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

pleasure?’ She didn’t stand up to greet them. They were on her turf.

Carliss waded straight in. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Miss Poole. Are you and Adam romantically involved?’

Emilia laughed. When she was done, her eyes looked as steely as those of the Professor, as Lucia could clearly remember from the last time she was in the library. ‘What a sweet way of describing it, Inspector. And what if we are?’

‘Can you please answer the question?’

Lucia was furious that she had them both on the back foot – two school children up before the headteacher, waiting to be reprimanded.

Emilia shrugged indifferently. ‘Yes, I’m sleeping with Adam. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Did you know that he stands to inherit Beatrice Hall?’ continued Carliss.

‘No, I had no idea.’ She looked maddeningly blank.

‘Did you know the Professor was planning to change her will and disinherit him before she died?’

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of this will.’ No hoped-for flash of admission across her serene face – not as much as a blink.

‘He didn’t confide in you, even though you’re in a relationship?’

She tilted her head forward with contempt. ‘Just because I go to bed with him occasionally doesn’t make me his agony aunt, Inspector.’

Lucia would have dearly liked to step in, but she bit her tongue and hoped the policeman would move on to a more effective line of questioning.

‘Does the name Stewart Ross mean anything to you, Miss Poole?’ he carried on hopefully, trying in vain to deliver the killer blow.

Instead of being ruffled, Emilia smiled. ‘It’s Adam. We didn’t want the Professor knowing about our affair. It’s unlikely she would have approved – I was here as her employee, after all. Full marks for working it out, Inspector, though I suspect you might have had a little help.’ This she addressed pointedly at Lucia.

‘Lovely brooch,’ retorted Lucia.

‘Ah, this. It was on the desk when I came in. I thought I’d try it on – I must have forgotten to take it off. Not really my style.’ She unhooked it gently off her dress and flicked it to one side.

‘What are you doing in the library anyway?’ asked Carliss. Lucia could see he was running out of ideas.

‘I’m sorting through the Professor’s papers. It would be a shame for all of this work to go to waste. Once I’ve filed everything, I’m planning to donate it to the Collaborative Mathematical Society. It’s what she would have wanted. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with it.’ She went back to her papers, shutting out the unwanted visitors.

Powerless, they shuffled back downstairs.

‘What did you make of that, Lucia?’

‘I don’t know what to think any more. She clearly couldn’t care less about Adam. Whether she was using him to get to the inheritance, I don’t know. She and her employer spent practically every waking hour together. It’s plausible that the will would have been mentioned at some point.’

‘I don’t know what it is about that woman – she throws me every time. If one of my sergeants had been that cack-handed with an interview, I would have sent them packing.’

The humiliation stung, and Lucia could see it. ‘She didn’t waste any time moving in to take the Professor’s place. I wonder what she’s planning to do next. Not elope with Adam, that’s for sure. She knows she’s being watched now.’

They stood on the steps outside, and Carliss lit a cigarette. ‘I’d sworn your mate Nina’s tempting Sobranies would be the last, but I’m stressed,’ he explained apologetically. ‘Want one?’

‘No, thanks. They don’t help.’

He shrugged with resignation. ‘I know they don’t. I just wish I could give them up.’

‘We all have our vices.’ Lucia’s sat quietly in a smooth envelope in her bedroom, waiting to be consumed as required.

‘What’s yours? White Burgundy doesn’t count, by the way.’

‘You rumbled me. That’s the only one.’ She was fully aware of the irony engendered by the earlier drugs bust. ‘I wouldn’t mind an early night. I’ll let you know if I hear back from Nina. And I’ll go back to work at Beatrice Hall tomorrow. That way I can keep close tabs on Emilia.’

‘Early night it is then.’

Lucia ambled back up Hampstead High Street. The rush hour was long gone, and the shop shutters were coming down, one by one, ready for a night’s rest. A lone old man nursed a cloudy pint at a table outside a pub even more sterile than the Hampstead Belle. Drugs, sex, money, vengeance, murder – and no closer to finding out how they fitted together. She had begun to question her own judgment. Perhaps Carliss had been right all along, and the rest was a mere distraction.

She sat on her bed, laptop propped on a pillow and a glass of cold wine on the bedside table. She was itching to dig around, but she had already exhausted the information she had on the suspects. Until Nina worked her magic, there was little chance of unearthing anything new. She opened the bedside drawer and looked at the envelope. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing. She needed to relax.

With the alcohol and the ketamine inside her, she soon sank into floating, pleasurable oblivion. Jumbled thoughts coursed through her head. For no particular reason, she remembered how Carliss had her pegged as a rich Home Counties girl. She pictured what she would say to him: ‘My mum brought me up on her own. She had me young, and my dad legged it as soon as she told him she was pregnant. We lived in a small council flat up in Hampstead. She was a dinner lady at the local primary school. Every Saturday we’d go to the library. It was my special treat – two or three books to see me through