Wexford 14 - The Veiled One Read Online Free PDF

rep, not velvet - had been left drawn back. He watched her pull them together, giving each an impatient tug. Attached to the top of the door into the room was one of those extendable brass rails made to accomodate a draught-excluding curtain. No curtain, however, hung from it.
       Wexford decided the time was not ripe to ask the question that came to his lips.

    It had fallen many times to Michael Burden’s lot to be the bearer of bad tidings of a particular kind, to break the news of a spouse’s death. He, whose own first wife had died prematurely, flinched from this task. And it was one thing having to tell someone, for instance, that his wife had died in a road accident; quite another that her murdered body had been found. No one knew better than Burden that the majority of those who are murdered have been done to death by a near relative. The chances are that a murdered wife has been murdered by her husband.
       It was only a few moments before Wexford’s arrival that he had looked inside the dead woman’s handbag. After the first photographs had been taken and the dirty brown velvet curtain lifted from the body, her handbag had been revealed lying under her, half concealed by her thigh. More photographs were taken, Sumner-Quist came and at last he was able to free the bag from where it lay and, holding it in gloved hands, undo the clasp and look inside. It was a standard cache of documents: driving licence, credit cards, dry- cleaning bill, two letters still in their envelopes. Her name and address presented themselves to him before he had even noted the other contents of the bag - chequebook, purse, pressed powder, packet of tissues, ballpoint pen and two safety-pins. Gwen P. Robson, 23 Hastings Road, Highlands, Kingsmarkham KM1O 2NW. One of the envelopes was addressed to her as Mrs G. P. Robson, the other to Mr and Mrs R. Robson.
       It might not be a shock to Robson; part of Burden’s job was to observe whether it was a shock or not. He silently framed the words he would use as the car climbed the long hill that led up to the Highlands estate. All this had been countryside when Burden first came to Kingsmarkham, heathy hillsides crowned with woods, and from the top of this incline by day you had been able to see the ancient landmark called Barringdean Ring. It was very dark tonight, the horizon defined only by an occasional point of light, and the circle of oaks was invisible. Nearer at hand Highlands was cosily lit. This was the way Gwen Robson had no doubt intended to come home, driving the silver Escort, entering Eastbourne Avenue and soon turning left into Hastings Road.
       Burden had been there only once before, though the estate had been put up by the local authority some seven years ago. Street trees and garden trees had grown up and matured: the first newness of the houses had worn off and they looked less as if built from playbox bricks by a giant’s child. Smallish blocks of flats no more than three storeys high, alternated with terraced or semi-detached houses, and opposite the block in which No. 23 was located stood a row of tiny bungalows designed as housing for the elderly. Not too far a cry from the old almshouses, thought Burden, whose wife had made him a lot more socially conscious than he used to be. On the doorstep of the Robson’s house stood a rack made for holding milkbottles; it was of red plastic-covered wire, surmounted by a plastic doll in a white coat with ‘Thank you, Mr Milkman’ in red letters under it and a clip to hold a note in its outstretched hand. This absurd object made Burden feel worse, indicative as it was of domestic cheerfulness. He looked at DC Davidson and Davidson looked at him and then he rang the bell.
       The door was answered very quickly. Anxious people fly to doors, to phones. Their anxiety, of course, may not be brought about by the obvious cause.
       ‘Mr Robson?’
       ‘Yes. Who are you?’
       ‘Police officers, Mr Robson.’ Burden