An Expert in Murder Read Online Free PDF

year of his medical degree – when the war had begun, but before it had gathered any real momentum.
    In Cornwall it had been intensely hot for the time of year, and he 22

    was making the most of his last days at home. The village had decided to continue as planned with the Harvest Festival in defiance of the stresses and strains of war, so he had joined the rest of the family in a walk to the cliff-top church on the edge of his grand-father’s estate to listen while his uncle, the rector of the parish, thanked God for a magnificent harvest and the unbroken weather which had allowed it to be gathered in.
    As soon as he saw the great Union Jack which had replaced the usual hanging at the front of the pulpit, Penrose realised that God’s representative – a sanctimonious bigot at the best of times, even if he was family – had changed his agenda. After preaching a terrifying sermon on the glories of battle, sanctifying maiming, slaughter and bloodshed with the blessing of a higher authority, the rector had urged all the young men to join the army, to sate the country’s appetite for soldiers who would defend the justice of the war. What he had failed to mention was that it was a cause for which thousands of them would be asked to give their lives, but his harvest sermon had done the trick: by the end of the year, every eligible man in the village had signed up to Kitchener’s new army, an exodus which was replicated all over the country, swelling the ranks by nearly a million in the space of just four months. Some expected garrison service at home while the real soldiers went off to do the real soldiering; most believed the papers when they said it would be a short war, over by Christmas at the outside. All had been wrong, and he was still sickened to the stomach when he thought of that call from the altar for young men to offer themselves for the glory of God and eight shillings and nine pence a week.
    In his darker moments, when a connection to life was harder to find, he wondered if that was perhaps what kept him in this job –
    not an abstract desire for justice or a belief that he could do anything to stem the evil which ran inherently through some men’s hearts, but a desperate need to contain the sense of guilt which he had carried since those days. Sometimes it worked, and the natural course of an investigation in which the humanity of an individual was paramount dispelled the sense of waste that came from seeing death on such a massive scale – but those moments were rare, and 23

    the anger that had been a part of him since the war only seemed to grow deeper with time.
    ‘Let’s go back to before you found Miss Simmons in the compartment,’ he said to the boy gently.
    ‘Is that her name, then?’
    ‘Yes, she was called Elspeth. What were you doing in that carriage?’
    ‘I was only in there to make sure it was clean and tidy, ready for the next journey.’
    ‘But that wasn’t your job, was it? You’re a waiter, not a porter.’
    Tommy took one look at the Inspector’s face and knew instantly that it would be pointless to string him along by pretending any great diligence in his work. ‘There was this girl, see? In the restaurant car – she kept giving me the eye, so I asked one of the other blokes if I could have a go at checking some carriages because I knew she’d be there somewhere. I thought I could catch her before she got off and see if she fancied a bite to eat later on. There wasn’t any harm in it,’ he finished defiantly.
    ‘And did you?’
    ‘Did I what?’
    ‘Catch her before she left the train.’
    ‘I did, as it happens. I was supposed to meet her outside the sta -
    tion when I knocked off. I expect she’s given up by now,’ Tommy said, with a wistful glance in the direction of the door.
    ‘Does this girl have a name?’
    ‘Ivy. I don’t know what her other name is. We hadn’t got that far.’
    ‘You’re sure you didn’t really go looking for Miss Simmons in that