Free Death of an Expert Witness by P. D. James Page B

suppose. There’s a very nasty atmosphere in this Lab recently, and if a certain gentleman doesn’t take a hold of himself there’ll be a mischief done, you mark my words.”

10
    It was nearly five o’clock and dark before Detective Inspector Doyle got back to his home in the village four miles to the north of Cambridge. He had tried to telephone his wife once, but without success: the line was engaged. Another of her interminable, secretive and expensive telephone calls to one of her old nursing friends, he thought, and, duly satisfied, made no further attempt. The wrought-iron gate, as usual, was open and he parked in front of the house. It wasn’t worth garaging the car for a couple of hours, which was all the time he could allow himself.
    Scoope House hardly looked its best in the late afternoon of a dark November evening. No wonder that the agents hadn’t recently sent anyone to view. It was a bad time of the year. The house was, he thought, a monument to miscalculation. He had bought it for less than seventeen thousand and had spent five thousand on it to date, expecting to sell it for at least forty. But that was before the recession had upset the calculations of more expert speculators than he. Now, with the property market sluggish, there was nothing to do butwait. He could afford to hang on to the house until the market quickened. He wasn’t sure that he would be given a chance to hold on to his wife. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to. The marriage, too, had been a miscalculation, but given the circumstances of the time, an understandable one. He wasted no time on regrets.
    The two tall oblongs of light from the first-floor drawing-room window should have been a welcoming promise of warmth and comfort. Instead they were vaguely menacing; Maureen was at home. But where else, she would have argued, was there for her to go in this dreary East Anglian village on a dull November evening?
    She had finished tea, and the tray was still at her side. The milk bottle, with its crushed top pressed back, a single mug, sliced bread spilling out of its wrapper, a slab of butter on a greasy dish, a bought fruit cake in its unopened carton. He felt the customary surge of irritation, but said nothing. Once when he had remonstrated at her sluttishness she had shrugged: “Who sees, who cares?” He saw and he cared, but it had been many months since he had counted with her.
    He said: “I’m taking a couple of hours’ kip. Wake me at seven, will you?”
    “You mean we aren’t going to the Chevisham concert?”
    “For God’s sake, Maureen, you were yelling yesterday that you couldn’t be bothered with it. Kids’ stuff. Remember?”
    “It’s not exactly The Talk of the Town, but at least we were going out. Out! Out of this dump. Together for a change. It was something to dress up for. And you said we’d have dinner afterwards at the Chinese restaurant at Ely.”
    “Sorry. I couldn’t know I’d be on a murder case.”
    “When will you be back? If there’s any point in asking?”
    “God knows. I’m picking up Sergeant Beale. There are stillone or two people we’ve got to see who were at the Muddington dance, notably a lad called Barry Taylor who has some explaining to do. Depending on what we get out of him, I may want to drop in on the husband again.”
    “That’ll please you, won’t it, keeping him in a muck sweat. Is that why you became a cop—because you like frightening people?”
    “That’s about as stupid as saying you became a nurse because you get a kick out of emptying bedpans.”
    He flung himself in a chair and closed his eyes, giving way to sleep. He saw again the boy’s terrified face, smelt again the sweat of fear. But he’d stood up well to that first interview, hindered rather than helped by the presence of his solicitor, who had never seen his client before and had made it painfully apparent that he would prefer never to see him again. He had stuck to his story, that they’d