Ha'penny by Jo Walton Read Free Book Online Page B

getting him to do things for her. They’d have terrific rows sometimes, but she’d always charm him again. She was always asking him around. And now her silliness and her selfishness have killed him.”
    The door opened. Carmichael looked up, expecting the maid, and saw a self-possessed man in his early thirties, in a pin-striped suit and Marlborough tie.
    Mrs. Kinnerson screamed. Royston looked horrified.
    “Hello, I’m Matthew Kinnerson,” he said, inquiringly. His tone said that he well understood how to use politeness as a weapon.
    “They said you were dead!” Mrs. Kinnerson shrieked.
    “Well, the reports seem to have been exaggerated, as they say, so do calm down, Rose. Who are these gentlemen?”
    Carmichael stood. “I’m Inspector Carmichael, of Scotland Yard, and this is Sergeant Royston. I’m afraid there’s been a mistake.”
    “Ah.” Kinnerson looked Carmichael up and down. “Should you perhaps be next door? Might it not be as well to check on such things?”
    “Your mother, Lauria Gilmore, is dead,” Carmichael said.
    “I am aware of that, although your colleagues neglected to inform me and I had to garner the information from the pages of the public press,” Kinnerson said, tapping the newspaper under his arm. “ ‘Actress Blown to Bits.’ Poor Lauria. Yet in a way, she would have liked to go with a bang. Am I to believe that you had reason to believe I was blown up with her?”
    “Somebody was,” Carmichael said. “He was unrecognizable.”
    “And you jumped to the conclusion that it was me? Why didn’t you telephone my office, where I’d have been delighted to speak to you, instead of driving all the way out here and distressing my wife?”
    That was a very good question, and one for which Carmichael had no good answer. “The Hampstead police had your home address, but not your work telephone number,” Carmichael said. “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”
    Kinnerson raised an eyebrow, and Carmichael squirmed.
    “They thought she was your girlfriend,” Mrs. Kinnerson said, her voice cracking. “They were taken in by her makeup and her way of talking and thought she was a tart you were keeping in Hampstead. They wanted to know if you were there overnight.”
    Carmichael felt himself blush under Kinnerson’s considering gaze. “Another misapprehension of the Hampstead police,” he said.
    “Not quite what one expects from Scotland Yard,” Mr. Kinnerson said. “Go and tidy yourself up, Rose.”
    Mrs. Kinnerson, seeming glad to be released, made for the door.
    “Well, now that this seems to have been cleared up, can I say good-bye to you two gentlemen?” Kinnerson asked.
    “I want to ask you some questions about your mother,” Carmichael said.
    “You seem to know very little about her if you imagine she would allow herself to be a kept woman,” Kinnerson said.
    “I know almost nothing about her except her reputation as an actress,” Carmichael said. “That’s why I want to talk to you. I want to know who her friends were, who she was, who might have been with her this morning, why someone would want to blow her up, or why she might have been making a bomb herself.”
    Was it his imagination, or did Kinnerson tense a little at that last question?
    “I didn’t know her very well,” he said. “I don’t expect I can be much help to you. Does this have to be now? My wife’s upset, I’d like to go to her.”
    His wife was upset, but he wasn’t. Cool as a whole plate of cucumber sandwiches, Carmichael thought. “I could talk to you in the Yard, but we’re here now, and there isn’t all that much to talk about, as you’ve said,” he said, as professionally as he could manage. “Let’s get it out of the way now, shall we?”
    “Very well, Inspector,” Kinnerson said, and sat down on the chair that Carmichael had first taken. “What do you want to know?”
    “I suppose you are Lauria Gilmore’s next of kin?”
    “I suppose I must be. Not that she had