A Small Hill to Die On: A Penny Brannigan Mystery by Elizabeth J. Duncan

manicure might be a nice treat for her.” Mrs. Lloyd nodded. “Yes, we’ll arrange that for her before I leave today. I think her birthday’s somewhere around Eastertime, so that would be a nice gift for her.”
    “Good,” said Penny. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy it.”
    “I just hope she won’t think it’s all a waste of money,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “You know she’s never had very much and I think she cuts her own hair.” Eirlys looked shocked.
    “Eirlys, love, you grew up in a time of plenty. You don’t have to worry about money. But women like Florence, who had to scrimp and save just to scrape by, well, life’s different for them.”
    “Yes, Mrs. Lloyd.”
    “Oh, Penny, speaking of scraping by reminds me. I just heard today that someone who used to live here has apparently moved back to Llanelen. I don’t know where she’s been all these years, but apparently she’s been spotted wandering through some fields outside town looking for ferns or bracken or whatever.”
    Mrs. Lloyd paused for a moment as Eirlys placed her hands in the warm, fragrant water of a soaking bowl.
    “So that got me thinking. This woman, Dilys Hughes her name is, used to make all kinds of lotions and soaps and what have you. Have you thought about creating a line of beauty products for your salon? Oh, what’s that called? Private label? Yes, you could have your own line of all-natural beauty products, sourced from fresh, local ingredients, with Llanelen Spa right on the bottle.
    “You’d need a fancy label, but that shouldn’t be too difficult for you. You could sketch a picture of the spa and include that in the design. Maybe Dilys could even make something up for you. She had a soap made from rose petals that was quite nice, as I recall. Lathered up a treat, it did. You could see the bits of crushed pink and red petals right in it. And not only that, the rose petals came right from the gardens at Ty Brith Hall.”
    Eirlys glanced at Penny, unsure what her reaction would be.
    “Well, it was very thoughtful of you to think of us, Mrs. Lloyd, but beauty products and cosmetics have a lot of restrictions on them. You can’t just sell products someone whipped up at home. They have to meet a lot of standards to guarantee they’re safe.”
    “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Mrs. Lloyd “That’ll be all those damned EU regulations. We got along just fine when we ran this country for ourselves without those Brussels boffins telling us how to do everything. We did manage to win the war, after all, with precious little help from them. Still, I do see you’d have to be careful. You wouldn’t want to sell a skin care product and have the ladies break out in hives and red rashes or end up covered in welts.”
    Eirlys made a little grimace, accompanied by a soft eew and Penny laughed.
    “No, it wouldn’t look good on us.”
    “Wouldn’t look good on them, either,” muttered Eirlys.
    “She also used to mix up love potions, as I recall,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “You know the sort of thing. Two drops of this, a bit of chopped-up that, shake well, slip into his drink, and he’s guaranteed to fall in love with you.”
    Penny and Eirlys laughed.
    Mrs. Lloyd hesitated for a moment and then joined in. “Well, she always was a little bit away with the fairies. Some folks thought she was as daft as brush. Daft Dilys some folk used to call her.” Mrs. Lloyd hesitated for a moment. “Me, I always thought there was something rather sly and secretive about her.”
    “I’m surprised I haven’t heard about this Dilys or even run into her,” said Penny as Eirlys applied a top coat to Mrs. Lloyd’s nails. “Where does she live?”
    “Do you know, I’m not really sure,” said Mrs. Lloyd. “But she’s quite likely staying with her brother. He used to be one of the gardeners up at Ty Brith Hall back when it was a going concern. Emyr’s mother used to say what he didn’t know about gardening wasn’t worth knowing. And then