A Species of Revenge by Marjorie Eccles

Author:Marjorie Eccles [Eccles, Marjorie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense
ISBN: 9780312193386
Publisher: St. Martin's
Published: 1996-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

12

By the time Mayo had finished talking to Tina Baverstock, he felt in need of something long and cool to wash away the taste of her nasty herbal tea. And not only the tea. The Drum and Monkey was just around the corner. What was ten minutes to a thirsty man?

It was a pleasant pub with a forecourt and tables, and a shady corner, fortunately empty. He carried his half of ginger-beer shandy to the table under a sycamore, threw his jacket on to the bench beside him, took a long, cool swallow and sat back, reviewing his thoughts.

Going straight from one house to the other had given him no opportunity so far to assess the interview with Imogen Loxley, but uppermost in his mind was the notion that if she’d been truthful about sitting at her window like the Lady of Shalott, looking out for the postman – and there was no reason at this stage to think she’d any conceivable reason to lie, or conceal the truth – it seemed clear that Patti’s murder had occurred after she’d delivered the paper to Simla and before Imogen arrived upstairs at, say, five past eight, no more than a fifteen-minute time span. Unless the assailant had either been lurking in the wood before she was attacked, or entered it via one of the gardens which adjoined it – and presumably escaped the same way. But how could he have known Patti would go into the wood?

He didn’t in any case see how anyone planning a murder would have contemplated one such as this, with all the attendant risks. There could have been no guarantee that the perpetrator would have got away without being seen or heard. When questioned about their movements, few people could be exact about what they’d been doing at a precise time during the day, but breakfast-time was different. The human race is on the whole more habit-orientated than it cares to admit. Morning routines are established by office, school and factory starting times, and in his experience, people usually knew exactly where they were, or should have been, when the day was beginning – and which people they normally encountered. A stranger hanging around was almost certain to have been noticed. On the other hand, a moment only would have sufficed to slip along that path and disappear from sight, and the same would apply when he emerged from the wood, not much later.

But it was fruitless at this stage in a murder inquiry to start looking for any sort of pattern. Until more facts were collected, names of witnesses had been obtained, others eliminated from the inquiry, until a suspect emerged and the motive became clear. Speculating before that, there was always the danger of jumping to wrong conclusions ...

A kamikaze wasp, intent on suicide, zoomed in on his beer mug. He moved his glass further into the shade, covering it with his hand. The wasp decided to concentrate on his ear. He flipped irritably at it and watched it land on the table, legs in the air.

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