The Betrayal of Trust Read Online Free PDF Page A

grandmotherwent to a stoop of holy water placed before a picture of the Virgin and crossed herself with it. The woman with a toddler clutching her leg and a couple of boys, huge-eyed, standing behind her on the stairs, who had told Simon, and loudly enough for them to hear every word, that she was glad her waste-of-space husband was dead, he deserved anything he got, serve him right, we’re betteroff without him, and no, I won’t come and identify him, I never want to see him again, and now bugger off. The man who had walked out of the farmhouse kitchen in which he and his wife, Serrailler and a fellow officer had been standing while the news of his murdered daughter was broken, and had shot himself a few minutes later, for them all to hear and Simon to be the first to reach his body.
    That had been the last time. Now this. Before, the news he had brought had always been of a recent death. This was very different. Yet he wondered if, essentially, it would be any different at all.
    ‘They always know,’ his army friend Harry had once said. He had several times been to the homes of men killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. ‘They know the minute they open the door to you – no,before that, the minute they see your shadow through the glass. They always know.’
    Simon rang the bell of the Old Mill, wondering if Sir John Lowther would see him and know.
    But it was a middle-aged woman who opened the door. The housekeeper. He gave his name and stepped into a large, rather dark hall. There was an empty feel about the house, as if it were somehow hollow inside. It smelled ofpolished furniture and cleanliness.
    He only waited a moment.
    ‘Simon – how nice to see you … but I hope nothing is wrong with your sister?’
    ‘My …?’
    ‘Cat – we’ve a hospice trustees meeting at two o’clock. Is she all right?’
    ‘Ah … yes, thank you, Cat’s fine. I’m sure she’ll be there.’
    ‘That’s a relief. I have a lot of time for Dr Deerbon. Please, follow me.’
    He was a tall man, stooped, withthinning grey hair and anxious, deep-set eyes.
    He led the way into his study, a long room overlooking the side of the garden away from the mill. The desk was set about with papers in neatly ordered piles, an open laptop, a small Georgian clock.
    ‘Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Mrs Mangan will be making some for me any moment.’
    He was oblivious to the reason for Serrailler’s visit. They didnot always know.
    ‘Thank you.’ Sitting down with coffee might help.
    He watched Lowther leave the room and, as he did so, caught sight of two photographs on the bureau. One was of a pretty woman with hair coiled up behind her head, marked eyebrows, a pleasing smile. The other, next to it, was of a young girl of fourteen or fifteen, with the same eyebrows, a high forehead, smiling slightly butwith her lips firmly together. Because, Simon thought, she was self-conscious about the brace on her teeth.
    Sir John came back, talking about coffee as he did so, but although Simon had looked away he had not done so quite quickly enough. Lowther followed his gaze. And then, as he glanced between the photograph of his daughter and Simon, he knew – the split second when he knew was clear on hisface. It was as if a curtain had dropped down over his welcoming expression, replacing it with a terrible blankness and he seemed to go not pale, but grey, the lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes deepened, the flesh sagged. A brisk man in his early seventies had been replaced by an old one.
    ‘You’ve found something,’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
    Lowther sat down slowly inthe desk chair. For a moment he stared ahead of him, but then straightened his back and turned. As he did so, the door opened on the housekeeper bringing their coffee, so that they had to wait until she had set it down, though as she did so, Simon saw her glance at Lowther with a flash of concern. But she said nothing.
    ‘Tell me, please.’
    The