Deadly Reunion Read Free Page B

start on doing the place up and had made excuse after excuse to Abra when she suggested he pulled his finger out and got on with it. But he’d never suspected that his ma’s invitation to her American cousins would snowball to the extent of the fifty guests that she casually mentioned she was now expecting over for the family reunion party that had been born out of the small get-together originally planned. How could he have anticipated that the casually stated and half-heard idea that his ma was expecting four guests would expand to fit his two spare rooms and more? Because he doubted that Ma would stop at liberating just one of his spare bedrooms, even though there was only a bed in one of them. She’d find a bed for the other from somewhere and would then expect him and Mickey and Patrick Sean to lug it around to his house and up the stairs.
    â€˜It’s only for two weeks, son,’ she said, wheedlingly. ‘You’ll hardly know they’re there.’
    Two weeks! To Rafferty, it seemed like eternity stretching before him. He hadn’t inherited his ma’s sociable gene and while he enjoyed a good craic as much as the rest of the family, he preferred to keep his home to himself. So he hadn’t said ‘yes’. But then, he hadn’t said ‘no’, either and that was all the encouragement Ma needed. Still, he had consoled himself as he prepared to set off for Griffin School, this murder would keep him busy and out of the way and these cousins that his ma had saddled him with were likely to be out doing the sights for most of the time. Between his work and their sightseeing, it was unlikely their paths would cross much.
    The Senior Common Room was at the front of the house and their borrowed office was at the back. From where he stood, Rafferty could see cricket and rugby pitches stretching to the middle distance. At the edge of his vision was what looked like tennis courts and Jeremy Paxton had mentioned they had a swimming pool in one of the outbuildings. All in all, they seemed to do very well for themselves.
    They had interviewed all the reunees and they had all said much the same. Even the ever-rebellious pig-hater, Sebastian Kennedy hadn’t strayed from the general line, which was that nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the day that Adam Ainsley had gone for a run and never come back.
    When questioned as to why nobody had commented on his absence at dinner, they had all claimed they had assumed the dead man had either gone to his room or decided to eat in the town. According to Giles Harmsworth, and the others had said the same, Adam Ainsley had been in a funny mood all morning and – considering this was a reunion – had been pretty unsociable towards most of the group. And when Rafferty had commented on this, Harmsworth and the rest had claimed the dead man had never been any different.
    â€˜Always got in a humour on the slightest pretext’, had been Harmsworth’s take on this. ‘We thought nothing of it.’
    â€˜So none of you went to see where he was when he didn’t show up for dinner that evening?’ Rafferty persisted.
    â€˜No. We had no reason to.’
    The school’s dormitories, for the older pupils at least, were made up of two-bed rooms. The dead man had been sharing with Sebastian Kennedy, but as Kennedy had been steadily depleting the school’s wine cellars during the evening, he had – or so he claimed – failed to notice that Ainsley was still not in their room at midnight, which was the time Kennedy had finally staggered off to bed.
    â€˜What do you think, Dafyd?’ Rafferty asked once they were finally alone. ‘Do you reckon they’re colluding for some reason?’
    Llewellyn shook his thinly handsome face. ‘No. They’re too disparate a group. I can’t see that Giles Harmsworth or Victoria Watson would agree to conceal a crime.’
    â€˜Unless they did it,’