Wexford 4 - The Best Man To Die Read Free

chippings into the water, and then Charlie said:
       ‘I reckon you need your beauty sleep, so I’ll be on my way.’
       ‘We got your present, Charlie. I wasn’t going to say nothing till the others had gone, but it’s a real grand job that record-player. It quite knocked me back when I saw it. Must have set you back a bit.’
       ‘I got it cost, mate.’ Another stone dropped and splashed in the darkness beneath.
       ‘Marilyn said she’d be writing to Lilian.’
       ‘She has, too. A lovely letter come from her before I went up north. A real educated girl you got there, Jack. She knows how to put a letter together all right. You don’t grudge the outlay when you get a letter like that. I brought you two together and don’t you ever forget it.’
       ‘Ah, you know how to pick them, Charlie. Look at Lilian.’
       ‘Well, I’d better get looking at her, hadn’t I?’ Charlie turned to face his friend and his shadow was short and black against Jack’s long one. He raised his hard little hand and brought it down on Jack’s resoundingly. ‘I’ll be off, then.’
       ‘I reckon you’d better, Charlie.’
       ‘And if I don’t get the chance tomorrow - well, I’m no speechmaker like Brian, but all the very best, Jack.’
       ‘You’ll get the chance all right. You’ll have to make a speech.’
       ‘Save it up till then, eh?’ Charlie wrinkled his nose and winked quickly. The shadows parted, he negotiated the stile. ‘Good night, me old love.’
       ‘Night, Charlie.’
       The willows enclosed him. His shadow appeared again as the path rose and dipped. Jack heard him whistling, ‘Mabel, dear, listen here’ under the stars and then as the shadow was absorbed and lost in the many tree shadows, the whistle too faded and there was no sound but the gentle chatter of the stream, the Kingsbrook that flowed everlastingly over its bed of thin round stones.
       Many waters cannot quench love, nor the floods drown it.

Chapter 2

    Detective Chief Inspector Wexford didn’t care for dogs. He had never had a dog and now that one of his daughters was married and the other a student at drama school, he saw no reason why he should ever give one house-room. Many an anti-dog man joins the ranks of dog lovers because he is too weak to resist the demands of beloved children, but in Wexford’s household the demands had never been more than half-hearted, so he had passed through this snare and come out unscathed.
       ‘When therefore he arrived home late on Friday night to find the grey thing with ears like knitted dishcloths in his favourite chair he was displeased.
       ‘Isn’t she a darling?’ said the drama student. ‘Her name’s Clytemnestra. I knew you wouldn’t mind having her for just a fortnight.’ And she whisked out to answer the telephone.
       ‘Where did Sheila get it from?’ Wexford said gloomily. 
       Mrs Wexford was a woman of few words.
       ‘Sebastian.’
       ‘Who in God’s name is Sebastian?’
       ‘Some boy,’ said Mrs Wexford. ‘He’s only just gone.’
       Her husband considered pushing the dog on to the floor, thought better of it, and went sulkily off to bed. His daughter’s beauty had never ceased to surprise the chief inspector. Sylvia, the elder one, was well-built and healthy, but that was the best that could be said for her; Mrs Wexford had a magnificent figure and a fine profile although she had never been of the stuff that wins beauty contests. While he . . . All he needed, he sometimes thought, was a trunk to make him look exactly like an elephant. His body was huge and ponderous, his skin pachydermatous, wrinkled and grey, and his three-cornered ears stuck out absurdly under the sparse fringe of colourless hair. When he went to the zoo he passed the elephant house quickly lest the irreverent onlooker should make comparisons.
       Her mother and sister were fine-looking women, but the odd thing about Sheila was that