stomach in the face of the pathologist’s robust black humour. He watched her small hands making cheese and tomato sandwiches with what seemed to him amazing dexterity and speed. She did not like being watched, but had long since decided it was easier to endure it than to protest. She said instead, ‘Is Bert Hook with you on the case?’
‘ He will be. We’ve hardly started yet. The body was found early this morning. By two of the suspects, apparently.’
‘ I saw Eleanor Hook last week at the parent-teachers evening. Young Kevin will be in my class next year.’
He recognised her resolute adherence to the world outside his work, which he now realised was one of her most valuable qualities. ‘It seems no time since he was born.’ Bert had married quite late and very happily. ‘Old Bert will be forty-four now.’
‘ Very nearly as old as old John Lambert,’ she said drily. ‘Eleanor tells me he’s started on an Open University degree.’
Lambert started to grin, then adjusted his features to neutrality just in time, as she slid the knife through the last sandwich and glanced sharply into his face. Patronising the uneducated was the ultimate sin in Christine’s short list. ‘You mean old Bert’s going to start answering back?’
‘ With any luck, yes. He might even start correcting your quotations: he’s reading Humanities.’
Lambert, secretly delighted, pondered the implications of this new development for the CID double act that had baffled friend and foe alike over the years of their association. Hook’s deadpan straight man had always concealed hidden depths; would he now begin to answer his chief’s wilder literary sallies, or even, heaven forbid, offer his own initiatives in the area? Rank still had its privileges, which surely must be preserved, for the sake of discipline in the force.
He ate his sandwiches and considered the possibilities offered by a Barnardo ’s boy with a degree. It was material for D. H. Lawrence; but wasn’t Lawrence on his way down again in the literary leagues of academia? He said to Christine, ‘You’d enjoy rooting among the psyches of our main suspects at the Wye Castle. Pampered products of private education, to a man, I should think.’
Christine Lambert sturdily refused to contemplate the smaller classes and easier pastures of private schools. He was proud of her, immen sely touched when, as often happened, people he came across paid unprompted tributes to her skills and persuasiveness as a teacher. He wondered why he should still find it so difficult to tell her so, why he preferred to tease her about her aspirations and her unstinting support of the underprivileged young. He saw enough of the results of deprivation to understand the importance of her work, even when she seemed sometimes to be swimming against an irresistible tide.
She watched him as he ate his sandwiches and scanned the newspaper headlines in their new conservatory. Scarcely half a stone heavier now as a grandfather than when she had first known him at twenty; greyer each year, lined increasingly about the eyes and mouth. She could not conceive of him doing anything other than the detection of serious crime. Once she had resented his single-mindedness, to the point where it had almost destroyed them as a pair; now she almost cosseted it.
She knew him well enough to know that even as he apparently relaxed with the sun on his face, his mind was busy already with the intricacies of his latest criminal puzzle. He left behind a cup still half full and a paper unopened.
Not for the first time, she wondered how such a man would endure retirement.
*
Lambert knew as soon as he saw Cyril Burgess that he was about to confirm murder. He had the bland smile, the annoying confidence of a magician who has performed a trick which is baffling to his audience but child ’s play to one with his knowledge and expertise.
‘ Do come through to the inner sanctum, John. You will not be disappointed, I
‘ He will be. We’ve hardly started yet. The body was found early this morning. By two of the suspects, apparently.’
‘ I saw Eleanor Hook last week at the parent-teachers evening. Young Kevin will be in my class next year.’
He recognised her resolute adherence to the world outside his work, which he now realised was one of her most valuable qualities. ‘It seems no time since he was born.’ Bert had married quite late and very happily. ‘Old Bert will be forty-four now.’
‘ Very nearly as old as old John Lambert,’ she said drily. ‘Eleanor tells me he’s started on an Open University degree.’
Lambert started to grin, then adjusted his features to neutrality just in time, as she slid the knife through the last sandwich and glanced sharply into his face. Patronising the uneducated was the ultimate sin in Christine’s short list. ‘You mean old Bert’s going to start answering back?’
‘ With any luck, yes. He might even start correcting your quotations: he’s reading Humanities.’
Lambert, secretly delighted, pondered the implications of this new development for the CID double act that had baffled friend and foe alike over the years of their association. Hook’s deadpan straight man had always concealed hidden depths; would he now begin to answer his chief’s wilder literary sallies, or even, heaven forbid, offer his own initiatives in the area? Rank still had its privileges, which surely must be preserved, for the sake of discipline in the force.
He ate his sandwiches and considered the possibilities offered by a Barnardo ’s boy with a degree. It was material for D. H. Lawrence; but wasn’t Lawrence on his way down again in the literary leagues of academia? He said to Christine, ‘You’d enjoy rooting among the psyches of our main suspects at the Wye Castle. Pampered products of private education, to a man, I should think.’
Christine Lambert sturdily refused to contemplate the smaller classes and easier pastures of private schools. He was proud of her, immen sely touched when, as often happened, people he came across paid unprompted tributes to her skills and persuasiveness as a teacher. He wondered why he should still find it so difficult to tell her so, why he preferred to tease her about her aspirations and her unstinting support of the underprivileged young. He saw enough of the results of deprivation to understand the importance of her work, even when she seemed sometimes to be swimming against an irresistible tide.
She watched him as he ate his sandwiches and scanned the newspaper headlines in their new conservatory. Scarcely half a stone heavier now as a grandfather than when she had first known him at twenty; greyer each year, lined increasingly about the eyes and mouth. She could not conceive of him doing anything other than the detection of serious crime. Once she had resented his single-mindedness, to the point where it had almost destroyed them as a pair; now she almost cosseted it.
She knew him well enough to know that even as he apparently relaxed with the sun on his face, his mind was busy already with the intricacies of his latest criminal puzzle. He left behind a cup still half full and a paper unopened.
Not for the first time, she wondered how such a man would endure retirement.
*
Lambert knew as soon as he saw Cyril Burgess that he was about to confirm murder. He had the bland smile, the annoying confidence of a magician who has performed a trick which is baffling to his audience but child ’s play to one with his knowledge and expertise.
‘ Do come through to the inner sanctum, John. You will not be disappointed, I
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