Lessons for Survivors by Charlie Cochrane

Author:Charlie Cochrane [Cochrane, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2014-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

“Are you asleep?” Orlando realised it was a stupid question as soon as it was out of his mouth. He’d be jolly lucky not to get a clout in response if he woke his light-of-love. He hoped he’d judged the signs right; Jonty had a certain tenor to his breath when asleep, and that note had been missing these last ten minutes.

“Sex has obviously affected your powers of logic again. How can you expect a sensible answer to that question?” Jonty turned over, snuggling up against his lover. “Talking of sex, you’re not after a second helping are you? Because I feel absolutely shattered.”

“No, of course not.” Orlando wasn’t lying for once; neither of them was getting any younger. Even if the spirit had been willing, the flesh felt a bit drooping. “I just wanted to talk about the case.”

“Have you been lying awake worrying about it? I could feel you tossing and turning.”

“Did I wake you? Sorry.” When they were younger, and their bodies weren’t quite so wilted, they’d have lain in each other’s arms after the act of love, discussing the case they were working on. Strange how often they’d made some sudden leap of deduction in a haze of postcoital bliss. Now sleep usually overtook them too quickly for such luxuries. “No, I haven’t been lying awake. Well, only this last half an hour.” Worrying about Owens too, although he wasn’t going to admit that. “Something about Mitchell doesn’t quite ring true. It’s been gnawing at me since we were in the pub. Of course now I’ve twigged it, the thing’s entirely obvious.”

“Well, it may be to a professor of mathematics, but a humble student of the Bard is struggling to get what’s going on.” Jonty arranged the covers around himself, making a little nest. “Especially at two o’clock in the morning, or whatever it is. Please enlighten me, if that’s not beneath your dignity.”

“He says he served out with the Cambridgeshires. How did he have time to get home at the end of the war and find a parish and get to know the Priestlands before Peter’s death when the man was already dead before the Armistice?”

“Eh? Can you say that again slowly?”

“We . . . must . . . assume . . . Ow!” Orlando rubbed his shin. It was a low blow to give a man a kick while sharing a bed with him. And not just low, dextrous with it. He moved his legs out of range.

“Not as slowly as all that, for goodness sake. You clearly haven’t had enough shin whacks recently and are getting into bad habits again.” Jonty jiggled his foot as a warning.

Orlando mustered all the dignity that his sore shin would allow. “We must assume that he’s been in the parish since earlier last year to have come to know the Priestlands reasonably well. Unless he was there prewar, of course, or knew them from somewhere else.”

“I didn’t get that impression from what he’d said, so while I

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