A Dangerous Deceit by Marjorie Eccles Page A

a Yale lock?’
    â€˜No, that’s just it, it’s a mortice. The door couldn’t have locked itself behind him when he went in, and there seems no reason why he should have locked it himself. If someone was in there with him, they turned the key and took it with them when they left. Why?’
    â€˜Panicking at what they’d done, or giving themselves a bit of time, who knows? I gather the foundry hadn’t been working for a day or two, but somebody from the machine shop next door was bound to go in and find him, probably sooner rather than later.’ He threw a sharp look at Joe. ‘So what are you thinking, Sergeant?’
    â€˜Looking less and less possible that it was an accident, isn’t it, sir?’
    Reardon made a non-committal sound which Joe took to be agreement.
    Murder. Manslaughter, at least. A serious crime, whichever it was. And contrary to public belief, one that could still sicken the police. The taking of a human life brought a pretty sharp reminder that police business was more than just keeping the peace, that it also dealt with matters of life and death.
    â€˜Remind me, what time was he found?’
    â€˜About half-eleven. Dr Dysart was called straight away and she estimated he hadn’t been dead long – three or four hours at most. His wife says they left the house for work at about half past eight.’
    â€˜They?’
    â€˜Yes. He gave her a lift as far as the shops and then took his car on to the garage where it was booked in to have the brakes adjusted. Walking from there would have taken about twenty minutes, so he should have arrived at the office before half nine at the latest, but nobody was unduly worried when he didn’t turn up – he was the boss, he didn’t have to clock in.’
    â€˜All right, Sergeant.’ Reardon squared his notes together. ‘Usual procedures, then.’
    Usual procedures. That meant summoning up the fairly limited resources open to Folbury’s police, who were not accustomed to dealing with murder or the routine that went with it.
    â€˜I’ll do my best to get extra manpower if it’s needed, but I warn you we probably won’t.’
    This was likely to be true, but it shouldn’t be a long drawn-out business – probably solved by the end of the week if they were lucky. This wasn’t detective fiction, just a small-town murder. Likely as not, the culprit would turn out to be someone who’d been known to have it in for the victim and seized his chance when Aston had stumbled and fallen into the sand, or had knocked him down in a fight begun in the heat of the moment. But then, more deliberately, had held him down until he stopped breathing. Somebody who knew him, where he worked, what his routine was. Unlikely they’d be looking for a stranger, anyway. Most murderers were known to their victims, and it was more than possible that someone else, who knew that bad blood had existed, would come forward and say so.
    Reardon was staring at the map again, as though making Folbury and its environs part of his inner landscape, ‘Houses on the opposite side of the road in Henrietta Street, aren’t there?’
    Joe was able to tell him he’d already sent a couple of lads door-knocking, asking if anyone was seen going into the foundry, or coming out, anybody acting suspicious lately.
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜Nix – from those they’ve managed to talk to so far, anyway. Nobody saw anything, but we haven’t caught up with everybody yet. Sure as eggs, some old biddy will have been nosey-parkering through the curtains, and if he was followed, or whoever it was went with him into the foundry, they might have been seen – unless they were waiting for him inside when he arrived.’
    And if they’d let themselves in and been waiting there long, good luck to them, he thought, recalling the bone-cold, almost windowless black hole, with only naked bulbs from