Murder Being Once Done Read Online Free PDF Page B

he was here with Howard at all and about to get his teeth into some real police work again without getting them into duck as well. The spread on the food counter looked mouth-wateringly enticing. He chose the least calorific, thin sliced red beef and ratatouille froide , and settled back with a sigh of contentment. Even the tall glass of apple juice which Howard presented to him with the assurance that it was made out of Cox’s Oranges from Suffolk couldn’t cloud his pleasure.
    Ever since his arrival in London he had felt that partial loss of identity which is common to everybody on holiday except the most seasoned of travellers. But instead of returning to him as he grew accustomed to the city, this ego of his, this essential Wexfordness, had seemed to continue its seeping away, until at last in the cemetery he had briefly but almost entirely lost his hold on it. That had been a frightening moment. Now, however, he felt more himself than he had done for days. This was like being with Mike at the Olive and Dove where, on so many satisfactory occasions, they had thrashed out some case over lunch, but now Howard was the instructor and he in Mike’s role. He found he didn’t mind this at all. He could even look with equanimity at Howard’s lunch: a huge plateful of steak-and-kidney pudding, Jersey new potatoes and courgettes au gratin .
    For the first five minutes they ate and drank and talked a little more about this misunderstanding of theirs, and then Howard, opening their discussion in the clearest and most direct way, pushed a snapshot across the table.
    ‘This is the only photograph we have of her. Others may come to light, of course. It was in her handbag. Not very usual that, to carry photographs of oneself about on one. Perhaps she had some sentimental reason for it. Where and when it was taken we don’t know.’
    The snapshot was too pale and muzzy for reproduction in a newspaper. It showed a thin fair girl in a cotton frock and heavy unsuitable shoes. Her face was a pale blob and even her own mother, as Wexford put it to himself, wouldn’t have recognized her. In the background were some dusty-looking shrubs, a section of wall with coping along the top of it and something that looked like a clothes post.
    He handed it back and asked, ‘Is Garmisch Terrace near here?’
    ‘The backs of the houses overlook the cemetery but on the opposite side to where we were. It’s a beastly place. Monstrous houses put up around 1870 for city merchants who couldn’t run to fifteen hundred a year for a palace in Queen’s Gate. They’re mostly let off into rooms now, or flatlets as they’re euphemistically called. She had a room. She’d lived there for about two months.’
    ‘What did she do for a living?’
    ‘She worked as a receptionist in a television rental place. The shop is called Sytansound and it’s in Lammas Grove. That’s the street which runs off to the left at Kenbourne Circus and also skirts the cemetery. Apparently she went to work by taking a short-cut through the cemetery. Why do you look like that?’
    ‘I was thinking of passing through that place every day.’
    ‘The local people are used to it. They don’t notice it any more. You’d be surprised in the summer how many young housewives you see in there taking their babies for an afternoon’s airing.’
    Wexford said, ‘When and how did she die?’
    ‘Probably last Friday. I haven’t had a full medical report yet, but she was strangled with her own silk scarf.’
    ‘Last Friday and no one reported her missing?’
    Howard shrugged. ‘In Garmisch Terrace, Reg? Loveday Morgan wasn’t living at home with her parents in some select suburb. They come and they go in Garmisch Terrace, they mind their own business, they don’t ask questions. Wait till you hear Sergeant Clements on that subject.’
    ‘How about boy friends?’
    ‘She didn’t have any, as far as we know. The body was identified by a girl called Peggy Pope who’s the