Free A Little Learning by J. M. Gregson

absolutely necessary.’
    Peach said, ‘I don’t see why we should bother your mother. Not at this stage, anyway.’ It implied a lot of things, that last phrase, to the attentive listener. Principal among them was the thought that if Ruth Carter cooperated as fully as she should, her mother could be left alone. ‘This is just routine, Mrs Carter. As we didn’t know your husband, we have to build up a picture of him for ourselves from those who lived their lives around him. Speed is important: that is why we have to intrude upon your grief so quickly. I apologize for that.’
    ‘There is no need. I appreciate what you have to do. I wouldn’t want to impede your work in any way.’
    ‘That’s very understanding of you. We shall be as brief as we can.’
    He’s less at his ease with middle-class women than with yobs most people would run a mile from, thought Lucy with amusement. If this wife had resisted, had given him something to bite on, he’d have been at her with his usual aggression, but he was fencing for an opening here, wondering how to get her on the back foot before he began the routine questions.
    Or perhaps she was being a little too harsh on Percy: he could be surprisingly tender-hearted when he met real suffering, though he would never have admitted it. Perhaps he was treading carefully over a widow’s pain. Except that to Lucy, Ruth Carter did not seem to be tortured with grief. Her oval face was white and strained, as you might have expected, with little or no make-up beneath the rather attractive waves of soft blonde hair. But she seemed perfectly composed as she invited them to sit on the sofa and then sat down opposite them in a heavy armchair; she was even calm enough to be watchful about her actions and her words, in Lucy’s view. But even though she was only twenty-seven, Lucy had already seen enough to know that grief took many forms, that those who displayed it most obviously were not always those who felt it most deeply.
    Ruth Carter said, ‘You mentioned that you were part of a large team when you rang, DS Blake. Am I to assume that this is now a murder inquiry?’
    It was Peach who answered her. ‘Officially we must wait for the verdict of the Coroner’s Court on that, Mrs Carter. But we believe it was murder, and we are proceeding on that assumption.’
    ‘How did he die?’
    She must surely have known. It had been included in the radio bulletins. And she would certainly have asked the WPC who came here to break the news at eight o’clock this morning for the details. ‘He was shot through the back of the head at close range.’
    ‘It couldn’t have been suicide?’
    ‘No. The angle of the shot rules that out, in my opinion and that of the doctors who examined him.’ He was carefully neutral. Most people found suicide a worse fact than murder in someone close to them, but there were no absolutes in the awful stresses brought by a sudden death. ‘I shall be able to tell you more about the type of firearm involved in a few days.’
    ‘It wouldn’t mean much to me. I know nothing about guns.’
    ‘Your husband didn’t possess one?’
    ‘Not as far as I know.’
    It was an answer which revealed rather more than she intended when she made it. If she genuinely didn’t know whether or not her husband possessed a firearm, it meant at the very least that the two had some secrets from each other. Ruth Carter appeared to be careful in her replies, anxious not to give away more than she had to. But she might of course be merely numbed with shock by the suddenness of this death, feeling the first resentment at the stripping away of the layers of privacy which was now inevitable.
    ‘Had he any interest or expertise in firearms?’
    ‘None whatsoever.’
    ‘And when did you last see him, Mrs Carter?’
    The blue eyes narrowed a little, making the small lines around them more noticeable. But if she realized the question registered her as a suspect in this death, she gave no sign of