Hushed in Death by Stephen Kelly

Author:Stephen Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Lamb made his way back to the Wolseley only to find Vera and Brandt gone. He told himself that there must be a good reason for their absence—that Brandt might have gone to home to check his own car for whatever parts he needed to make the repair. But he was somewhat put out that Vera seemed to have left her post to go with Brandt. Resolving to check back on the pair later, he went in search of Rivers, in part to bring the inspector up to speed on the subject of the disabled car, but also to check and see if the canvass had turned up any useful information yet.

After fifteen minutes of searching, Lamb found Rivers emerging from a cottage on the western edge of the village green.

“I didn’t expect to see you back here so early,” Rivers said.

“My car broke down. We found a local man who can repair it—the same one who wrote the newspaper article on Lord Elton’s murder.”

“A jack of all trades, then?” Rivers said.

“We’ll see.”

Lamb said that Hornby had not yet returned from Southampton.

“Sounds as if we might have to put a ball and chain on the good doctor before it’s all over,” Rivers said.

“What we need is probable bloody cause for a warrant to search the place. I’m hoping that we will find something today.”

Rivers brought Lamb up to date on what the canvass had so far uncovered. The people whom he and the three constables under his command had interviewed so far had mostly denied knowing Joseph Lee personally, though a couple had admitted they would have recognized him if they saw him on the street. The gist of their statements was that Lee came into the pub regularly and normally left drunk, but that before the incident with Fox nobody had seen him act belligerently. Everyone knew Alan Fox and a couple of them had seen Lee harassing Fox in the pub on the night in question and waving around what he claimed was a love letter that Fox had sent Theresa.

Although several people had seen Lee follow Fox out of the pub, none had witnessed the fight near the church. Two people had confirmed Horace Hitchens’s story that Lee had returned to the pub with a bloody nose not long after he’d left it. None had seen Fox return to the pub that night.

Rivers halted briefly to retrieve his notebook from his pocket and flip it open. He glanced at it, checking his notes.

“One of the women I spoke to said that when Lee returned to the pub bloodied, she heard him tell Horace Hitchens that he intended to ‘ruin’ Alan Fox and that Fox could do nothing about it,” Rivers said.

“Did she know what Lee meant by ‘ruin’?”

“No. She thought it just another case of Lee mouthing off, as he often did in the pub when he was in his cups.”

“Has anyone else mentioned hearing Lee tell Hitchens this?”

“Not so far.”

“All right, then, Harry, nice work,” Lamb said.

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