Read Online Last Post by Robert Barnard - Free Book Online Page A

breakfast cereal. The woman began back toward home, but was stopped by someone she knew—a man in a tweedy but perky hat and a thigh-length mac. Eve had by then crossed the road and lingered at the window of a secondhand furniture shop pretending to sell antiques. The conversation of the pair she was watching was as brisk as Jean Mannering’s walk,and she soon was starting up again. Presently she was back with the postwar semis and the late-twentieth-century hodgepodges, and then back to her own row of turn-ofthe-century houses. Tripping up the steps without hesitation, she disappeared through her own front door. Offstage and into the wings.
    Eve would have liked to get an interview with her then and there—to pop up the steps after her, ring the doorbell then sit down in Jean’s flat and ask her what her relationship with her, Eve’s, mother had been. Just to have it over with, to know, would have removed a burden—no, removed a piece of baggage—from her mind. But she felt herself miserably unprepared for a searching conversation with a woman who showed every sign of being on the ball. An alert, still-observant mind, with strong, long-held opinions—that was how she would have summed up the lady she had been observing for the last twenty minutes. She decided that talking to her was best done after considerable preparation.
    That evening Eve rang Rani to report progress.
    â€œGood evening, Miss McNabb,” came his soft but decided voice.
    â€œGood evening, Mr. Rani. I hope you don’t mind me ringing you at home?”
    â€œWhere else? Remember you said that we are not talking about any criminal matter.”
    â€œOf course we aren’t. Let me bring you up to date.”
    When she had finished her account of the day’s events, Rani thought for a bit.
    â€œYou cannot be sure that the woman you saw was Jean Mannering.”
    â€œWell, not sure, but I felt . . . No, forget I said that. What I felt isn’t evidence.”
    â€œNo, it isn’t. What you guessed is that there is another flat in the house, and perhaps a bedsit up in the attic. Of course you should prepare for the interview—if you get to have one—but not on the presumption that it will be with the woman you saw.”
    â€œRight. Point taken. Anything else?”
    â€œRemember that the woman who wrote to your mother is an actress. Only an amateur, but apparently a good, versatile one. Even if you drop in on her unexpectedly, she may have a repertoire of people whose personae she can assume. Try not to attack her in any way, but just keep the talk apparently casual. That way you’ll have a better chance of penetrating the mask, if there is one.”
    â€œThank you. I’m sure that’s good advice. How are you? Feeling better?”
    â€œNo. But thank you for asking, Miss McNabb.”
    That last exchange did not help Eve in preparing to talk to Miss or Mrs. Mannering. She could hardly keep the image of Rani out of her mind, especially his big, dark, hopeless eyes. By the next morning she had half-decided that this was not the day to drive over again to Huddersfield.
    The morning post was showing signs of natural diminution. The people who had wanted to have their say on her mother had had it. But there were enough letters addressed to herself that she opened them quickly without studying the envelopes, and there was one that therefore came as a surprise. The address at the top of the letter was the Huddersfield address she already knew.
    Dear Miss McNabb,
    You will not know me, though I saw you often when you were in your pram. A friend in Halifax has just told me the news of your mother’s death and funeral. We were very good friends in her early days in Crossley, and I do wish we had resumed communication when May had retired and we both had time to do things together. As it was we had simply drifted apart, and didn’t even send the ritual Christmas card.