Free Maxwell's Chain by M.J. Trow Page A

dead, but her gorgeous young husband was still here and that was, after all, what counted. ‘Well, she’d just gone off, honey, hadn’t she?’ she fluttered at him. ‘We hardly missed her, after a bit. They grow away from you, don’t they, in the end?’
    Do they? Jacquie wondered. Would that little pink thing she had at home, cuddling into her neck when he was tired and twining his fingers into her hair, ever grow away? And what would it do to her if he did? Jesus, she realised, she’d become Marianne Crown.
    ‘He missed her, I reckon,’ came a growl from the end of the sofa. They had all forgotten Mr Crown Senior.
    His son jumped up and bundled him from the room. ‘Now, then, Dad,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you go and do some gardening or something?’ They could still hear him muttering as he made his way down the hall. ‘Mum died a few months ago,’ Crown said. ‘Dad came to stay for a bit and he’s proving a little difficult to dislodge. But Marianne’s a wonder with him, aren’t you, darl?’
    She simpered. But the police pair had noted his comment and it clarified a lot of things for them. It’s all very well marrying an older wife with her own home. But it’s even better if she has a pretty daughter on the premises to remind you you’re still young.
    Neither Jacquie nor Henry Hall had much stomach for continuing the interview once Superman arrived. They took the photograph with them, carefully removed from its silver frame by Crown before he handed it over. They paid lip service to their condolences, walked silently down the path and got into the car, faces frozen in blank expressions until they were safely up the road. Only then did they turn to face each other.
    ‘What a wanker,’ Jacquie exploded.
    ‘Now, now,’ said Henry Hall, awake now, driving and in control. ‘That’s such a nasty, judgemental word. We never use that at home.’
    Jacquie looked crestfallen.
    ‘No, for people like Crown, we always prefer “tosser”.’

Chapter Five
    ‘But I left a message,’ Maxwell was placatory. He knew he was looking his best; a bathed, changed, fed and smiley baby in one hand, a gin and tonic, ice and lemon, in the other.
    ‘True.’ Jacquie took the baby and the gin from him, not necessarily in that order. A kiss and a sip and things might look better. She tried both. No, no good, it still sounded rubbish. And it was all made worse by the fact that they were carrying on this conversation at a low hum, through the clenched teeth of secrecy. ‘I don’t understand why you invited a suspect in my latest murder case to stay with us.’
    ‘I’m not sure I invited him, as such.’ Maxwell, relieved of son and gin, flopped down in his chair. ‘He had left about a million messages and Emma has left him and…well, I knew you wouldn’t reallymind. You can’t seriously think he is a suspect. I mean, go and look at him. He just doesn’t look like a murderer.’
    ‘Neither did Crippen. Nor do I, but I may well become one in a minute. I don’t want to ask this, but where would I go, were I wishing to look at him?’
    ‘Ermm…in the spare room?’
    ‘ What ? My spare room, I mean, our spare room? Here? In this house?’
    ‘Well, yes, woman policeman. Where else do we have spare rooms?’
    ‘At my mother’s fortunately. Because I think that’s where I’ll have to go if he stays here.’
    ‘Oh, come on. It isn’t that serious.’ To Maxwell, for anyone to consider seriously living with Jacquie’s mother, there would have had to have been a nuclear holocaust.
    ‘Yes, Max, it is that serious.’ Nolan sensed the mood of the moment. His Mummy was upset. His Daddy was a prat. What’s a boy to do? He put his fingers on Jacquie’s lips as if to say ‘Hush, now’. But she wasn’t having any of it and gently turned her head away. ‘William Lunt is a suspect in the murder of Lara Kent. Not a very suspect suspect, I grant you, but he is on file in the police station where I work ! Max, this