Free Death on the Eleventh Hole by J. M. Gregson

to people every day. People in much worse situations than me. I know that. It should alter the feeling of rejection, but it doesn’t.’
    Christine was surprised by their closeness now, by his willingness to talk about this. For years when he was younger, he had shut her out from his work, so that they had almost split up because of his fierce, single-minded dedication to it. She slipped her arm through his. ‘You helped me through the mastectomy and the heart bypass. I’ll just have to help you through this.’
    John Lambert was suddenly ashamed of himself. ‘There’s no comparison, is there? Those were much more serious things. Matters of life and death.’
    ‘You certainly behaved as though they were, at the time, you old softie! But it was a big help to me that you wanted me to survive so much.’ She squeezed his arm. ‘Come on, show me round our garden. Tell me what’s happening.’
    He showed her the sea of promising buds on the roses, found for her the two that were already showing colour. They looked at the branches he had layered from their two choice rhododendrons, and decided together that they had rooted. He would need to spray for greenfly some time during the next week, he said, when the exigencies of this Kate Wharton murder case allowed the time.
    Once she had him thinking again about the future, she was content to let him lead her from the cool twilight into the warmth of the bungalow. He had the tall man’s slight stoop, the stiffness in his movements that she had only noticed in the last year or two. He had a lot of life to live yet, she hoped, but he was ready for retirement. But you couldn’t expect him to see that.
    She observed his grey head over the Times crossword when he thought she was watching television, took care not to be too assiduous in her attentions when she made a drink at ten thirty. They grinned at each other as they left the lounge, and he said, ‘I’m lucky really, aren’t I, old girl?’
    He knew that it was a title she hated, and they giggled as she punched at his ribs in the darkness. An hour later, after they had made love, Christine muttered sleepily into his ear, ‘You’re right, you old fool, you’re lucky. But perhaps I am, as well.’ Then she fell quickly asleep.
    At half past three, John Lambert was staring at the invisible ceiling, contemplating the empty years ahead with something like panic, and wondering when the dawn would come.

 
    Eight
     
    The post-mortem report on Kate Wharton gave a few new facts, but mainly confirmed what the leaders of the police team already suspected.
    Hook had discovered the body on the golf course at 6.30 on the evening of Monday 7th of May. Death had taken place around twenty-four hours earlier — possibly a little less, but the dumping of the body face upwards in a ditch, with the back of both the torso and the lower limbs in two inches of water, made the progress of rigor mortis a difficult factor to compute.
    This made the likeliest time for dumping the body the night before it was found, but so far no one had come forward to record the sighting of a suspicious vehicle on the lane which passed the ditch on the eleventh. This ran through the hamlet of Kempley and connected the Newent-Hereford B road with the village of Dymock. It was a quiet, winding lane, which carried little traffic save at the beginning and end of the normal working day.
    Kate Wharton had not been killed where her body was discovered. She had been lifted after death; slight blackening around the left armpit and on the back of the left thigh indicated that the lifting had probably been done by one person, though there was no certainty about that.
    She had been killed by the application of a ligature around her neck. This was almost certainly a smooth cord or wire rather than a coarse rope, since no fibres had been found on the throat. The wire had been vigorously applied, probably from the rear, and death would have occurred within seconds. This had