A Death Left Hanging Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t even have been on the Force then.’
    â€˜No, I wasn’t,’ Woodend agreed, wondering if the man who had instructed him to stand outside Strangeways Prison, that wet early morning, was still alive.
    â€˜Anyway, Margaret Dodds had a daughter by a previous marriage, name of Jane,’ Marlowe continued. ‘Jane went to live with her aunt for a few years, then won a scholarship to Oxford, where she read law. She wasn’t called Dodds herself. She’d kept her real father’s name – which was Hartley.’
    Given the drama Marlowe had infused his last few words with, it was obvious to Woodend that the name was expected to mean something to him. He repeated it silently. Hartley . . . Jane Hartley.
    â€˜The QC?’ he asked.
    â€˜The very same. Jane Hartley, who gets front page headlines every time she takes on a case – and not just because she’s a woman.’
    â€˜So what’s her problem?’ Woodend asked.
    â€˜Her problem is that she thinks her mother was framed.’
    Woodend shrugged. ‘Nobody likes to think they’ve got a murderer in the family.’
    â€˜But not everybody is as determined to
prove
that they don’t. Jane Hartley has done some background research herself, and has also put private detectives on the job.’
    â€˜An’ has she come up with any real proof that her mother was innocent of the crime?’
    â€˜No, but she’s come up with enough unanswered questions to suggest that there might be proof out there, if only we’re prepared to look for it. And that’s what I want you to do.’
    â€˜But the case is thirty years old,’ Woodend protested. ‘Half the witnesses are probably dead by now. Bloody hell, the officer who investigated the case is most likely kickin’ up daisies himself.’
    â€˜That’s where you’re wrong,’ Marlowe said heavily. ‘The officer in question is very much alive.’
    â€˜An’ livin’ in Whitebridge?’
    â€˜I believe he’s still got a house here, but he spends most of his time in London.’
    â€˜Then he can’t still be on the Force.’
    â€˜No, he isn’t,’ Marlowe agreed. ‘In fact, he resigned shortly after Margaret Dodds was hanged – and got himself elected to parliament.
    â€˜For where?’ Woodend asked. ‘The horseshoe or the hoof?’
    â€˜He won as a Conservative,’ the Chief Constable said.
    The horseshoe then. The constituency which ran round the more prosperous edges of Whitebridge, and ensured that, despite solid Labour support in the town itself, there would always be at least one Conservative Member of Parliament elected in the area.
    The current Tory MP, Archibald Heatherington, would have been no more than a lad in short trousers back then, Woodend thought. Besides, Heatherington had been a chartered accountant, not a bobby, before he was elected to parliament. So who had served as the MP for the horseshoe before him?
    â€˜Sharpe!’ Woodend said. ‘Eric Sharpe!’
    The Chief Constable nodded sombrely. ‘Or Lord Sharpe of Whitebridge, as he is now,’ he agreed.
    â€˜An’ Jane Hartley thinks he fitted up her mother for the murder of her stepfather?’
    â€˜That’s right.’
    Jane Hartley probably had some very influential friends she could call on for support if she needed to, Woodend thought. But Eric Sharpe – who was both a peer of the realm and a government minister – could do the same and, in addition, had clout
in his own right
. All of which meant that whatever way a new investigation into the Margaret Dodds murder case went, the officer in charge of it was virtually certain to make himself at least one powerful enemy.
    The case was a poisoned chalice if ever he’d seen one. Which was why, of course, it was being handed to him.

Three
    M aking a quick and accurate assessment of people she had just met