Free Shallow Grave by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Page A

pubs display to make them look homey: leather-bound books, pewter mugs and plates, a copper kettle, a crow-scarer, a set of donkey-boots, wooden butter-pats, wicker baskets. Since the real-ale, real-pub revolution there was a whole new vocabulary of clutter, and presumably merchants who combed the antique shops of the realm and supplied it by the yard.
    Mrs Potter slapped the hatch shut, sat down on a banquette, crossed her legs, and extracted a cigarette one-handed from the packet. It was such a dextrous, professional action that it reminded Slider of a prostitute he had once seen up an alley near King’s Cross extracting a condom from its wrapper without looking, using only her left hand. He shook the thought away.
    ‘Smoke?’ said Mrs Potter.
    ‘I don’t, thanks,’ said Slider, pulling out a chair and sitting opposite her, sideways on to the table.
    ‘I don’t usually in here. Get a lot of non-smokers in our class of trade, and I like to keep the snug smoke-free. But this morning – sod it! I’m not going to get through today without my fags. You watch ’em come in later, all the ghouls, to pick over the body.’
    She put the cigarette into the dead centre of her crimson lips, and Slider reached across to take up her lighter and strike theflame for her. She looked at him over the cigarette with her eyebrows raised, and then leaned forward, sucking the flame onto the tobacco with little popping puffs. Then she leaned back again, dragged deep, blew long and ceilingwards, and said, ‘Ta,’ with just enough surprise in her voice to convey the words, ‘It’s nice to meet a gentleman with manners. You don’t get too many of them these days.’ She folded her free arm, the one holding the Kleenex, across her chest, and propped the other elbow on it so that the cigarette was in the operative position just in front of her face. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘So how did it happen? Everyone’s talking about it, but nobody seems to know anything. Not that that stops them talking,’ she added viciously. ‘But they say – well, if she was found where they say she was – it looks like she must’ve been done in.’
    Her eyes behind the mascara were frightened, and she looked at him with flinching courage, waiting to hear the worst; dreading it, but facing up to it all the same. The spirit of the Blitz. He liked her a little better. He put the lighter down neatly on top of the cigarette pack and said, ‘We don’t know yet what the cause of death was.’ And because of the fear in her eyes, he added, ‘There were no obvious signs of violence on her.’
    ‘Oh.’ Linda relaxed slightly. ‘Well, I suppose that’s something. But you do think it was murder?’
    ‘We’re keeping an open mind about it. But however she died, someone must have put her body where it was found.’
    Her mouth hardened. ‘Well, you don’t have to look far for him, do you? Eddie Bloody Andrews. Is that right you’ve arrested him?’
    ‘He’s helping us with our enquiries.’
    ‘Same thing.’ She dismissed the distinction. ‘He’s the one all right, take my word for it. Bastard! I don’t know how Jen put up with him.’
    ‘Womaniser, was he?’ Slider suggested.
    ‘It wouldn’t surprise me. But that’s not what I meant. No, he was a jealous swine, always following her around and spying on her. But men are all the same.’ She brought the Kleenex into play, dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose carefully so as not to smear her makeup.
    ‘You don’t have much of an opinion of men,’ Slider observed.
    ‘I’ve seen too many freeloaders. I’ve been in the trade all mylife, you see. My dad had a pub. My grandad, too. I grew up in a pub – served behind the bar as soon as I was old enough. Then I married Jack. He’s not from the trade – he was a merchant seaman till he married me, then he gave it up and we started off managing a tied house in Watford. Then we got a tenancy in Chiswick, and then we bought this place.’
    ‘How did