Free A Murder in Mayfair by Robert Barnard

the serious investigators, come to that.”
    â€œThere are some serious investigators?”
    â€œWell, one. Someone who seems to have done his homework.” She rummaged in the plastic bag and pulled out a color supplement with an anorexic and slightly stoned-looking model on the cover.
    â€œHe didn’t make the front page,” I commented.
    â€œArticles like this are essentially fill-ups to the ads and the fashion and furniture features. You know that, Colin. Still, the man who wrote this got five pages, and he really used them. Mind you, he makes mistakes.”
    â€œWhat sorts of mistakes?”
    â€œAbout English titles. Says that Lord John could sit in the House of Commons because his father, the Marquis of Aylesbury, was still alive—that sort of thing. I think the author may be American.”
    â€œThat sort of thing confuses us as well.”
    â€œHis name is Elmore Hasselbank.”
    â€œWell, you could be right. But remember we’re a global village, and we get some pretty way-out names here too these days.”
    â€œAnyway, he’s got a very good picture of the wife—something not posed or prettified.” She flipped through the magazine and found the page. “Does your heart warm to her?”
    I looked at the picture.
    â€œNo,” I said at once.
    The photograph was an off-guard one, like the earlier ones of Lord John snapped at a party, probably a fashionable one. Lady John was talking to another woman, of whom only the bare shoulder was visible. Lord John’s wife was clearly retailing and relishing scandal: her mouth was twisted, her eyes had anicy sparkle, and one had a sense of a corrupt nature under a glossy exterior.
    â€œYou know,” I said, “I’m almost getting a very ideologically incorrect view of this case, with Lord John as this woman’s victim instead of vice versa.”
    â€œOh, these days feminism doesn’t demand that female monsters have to be explained away as a reaction to the prevailing male dominance. Women have to be given the freedom to choose to be monsters. Still, that is rather a ridiculous view of things.”
    â€œOf course it is. He did kill her, after all.”
    â€œIs it the permanent secretary’s view of the man that is influencing you?”
    â€œYou know, I rather think it is.”
    â€œWas she in love with him?”
    â€œA little, I’d guess. But love is not really her line, and I don’t think that affected her judgment.”
    â€œHmm. It usually does.”
    â€œAnything else in the article?”
    â€œOne or two suggestive things. Read it for yourself—you’ll probably pick up more. And there’s certainly one thing that will interest you.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œAt the time of the murder, the nanny was pregnant.”

CHAPTER SIX
Joker
    I t was about ten days after this that a disturbing thing happened.
    It was a hot Wednesday, and I’d been working on new initiatives for autistic children all morning and into the early afternoon in the Department in Great Smith Street. I left my office in my shirtsleeves and walked toward Victoria in the nourishing sunlight, registering the brown or peeling red office workers coming from the direction of St. James’s Park after their lunch hour. I meditated getting into my car—my little-used car as it was, these days—and driving out into the country for a pint and something to eat. I wondered if Susan would come with me. In case neither thing happened—and things did crop up with increasing frequency now that I was a minister that stopped me doing what I wanted—I dropped into Marks & Spencer for a prepared meal.
    Once in the middle of the lazy person’s cuisine I avoided the slimmer’s meals and even the meals for one. I like a hearty-sized main course, and can do without any of the other courses. Anyway it was not beyond the possible that I would be feeding