A Match Made for Murder Iona Whishaw (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

the subject.” Darling smiled and considered returning the compliment. How very lucky he felt to have persuaded her to marry him. “Now then, the disquieting villa people.”

“To be honest I don’t think I should say, outside here, as we are. It’s well past lunchtime. Ought we to get dressed?”

“As much as I’d like to gaze at you in that red bathing suit, yes. And then should we go horseback riding or something? I understood from Galloway it is the done thing. He’s given me the name of an outfit that hires out horses.”

“You’re not forgetting we are dining with that nice couple from Wisconsin?” Lane collected her book and towel and prepared to leave the pool. They walked past a row of new palm trees, and along the winding path to their room.

“All right, we’re out of earshot. What did you learn about the villa people? By that, I assume you mean that May–December couple,” Darling said, closing the door and pulling off his tie.

“Another May, or even April, has been introduced. I heard the woman leaving the villa with a giggling but loving adieu, promising not to spend too much money, and then she hurried off and met a very young man with a moustache in one of the corridors in the main building and, well, they got into a bit of a scrum.”

“You followed her? You’re absolutely without scruples, you know that?” Darling said with evident admiration.

“I didn’t mean to see them; I came around the corner looking for the gift shop and there they were. I beat a hasty retreat and came out to the pool to think about it.”

“Concluding?”

“That she is not particularly happy and seems to be carrying on a desperate affair with a young man with a moustache. Probably younger than she is.”

“Let that be a lesson to you. A double life never did anyone any good. You ready?”

“Yes. Can we give the horses a miss, do it another day? I’ve just got stuck into my book and I might need a nap to prepare for this dinner tonight. We were up rather late last night,” Lane said, pinning up one side of her hair, directing a glance at him in the mirror.

Darling, a slave to the curve of her cheekbones and the fall of her auburn hair, took her hand. “Right. Lunch and a lie down. Perhaps I can tell you about my morning. I’m not sure I’d go as far as ‘disquieting,’ but something like it.”

The first rush of lunch eaters had come and gone, and they were able to get a table overlooking the cadmium yellow and moss-green-tiled fountain they so admired. The water glinted in the sunlight, and trees with yellow puffballs in full bloom—which Lane had learned were called sweet acacia—bobbed decorously in a gentle afternoon breeze.

“I think I didn’t quite recognize the Galloway I knew before,” Darling said, pulling apart a roll. “He was very informal, not to say slapdash. He introduced me to an earnest young sergeant as his ‘pal.’ I can’t imagine introducing anyone to Ames that way. What was interesting is that this Sergeant Martinez looked to be a man of much more formality. He leapt up and shook my hand. He was in some distress because he wasn’t able to find an arrest report and some evidence he needed for court. Galloway was dismissive of him when we were alone together. ‘Good at the lingo and brave, but not really up to the job of a real policeman’ sort of thing. Said he had white policemen who are more reliable. I don’t think I would have suspected him of that sort of prejudice. I feel like he’s not who I thought he was, if you see what I mean.”

“I’m sure you get that sort of attitude at home. I think Constable Terrell must have to put up with that sort of rubbish,” Lane said, referring to Jerome Terrell, the Nelson Police Department’s new hire and the first black officer on the force.

“Yes, but not from me, is my point.”

Hidalgo shifted his behind on the wooden chair he used as his surveillance base across the road from the hotel. There was a field with a few scrawny cattle and some mesquite trees near the road that threw a little shade in the heat of the day. He hadn’t minded the job at first, especially when he got a glimpse of her, but he began to wonder why a man would put his wife to work on a racket like that.

He sat up straight when a cab pulled up—not at the foot of the stairs up to the main entrance of the hotel but farther down, at the gate where the help went in and out. A young man in a nice suit got out and leaned into the car, saying something to the driver. The young man looked like an operator, Hidalgo thought. Maybe he was seeing one of the maids. A full ten minutes went by, and he was beginning to lose interest when the gate opened. He was startled to see that it was the young man ushering Meg Holden hurriedly out the gate and into the cab.

Frowning, he watched the cab disappear in a cloud of dust and make the turn at the end of the road that would take them back to town. This was new. He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the time. Should he wait till they got back? He tried to imagine Mr. Griffin’s response. He’d be angry if he hadn’t followed through. On the other hand, maybe this was something to do with Mr. Griffin, someone he’d sent to fetch her, and therefore none of his business.

James Griffin sat at his desk in a dark and cluttered office at the back of his restaurant. He’d come in through the front door, as he did every morning, just to revel in the size of the place when it was empty and quiet and be