MURDER BY POISON PEN a completely unputdownable cozy murder mystery by VERONICA HELEY

Author:VERONICA HELEY [HELEY, VERONICA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Ostara Classics
Published: 2023-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Roy took out cigarettes and lit up without asking her if she minded. She was surprised. She hadn’t smelled cigarettes on him, and his fingers were clean enough. Not those of a habitual smoker.

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, catching her change of expression. ‘I’ve really given them up, but every now and then I go back to my old habits. You don’t mind, do you?’

Without pausing for her consent, he went on, ‘What do you want to know? I married ten years ago, the daughter of the senior partner in the firm. I’d had several long-term relationships before, all very civilized, no commitment, no strings. But this was different. She was much younger than me, but she’d just been through a pretty bad experience with someone else and I thought — we both thought — that we’d be well suited. It did work for a while, but then . . . she wanted children and it didn’t happen.

‘We went for tests and it turned out she had some problem, might never conceive. I wanted to consider all the options, but she wouldn’t discuss it. I didn’t handle her well, I suppose. There were rows, and each time we rowed, we grew further apart. We stopped talking. She stopped cooking for me, not that she’d ever been that keen to spend time in the kitchen. Then she began to make eyes at a young architect in the office, just starting out, even younger than her.

‘I got home one evening, found a message on the answerphone from him, for her, asking her to meet him at a local pub. I went there and confronted them. She said she was leaving me. I said the sooner the better, as it had only been a business arrangement between us, after all. I’m not proud of that. We all three got drunk and chased one another through the country lanes. Yes, I ought to have known better. He crashed his Mini into a tree and I ran into him. We all three ended up in Casualty being breathalysed. Cuts and bruises all round. Fines, suspensions. She left the hospital with him and that was that. It was two years ago.’

Ellie watched him as if she were looking at a soap opera on the television. ‘Does it still hurt?’

‘No, of course not. Well, perhaps a little.’

She thought: it was your pride that was hurt. And mine? What do I feel? No, don’t probe, not just yet.

He said, ‘I blame myself in a way. I was so much older, I ought to have managed it better. But she wanted to go and I couldn’t stop her. I feared I might have to lose the house — our family house — at first, but then I managed to pay her off, so that was all right. They never married. What did hurt was seeing her toy boy doing so well in the business, favoured by her father. When he was promoted to partner, I decided to take early retirement.

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