An Accidental Shroud

An Accidental Shroud by Marjorie Eccles

Book: An Accidental Shroud by Marjorie Eccles Read Free Book Online
Authors: Marjorie Eccles
Tags: Mystery
he missed her. Independence was something he'd encouraged in her, then found he didn't much like the form it had taken. As for Alex ... funny that he should feel her absence here so keenly – she had her own flat, had steadfastly refused to move in with him. He was slowly learning that he might have to accept the situation as it stood. To press her too hard into making that total commitment he himself wanted might be to lose her altogether.
    At any rate, nobody could say Bert wasn't pleased to see him. Mayo scratched the parrot's gaudy head as he dished out his food. Very choosy about his food, Bert, picking out the choicest seed from his mixture and disdainfully discarding the rest on to the floor around his cage.
    'At least there's somebody alive when I come in at night, mate,' Mayo told him. Self-pity wasn't something he encouraged in himself as a rule, and Bert very properly responded with a sharp nip to his finger. He was a bird who vocally craved affection but liked to remind people of his independence.
    There had been a postcard from Alex, wedged in between his gas bill and an offer of a timeshare in Portugal. She was enjoying the convalescent holiday with her sister Lois in Devon, the food was good, they'd been walking every day, healthwise she felt back to normal. She didn't say 'Wish you were here'.
    And, since it was only a postcard, there was naturally no mention of whether she'd finalized her decision to quit the police.
    'Leaving the force? You're giving up your career, for God's sake!' he'd said, winded, when she'd thrown that one at him.
    'It's gone sour on me.'
    'We all get disillusioned from time to time. And this has been a particularly bad time for you.' For both of them ... So bad, when her life had hung in the balance, that he came out in a cold sweat even now, just thinking about it. A bad time, yes, but lit by moments of unexpected joy, that she was alive, and would be well.
    'It's not a passing thing, Gil. All this has nothing to do with it. I've thought about it for months. I'm just not dedicated enough, not like Abigail Moon, for instance.' She'd added, 'It'll solve a lot of other problems, too,' and he'd stopped himself from saying that could be altered at any time, because this was a cul-de-sac they'd been down more times than he could remember. Their relationship was a complex one.
    It wasn't just that she didn't want to marry him, she didn't want to marry anyone, if it would get in the way of her career. And if he detected in that the hand of her sister Lois, who had a poor opinion of men and of Gil Mayo in particular, he'd managed to stop himself from saying so. So where had all the dreams gone?
    Abigail, then Sergeant, now Inspector Moon, sitting before him with the light of ambition in her green eyes, was a very different kettle of fish. A graduate entrant, she was marked out for a quick sprint up the ladder. Tough, although not half as tough as she thought herself. Competent and smart but, like all these high-flyers, long on theory, short on experience, though that, he acknowledged, was hardly their fault: coming up through the ranks so quickly, they didn't have the chance to get it. To compensate, she had the ability to operate on personal initiative, the willingness to accept responsibility, the nous to know how far she could cope, the grace to admit it when she couldn't.
    He drummed his fingers on the desk as he thought. His first skimming over of the facts had told him this was quite likely to be an everyday, common-or-garden mugging but now, something about Abigail's swift summing-up was telling him otherwise. He'd learned to trust her quick intuition which, coupled with his own experience, told him this might turn out to be a major homicide investigation, and one which was ultimately his responsibility.
    'All right, stay with it, Abigail. I shall be tied up in court for most of today and possibly tomorrow, so it looks as though you're going to be lumbered with the PM and the rest.

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