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

anyone know right away what kind of person a girl was? What kind of person was Tina Van Eyck, for example? It wasn’t enough that her smile made his heart flutter. Her initial fury about the garage door showed some depth of anger that maybe ought to worry him, not to mention her sudden antagonism toward the police. Where had that come from? She had originally struck him as attractively confident and sure, but he worried she might not be that different from Violet, who had seemed always furious at him for something.

“Are you sure you don’t mind? It’s almost the last time I’ll abandon you. I promised Galloway I’d go for a drive around his district. I’ll be back right after lunch, and we’ll go for a ride at that ranch up in the hills that he recommended.”

“I’ll try to cope with just the pool and my book. I may even have a nap, since this place fairly cries out for afternoon napping. Or perhaps I’ll send Angela and the Armstrongs a postcard. Shall I send one to Ames signed by you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never live it down, and neither would he.”

“You’re quite sweet when you’re gruff. Have fun with Galloway, whom . . . well, never mind.” Lane put her straw hat on, pinned it, and looked for The Nine Tailors.

“What?” asked Darling.

“It’s nothing. It’s unfair, really, I shouldn’t judge on one meeting. I just don’t think I quite like the man. I thought, don’t you know, that he was being rude about his wife and she didn’t care for it.” She kissed him and swept out with her book and a towel.

Darling stood at the front of the inn waiting for Galloway in something of a turmoil. For one, Lane in her red bathing suit with her straw hat tilted over her left eye was hard to abandon, but he also became aware of something about being married to Lane. He was used to forming judgements, usually, he told himself, quite accurate ones, but he now had an astute and intelligent wife to provide a new perspective. He realized he’d had a feeling about their evening at Paul Galloway’s home that he’d not been able to articulate, and Lane had just identified what he now saw to be true. As the police car pulled up and Galloway leaned over and called out to him to hop in, Darling wondered anew about his old colleague.

The water in the turquoise-tiled pool stirred and eddied in bands of luminescent blue and gold in the late morning sun. Lane, soothed by its beauty and the quiet talking and laughing around her, rested her book on her stomach and closed her eyes. The warmth of the sun on her eyelids, the gentle cooing of the doves, and the lapping, fading sounds that accompany the drifting call of a nap by a pool sent her into a doze.

Then two shots.

When they came, it felt like they had come from inside her, from some dream that had been wiped away by its own sounds. A scream and the scattering of birds, all rising at once in a panic, brought her fully to life, and she leapt up, suddenly aware that those few people who had been by the pool when she’d gone to sleep had all but disappeared. One older woman on the opposite side of the pool was on her feet, clutching her towel against her chest and looking frantically around.

“What was that?” the woman cried hoarsely.

“Stay here,” Lane commanded. The scream seemed to have come from near the villa somewhere, and she ran around the hedge, toward the villa patio, wrapping her towel around her waist.

The Bette Davis blonde, her hands over her mouth, her face white, was staring down at the body of Jack Renwick, lying flat on his back, his chest rent by the bullets that had mowed him down. Lane rushed to the woman and took her arms and shook her gently to get her to stop staring at the dead man and focus.

“Run and get the office to call an ambulance and the police. Now!”

Lane’s commanding tone seemed to bring the terrified woman around, and she stumbled toward the main building, sobbing. Lane knelt down and, stilling the turning of her stomach at the sight of the torn flesh and gory white shirt, felt Renwick’s neck for a pulse. A pointless gesture, she knew. He was dead. One of the bullets had certainly penetrated his heart. A man from the front desk barrelled toward the scene, shouting, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” He leaned forward and appeared about to try to do something with the body.

“Don’t touch him, please,” Lane said firmly, reaching her hand out to block him. “The police will need him as he is.”

The man, uncertain anyway, recoiled and looked helpless. The blond woman’s husband came out of the villa, bemused, woken from a nap, and demanded to know what all the racket was, then stopped, aghast at the scene before him.

“You,” Lane commanded, looking at the blond woman’s husband, “can you get something from your room to cover him with?” She could have gone to her own room, right nearby, but she was reluctant to leave until the police arrived; she had learned during the war that it was better to keep people in shock busy.

“How could this happen?” the distraught front-desk agent cried, wringing his hands. The blond woman stood frozen in the doorway of the main building, a handkerchief up to her nose, reluctant to come any closer. The old woman by the pool hovered uncertainly near the hedge, craning her neck to see what was happening. Other guests who had been sitting down to lunch had come out and pressed up behind the blonde.

“How could this have happened?” the desk agent repeated.

That, thought Lane, is a good question. She turned and looked in the direction the bullets must have come from. She remembered they had