End in Tears

Read Online End in Tears by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online Page A

Book: End in Tears by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online
Authors: Ruth Rendell
Ads: Link
Amber was plain from the start of the interview. Unasked, she took a high moral tone. “I always thought it was wrong her going clubbing. I said so often enough to Ben, but he wouldn’t see it my way. She had a year-old baby at home, for God’s sake. I mean, never mind the ins and outs of whether anyone
ought
to get pregnant at just seventeen, she did and she’d got the baby and she ought to have got a better sense of responsibility, don’t you think?”
    Neither Barry nor Lynn had the least intention of saying what they thought and Barry believed in never stopping a possible witness when in full flood.
    â€œI know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but there’s nothing I’m saying I hadn’t said to her face. I believe in speaking my mind. Those parents of hers—well, her dad. He acted like he was broken-hearted when she told them she was pregnant. He didn’t even like Brand. I’m not saying her and him’d have been unkind to him, but would you leave your baby boy with people who didn’t care for him? To go clubbing? And it wasn’t just once in a blue moon, it was every week. But everything goes right for some people, doesn’t it? You have to admit. I mean, getting the offer of a flat to live in! In London! I should be so lucky. I’d just love to live away from home. Me and Ben’d move in together if we could get a place, but not a hope. Not for years and years with prices the way they are.”
    Finding a brief second or two of silence in which to intervene, Lynn asked her to tell them about the evening in question.
    â€œWhat’s to tell? Ben picked me up and we went to Bling-Bling. She came after around half an hour or a bit after that. She was later than normal, I don’t know why. We all three left together, which actually I never liked. I mean, Ben might have been her friend but he’s my
boy
friend and you don’t want a third person there with her ears on stalks when you’re saying good night, do you?”
    â€œWhat time was that?”
    â€œMaybe one-fifteen, one-twenty. It’s no distance—well, you can see. I’d walk it but not at that hour, no thanks. Besides, why leave those two together? I had to for the drive to Brimhurst, but I didn’t like it, I can tell you. Actually, I may as well be honest with you, I couldn’t wait for her to move into that place of the Hillands.”
    â€œShe died before she could do that,” said Barry and if there was admonition in his tone he didn’t care. The interview left him with a strong feeling that the motive for Amber Marshalson’s murder had something to do with the Crenthorne Heath flat.
    Wexford, alone in his office, was having much the same idea. He had phoned Vivien Hilland and in the light of what he had learned of the road crash on June 24 , asked her when the offer of the flat was first made.
    â€œI don’t know exactly when. But wait a minute—yes, I do. It was some time in June, two or three weeks before Amber’s birthday. Amber was going to be eighteen in July. You know how these days they must have a party when they’re eighteen and probably another when they’re twenty-one. We’d been talking about it and then my husband came in and whispered something. I went out of the room with him and he said to me, why not offer her the flat when Mr. and Mrs. Klein go in October. Well, I went straight back in there and made the offer and she was absolutely ecstatic, said I couldn’t have given her a better birthday present.”
    â€œWhen was her birthday, Mrs. Hilland?”
    â€œLet me see. July the first, I think. No, July the second.”
    â€œSo your conversation about the flat was mid-June?”
    â€œIt must have been.”
    â€œBefore the car accident Amber was involved in?”
    Light dawned. “Oh, yes, of course! It was about a week before.”
    So was the attempt to kill her on June

Similar Books

The Color of Death

Bruce Alexander

Primal Moon

Brooksley Borne

Vengeance

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Green Ice

Gerald A Browne