Grave Stones by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online Page B

thanks.’
    She seemed not to have heard him decline the offer, clip-clopping into the kitchen on pink stiletto mules and absent-mindedly filling the kettle. She turned around then to face him in an almost choreographed move and he wondered why such an attractive woman who didn’t look over thirty felt she had to be so obvious – wearing blatantly seductive clothes and an awful lot of make-up . She concentrated on spooning deliciously scented ground coffee into a cafetière and filled it with boiling water. ‘Well, the farmer’s old,’ she said. ‘I guess it was bound to happen sometime.’
    Hesketh-Brown hesitated. Grimshaw must have seemed ancient to her but all the same this was a callous response. Even if an expression of sympathy was sometimes a formality, he would still have expected it. He had to remind himself that Charlotte Frankwell wasn’t aware of the circumstances of Grimshaw’s death. He let her carry on believing that poor old Grimshaw had met with an accident. Too early to start promoting the official line, anyway. Until the post-mortem was completed, nothing was certain.
    Charlotte poured the coffee and they sat around the kitchen table, Hesketh-Brown’s mind busily memorising details. Charlotte Frankwell wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. There was a brand new Merc C 350 parked in the drive, which the last time he had run a fantasy price check had been retailing at £32K. And she had a child. A daughter. He’d seen a pair of small, pink shoes inthe laundry beyond the kitchen, which fairly obviously didn’t belong to Ms Frankwell. How the hell could she afford to live in a place like this? Rich parents? He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t think so. She didn’t have the polish of boarding or finishing school.
    He sat back in his chair. Must be divorce, then, Danny, my boy, he thought, and felt pleased with himself for sorting out an answer.
    ‘When did you last see the farmer, Mrs Frankwell?’
    Apart from raising her eyebrows at the ‘Mrs’, Charlotte simply looked bored. She carefully studied an intricately painted fingernail. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said impatiently.
    ‘Well, your land backs on to his.’
    She shot him a look of scorn. ‘Unfortunately,’ she said. ‘Fairly typically of my ex-husband – almost my entire view of the dilapidated farm is taken up with a barn that’s falling down and a cowshed that isn’t much better.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Perhaps Gabriel hoped I’d be out in the garden one day and the bloody things really would collapse on me.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    ‘The entire place,’ she said, ‘stinks like a sewer. I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known. And I’ll be selling up very soon. Moving to Spain the second I’ve sold. Put my darling daughter in boarding school. Preferably one with very long terms and short holidays.’
    All of a sudden Hesketh-Brown didn’t find Ms Frankwell at all attractive. In fact she looked downright ugly. He looked around him. ‘But it’s a nice place,’ hesaid. ‘You’re lucky to be able to afford it.’ At your age.
    Her eyes narrowed. She knew exactly what he was thinking.
    How?
    And she deliberately didn’t tell him.
    ‘Yes,’ she said coolly. ‘It is nice, isn’t it?’
    Danny was getting fed up with this game. ‘So you don’t know when you last saw Mr Grimshaw.’
    She looked up then and he caught a gaze of her amazing blue eyes heavily fringed with what he suspected were false eyelashes. ‘No.’
    He stood up then, leaving the barely touched coffee on the table. ‘And you haven’t noticed anything suspicious around the farm?’
    ‘Like what?’ She pursed her lips.
    This woman, he thought, is dangerous.
    He had the feeling he was playing a game involuntarily. But far from seducing him, this woman was annoying him. ‘Well then, if you can’t help…?’ He left the phrase open, the ball firmly and squarely in her court.
    ‘Sorry,’ she said – without regret.
    He gave up and left without saying