Cold Coffin Read Free

But I’d give you outsider odds it’s the explanation.”
    “That’s the trouble with being coppers, Tim, it makes us think the worst of people. Just ask around about him, will you? But discreetly, mind.”
    “Trust me. My middle name is tact.”
    “I thought it was Cuthbert.” She’d been saving that little gem for the right moment, ever since she’d spotted it in Records.
    Boulter paled a few shades. “Who told you?”
    “A little birdie.”
    “Well, for God’s sake, guv, don’t spread it around.”
    “Trust me, Cuthbert.” She stood up. “Before you do anything else, you can run me back to the Dodford polo ground. Most people will have gone by now, but my aunt and I went there together and she’s probably still hanging around in her car wondering where I’ve got to.”
    * * * *
    On Sunday evening Kate had a dinner date with Richard Gower, postponed from Thursday owing to other commitments. They usually met about once a week if they could manage to find an evening when both were free. They liked each other, and neither tried to hide the fact. On the other hand, they were allowing their friendship to coast along nice and easy; experience had made both of them only too aware of the dangers of rushing into relationships.
    This evening they went to the Black Swan in Chipping Bassett, famed locally for its good food. Their window table overlooked the river, turned now to a thousand golden ripples in the dying sunlight.
    “I went to see Lady Kimberley this morning,” Richard said as they studied their menus.
    Kate felt a prickle of irritation. She asked coolly, “Why did you do that?”
    “There might be a story for me, that’s why.” The look he shot her was challenging; but also, she thought, a mite defensive. “It happens to be the function of the press to provide news, Kate. Lady Kimberley was in a real state about her husband. She still hadn’t heard a word about him.”
    “I know. Felix phoned her earlier. Poor woman, I feel sorry for her.”
    “Yet there’s nothing you can do about finding out what’s happened to Sir Noah?”
    “I’m doing all I can—which doesn’t amount to much, I admit. Just making a few discreet enquiries here and there. But if I tried to utilize police manpower in a big way, my superintendent would have me on the carpet. And he’d be justified. A kid going missing is another matter, but if we set up a major enquiry on every missing-from-home adult, we’d have no time left for anything else. Besides, it’s a matter of freedom of the individual. An adult in this country has a perfect right to take himself off if he chooses, without leaving a forwarding address.”
    “Yeah, sure. But I doubt if Vanessa Kimberley will ever see it. She feels very disgruntled that you seem to be doing nothing about her husband. She muttered about hiring a private detective.”
    “She might not like the answer he comes up with.”
    “Do you really believe that the old boy has hopped it with a woman?”
    “No, I don’t, as it happens. But I’m trying to keep an open mind. I’ll tell you one small thing that goes counter to the other-woman theory. Sergeant Boulter’s wife used to work at Croptech. He phoned me this morning and said that Julie was adamant that no way could Sir Noah Kimberley be regarded as a skirt chaser. She rather jumped on Tim, apparently, when he took the cynical view. Her ex-boss was always the perfect gent with the female staff, she insisted, and his longstanding devotion to Vanessa Logan was well known. They all thought it was rather sweet.”
    Richard nodded. “I looked up the Kimberley story in the Gazette’s files, to remind myself. They appear to have been a couple of real lovebirds. Still, marriages can quickly go sour—as I well know.”
    “The explanation for his taking off doesn’t have to be a sex-related thing, Richard. It could be anxiety of some kind. About health or money, for instance.”
    “Neither of which seems to apply in this case.