A Very Good Hater by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2019-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

HE WAS AWOKEN by a thunderous knocking at the front door. Feeling dreadful, he went down the stairs and opened it.

‘My God!’ said Liz. ‘You look awful.’

She came in uninvited and led him into the living-room.

‘What’s happened to you?’

‘I had a bit of an accident.’

‘I’ve noticed. Let’s clean you up a bit.’

It was rather pleasant to relax and admit her expert ministrations. She told him she had tried to ring the previous night but had not been able to get through. Similarly this morning, and she’d decided to catch him before he set off for work.

‘Last night’s row was stupid,’ she said. ‘I should have realized you wanted to relax, not listen to Jeff rattling on. Mind you, you were a bit rough on him. On all of us.’

‘I’ll apologize,’ he said. He had let her believe he’d had a few drinks after leaving her house, been involved in a slight accident and decided to abandon the Land-Rover in the interests of safety. He had been examining the living-room as he spoke, and though there were signs of a search – drawers and doors pulled open, books disturbed – there was nothing not attributable to alcoholic disorderliness. Even the telephone cord might have been pulled accidentally out of its socket.

He began to feel better after coffee, aspirin and a substantial breakfast. His chest was badly bruised and he had to promise Liz he would consult a doctor before she would let him go to collect the Land-Rover. He had been deliberately vague about its whereabouts, saying it was ‘up the road a bit’ and this seemed to satisfy her. He also expected more opposition to his declaration that he was going to work, but Liz merely nodded, said that as she had a bit of time coming, she thought she’d take the morning off and, unless he had any great objection, start putting his house to rights.

It was an opportunity she had been long awaiting, he knew, and it would have taken more churlishness than he had the strength for that morning to refuse. Her concern for him was flattering and he wondered as he had often done recently whether it was just her mother’s propinquity that made it seem threatening also. He found himself comparing mother and daughter. It was not difficult, even though it might be unjust, to detect the lineaments of the older woman in the younger. He found himself considering as a foil to them both the cool, ordered, self-containment of Jennifer Housman. Even her appearance with its unobtrusively elegant grooming contrasted with the conscious flamboyance of Mrs Sewell and with Liz’s laissez faire.

He would have a chance of examining the contrast more closely that day when he visited Greenmansion again to make discreet inquiries about the man he had met coming out of the house on Saturday. The man called Munro. The man who had stood and faced him in the headlight’s glare on the far side of the ridge last night.

As far as

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