Lady with a Cool Eye by Gwen Moffat

Author:Gwen Moffat [Moffat, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471309069
Publisher: AudioGO

Chapter Nine

HE SAT HUNCHED over the table drinking black coffee. He was smoking and his fingers shone with nicotine and sweat. It was warm in the dining room.

Miss Pink, astonished and appalled, stopped beside him.

‘Good morning, Charles,’ she said quietly.

He took one elbow off the table and leaned back to focus on her. For a moment there was no recognition even as he returned her greeting.

‘Please accept my sympathy,’ she said, and meant it for, murderer or not, he was obviously in need of compassion.

‘Miss Pink.’ He announced her name as if he were relaying the information. ‘That’s kind of you,’ he added more naturally.

‘Would you like me to sit here?’ she asked.

There was a pause.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘I would.’

She sat down, making a business of it, settled herself and looked out of the window.

‘A better morning,’ she murmured.

‘They let me go,’ he said in the same tone in which he would have told her it looked like rain.

‘When?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve lost count of time but it couldn’t have been long ago.’

‘Have you had any sleep?’

‘No. They said I could sleep today.’

There was another pause.

‘How long were you with them?’

‘Some time.’ He made an attempt to calculate. ‘We left London, I suppose about eight last evening. We must have arrived some time after midnight. I’ve been with them several hours.’

Olwen came in, stared at Miss Pink in consternation and ignored Martin.

‘Mr Roberts said to tell you he’d gone with the police, mum.’

Miss Pink would have liked to question her but felt this would be tactless in Martin’s presence. She ordered coffee and toast. She could eat only a token breakfast when she was surrounded by tobacco smoke but in the circumstances she hadn’t the heart to protest. He lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. There were deep pouches under his eyes and the flesh of his face appeared to have sagged. The suggestion of a tan which he had possessed had faded, leaving his skin an unhealthy yellow.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

‘Not particularly.’

He seemed to be in that state of despondency that takes every word literally and which – sometimes – exposes the truth. But did she want to know the truth? Did she need to? The police had questioned him for several hours and then released him. Was there not enough evidence for a charge or did they think him innocent?

‘I want to go there,’ he said, ‘will you take me?’

‘Go where?’

‘To the cliffs – where it happened.’

She frowned. ‘I’ll take you if you’re sure you want to go.’

‘I haven’t a car, you see.’

‘You’re quite sure you want to go?’

‘It’s a nagging feeling. I’ve got nothing to do. They want me to stay here: in the locality. They’re not sure of me, I suppose; I’m the obvious person but they don’t know how I could have got from the Centre and back without transport. They seem to think Sally’s mixed up in it. So I can’t go away – and there’s the inquest this afternoon, just informal, they say.

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