Body Line by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles Read Free Book Online Page B

voice that it was impossible to pursue the subject.
    ‘Then it looks as though you are the nearest thing he had to next of kin,’ Slider concluded.
    ‘I am his ex -wife,’ she reminded him again, sharply. ‘I am not responsible for anything to do with him.’
    ‘Not legally, of course,’ Slider said, as though there was another kind of responsibility. She eyed him and opened her mouth to retort but he got in first – soothingly. ‘I was just wondering whether there was anyone else who needed to be told about his death.’
    ‘ And you were wondering who’s going to pay for the funeral, I suppose,’ she suggested tartly.
    ‘Oh, I dare say there’ll be enough in his estate to cover that. He seems to have been living in comfort.’
    This seemed to interest her. ‘You’ve found money?’
    ‘I didn’t mean that – just that his style of living suggests he was comfortably-off.’
    She looked down at her hands and then up again. ‘I thought perhaps he had got into financial trouble and committed suicide.’
    ‘It wasn’t suicide,’ Slider said.
    She surveyed his face keenly. ‘You’re sure of that? David wasn’t a very – resolute person. Liable to look for the easy way out when things – set him back. Not a striver against misfortune.’
    Why was she keen to sell them on suicide, Slider wondered. ‘He didn’t kill himself,’ he said.
    ‘Sometimes these things can be made to look like an accident,’ she said, and then hurried on, as though she had come to a decision. ‘You needn’t worry about the funeral. I’ll make all the arrangements, if that helps. I don’t suppose there’s anyone else who—’
    ‘Cares for him?’ he suggested gently.
    ‘I don’t care for him,’ she said. ‘I did once, but that was a long time ago. However, there is such a thing as common decency.’
    She hadn’t looked at Atherton since they’d sat down. She had forgotten him. And he could see she was ready to talk to Slider. He wondered again how Slider did it. Animal magic – pheromones – mesmerism? Something.
    ‘He was an attractive man,’ Slider suggested.
    ‘You don’t know how attractive.’ She stopped abruptly as something occurred to her. ‘You haven’t said yet how he died. Was it a car crash?’
    Slider held her eyes. They were not blue, as he had first thought, but greenish-grey. Unusual, but not very – what was the word? – sympathique , in the French sense. Better suited to expressing froideur than warmth. ‘I’m sorry to tell you that he was murdered.’
    For the first time she lost her composure. Colour drained from her face, and she looked suddenly older. Her lips rehearsed some words she didn’t speak. At last she got a grip. ‘How can you be sure?’
    ‘He was shot in the back of the head,’ Slider said.
    The words were as brutal as the shot itself.
    ‘Oh my God,’ she said, staring at him as if he had slapped her. She put both her hands to her mouth. But evidently her mind was still working. After a moment she said from behind them, ‘Was it over some woman?’
    ‘That’s what we have to find out,’ Slider said, ‘and it means going into his background, which is why I hoped you would be able to help us. The more we know about him, the better chance we have of finding who did this.’
    ‘There’ll be a woman at the bottom of it,’ she said, and now there was a hint of bitterness in her tone. ‘There always was. That’s what killed our marriage – women. He couldn’t resist them. And they couldn’t resist him. To some extent he wasn’t to blame. They threw themselves at him. He was so handsome, so charming. He had a way of making you feel you were the only person in the world who mattered. And of course it was sincere – at the time. It took me years to understand that. He wasn’t pretending. It was just that he made every woman feel like that.’
    ‘It must have been a useful thing for a doctor.’
    She didn’t take it amiss. ‘Yes. The ultimate bedside