Poachers Bag by Douglas Clark

Author:Douglas Clark [Clark, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2020-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

All of them, except Bella, gathered in the sitting room after lunch. Wanda addressed them all. ‘I hope you’ll forgive my mother. She obviously bore up very well at the time of Mr Prior’s death. She kept it to herself—her grief at his illness and then the tragedy that night—bottled it up and didn’t even let us know. But this weekend was to have seen her remarried and to have been a very happy occasion. As it is, she has kept going until she could unload all her doubts and unhappiness on to us, and now I suppose she is suffering from delayed shock. I’ve persuaded her to go for a rest.’

Doris Green went across and put an arm round Wanda’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you dare apologise to us, lassie. There isn’t one of us who has taken offence at anything your mother has said or done.’

‘That’s right,’ said Green. ‘She’s odd man out, you see, Wanda. Everybody else here is connected with the force. You and Doris by marriage only, of course, but at least you know how we operate. And I can sympathise with Bella. There is nobody on earth more maddening than your old man when he’s on the job. I know because I’ve had a bellyful of it on numerous occasions. But that’s the way he’s made. He’s lost if he’s given a job that has to be done by the book. He won’t wear the setting up of murder HQs and incident rooms full of clerks and ringing phones. So he’s never given jobs like that. They’re always given to blokes who can only work that way and, let’s face it, some crimes can only be solved in that way. If Bella had seen that sort of thing going on, it would have appealed to her tidy mind. Everything noted and filed for cross-checking. Evidence of progress. But the way we play it—a sort of mental juggling act with every fact that comes to light—there’s nothing to see. There’s no play. Just an empty stage to look at until the final curtain comes down. And that’s it. I tell you, love, if I had to watch us at work I’d go crackers and not just get a bit impatient like Bella did.’

Berger said: ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did, Mrs Masters. I’m sorry.’

‘Please don’t be. My mother appreciates hard hitting. She’ll have taken no offence, will she, George?’

‘None whatever, I’d have said. She always gives me the impression that foolish ideas should be stamped on. And I don’t think I need to say that her ideas were not foolish. You see, she doesn’t know half of what we’ve done. None of the ladies does. But the other two …’ he grinned at them, ‘… know better. They’ve experienced more of it.’

Reed said: ‘I agree with Mrs Bartholomew.’

‘You what?’

‘She’d have been right with every team at the Yard except ours.’

‘That’s virtually what’s just been said, lad.’

‘But she wasn’t to know that, was she?’

‘So what?’

‘If she

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