A Will to Murder by J F Straker

Author:J F Straker [Straker, J F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2015-05-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Who else is there?

Robert Lane was a small, insignificant-looking man with a receding chin and an expression that seemed to indicate permanent dissatisfaction with life. He had a thin, petulant voice, watery blue eyes that peered suspiciously from above half-glasses, and a mobile lower lip that sucked intermittently and noisily at a dull, drooping moustache. Picture of the eternal pessimist, thought Pitt, ruminating on estate agents in general and this one in particular. How on earth does such a drab individual ever persuade anyone to buy a house?

‘Your brother’s sudden death must have come as a shock to you, Mr Lane,’ he said. ‘I dare say it was also a blow to learn that you were not mentioned in his will?’

‘Not at all. It was what I had expected. Edward and I quarrelled shortly after his wedding.’

‘You did not approve of it?’

‘I said after it, not because of it. What has this to do with my sister-in-law, Inspector? I thought it was her death you were investigating, not my brother’s.’

Pitt accepted the rebuff.

‘Do you own your present business, sir?’

‘No. I’m the manager.’

Pitt was not greatly interested in Robert Lane. The man had a seedy look, and no doubt a slice off Charlotte Lane’s generous bank-roll would have been welcome to him. But he had not killed her. His alibi was cast-iron.

He looked across the room to where Mrs Lane sat, firmly wedged in her fireside chair. She was a large, flabby woman with enormous bosom and tree-trunk legs. The legs and bosom so filled the eye that one did not at first notice the sad expression or the slight cast in her eye, the work-roughened hands or the ill-fitting dress.

‘I’m sorry your son is out,’ he said.

‘Gone to the pictures, eh? You know, I’m so out of touch with the cinema that I had forgotten they were open on a Sunday. Does he go regularly?’

‘Why, no,’ the woman said, with a quick glance at her husband. She sounded short of breath. ‘Not really. I’ve certainly never known him go on a Sunday before. It must have been a film he particularly wanted to see.’

‘I had hoped to ask him about last Thursday,’ Pitt said, wasting no more time. ‘Pure routine, as I said before. Perhaps you can remember what he did that evening?’

‘Why, yes.’ Again that quick glance at her husband. ‘At least — no, I don’t think I can.’

The little man has more to him than I gave him credit for, Pitt thought. He certainly has his wife under his thumb. She can’t even answer a question without his permission.

‘What did you want to know, Inspector?’ Lane asked, in his thin voice.

‘Well, I suppose your son was at the office until it closed?’

‘He was.’

‘And after that?’

‘I don’t know. But he came home in good time for his supper at eight.’

Mrs Lane moved slightly in her chair. ‘Oh, but surely, Robert, you remember —’

This time Pitt saw the frown that stopped her. Damn the man! he thought. If I could have sprung it on her alone I might have learned something useful.

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