Read The Ice House for Free Online Page B

stack the bricks in there. The children might know. I suppose I could ask them."
    Walsh remembered her children, a gangling ten-year-old boy, arriving home from his boarding prep-school in the middle of the investigation, his eyes the same clear blue as his mother's, and an eight-year-old daughter with a bush of curling dark hair. They had protected her, he recalled, with the same fierce quality that her two friends had shown earlier in the drawing-room. "Jonathan and Jane," he said. "Do they still live at home, Mrs. Maybury?"
    "Not really. Jonathan rents a flat in London. He's a medical student at Guy's. Jane is studying politics and philosophy at Oxford. They spend the odd weekend and holidays here. That's all."
    "They've done well. You must be pleased." He thought sourly of his own daughter who had got herself pregnant at sixteen and who now, at the age of twenty-five, was divorced with four children, and had nothing to look forward to except life in a tatty council flat. He consulted his notes. "You seem to have acquired a profession since I last saw you, Mrs. Maybury. Constable Williams tells me you're a market gardener."
    Phoebe seemed puzzled by his change of direction. "Fred's helped me build up a small Pelargonium nursery." She spoke warily. "We specialise in the Ivyleaf varieties."
    "Who buys them?"
    "We have two main customers in this country, one's a supermarket chain and the other's a garden-supplies outlet in Devon and Cornwall. We've also had a few bulk orders from the States which we've air-freighted out." She was intensely suspicious of him. "Why do you want to know?"
    "No particular reason," he assured her. He sucked noisily on his pipe. "I expect you get a lot of customers from the village."
    "None," she said shortly. "We don't sell direct to the public and, anyway, they wouldn't come here if we did."
    "You're not very popular in Streech, are you, Mrs. Maybury?"
    "So it would seem, Inspector."
    "You worked as a receptionist in the doctor's surgery ten years ago. Didn't you like that job?"
    A flicker of amusement lifted the corners of her mouth. "I was asked to leave. The patients felt uncomfortable with a murderess."
    "Did your husband know about the ice house?" He shot the question at her suddenly, unnerving her.
    "That it was there, you mean?"
    He nodded.
    "I'm sure he must have done, though, as I say, I don't remember him ever going in there."
    Walsh made a note. "We'll follow that up. The children may remember something. Will they be here this weekend, Mrs. Maybury?"
    She felt cold. "I suppose if they don't come down, you'll send a policeman to them."
    "It's important."
    There was a tremor in her voice. "Is it, Inspector? You have our word there was no body in there six years ago. What possible connection can that-that thing have with David's disappearance?" She took off her glasses and pressed her fingertips against her eyelids. "I don't want the children harassed. They suffered enough when David went missing. To have the whole ghastly trauma played out a second time and for no obvious reason would be intolerable."
    Walsh smiled indulgently. "Routine questions, Mrs. Maybury. Hardly very traumatic, surely?"
    She put her glasses on again, angered by his response. "You were extraordinarily stupid ten years ago, of course. Why I ever assumed the passage of time would make you any brighter, I can't think. You sent us to hell and you call it 'hardly traumatic.' Do you know what hell is? Hell is what a little girl of eight goes through when the police dig up all the flowerbeds and question her mother for hours on end in a closed room. Hell is what is in your young son's eyes when his father deserts him without a word of explanation and his mother is accused of murder. Hell is seeing your children hurting and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. You asked me if I was pleased with their achievements." She leaned forward, her face twisted. "Surely even you could have come up with something a little more