Murder Being Once Done Read Online Free PDF

speech, but now a faint smile twitched his lips. He felt in the pocket of his coat while Wexford leaned against the vault, his arms folded defiantly.
    ‘Here, read that. It came two days before you did.’ Reassured by the evidence he had produced, Howard spoke firmly now. ‘Read it, Reg.’
    Suspiciously Wexford took the letter. Without his glasses he could only just read it, but he could make out enough. The signature, ‘Leonard Crocker’, leered blackly at him. ‘. . . I am confident I can rely on your good sense . . . Nothing he wants more than to get completely away from everything connected with police work . . . Better not let him come into any contact with . . .’
    ‘We thought we were acting for the best, Reg.’
    ‘Close friend!’ Wexford exploded. ‘What business has he got interfering with me?’ Usually litter-conscious, he forgot his principles and, screwing the letter into a ball, hurled it among the bushes and the crumbling masonry.
    Howard burst out laughing. ‘I spoke to my own doctor about it,’ he said, ‘telling him what had been the matter with you and he said – you know how diplomatic they are – he said there were two opinions about it but he couldn’t see that you’d come to any harm indulging – er, your usual tastes. Still, Denise insisted we abide by what your own doctor said. And we did think it was your wish.’
    ‘I took you for a snob,’ said his uncle. ‘Rank and all that.’
    ‘Did you? That never struck me.’ Howard bit his lip. ‘You don’t know how I’ve longed for a real talk instead of literary chit-chat, especially now when I’m short of men and up to my eyes in it.’ Frowning, still concerned, he said, ‘You must be frozen. Here comes my sergeant, so we can get away from all these storeyed urns and animated busts.’
    A thickset man of about forty was approaching them from the direction of St Peter’s. He wore the cheerful and practical air of someone totally insensitive to atmosphere, to that of the cemetery and that which subsisted between the two other men. Howard introduced him as Sergeant Clements and presented the chief inspector without saying that Wexford was his uncle or attempting to account for this sudden and surely astonishing appearance at the scene of a crime.
    In such august company the sergeant knew better than to ask questions, or perhaps he had read the Montfort injunction.
    ‘Very pleased to meet you, sir.’
    ‘My uncle,’ said Howard, relenting a little, ‘is on holiday. He comes from Sussex.’
    ‘I daresay it’s a change, sir. No green fields and cows and what-not round here.’ He gave Wexford a respectful and somewhat indulgent smile before turning to the superintendent. ‘I’ve had another talk with Tripper, sir, but I’ve got nothing more out of him.’
    ‘Right. We’ll go back to the car. Mr Wexford will be lunching with me, and over lunch I’m going to try to persuade him to give us the benefit of his brains.’
    ‘We can certainly use them,’ said the sergeant, and he fell back to allow the others to precede him out of the cemetery.
    The Grand Duke was a little old pub Howard took him to on the corner of a mews in Kenbourne Lane.
    ‘I didn’t know there were places like this left in London,’ Wexford said, appreciating the linenfold panelling, the settles and the old mullioned glass in the windows. It was like home, the kind of inn to be found in Pomfret or Stowerton.
    ‘There aren’t around here. Kenbourne’s no Utopia. Would you believe, looking out of the window, that in an unpublished poem, Hood wrote:
    ‘ “O, to ride on the crest of a laden wain
    Between primrose banks in Kenbourne Lane”?’
    ‘What will you eat, Reg?’
    ‘I’m not supposed to eat anything much.’
    ‘Surely a little cold duck and some salad? The food’s very good here.’
    Wexford felt almost dizzy, but he mustn’t allow himself to break out entirely. It was a triumph of communication over misunderstanding that