Free The Company of Fellows by Dan Holloway Page B

the Schloss Glucksburg in northern
Germany. But in miniature.
     
     

____
    12
     
    Emily kicked
off her shoes and sank into the sofa, exhausted. She hadn’t had
time to think about seeing Tommy. She was aware of him only as
something that nudged her in the stomach; something that made her
less interested than she might be in the smell of David’s
shepherd’s pie that was wafting in from the kitchen.
    The doorbell
rang. “Can you get that, D?”
    “ Hi, Rosie,”
said David, holding the door aside, ushering her
through.
    “ Sorry to
interrupt again, David. God that smells good.” Rosie smiled,
revealing two enormous rows of perfect white teeth.
    “ Do sit down,”
said David.
    “ Thanks.”
    David went
back to the kitchen. He didn’t bother setting another
place.
    “ Hi, Rosie.
What news?”
    “ Well,” said
Rosie, kicking her Doc Martens boots off beside Emily’s mules and
joining her on the sofa. “Tox results came back. Our professor died
from an overdose of warfarin. Rat poison, not heart medicine. We
may get a proprietary brand in a few days, but there was a packet
under his sink with his prints on it.”
    “ How did he
ingest it?”
    “ In his
water,” Rosie said.
    “ Water?” Emily
thought over what Tommy had said. Water made sense. “Well, I guess
that suggests suicide.” She drained her glass, wondering if she
would detect the difference if it contained a fatal dose of
warfarin, “He would have noticed it if someone had slipped a slug
of rat poison in his water,” she added.
    “ Yeah.” Rosie
fetched a glass from the tallboy and filled it generously. “The
Divinity Faculty at Harvard confirmed they turned him down for the
post.”
    “ The Warden
said he had his heart set on moving.”
    “ You’d have
thought he’d have been able to find another job, though, if he was
desperate to go to America.”
    “ From what I
gather he was a pretty high flier,” said Emily. “Perhaps it was too
much of a dent to his ego.”
    “ I guess,”
said Rosie. “Can you imagine what his wife would have made of it
when she found out they’d turned him down? I might have been
tempted to kill myself to avoid that.”
    Emily said
nothing for a moment. She thought about Haydn, about the coldness
between her and her daughter. She felt her blood pressure rising.
She would have loved to pin something on the callous bitch. She
took a large gulp of wine, ashamed of herself. It was along time
since she’d had so many uncharitable thoughts. She wondered if it
had anything to do with seeing Tommy again.
    She sighed.
She knew she could probably carry on pushing things for another day
or so, but she also knew what the Chief Super would say about
wasting resources, and going down dead ends. And deep down she knew
it was right; she’d only end up in the same place, but she’d get
there that little bit more bitter, which was never good. If you’re
only carrying on out of spite rather than reason, that’s always the
time to draw the line.
    “ The rest is
paperwork,” said Emily at last. “We’ll file the report tomorrow.
Notting Hill?” She used Rosie as an excuse to watch Hugh Grant
films without risking David’s jealousy. He just got jealous of
Rosie instead. Still, it was better for him to go the green-eyed
monster over someone real, who would laugh and drink wine with you
and make you forget to feel guilty for enjoying
yourself.
    “ What about
David? I don’t want to get in the way.”
    “ It’s OK, I’ll
make it up to him later,” said Emily. “Anyway, I think he’s gone
off to his cave.” By now he’d be engrossed in his work, crunching
the numbers to price a tender for a new account. By the time she
asked him to come to bed he’d have forgotten that spending the
evening apart had been her doing, and would probably be desperate
to make it up to her.
    David folded
his arms around her when they finally rolled into bed together long
after midnight. “Celebrating?”
    “ Unh-hunh”
    “ Case