Read Online Pretty Maids All In A Row by Anthea Fraser - Free Book Online

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    'Even so . . . Well, I'd best be going.' Bob turned to the door, and as Delia made no move to show him out, Carrie opened it for him. 'Thanks for the beer, Delia. Good night then.'
    Carrie closed the door behind him and turned the key. 'He's in love with you,' she said flatly. 'More fool him.'
    'But he's such a nice chap.'
    'Look, it's not my fault. I've told him it's no go. If he wants to spend his evenings making eyes at me, that's up to him.'
    'But he's been hurt enough, with his wife dying and all.'
    'Well, what do you expect me to do about it? He hasn't had any encouragement.'
    'You could stop him coming. That would be kindest. It upsets me to see him here, looking all—humble and devoted.'
    'Your trouble is you're too sensitive. Now stop going on at me, for Pete's sake. I'm not in the mood for it.'
    Carrie sighed. 'You remembered to shut up the hens, didn't you? I don't want a fox getting them.'
    'Yes, I shut up your precious hens. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for bed. Do you want to go to the bathroom first?'
    'All right.' As Carrie walked through the dark kitchen to the bathroom beyond, she tried to close her mind to other people's troubles. She'd enough of her own.
    CHAPTER 5
    It was Friday morning. Everyone known to have been at The Packhorse on Wednesday had been interviewed and, with varying degrees of willingness, had agreed to the clothes they'd been wearing being sent for examination. Webb had stressed they'd the right to refuse but as the darts captain remarked, 'Tongues would start wagging if we did.'
    Crombie pushed a pile of statements to one side. 'If you ask me, this is the one that got away. Nobody noticed anyone leave, except to go to the men's room, and no one was absent for a suspiciously long time. Of course, our man could have been the inoffensive little chap in the corner that nobody noticed. In fact, he probably was.'
    Webb grunted, glancing through his mail. Among the already opened letters, he came across a sealed one marked Personal and slit it open, his eyes rapidly scanning the sheet of paper. Then he said softly, 'Hell and damnation. Listen to this, Alan.
    Dear Sir, I've just read in the News about the nursery rhyme rape. You might be interested to know I had a similar experience a few years ago. I was too ashamed to report it, and have never mentioned it to anyone, but surely it must be the same man? I too had a hood slipped over my head, my hands tied behind me, and was made to recite nursery rhymes throughout my ordeal. There's nothing to be gained by our meeting, but I thought you should know it's almost certain that the rape you're investigating isn't this man's first.
    He looked up, meeting Crombie's eyes. 'A new line in anonymous letters. Good hand, educated woman by the look of it. God, Alan, the percentage of rapes that are never reported! If he's done it once before, he could have done it a d ozen times. Far from the one-off, we were hoping for, he's turned at a stroke into an habitual offender.'
    'No signature at all? Not even "A well-wisher"?'
    'Not a damn thing.' Webb slammed his open palm on the desk. 'Whatever she says, of course I have to see her. We need to know exactly when and where it happened before, the method of approach, whether the knife was in evidence —a dozen things.' He flipped over the envelope. 'Postmark's Ashmartin, but that's no help. She could have gone in for the day shopping, or moved house in the meantime.'
    'You reckon it's genuine?'
    'I wish it wasn't, but it has the ring of truth about it.'
    'Put an ad in the News asking her to phone you. You needn't actually meet if she's so hell-bent on secrecy, but at least you could question her. And we know she reads the paper, so she must still be in the county.'
    'That's a thought. Our only hope, anyway. In the meantime I'll get through to Ashmartin and see if they've anything on their books. I'm not hopeful—if they had, they'd have been in touch before now.'
    It opened a new avenue,