Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery, Suspense & Thriller, Young Adult, fiction
ISBN: 9780307424624
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2001-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When Michelle told her the murdered man in the cinema was Jeff, Fiona had suffered that momentary loss of consciousness once apparently common in women but now rare. She fainted. Michelle, who a few weeks ago couldn’t have got down to the floor, did so with ease, sat beside her stroking her forehead and whispering, “My dear, my poor dear.”

Fiona came to, said it wasn’t true, was it? It couldn’t be true. Jeff couldn’t be dead. She’d seen a paper which said it was someone called Jeffrey Leach. Michelle told her the police were coming. Would she feel able to see them? Fiona nodded. The shock had been so great, she couldn’t take much else in. Michelle got her onto the sofa, helped her put her feet up, and made milky coffee with plenty of sugar in it. A better remedy for shock than brandy, she said.

“Was he really called Leach?” Fiona asked after a moment or two.

“It seems so.”

“Why did he tell me he was called Leigh? Why did he give me a false name? He’d been living with me for six months.”

“I don’t know, darling. I wish I knew.”

At her interview with the police—the same woman who had taken Zillah to the mortuary and would speak to Jims the next morning— Fiona suffered the beginnings of disillusionment to add to the pain of her loss. That his name was truly Jeffrey John Leach was confirmed, that he was in touch with his former wife, and that he appeared to have had no employment for several years, not perhaps since his student days. The police asked her where she’d been on Friday afternoon and to that she gave very little thought. She could easily name half a dozen people who saw and spoke to her at her merchant bank between three and five. “I wouldn’t have harmed him,” she said, a tear running down her face. “I loved him.”

They examined Jeff’s clothes and what they called his “personal effects.” As a result of watching television programs, Fiona asked tentatively if she would be needed to identify Jeff. They said that wouldn’t be necessary, as Mr. Leach’s former wife had already done so. Fiona found this more upsetting than anything she’d so far heard and she began to sob. Through her tears she made it known that she’d like to see Jeff and they said that could be arranged.

When they’d gone she fell into Michelle’s arms. “There’s never been anyone I felt about the way I did about him. He was the man I’d been waiting for all my life. I can’t live without him.”

Most people would say eight months’ acquaintanceship wasn’t enough for life, and Fiona’s sorrow would pass, but Michelle had known Matthew for only two when she married him and what would she have felt if he’d died? “I know, darling, I know.”

Fiona thought how unkind she’d been to Jeff that evening in Rosmarino when she’d told him to save his silly stories for their baby, she was grown-up.

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