The House on Widows Hill by Simon R. Green

Author:Simon R. Green [Green, Simon R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780727890306
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-05-10T16:00:00+00:00

FIVE

Things Seen and Unseen

I didn’t go after Penny. I couldn’t – not until I had some kind of answers to the questions she’d raised. The only thing I was sure of was that I had no intention of letting her walk out of my life. Because she was my life, in every way that mattered.

On top of all that, I still had a murder to solve. It had been a long time since I’d had to work a mystery on my own. I’d grown used to having Penny at my side, as a sounding board for my ideas and to point out the subtler areas of human interaction I still sometimes had problems with. I couldn’t ask any of my potential suspects, so that meant there was only one person left I could turn to.

‘Arthur?’ I said quietly. ‘Are you still hanging around? Because I could really use your help.’

He appeared beside me, shaking his head disbelievingly. ‘You don’t just need help; you need a whole couchful of relationship counsellors on speed dial.’

I looked at him accusingly. ‘You were eavesdropping.’

He shrugged, not looking even a little bit guilty. ‘What else is there to do around here? If you don’t want sympathy, which I’ve never been much good at anyway, what do you want?’

‘I need you to help me solve your murder.’

He looked at me blankly. ‘Why are you asking me? I already told you I didn’t see who did it.’

‘Because,’ I said patiently, ‘you’re the only person in this room I can be sure didn’t do it.’

He nodded slowly. ‘OK, that makes sense … I suppose.’

‘Be my partner,’ I said. ‘And help me drop the hammer on whoever did this to you.’

‘Oh, I am in!’ said Arthur. ‘What can I do?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What can you do?’

Arthur took a moment to think about it. ‘Well … it seems I can’t leave this room, so I can’t go looking for clues. And I can’t interrogate people or intimidate them, so I’ll have to leave that to you. I can see people’s auras, which I couldn’t before. Didn’t even know people had auras …’

‘What use is that?’

‘I can tell from changes in the aura whether people are lying, or being evasive, or hiding something,’ said Arthur. ‘The colours change and … Look, just take my word for it, OK? Of course, one of the first things you learn as a journalist is that most people lie like they breathe, and for any number of reasons. Sometimes I think they just do it to stay in practice.’

I had to ask. ‘Do I have an aura?’

‘Of course.’

‘What’s it like?’

He considered me carefully. ‘Lots of purple.’

I decided I wasn’t going to touch that one. ‘OK … I will ask people pertinent and probing questions, and you can tell me how much I should trust their answers.’

‘So you’re leaving it to me to do all the heavy lifting?’ said Arthur.

‘You want to find out who killed you, don’t you?’

‘Oh, great! Hit me over the

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