Funeral Music by Morag Joss Page B

buy the kids a computer. Valerie was still giving him grief about it but he had reached a point when he just had to play again, and Valerie was going to have to lump it.
    ‘His little wifey is his business,’ she now told James.
    ‘Okay, okay,’ James said. ‘Maybe your motives are entirely pure. But Poole did kind of manipulate you into teaching him, didn’t he?’
    James could be so irritating. She wasn’t going to explain it all again, how Andrew had simply needed lessons, and when he had read in the
Bath Chronicle
, which had run a feature on her, that she had come to live near Bath, he had written her a sort of fan letter. He had introduced himself, told her that he had all her recordings and said that he did not suppose for a moment she would consider teaching him. She had written back acknowledging the first part of the letter, failing to state categorically that she did not take pupils. Then he had simply rung up and asked when he could come and meet her and get her advice. She had not been surprised to find that the attractively gentle voice was attached to a strongly built, fair-haired, brown-eyed man a year or two older than she was. But she had been surprised at how musically he had played despite many years’ rust on his technique, and how very strongly he had resisted the idea of approaching any of the other people she suggested about lessons. ‘But I don’t take pupils,’ she had protested.
    ‘I don’t charge him,’ Sara said, staring defensively at James, who was sipping smugly from his glass. It was hardly the point. Andrew had written again. And then telephoned. By this time he was being so reliably surprising that she, ridiculously flattered, had relented. The thought had entered her mind that she would much rather that this amusing, insistent man with his gentle way of getting exactly what he wanted were in her life, rather than out of it.
    ‘Look, it’s only once a fortnight or so. And I like him and I like teaching him, so you can stop looking at me like that. If he is on the case, he’ll probably have made an arrest by now. How complicated can it be? Give me another drink. Didn’t you get any cheese?’
    ‘Of course I did,’ said James, still looking smug.

CHAPTER 5
    THE NEXT MORNING, despite a slight hangover, Sara drove out along the London Road between the high walls of the Batheaston town houses. She stopped for a paper at Dennis and Maureen’s shop where, to her surprise, news of the corpse in the water and her involvement in its discovery had not yet arrived. Then she turned left up towards Bannerdown, where the Roman road ran straight along the top of the hill towards Colerne and the sanctuary of the health club at Fortune Park.
    As Sara came through the double doors into the club she saw that Sue was on the desk and that her happy mood of two days ago had flown. It was almost an achievement, the way she managed to look so depressed in her sharp little up-and-at-’em fitness-instructor outfits, although this job was often combined with being the club receptionist and waitress. Her perfect athletic body was dressed and immaculately accessorised today in expensive aerobics kit, yet her face betrayed a life again quite devoid of fun.
    ‘Hello there,’ Sara said, annoyingly bright.
    Sue tried to raise a smile.
    ‘Oh, dear. Paul?’ Sara asked.
    Sue nodded. ‘Not what you think – not a row or anything.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘He’s being questioned about...oh, God, it’s awful...about...oh, God, a murder! At the Pump Room. The police rang up here. He’s gone into Bath police station, and the whole game’s up! He’s been found out and it’s over. He won’t be able to work here any more!’
    Sara wanted to say several things at once, one of which was that if Paul had committed the murder then there were surely going to be more pressing and serious consequences than the loss of his job. Instead, she deferred her exercise without complaint, took a stool at