedding, but his parents seemed to think he would be able to iron out any problems with the ceremony itself. There was nothing he could do, however, about Lee’s father’s absence. He wished it were a normal day at work, with Zak Johnstone casting evil glances at him from behind the local shells display, Jemima and Dave popping in at lunchtime with unhealthy snacks, and the portrait of his uncle, now known even to him as El Presidente, glowering down the corridor at everybody.

      As if he had conjured up the man just by thinking about him, there was a noise in the corridor and Kyle’s uncle stepped into the room.

      ‘What’s the hold-up, then?’ he boomed. ‘We’re all waiting in the Folk Museum. The catering arrangements will fall apart if we start running late.’

      It seemed that he too held Kyle responsible for the success of the event.

      ‘It’s Tiffany,’ said Kyle.

      ‘No, it isn’t Tiffany,’ snapped Lee. ‘It’s my Dad.’

      El Presidente, resplendent in full tartan regalia – Kyle wouldn’t have been surprised to see a ceremonial sword hanging by his side – drew himself up to his full height and said, ‘That’s not good enough, is

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1