Alias the Vicim: A Case for Superintendent Anthony Slade by Leonard Gribble

Author:Leonard Gribble [Gribble, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: PFD Books
Published: 2016-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

7

Carrie Teale had been a good-looking woman once, but the accident that had left her crippled had etched lines in her face capable of permanently masking beauty. For four years she had tried to adjust to a new life of loneliness, but without success. Her husband had little time to spare for a wife who was not a good traveller and had to stay at home while he dashed from place to place at the behest of the man who was the centre of his personal universe, Ferdinand Lopezanco.

Carrie had met Lopezanco once, about five years before. She had not liked man or manner, both were covered with too much oil. She had been sick aboard La Paloma, and Raymond had been annoyed as though she had to keep to their cabin to spite him.

She pushed away the tea-things, groped for her stick with the thick rubber ferrule that allowed her to creep about her own house in silence and shame, and hobbled to the window that gave on to the drive. She was standing there watching the sky and wondering if the clouds scudding before a rising wind meant that there would be rain before nightfall.

She hoped so. She liked rain falling. She liked watching it beat upon the ground and soaking everything as though taking possession of the earth, and she liked even more sitting with eyes closed listening to the pound of heavy rain. It had the steadiness, she had discovered, of a heartbeat. Upon occasion it could quicken like the human heart and even falter. But the steadiness was what she listened for. It seemed to soothe her mind, though she had nothing to trouble it these days except the thoughts of a lonely woman who was too imaginative and whose husband was too good-looking.

She had learned to stop torturing herself with thoughts of other women. But never for long. And each time she forced herself to stop the effort took more and more of her resolve and energy. When the nights were loneliest she fell to wondering what she would do when her energy was all used up and her resolve failed.

Would she go quietly mad?

And if she did, would Raymond care a damn?

The answer to either question, if she were brutally honest with herself, could bring tears.

But tears were to be shed in private. They were the secret shame she strove never to reveal to other eyes.

She was staring at the wind-driven grey clouds with linings of silver light when she heard the car turn into the drive off the Southampton-Romsey road. She waited for it to sweep round the bend in the drive so that she could see the faces of those in it.

The car was a sleek black Jaguar with two men in the front seats. The man in the passenger seat looked distinguished in an unobtrusive way. He was middle-aged with an interesting face that appealed to her because it had strength and a look of having seen many things. She

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