Free 03 - Murder in Mink by Evelyn James

so bleak.
    Clara shut her eyes and concerned herself with falling
back asleep. Her clock ticked reassuringly and the silence seemed peaceful,
even if it hid a wealth of torn emotions. Slumber found her again.
    When she woke for the third time she wasn’t sure the
cause. Her wristwatch said five minutes past four and there was a faint glow
outside that hinted at dawn not being far off. Clara rolled onto her back and
heard the sobbing. It was a woman weeping, softly but heavily. Perhaps she
would never have heard it, never have woken from her sleep, had it not been so
near. Clara drew a mental picture of the house in her mind and tried to think
whose room was closest to hers. Susan’s bedroom was surely just above her. It
could easily be Susan who was weeping so solemnly. Clara listened a while, she
was not tempted to go up and check on her. People who pick the middle of the
night to start crying usually do so because that is the time when they are least
likely to be disturbed by a well-wisher. They don’t want someone to creep in
and start sympathising.
    If it was Susan, Clara fully understood her anguish. She
could be weeping for the sake of her friend’s broken marriage, but weeping in
young women is usually self-centred, unless they are mothers. Weeping comes
from the heart and it tends to break when we are weakest and when we are
thinking the hardest of ourselves. Clara knew what that was like. She only ever
cried in private and when she did it was because something had penetrated her
usual shell of self-confident calm. She wouldn’t be surprised if Susan was
weeping over her own misfortunes in life. Her bubbliness masked a deep-centred
unhappiness. Susan was lost, she didn’t know what she wanted from life, yet at
the same time she wanted something . She had no husband, which might have
been off-set if she had a career of some description, even a hobby, but she had
none and, truth be told, life as a housewife was still the only career most
women could expect. So she was jealous and that made her feel guilty, and guilt
made her angry at herself and so she wept.
    Oh yes, Clara knew all about that. How often had she sat
and wondered where her future lay?  Yes, she had her work and it was good work,
but she was still lonely. For a brief period a few weeks ago that loneliness
had been assuaged by a dashing ex-RFC captain. O’Harris had been everything
that normally drove Clara away; brash, over-confident, boastful, driven.
Instead he had drawn her in and within a short time Clara had begun to think of
him a lot more than was usual. His disappearance had hurt. She denied loving
him, because Clara Fitzgerald did not fall that easily, but he had shown her an
insight into another world, a world where love, maybe even marriage was
possible. And then he had gone and blown it.
    Clara tossed onto her side gruffly. He had ruined her
last hopes. She had opened a small, yet firmly sealed door inside herself, for
him, and when he left it was murder closing it again. Perhaps it hadn’t really
closed. A faint smile played on Clara’s lips because a thought had struck her.
That silly man Oliver Bankes was still around. She wasn’t sure if he irritated her
or appealed to her. He definitely drove her insane. He was so disorganised and scatter-brained.
Sweet, but hopeless. He was the sort of man who would need a full-time wife
just to ensure he got dressed and had breakfast in the mornings, not a woman
who had her own life to lead. Still, he was nice company and he had taken her out for afternoon tea every day after the loss of O’Harris was known,
just so she didn’t get down in the dumps. Silly man! But, bless him, he was so
amiably reliable. Clara rested back. Her last thoughts were of Oliver Bankes
and his endless photographs of Brighton.
     

Chapter Nine
    “We’re heading to the race track, come on.”
    “Tommy Fitzgerald don’t pester me! I barely slept.” Clara
splashed cold water on her face.
    “You know Andrew