The Wheel Turns (Pollard & Toye Investigations Book 14) by Elizabeth Lemarchand

Author:Elizabeth Lemarchand [Lemarchand, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2019-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Monday had also seen Detective Chief Superintendent Pollard’s return to New Scotland Yard after a fortnight’s holiday spent with his family at the seaside. He found that an appointment had been made for him to report to his Assistant Commissioner at two o’clock.

When he presented himself he got an appraising glance.

‘Afternoon, Pollard. No need to ask if you’ve had a decent break.’

‘No, Sir. Really superb weather all through, and no hang-ups, major or minor.’

‘Fine. Now then —’ The A.C. reached for a folder, opened it and ruffled through its assorted contents. ‘Does Loxford, Crantshire suggest anything to you?’

‘I’ll say it does, Sir. That remarkable research by the vicar’s son down there. They managed to get a Home Office permit to open a grave purporting to be that of the last Abbess of Loxford Abbey but one. No skeleton found, but a superb golden casket containing a reliquary. The V. and A. are restoring them.’

The A.C. looked at him with sardonic amusement. ‘Right up your street, that sort of thing, of course. Well, Loxford has got itself on to the front pages again, with what the Crantshire chaps are convinced is a murder. The sort that looks like being impossible to prove and bring home to anybody. The victim was a woman, the illegitimate half-sister of a leading light in the public life of the county. He’s called Basil Railsdon, lives at Loxford House, is rolling in money, and has just been selected as prospective Tory candidate for North Crantshire at the next General Election. He claims — and there’s some supporting evidence — that he didn’t know of her existence until about six weeks ago when she contacted him by letter. He invited her down to stay and she arrived last Tuesday. The next morning she was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning — the sole cause of her death, the post-mortem found — in a building being used by Railsdon as a temporary garage. As far as the Crantshire C.I.D. have been able to discover, he was the only person in Loxford or anywhere near who had ever met her before she came down, apart from the woman who runs the village shop who had sold her some postcards last May. Not unnaturally they’ve got their sights on Railsdon and wonder if she was trying to blackmail him. However, he’s got an alibi of a sort. Not the cast-iron type that arouses instant suspicion, but the type that experienced Counsels can present as absolutely convincing or completely valueless with equal facility. The reason why the buck has been passed to us is that the Crantshire chaps know that they’re going to raise the hell of a stink whatever they do. If they make out a case against Railsdon the overwhelmingly Tory North Crantshire will go over the top, especially as there seems to be a possibility of the local woman he’s about to marry being involved too. There’s also the possibility that the door was difficult to push open from the inside and the woman just panicked, and it’s a non-case.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.