BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

killed the man, as would have been my right. Sent her away . . . for a time. I might have beaten her.” He shrugged and turned away. “I loved my wife. I do not know if Eldred loved his.”

* * *

Tuesday night became Wednesday morning. The promised officer had failed to arrive and when Rozlyn called in to find out what had happened was told that there’d been trouble in town at one of the clubs and there’d been no one to spare.

“On a Tuesday? Sorry, I suppose it’s Wednesday. We don’t usually get problems until the weekend.”

Private party that got out of hand, she was told. A fight had broken out, someone glassed and another with a broken arm. Mouse took a back seat to drunken brawls.

The junior doctor came at one o’clock. He looked as exhausted as Rozlyn felt and could tell her little more than Jenny already had.

“You should go home,” he said. “Get some sleep. He’s stable and we’ll call you when he wakes.”

Reluctantly, Rozlyn had to accept that this was good sense. “Tell him I came and that I’ll be coming back.”

“Will do. Or, rather, I’ll pass the message on. My shift ends at six.”

“Think you’ll make it until then?”

The man smiled wearily. “I’m mainlining caffeine,” he joked. “He hasn’t any family?”

“Not that I know. His mother died a few years back. He still lived in the same house, but I’ve never heard him talk about other family.”

The doctor nodded. “Go home,” he said. “We’ll let you know.”

Rozlyn went, relieved to be out of the place but guilty about leaving. She stood in the car park, looking back towards the illuminated windows of the ward and slipping back in memory to that other time. Leaving her father there. Dead. She’d stood outside of the hospital then. That other place. Trying to recall her father’s face from that time only a few days before when he’d been alive and happy and so full of living there could never have been enough time to do it all. And she thought about what she’d just told the doctor about Mouse, how she’d never heard him talk of family and she knew that, should their roles have been reversed, Mouse or Jenny or even Brook would have told him just the same about Rozlyn.

* * *

Cate gave up on life just before dawn. Treven watched her face and saw that momentary transition that told him that her spirit had fled and the body was now empty of that which made it human in his eyes.

He sighed and let his head drop into his hands.

“Oh God,” Eldred whispered. “Oh sweet Jesus, no. He’s killed her!”

“Hush man, you don’t know that.” Edmund’s voice, though reasonable, held no conviction.

“Don’t I? Cate is dead and he was with her the night she died. I know that much, brother.”

Edmund looked at Treven. “Can you account for his movements?” he asked. “Was he within your hall?”

Treven would have liked to lie, but he could not. “Hugh returned late,” he said. “He told me he had been with Cate, but that she left him swiftly and vowed never to take time with him again.”

“And he returned to you? At what hour?”

Treven shook his head. “Late. Early. Not long before dawn. He said he had gone from Cate to . . . another. He did not name her.”

“You should keep your reeve on a tighter leash,” Edmund said angrily. “Is this a taste of the King’s law? The King’s peace?”

“It was my doing, not the Lord Aelfred’s,” Treven exploded angrily. “And you are right. I should have bound him tighter, even sent him from me, and I swear this to you, if Hugh is guilty he’ll be punished according to the law. If Hugh is guilty.”

“Punished!” Eldred exploded. “So he’ll pay me gold in compensation? Cate paid with her life for her foolishness. Aye, and for mine in letting it pass without greater punishment.”

“I’ve heard tell you punished her enough.”

“What does that mean?”

“You beat the girl. It’s common knowledge. Small wonder she fell in with the likes of Hugh.”

Eldred turned, fists raised and Edmund moved to intervene. Kendryk, sitting silent in his corner roused himself. “Is this a way to behave? Grown men, fighting over the body of one newly dead. Eldred, if you would accuse Hugh de Vries, then do so and we will have judgement over him, but you’ll not raise fists or brawl in my presence or in that of your dead wife. And you, Lord, you think any of this is seemly?”

Treven shook his head. “None of it,” he said. “Hugh and I will face your judgement, but it is in my heart to ask, why, if you knew your woman was lying with another, why you did nothing?”

“And what should I do? Kill her? Take his life?”

“Had you discovered them and killed Hugh, I would have heard your plea and demanded recompense, but no law would have condemned you utterly. You should and could have made complaint. To me, to Abbot Kendryk here. To the shire courts.” He took a deep breath and asked. “You knew she was with child?”

From his reaction it was clear that Edmund did not, but Eldred nodded.

“And that the child, most like, was Hugh’s?”

“It could have been mine.”

“Could it?” Treven was not sure what moved him to ask that question, but it hit the mark. Eldred flushed scarlet and turned away.

“Eldred?” Edmund was clearly not privy to this secret either.

“You’d have welcomed the child as your own,” Treven said softly. He reached a hand towards the other man, then let it fall. “Eldred, you would not be the first to foster and love another man’s son when you could not make your own. Forgive me, I would have willingly left this