Death's Dark Shadow by Spencer Sally

Author:Spencer, Sally [Spencer, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: _rt_yes, Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, tpl, Traditional British, __Fixed
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2013-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Robert Martinez had been going out with Lynn Jones, the deputy headmistress of a local girls’ school, for years. It had been a very old-fashioned – almost traditional – courtship, and everyone who knew them had automatically assumed that they would eventually end up getting married. And, in fact, Robert had proposed to Lynn, just days after having been selected by his constituency party as prospective parliamentary candidate for Whitebridge.

‘If you’re elected, I’d have to give up my job, and we’d be spending most of our time in London,’ Lynn had said. ‘And I’m a northern lass to my core, Robbie – I like living in Whitebridge.’

‘You could keep your job, and we’d see each other at the weekends and when parliament isn’t in session,’ Martinez had replied.

‘I’d rather have no husband at all than a part-time husband,’ Lynn had countered. ‘You’ve already got work – everybody says what a marvellous job you’ve done since you’ve taken over Sunshine Holidays – so why would you want to become an MP?’

‘I want to do some good.’

‘But you’re already doing good. Can you tell me the name of any other coach operator in Lancashire who lends his buses out to charities anything like as often as you do?’

‘No, but …’

‘And then there’s your work at the battered wife shelter and the animal refuge – there’s dozens of organizations that you support in one way or another.’

‘It’s not enough,’ Robert had said. ‘This country didn’t have to give me a home, but it did, and I feel under an obligation to do the best I can for it in return. Being in Westminster will give me that opportunity. I can help hundreds of battered wives’ shelters and hundreds of animal refuges if I’m an MP.’

And since neither of them would budge on the matter, they had parted. But it had been an amiable parting – so amiable that they both realized they had probably never actually been in love.

In fact, other than them not sleeping together any more, it was barely a parting at all. Lynn had worked long and hard on Robert’s election campaign, and Robert had continued to take Lynn out for dinner whenever he was in Whitebridge. So it had been only natural that, when the police had informed Robert that he could not go back into his house, since it was now officially a crime scene, he should ring up Lynn and ask her if she could give him a bed for the night.

Now, at a quarter to six the following morning, the two of them found themselves facing each other across Lynn’s kitchen table.

‘There’s not much point in asking you whether you had a good night’s sleep, is there?’ Lynn asked, sipping at her cup of coffee. ‘You can’t have been in bed for more than four hours – and I heard you tossing and turning for most of that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Robert said. ‘I never meant to disturb your sleep.’

‘Don’t you go worrying about me,’ Lynn said sternly, in her best deputy headmistress voice.

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