The Company She Kept Read Free Page A

opera and dance, and a horrifying subtext which had underlined the dark themes of superstition and betrayal and sacrifice. With its dramatic background of flames and fire, and frenzied, naked dancers, he had found it ultimately deeply depressing. It had haunted him, if that wasn’t too strong. At any rate, made the hairs rise on the back of his neck ... just as this letter did.
    He read it again and could make nothing of it. He decided it was probably from some poor soul who wasn’t quite right in the head, or from someone who was having them on, with long odds on the latter. He’d learned to be cynical about these things.
    Abigail said, ‘What shall we do about following it up, sir?’
    â€˜What can we do, where do we start, without anything more specific to go on? There’s no way this can be taken as material evidence of a murder. Even if we’re expected, as I assume we are, to believe that years ago some old woman was murdered?’
    She didn’t appear to be too convinced, obviously believing there was some mileage in pursuing the idea. Her mouth was stubborn even though she knew he was watching her, judging her with the steady dark look that was capable of making potential suspects buckle at the knees. His gut feeling where Abigail was concerned was that she was good, and going to be better. She was young and as far as he knew had no ties or encumbrances, which was all to the good as far as her career was concerned. Tough going stimulated her; throw down a challenge in front of her and she’d pick it up and run with it – more than some of her male colleagues were prepared to do. But he thought briefly of last month’s crime figures, this month’s budget, his permanently overstretched team, shook his head and then dismissed the letter from his mind.
    He flicked the pink paper back on to the desk. ‘Nasty overtones – but why stop there? If she really has something to tell, she’ll write again. I doubt it, though, now that she’s got it off her chest.’
    Abigail looked enigmatic at his choice of pronoun, but it hadn’t only been the pink scented paper and its matching envelope, lined with deepest rose, that was suggestive of a woman writer. There was also – he had to say it – the hysterical tone. And the handwriting, which was loopy and irregular, increasingly illegible towards the end, with backward-curling down-loops and sentences only half-completed. And the erratic syntax and punctuation, which could, of course, apply to either sex. But the general tone of the letter struck him as unquestionably female.
    He went on his way at last, certain they had heard the end of the whole thing. A prediction which could hardly have been more wrong.

CHAPTER 3
    When Sophie first came to Flowerdew in 1978, a sepia photograph had stood on the walnut lowboy in the drawing-room: a snapshot of Kitty Wilbraham when young, a small but gallant figure in a safari jacket and divided skirt, wearing a pith helmet with a wealth of richly curling hair tumbling from under it. Around her were the stone ruins of Carthage, beside her a monumental fallen column, its mighty head in the dust. Two men were pictured with her. One of them was her husband, Alfred, a stout, bearded, elderly figure reminiscent of King George the Fifth, and clad – inexplicably under that bright harsh sun – in tweed plus fours and a stiff collar. The other man was Milralav Bron, another archaeologist who had been working with the Wilbrahams on the same dig. He was taller than Alfred, and very dark, sporting a bold moustache, a regrettable shirt and a louche smile. But then he was, after all, a foreigner.
    The departed Alfred Wilbraham seemed to have been an unimpeachably virtuous figure whose integrity, erudition and wisdom Kitty never ceased to extol. He had died in Tunisia from a fall of rock upon his unprotected head after an inexplicable failure to keep to his own rules and wear a