A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (heaven official's blessing novel english txt) 📕

enemy never believed women would do the work they did. If they were armed it put them in much greater danger. Claude had told her the British were useless if they did not come with guns, but he had been angry about his friends. She had only come with information, she didn’t even know what kind, it was all coded, but he wasn’t having it. She had always thought, if only she had been armed, he might have been spared.

“Do I?” she said. “I think I do. But guilt doesn’t hang on reason. It is a great dark pool inside that reminds you, in your blackest moments, that you were spared and someone else wasn’t. I don’t think I quite know yet how to live with it.”

Darling pulled both of her hands into his. “I think what I fear most is that one of the ways you live with it is to constantly put yourself in danger, until one day . . .”

“Look, darling. Let me clear one thing up: I’ve always been like this. Do you think I would have signed up for the sort of work I did if I wasn’t a little inured to the danger? And though I tell you I’m not sure how one lives with that sort of guilt, I have lived with it. I have turned my face firmly to the future, hoping that time would do its healing-all-wounds best. I couldn’t have married you if I didn’t believe in that. But I do sometimes have very bad nights, and I think the loss of that man is why. I should perhaps have told you what happens to me sometimes, but I don’t know when it will strike. I think I worried that what happened today would usher in another episode of nighttime horrors. Perhaps I should have told you before. You might not have wanted me under the circumstances.”

“I’m afraid there are no circumstances under which I would not want you,” Darling said.

“And if it’s any consolation,” Lane pushed on, not wanting to accept the glow of warmth his words caused her just yet, “I actually think today I realized a little bit more that his death was not my fault. I don’t think it means I’m over it completely, but it really is the first time I’ve seen more clearly that it is, oh I don’t know, not about fault and more about circumstance. For example, I refused to take a weapon. It was the right choice. And even if I had had one, it would have been nearly impossible for him, say, to shoot and actually kill even one of his pursuers, speeding as they were on their motorcycle, and for all I know he wasn’t a very good shot. He certainly wasn’t army trained. So, you see, I think I’m beginning to understand logic might actually come into it.”

Darling sat back and looked at the dining room with its hushed atmosphere and thick white tablecloths. Outside, lanterns illuminated the paths to the rooms and suites, and the fountain was lit, the water playing and catching the light. “Not much of a honeymoon,” he said, “what with one thing and another.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t anything to compare it to. It was better than poor Mr. Renwick’s. With everything else going on in his life, the crowning tragic insult is that he should have been killed simply because he was mistaken for someone else. What do you think will happen with Ivy and the hapless brother-in-law?”

“Once it’s clear neither of them had anything to do with the death, I suppose they’ll be off back to Wisconsin. She looks like someone who eats brothers-in-law for breakfast. She’ll land on her feet and before long we’ll be reading about her in the business section of the newspaper. Do you mind terribly about the extra day?”

“Not at all. Once we’ve done our statements, I intend to spend the entire rest of the day in a lounge chair reading Zane Grey. Better late than never, I always say. What I’m wondering about is what will happen to Meg.”

Chapter Thirty

When they arrived at the police station the next morning, the place was abuzz with activity. Galloway’s office was crowded with policemen—Lane was happy to see one woman among them—all going through his drawers and boxing and labelling things. Martinez led them to his desk and asked them to sit down.

“Thanks for coming down. I know this held up your trip back home. Everything is ready for you,” Martinez said, sitting heavily in his chair. His exhaustion was palpable. “How are you doing, Mrs. Darling?”

“Quite all right,” Lane said, smiling. “It was a flesh wound. I imagine I’ll have sore ribs for a while, and then it will be like it never happened.”

Martinez nodded.

“Anyway,” she continued, “There’s a shawl I want to get before I go. I’ll cheer myself up with that. In fact, I was on my way to buy it when I got pulled into that car.”

“You’re taking it very well, ma’am.”

“For what it’s worth, Sergeant Martinez, I thought you were very brave. I imagine it took everything you had to stand up to your boss like that.”

“Thank you. Just my duty, and I have Inspector Darling to thank, I think, for the photographs. They arrived in an envelope yesterday from the Santa Cruz Inn. They were brought by a cab driver.” He pulled out the envelope in which the pictures had come and removed two of them. “I guess you’d like these?”

One photograph showed Lane and Darling standing, arm in arm, squinting very slightly from the sun, in front of the door of the San Xavier del Bac mission church door. In the second one, they were laughing at something. Priscilla Galloway had caught them as they prepared for the more formal picture, a lovely natural shot of them happy in each other’s company. Lane held this second picture an extra moment. What must it have been like for Priscilla