Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull Read Free Book Online

‘our Edith was missing’ . . . again, not the sort of husband he would have thought to Edith Hemmings’s taste.
    â€˜Were you long married?’ Hennessey asked.
    â€˜No, sir . . . just a few months.’
    â€˜Months!’
    â€˜Yes, sir, about eighteen, that’s all. Just a year and a half, if that. I was a bachelor getting close to retirement and I thought, well that’s me, lived alone, set to die alone, then along comes our Edith. We met in a pub in town. It was she who started to talk to me. I was just in there for a pint to get out of the house for an hour or two . . . I get fed up with my own company now and again . . . and it changed my life. I’ve never been very successful with women and I wondered what she wanted at first but she seemed properly interested in me and then one thing led to another and another and another and eventually we got married quietly at the registry office and she came and settled with me in my little house in Dringhouses. She was keen to know that I owned the house and that I wasn’t renting it, she just wanted that bit of security, I assumed, and that’s fair enough. So, anyway, I showed her the papers about the house, the little bit of mortgage I am still paying off . . . after that she was OK about it. Quite happy. She was Mrs Hemmings. Mine . . . our Edith for me to come home to.’
    â€˜I see.’ Hennessey rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his meaty hands together. ‘What do you know about your late wife’s background?’
    â€˜Very little, tell you the truth. It might seem strange but it really was a very rapid thing we did. One day I was alone in the world . . . not unhappy . . . lifelong bachelor, the next married and the next a widower.’
    â€˜Was she employed, or did she have any outside interest?’
    Hemmings shrugged. ‘Well, she was not employed when she was my wife but before that . . . well, she was working as a sort of housemaid but not a maid . . . a helper . . . like a companion, she and the elderly gentleman who owned the house, somewhere in the country outside York, somewhere like that . . . out in the sticks. She didn’t talk about it very much; frankly, to be honest, she didn’t talk about her life very much at all.’
    â€˜Do you have the old boy’s address?’ Hennessey asked warmly.
    â€˜Yes, I have it. I can let you have it. It’s at home though. But yes, I can let you have her previous address.’
    â€˜We’d like to chat to him. He might help us get to know more about your wife, nothing more than that.’
    â€˜It’s more his family that is likely to help you. I think that he was a bit gone in the head and difficult to live with. I think our Edith was glad to get away from there. That was the impression I got anyway.’
    â€˜I see . . . so . . . can I ask you, when did you last see your wife?’
    â€˜See? Two days ago. Wednesday today, so last saw her on Sunday, so then that’s three days ago. She left the house to go to the shops on Sunday evening about five p.m. We had run out of milk and so she put on her white coat and said, “I’ll be back soon” . . . or “I’ll be ten minutes”, something like that. There’s a little shop just five minutes’ walk away, you understand; it opens seven days a week and stays open late. It has to do that to compete with the supermarkets . . . bad position for a man to be in, I always thought. I don’t earn much at the biscuit factory but at least the hours are civilized.’
    â€˜Yes . . . yes . . .’ Hennessey allowed impatience to edge into his voice.
    â€˜So when she didn’t come back after about an hour I went out looking for her. Who wouldn’t? I went to the shop but the fella