The Devil in Disguise by Martin Edwards Page B

be?’
    A deliberately casual shrug of the big shoulders. ‘It’s just that for the past couple of days you haven’t seemed yourself.’
    â€˜What makes you say that?’
    â€˜Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Jim said mildly, ‘but you’ve been arriving early and leaving very late and not sparing anyone much more than a hello and a goodbye. Your secretary told me this morning she’d never known you be so up-to-date with your paperwork. There’s even a filthy rumour that behind closed doors you’re practising on the computer. Any minute now and you’ll be surfing on the Internet.’
    Despite himself, Harry smiled. ‘So - there must be a problem? I can’t win.’
    â€˜Dead right.’
    It was difficult to keep a secret from a partner. Jim had found that out for himself the hard way. Why pretend? Harry sighed and explained that Kim might be about to leave Liverpool.
    Jim grunted. ‘Sorry to hear that. But you say she’s still in two minds?’
    â€˜The job was made for her. She’d be crazy to turn it down.’
    â€˜You could be long-distance lovers.’
    Jim’s easy assumption that the affair had been consummated deepened Harry’s melancholy. He could not bring himself to tell his partner why he and Kim had never slept together. The last time she had made love to a man, he had died in the act. She was still fighting to rid herself of the sense of guilt that she felt because of the death of someone who had been married to another woman.
    Jim took a deep breath. ‘You’re not going to thank me for this.’
    â€˜Words of wisdom coming up,’ Harry said gloomily. ‘Go on.’
    â€˜If she did go - it could be for the best in the long run.’
    â€˜Thanks,’ Harry said in his curtest tone. ‘But right now, that feels unlikely.’
    Jim was trying to choose his words with care, to make a point without causing pain. The effect was clumsy: he was like a bear trying to hold an eggshell in its paw. ‘I mean, it has always seemed to me that the two of you are so - different.’
    â€˜That’s why I like her,’ Harry said. ‘Because she is different.’
    Jonah turned up later that day to report progress on the Vera Blackhurst inquiry. He was wearing a thick scarf and walking even more stiffly than usual. The thought passed through Harry’s mind that the old man was himself a candidate for being carried off by the bad weather. And a hundred to one he hadn’t made a will.
    â€˜She’s a lady with a past, that’s for sure,’ Jonah wheezed. ‘Only trouble is, it doesn’t look as though it’s the same past she told Charlie Kavanaugh about when she applied for the job with him.’
    â€˜I wonder if she’s told Geoffrey Willatt that?’
    Jonah shook his head. ‘I’d have thought he’d have had more sense than to get involved with the likes of her.’
    â€˜Perhaps it’s not so surprising. His wife left him eighteen months back. She ran off with a partner in Boycott Duff. I suppose that if Vera has turned on the charm...’
    â€˜There’s no fool like an old fool,’ Jonah said. ‘Any road, I’ve had a scout round the house, rooted through a few of the old feller’s things.’
    Jonah was perhaps ten years older than both Geoffrey Willatt and the late Charles Kavanaugh, but Harry let it pass. ‘How did you manage that?’
    Jonah winked and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You ought to know better than that, lad. Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies. Let’s just say that I did a bit of sniffing around.’
    â€˜Isn’t Vera still living there?’
    â€˜Yeah, queening it for the time being. She’s a lady who likes the sound of her own voice, from what the neighbours tell me. It’s a posh area, the people there don’t have much time for servants with ideas above