Read Guilty Thing Surprised for Free Online Page B

leaves. There was a square of carpet on the floor. The furniture, a horsehair sofa, two Victorian armchairs with leather seats, a gateleg table, had apparently been rejected from the Manor proper. Villiers’ desk was a mass of papers, open works of reference, tins of paper clips, ballpoint pens and empty cigarette packets. At one end stood a stack of new books, all identical to each other and to the one Wexford had seen on Nightingale’s bedside table:
Wordsworth in Love
, by Denys Villiers, author of
Wordsworth at Grasmere
and
Anything to Show More Fair.
    Before sitting down, Wexford picked up the topmost of these books just as he had picked up the one in the bedroom, but this time, instead of quickly scanning the text, he turned it over to eye the portrait of Villiers on the back of its jacket. It was a flattering photograph or else taken long ago.
    The man who faced him, coldly watching this brief perusal, seemed in his late forties. He had once, Wexford thought, been fair and handsome, strikingly like his dead sister, but time or perhaps illness had taken all that away. Yes, illness probably. Men dying of cancer looked like Villiers. In their faces Wexford had seen that same dusty parched look, yellowish-grey drawn features, blue eyes bleached a haggard grey. He was painfully thin, his mouth bloodless.
    ‘I realize this must have been a great shock to you, Wexford began. ‘It seems unfortunate that no one broke the news to you earlier.’
    Villiers’ thin colourless eyebrows rose a fraction. His expression was unpleasant, supercilious. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘it makes very little difference. My sister and I weren’t particularly attached to each other.’
    ‘May I ask why not?’
    ‘You may and I’ve no objection to answering you. The reason was that we had nothing in common. My sister was an emptyheaded frivolous woman and I—well, I am not an emptyheaded frivolous man.’ Villiers glanced down at his typewriter. ‘Still, I hardly think it would be tactful for me to do any more work today, do you?’
    ‘I believe you and your wife spent last evening at the Manor, Mr Villiers?’
    ‘That is so. We played bridge. At ten-thirty we left, drove home and went to bed.’ Villiers’ voice was clipped and sharp with an edge of temper to it, a temper that could be quickly aroused. He coughed and pressed his hand to his chest. ‘I have a bungalow near Clusterwell. It took me about ten minutes to drive there from the Manor last night. My wife and I went straight to bed.’
    Very tidy and brief, thought Wexford. It might all have been rehearsed beforehand. ‘How did your sister seem last night, sir? Normal? Or did she appear excited?’
    Villiers sighed. More from boredom than sorrow, Wexford decided. ‘She was just as she always was, Chief Inspector, the gracious lady of the Manor whom everyone loved. Her bridge was always appalling, and last night it was neither more nor less appalling then usual.’
    ‘You knew she went for nocturnal walks in the forest?’
    ‘I knew she went for nocturnal walks in the
grounds.
Presumably it was because she was foolish enough to venture further that she met the end she did.’
    ‘Is that why,’ asked Wexford, ‘you weren’t surprised to hear of her death?’
    ‘On the contrary, I was very surprised. Naturally, I was shocked. But now that I’ve considered it, no, I’m not very surprised any more. Women on their own in lonely places do get murdered. Or so I’m told. I never read the newspapers. Matters of that kind don’t interest me.’
    ‘You’ve certainly made it clear that you disliked your sister.’ Wexford glanced about the large quiet room. ‘Strange, under the circumstances, that you should have been among those who accepted her bounty.’
    ‘I accepted my brother-in-law’s, Chief Inspector.’ White with anger or with some other emotion Wexford couldn’t analyse, Villiers sprang out of his chair. ‘Good morning to you.’ He opened the door and the dark