Free Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz Page B

detective in the country be interested in her? It wasn’t even as if she would have been able to pay him. And what he had said had been true. There was no case to solve. Joy knew that Robert hadn’t killed his mother. She had been with him that morning and would certainly have heard him if he had left the house. Robert could be moody. He often snapped out, saying things that he regretted. But she had been with him long enough to know that he would never hurt anyone. What had happened at Pye Hall had been an accident, nothing more. All the detectives in the world would have been no match for the wagging tongues of Saxby-on-Avon.
    Still, she had been right to come. The two of them deserved their happiness together, Robert in particular. He had been so lost until he had met her and she wasn’t going to allow anyone to drive them apart. They weren’t going to move. They weren’t going to take any notice of what people thought of them. They were going to fight back.
    She reached the station and bought a ticket from the man in the kiosk. Already a thought was taking shape in her mind. Joy was a modest girl. She had been brought up in a very close and (despite her father’s politics) conservative family. The step that she was now considering shocked her but she could see no other way. She had to protect Robert. She had to protect their life together. Nothing was more important than that.
    Before the tube train had arrived she knew exactly what she was going to do.

4
    In a restaurant on the other side of London, Frances Pye cast a careless eye over the menu and ordered grilled sardines, a salad, a glass of white wine. Carlotta’s was one of those Italian family restaurants behind Harrods: the manager was married to the chef and the waiters included a son and a nephew. The order was taken, the menus removed. She lit a cigarette and leant back in her chair.
    ‘You should leave him,’ her lunch companion said.
    Jack Dartford, five years her junior, was a darkly handsome man with a moustache and an easy smile, dressed in a double-fronted blazer and cravat. He was looking at her with concern. From the moment they had met, he had noticed something strained about her. Even the way she was sitting now seemed nervous, defensive, one hand stroking the other arm. She had not taken off her sunglasses. He wondered if she had a black eye.
    ‘He’d kill me,’ she replied. She smiled curiously. ‘Actually, he did try to kill me in a way – after our last row.’
    ‘You’re not serious!’
    ‘Don’t worry, Jack. He didn’t hurt me. It was all bluster. He knows something’s up. All those telephone calls, days off in London, the letters … I told you not to write to me.’
    ‘Does he read them?’
    ‘No. But he’s not stupid. And he talks to the postman. Every time I’ve received a handwritten letter from London, he’s probably heard about it. Anyway, it all came to the fore over dinner last night. He more or less accused me of seeing someone else.’
    ‘You didn’t tell him about me!’
    ‘Afraid he’ll come after you with a horsewhip? I wouldn’t put it past him. But no, Jack, I didn’t tell him about you.’
    ‘Did he hurt you?’
    ‘No.’ She took off her sunglasses. She looked tired but there were no bruises around her eyes. ‘It was just unpleasant. It’s always unpleasant where Magnus is concerned.’
    ‘Why won’t you leave him?’
    ‘Because I have no money. You have to understand that Magnus has a vindictive streak the size of the Panama Canal. If I tried to walk out on him, he’d surround himself with lawyers. He’d make sure that I left Pye Hall with nothing more than the clothes I was wearing.’
    ‘I have money.’
    ‘I don’t think so, darling. Certainly not enough.’
    It was true. Dartford worked in the money market, which in the true sense wasn’t really work at all. He dabbled. He made investments. But recently he’d had an unlucky streak and he very much hoped that Frances Pye had no