The Serpent Dance by Sofia Slater

Author:Sofia Slater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Midsummer’s Eve;Midsummer;Murder Mystery;Cornwall;Feast of St John’s;Golowan;Trevennick;West Country;summer solstice;Daphne du Maurier;Agatha Christie
Publisher: Swift Press
Published: 2024-04-17T13:11:14+00:00

Chapter 13

Audrey reached for her glass, then realised it was empty. She slowly replaced it on the low table in front of her, making sure the base of the glass lined up perfectly with the moisture ring which marked where it had stood before. She knew there were implications waiting somewhere to be understood. But she couldn’t see them yet. She sat in her forgiving armchair, sinking into its worn leather recesses, looking at DI Morgan. There was a watchful glitter in his eye as he looked back at her.

Then, a word: Noah.

Ah, yes. That was it. The thing waiting on the edge of vision, the edge of consciousness. The realisation that exactly what she’d suspected, the thing he’d so vehemently denied, was true. Because who else could have slept with Stella in the time between the departure of her fiancé and the moment she died?

It must have been Noah. Noah, who’d assured her that she’d got it all wrong. In fact, it had been much worse than she’d feared. Not just a flirtation, insensitively carried out in front of her, but an actual betrayal. He’d gone into the woman’s room while she was sleeping across the hall – behind nothing but glass and a filmy curtain, practically in plain view – and cheated on Audrey.

To sleep with someone else in the room next to hers, while she slept off the wine she’d drunk too much of precisely because he was ignoring her, was horrific. To tell her she was imagining things when he came back from doing it was possibly even worse. And then to cap it all off, he had cast blame on her in the eyes of the police. If he could betray her like that, what else was he capable of?

DI Morgan shifted in his own chair opposite, evidently waiting for a response. She looked over at the bar. Morwenna was serving a couple of villagers, both wearing white with blue sashes round their waists. Griffin and his brother had melted away.

‘Do you think this means…’ She cleared her throat and had another run at it. ‘Do you think this means Noah and Stella…’ She still couldn’t finish, but it didn’t matter; Morgan could follow her train of thought.

‘Is that what you thought it meant?’

‘Thought? But you’ve only just told me about it.’

‘Of course, of course.’ He cleared his throat, but didn’t move on quickly enough to cover the implication. He’d just tried to catch Audrey out, on the off-chance that she’d killed Stella, motivated by a jealous rage.

‘You don’t seriously think I had anything to do with it?’ she asked, almost too shocked to be angry.

‘You have to admit all possibilities in my line of work,’ he said, ‘whatever you hope is true.’ The watchful glitter had become a twinkle again. He was slyer than he looked, Morgan. The rumpled, friendly air, the sharing of confidential information – and then it turned out he’d been laying a trap all along. ‘You can’t confirm, then…’

‘I can’t.’

He nodded and put his hands up to indicate he wouldn’t push.

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