Corpse in Waiting Read Free

then, on crutches. I spotted him straight away but not because of that. So good looking. I have to say he never mentioned you.’
    â€˜We were divorced for a while. Round about then, obviously.’
    Elspeth, Patrick’s mother, had told me when Patrick and I got back together again that there had been a few ‘girlfriends’ during the interregnum, as she had smilingly referred to our separation, a couple of whom he had brought to stay for the occasional weekend.
    â€˜So I take it he was invalided out of the army and—’
    I carved her up. ‘No, Patrick was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel after working for MI5 for a while and then resigned his commission. He’s now with the Serious Organized Crime Agency as an adviser.’
    â€˜So what does that make him?’ she wanted to know.
    â€˜Mostly a policeman.’
    â€˜Oh.’
    I had chosen what I wanted from the buffet and now went over to a table near a window. She followed and seated herself with a satisfied sigh, her gaze going across to Patrick. I took a good look at her. She was older than I had first thought, perhaps mid-forties, and I had to admit was attractive – in a hard sort of way.
    â€˜Is he going to stand talking to that old bore all night or join us?’ she said. ‘He trapped me earlier as we were waiting to go into the Roman Baths, telling me how his wife had recently died. I was forced to abandon – I simply can’t stand other people’s hard-luck stories.’
    Fortunately, or not, Patrick ended his chat and, after helping himself to something to eat, came over. He then went away again to fetch a couple of glasses of wine from the bar – he had not yet been cleared by his specialist to drink alcohol after being drugged. Watching him carefully I noted that he was not exactly devastated by the arrival of Alexandra, giving her a broad smile.
    â€˜It’s lovely to see you again,’ she said, turning in her chair so as to slightly have her back to me. ‘You haven’t aged at all really, just a few grey hairs. Men who have a good head of hair always look distinguished when it starts to go grey.’
    The man in my life happily soaked this up, smiling at her again before saying, ‘You haven’t changed either. I seem to remember we met in a pub in Plymouth.’
    â€˜No, that must have been someone else, darling. Perhaps it was that little brunette you were with. No, I found you at the Savoy. There was a charity fashion show – royalty and all – and there you were.’
    â€˜That’s right. I remember now.’
    He didn’t.
    There was a little silence and then Alexandra said, ‘Is your brother – Harry, is it? – well?’
    â€˜Larry. No, he’s dead.’
    â€˜Oh, I’m terribly sorry.’
    â€˜He was killed a while back. We adopted his two children, Matthew and Katherine, Katie.’
    She nodded understandingly. ‘Yes, of course.’
    â€˜And we’ve three of our own,’ I said brightly before the bloody woman could say anything that might embarrass him.
    Elspeth, having mentioned the ‘girlfriends’ had also said that there had been no creaking floorboards after lights out. Clergy family or no she had not fixed the sleeping arrangements so they shared a room having thought that the divorce was mostly Patrick’s fault, actually not true. She had nevertheless been hoping and praying that we would get back together again. But she had been concerned for him too having been informed by the army medics that his injuries included the genital region. So the no creaking floorboards situation had probably not eased her mind at all. The catalyst had been the arrival on the scene of the patient’s ex-wife, the magic boosted by the spell-maker preparing a camp-bed for him in a cobweb-loaded box room with no heating, the spare bedroom unaccountably being ‘not in use’, while I was given his. And