To Kill a Wife (Inspector Peach Series Book 3) by J. M. Gregson

Author:J. M. Gregson [Gregson, J. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Martin Hume discovered his wife’s body on the night of Sunday, 19th May. The news broke in the press and on radio on Monday May 20th.

Richard Johnson watched the brief local television announcement of the news on the evening of that Monday. On Tuesday, he worked through his day at the hospital as usual. If he wondered whether and when the call from the police would come, he gave no sign of his apprehension to the series of anxious faces he sought to reassure during his ward round and his out-patients’ clinic. And there was no contact from the police, though the hours seemed to stretch endlessly as he waited to find out if his connection with Verna Hume would be brought to light.

There was no need to ring home; his wife would contact him immediately if there was any enquiry there from the police. He knew that: he could almost hear her bewildered and troubled voice in his ear. Yet he still had to resist the urge to pick up the phone whenever he had a moment between patients, to confirm to himself that Carmen had heard nothing.

When he eventually arrived home at five-thirty, he knew from a glance at his wife’s placid face that nothing untoward had broken the tenor of her day. Carmen had a serene, unlined, black face which had been one of her chief attractions when he had first met her and they had been students. It had filled out a little, and that serenity which had been so attractive in a teenage countenance now seemed dull, even bovine, when he was in his least charitable moods.

“I thought we’d have tea in the conservatory,” she said. “It’s only quiche and salad. I let the boys have theirs, because we didn’t know how late you’d be.”

She’d ask him presently how his day had been, he thought, and he’d give his standard reply. They would watch television later. And then, at the end of the evening, they would make love, if he required it. There would never be a rejection for him, never a complaint if he did not feel amorous. He knew he was being unfair, that the dullness he complained of was as much of his making as of hers. Yet, as he watched her carefully cutting the portions of quiche and sliding them on to the plates in the modern, aseptic kitchen, Richard Johnson wondered whether he now hated his wife.

And that name, Carmen! You couldn’t get much further from Bizet’s passionate and tempestuous heroine than this woman he had tied himself to. So long as the children were happy at school and she had enough money for her modest housekeeping needs, she was contented enough. Certainly, she would never complain.

You could not have a much greater contrast to the sensual and impulsive Verna Hume.

Like many a selfish man, Richard Johnson required those qualities in his wife, which would have made her an excellent mistress for someone else. And like many an intelligent, educated,

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