Read Online An Unsuitable Death by J. M. Gregson - Free Book Online Page B

others was suddenly lost for words of his own.
    It was Bert Hook who eventually said quietly, “If you had been able to persuade her to give up the others?”
    Tom Clarke flashed a look of hatred at this stolid man who had spoken for the first time. But the weather-beaten features were so calm, so understanding, even sympathetic, that the outburst died in his throat. He waved the too-mobile hands for a moment, then said, “They were unimportant, the others. She’d already given them up. She saw the sense of what I was trying to do. If we’d just been given time, she’d—” Suddenly he sobbed, gasping for control, biting his lip and fighting for the breath which would not come evenly. He looked much younger than his years, like a grief-stricken child trying to be brave in public.
    Lambert waited for a moment for the tears which did not come. Then he said calmly, “She’d have done what, Tom? Given up the lifestyle which was making her miserable? Married you, perhaps?”
    Clarke nodded, grateful that these somber men seemed to know so much. “Yes, just that. I wanted her to marry me, and she would have done, eventually.”
    Again Lambert had that fruitless wish to hear the reaction of the girl who would now never speak. “Eventually?”
    “Well, yes. Tamsin had her problems, as you obviously know, but we’d have come through it, in the end. She was just beginning to believe I could help her when when—”
    “When she was brutally murdered.”
    The sensitive face winced on the phrase, as though it had been struck a physical blow. “Yes. I came here to offer you whatever help I could, but it seems you already know more about her than I do.” For a moment he was almost petulant with the thought.
    “We actually know very little. Far less than you assume. For instance, we didn’t even know of your existence, until a search of Tamsin’s flat revealed this picture.” Lambert showed him the rather old-fashioned posed portrait of his profile against the black velvet, and the mobile face broke into a surprising, rather embarrassed smile.
    “It’s a bit over the top, isn’t it? I was imitating a picture of Ellen Terry I found in the library at RADA. Pure ham, I suppose. It seemed to impress Tamsin far more than any agent I sent it to.”
    “You were at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art?”
    “Oh, yes. Nothing but the best for Thomas, you know. At one time my accent would have been just right for RADA. Now they spend a good part of the time trying to knock a public school accent out of you. Regional accents are all the rage in the commercial theatre now, you know. I was allowed to be an effete public school Cassio last year, but only alongside a Brummie Othello being deceived by a Geordie Iago.”
    Lambert wasn’t quite sure where this was leading, but for the moment he was content to find out all he could about this mercurial young man. After all, he had announced himself as a murder suspect at the moment he came into the room. “You were at public school?”
    “At Shrewsbury, yes. As a day boy, though. We live about halfway between Hereford and Shrewsbury. So I escaped the routine adolescent fumblings in the dorm. Until I entered the theatre, of course!” It was obviously a line he had delivered before, and he looked for a reaction he did not get from the two large men who studied him so gravely and so continuously.
    Hook merely said, “So you know the Shrewsbury area well, eh? That’s where this Sacristan killer has been operating, of course.”
    Clarke looked at him sharply, but the Sergeant was making an entry in his notebook in his round, careful hand, with no trace of a smile on his rubicund features. It was Lambert who said suddenly, “How long had you known Tamsin Rennie, Mr Clarke?”
    “A year, I suppose. Well, very nearly a year, anyway.”
    “And how long had you been sleeping with her?”
    Colour rushed into the too-revealing features. “Now look here, I came here to help, and if all you can