Murder in Hampstead by Sabina Manea (read this if txt) 📕

by a long shot. ‘Yes, something like that. Don’t feel too sorry for me, will you?’

The blue eyes narrowed. He had probably worked out she was pulling his leg as he changed tack. ‘Another one?’

Lucia caught a glimpse of her watch. They had seamlessly moved into early evening, as if there had been a moratorium on time. How bizarre to have spent so long, and not notice, with someone she barely knew. She fruitlessly sought to conjure up a reason to leave – an appointment, a date, a class. Her mind was wilfully blank. Ultimately, there was nothing to lose.

‘Go on then.’

The second glass of cold wine erased all her misgivings, and she decided to give free rein to her curiosity. ‘What made you become a copper?’

Carliss glanced sideways into the light, just like Lucia had done moments earlier, and she sensed he hadn’t yet made up his mind on how much of himself to disclose. She knew she baffled him with the strange mix of artless and unreadable that she affected. He seemed like the kind of man who had spent his life sheltering from excessively strong feelings that might threaten to rattle his equilibrium.

He finally answered. ‘I felt this strong sense of duty. I know it sounds clichéd. My parents instilled it in me. I’m not a stickler for rules, as you may have gathered already, but I’m a firm believer in basic decency. Plus, I wasn’t brainy enough to be a doctor.’

‘I find that hard to believe. I think you enjoy the power you wield. Having the psychological advantage.’

‘Yes, I admit I do. I don’t use it for nefarious purposes, so that’s me absolved.’

Lucia couldn’t resist carrying on with her assessment of the policeman. ‘How come you haven’t risen any higher than Detective Chief Inspector, at your age?’

She waited to see if she’d gone too far – if he would take offence at the impertinent line of questioning. She had a habit of directness which most people – especially men – found disconcerting.

To her relief, the corner of his mouth lifted into a relaxed smile, as if he’d been expecting the question all along. ‘I like working in the field, not sitting behind a desk writing polite emails and sucking up to the boss. I couldn’t care less about getting promoted.’

And so it meandered, pleasurably, on and on, until a decision loomed.

‘Hungry?’

In her head, she hesitated for a split second, but the reply shot straight out. ‘Famished.’

By now, all prudence had gone to the winds, the way it does, deliciously, when you’ve got a bottle of wine and not much else swirling around your stomach. Carliss knew a quaint little French restaurant a few streets away, a home from home for hankering Parisians who had got waylaid on the pilgrimage trail to Kensington. They ate, drank and talked until they were unceremoniously turfed out at midnight.

‘Good night, Miss Steer.’

‘Good night, Detective Chief Inspector.’

‘David.’

‘Good night, David. And thank you for a very nice evening.’

He teetered on the step but thought better of it.

They parted.

Chapter 8

It was past ten o’clock when Lucia finally stirred. Shards of light streamed into the darkened bedroom along the edges of the blind. She quickly ran over the events of the previous evening in her head and was relieved she’d kept her wits about her. It would have been pretty bad form if she’d ended up in bed with the copper investigating her former client’s death – even though he did have very nice eyes and she had genuinely considered it a few times.

With plenty of strong coffee inside her, Lucia’s senses sharpened. All roads led to the Professor, and yet she eluded their grasp. To make any sense of her death, they had to start with an element of certainty. Where the Professor had come from was an unknown. Where she had landed, however, was not, so the logical first point of call was the Collaborative Mathematical Society. If the Professor’s work had really been all-encompassing, she was likely to have left deep footprints there. More importantly, Lucia relished the prospect of getting one up on the DCI.

A near perfect straight line joined her flat to the destination, Montague Street, where the Society was protectively tucked under a wing of the British Museum. The 168 was waiting patiently for her at the bottom of Rosslyn Hill and duly deposited its cargo on Southampton Row. Booth’s poverty map had categorised the area as predominantly red, with smatterings of yellow on the Squares, Bedford and Russell – middle class, well-to-do, with touches of upper-middle and upper classes, wealthy. Montague Street was definitely in the former category – respectable, though categorically out of the price range of the middle class. Every other door marked the entrance to an overpriced hotel that unsuccessfully tried to distinguish itself from its neighbouring rivals. They all had dingy basement dining rooms with litter piled up outside the windows.

The Society was in the same category, with its yellow stock brick darkened by two centuries of man-made grime and indistinguishable from the rest of the row, except for a matt brass plaque announcing its name to the world. Lucia had done her research – the Society was open to the general public on a Sunday. If they couldn’t yet determine what kind of person the Professor was in private, Lucia wanted to at least craft a picture of who the woman was professionally. She also hoped there would be one or two members of staff that she could gently interrogate – if she was particularly lucky, perhaps even someone who had been there long enough to remember the Professor.

The doorbell rang timidly. No answer. The second ring was cut short by the slow-motion opening of the door. In the dimly lit entrance hall stood a man somewhere in his eighties who looked like he might