Read Wexford 22 - The Monster In The Box for Free Online

had amused him that people had begun to look on him, especially when on their home territory, as a harbinger of doom.
       'I told her nothing was wrong and then I asked him if he'd mind telling me what he was doing while he was at home with his son. There was just an outside chance, Mike, that she'd deny that he had been – but, no. Not a flicker of wonder or doubt. "I was doing press-ups and leg curls – if you know what they are – in the kitchenette." They called kitchens kitchenettes then, even if they weren't particularly small.
       'Mrs Targo told the boy to say goodnight to his dad and Alan went up to his father. He didn't say anything but – well, to my surprise, kissed him on the cheek. Then he fondled the dog's neck and that pleased Targo. He smiled and nodded. Alan went up to his mother and held up his arms but she shook her head. "Not the way I am now, Allie," she said. "You're too heavy."
       'She was very unhappy with Targo. I guessed that then and what I thought was confirmed when I met her again by chance years later. She and Targo were divorced by that time and she'd remarried. That evening in Jewel Road I could see she was exhausted but he didn't get up. "You can make yourself useful for once, Kath," he said, "and show the officer out. I'm tired. Oh, wait, though," he said to me. "There's one thing you may want to know. I said I'd never spoken to that Elsie Carroll and I never did, but it's well known down this street that her two-timing husband was carrying on with a woman in Kingsmarkham. Dirty bitch. No better than a streetwalker."
       'Eric! Not in front of the boy,' Kathleen said.
       'He don't understand. That Carroll'd have been happy as Larry to see the back of his wife, that I can tell you.'
       'I thanked Targo and said he'd been very helpful, the way we were supposed to, though he hadn't. All he'd done was teach me something about his own character. Kathleen took me out into the hall after that and sent the boy upstairs before she opened the front door and let the cold air in. I turned back on the doorstep and I asked her what she thought of the Tuesday-evening dressmaking class. I said my mother was thinking of signing up for it.
       'Oh, it's lovely,' she said, showing more enthusiasm than I'd seen from her before. "Eric's so good staying here with Alan. I never miss." I had the impression she only said that to make me think all was fine with them on the domestic front. It was all part of that pretend-everything-in-the-garden's-lovely attitude people adhered to then. "Well, I'll have to miss it for my confinement."
       'They still said that then. Well, some of them did, the really old-fashioned ones, the sort who still put on a hat to go to the shops. There were women in the villages round here, in the cottages without running water or electricity, where they referred to their husbands as "my master".'
       'OK,' said Burden. 'I can see that Targo could have left his son for ten minutes, say, and gone along the back lane to number 16 – 16 right?'
       Wexford nodded.
       'And gone through the gate into the back garden – maybe even concealed himself and watched George Carroll leave on his bike before going into the house. He finds poor Mrs Carroll upstairs and kills her, strangles her. Then he leaves the way he came where he is seen by Harold Johnson, who doesn't recognise him in the dark. It could be done. Easily. But why, Reg? Why? '

Chapter 4

    Burden was looking at the photocopy of the chapter from Chambers' book Wexford had given him. It was ten pages long. 'There's absolutely no motive,' he said at last. 'Of course, finding a motive's not strictly necessary but you have to admit it helps. Where's your circumstantial evidence? There's none against Targo unless you count Harold Johnson seeing a man cross the garden but, according to Chambers, he was never prepared to swear in court that it was George Carroll or anyone else. Or is Chambers wrong there and he took