The Unkindest Cut by Gerald Hammond Read Free Book Online

Explain. Urgent call surgery. Attempt to rob knifepoint. Microchipped the … the intruder. Got blooded, went home to change. Sorry delay. Please enjoy.’
    She stood back, confident that she had given a full explanation. Manfred was a tall man with a head of carefully waved hair and a handsome face ruined, in Jane’s opinion, by an effeminate mouth. Putting flesh on the bare bones, he began a tolerable speech of explanation and apology.
    As Manfred finished, Jane found herself breathing heavily with nothing to do at last except to get married. But before that could happen she was approached by a confused-looking Mrs Ilwand. Emotion flushed over her. Before the other could speak, Jane burst out, ‘I’m sorry about your wedding dress, so sorry, but the pup was spouting blood – I had to put it down in the end – I couldn’t just leave it. I was going to—’
    Mrs Ilwand managed to break in without slapping her and instead held on tightly to her forearms in a half reassuring and half restraining embrace. ‘My dear, never mind the bloody dress. I don’t have a daughter to pass it on to. I urged you to look after it so that I could give it to a charity shop. I’ll make a donation instead. More importantly, are
you
all right? That’s the point. I could barely understand what the best man was going on about, but I gather it has something to do with an injured pup and lots of blood …?’ Mrs Ilwand looked at Jane with a sympathetic tilt of her head and grasped her for another hug.
    Jane could have fainted with relief; she couldn’t believe that Mrs Ilwand was being so forgiving about the ruined wedding dress. She had been thinking of the bloodying of the wedding dress as the ultimate calamity of the day.
    â€˜Well … I’m a bit shaken,’ Jane replied. She was tempted to add ‘
but not stirred
’; but backed away from such flippancy. ‘I’ll have the dress sent to specialist cleaners. They get quite used to getting blood out of vets’ clothes.’
    Mrs Ilwand laughed. ‘I said not to mind the dress. But what you’ve got on …’ She ground to a halt, short of words as her eyes ran up and down Jane’s figure, taking in the blatant transparent nature of the replacement dress.
    â€˜Shocking, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Well, it does look more like a nightie. Where did you get it from in a hurry?’
    â€˜It
is
a nightie,’ Jane explained. ‘It was the only all-white thing I could find. Not that anybody will think me entitled to a white wedding when everybody knows that the groom and I have been cohabiting for yonks and if they look too closely they might also notice a slightly bulging waistline …’
    Mrs Ilwand was still laughing. ‘They don’t place too much emphasis on that, these days,’ she said. ‘In the West Highlands things may be different. I was married in that virginial dress but nobody was taken in by—’
    â€˜Errr, I’m afraid that’s enough girl talk, thank you.’ A voice broke in to interrupt the conversation. Jane looked around and realized that a sort of queue had started to form in front of her, at the head of which stood Ian Fellowes, the local detective inspector who was also Deborah’s husband and Keith Calder’s son-in-law. He was among those who felt obliged to wait before talking to the bride. Now he had lost patience. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt so rudely, and Jane, best wishes of course. Now, everybody else please back off. We’ll let the full story be known shortly.’ Then back to Jane he said in a quieter tone, ‘Jane, tell me about this attempted robbery.’
    â€˜I can’t add anything to what Manfred said,’ she replied, now beginning to regret having been so informative about her delay in arriving. She rather wished she had said nothing and explained all later, once she’d actually got