A Mind to Murder by P D James

Author:P D James [James, P D]
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9785557108355
Publisher: Books on Tape
Published: 2010-03-24T20:26:21+00:00

She was waiting for him at the entrance to St. James’s Park just as he had expected her to be. As he crossed the Mall and saw the slight figure drooping a little disconsolately by the war memorial Nagle could almost feel sorry for her. It was the hell of a raw night to be standing about. But her first words killed any impulse to pity.

“We should have met somewhere else. This is all right for you, of course. You’re on the way home.”

She sounded as peevish as a neglected wife.

“Come back to the flat, then,” he taunted her softly. “We can get a bus down.”

“No. Not the flat. Not tonight.”

He smiled into the darkness and they moved together into the black shadow of the trees. They walked a little way apart and she made no move towards him. He glanced down at the calm, uplifted profile cleansed now of all traces of crying. She looked desperately tired. Suddenly she said:

“That superintendent is very good-looking, isn’t he? Do you think he suspects us?”

So here it was, the grasping at reassurance, the childish need to be protected. And yet she had sounded almost uncaring. He said roughly:

“For God’s sake why should he? I was out of the clinic when she died. You know that as well as I do.”

“But I wasn’t. I was there.”

“No one’s going to suspect you for long. The doctors will see to that. We’ve had all this out before. Nothing can go wrong if you keep your head and listen to me. Now this is what I want you to do.”

She listened as meekly as a child but watching that tired, expressionless face he felt that he was in the company of a stranger. He wondered idly whether they would ever get free of each other again. And suddenly he felt that it was not she who was the victim.

As they came to the lake she stopped and gazed out over the water. Out of the darkness came the subdued cry and shuffle of ducks. He could smell the evening breeze, salt as a sea wind, and shivered. Turning to study her face, ravaged now with fatigue, he saw, in his mind’s eye, another picture; a broad brow under a white nurse’s cap, a swathe of yellow hair, immense grey eyes which gave nothing away. Tentatively he pondered a new idea. It might come to nothing, of course. It might easily come to nothing. But the picture would soon be finished and he could get rid of Jenny. In a month he would be in Paris, but Paris was only an hour’s flight away and he would be coming back often. And with Jenny out of the way and a new life in his grasp it would be worth trying. There were worse fates than marrying the heiress to thirty thousand pounds.

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