Dying in the Dark by Sally Spencer Page B

asked.
    â€˜What?’ Rutter replied. And when she had told him, he said, ‘Why should you want me to do that?’
    â€˜Just for once, can’t you do what I ask without asking questions?’ Maria countered.
    â€˜You’re expecting a visitor, aren’t you?’ Rutter demanded.
    â€˜Since I’ve already said I want you out of the house, I should have thought that was obvious.’
    â€˜Who is it? Who’s coming round?’
    â€˜After what you’ve done, you really have no right to ask.’
    She was spot on, Rutter thought. He
did
have no right to ask. Absolutely no right at all!
    At seven o’clock – when Woodend and Paniatowski had interviewed so many young women that they’d scarcely have noticed if they had finally reached the end of the line and started again – Lucy Higson appeared at the door.
    God, but she was a striking woman, Woodend thought, and wondered how Derek Higson – a man of his own age, for God’s sake! – had managed not only to pull her but to hold on to her.
    â€˜It’s past clocking-off time, but I’ve talked to the staff and told them they’re to stay here for as long as you want them to,’ Lucy said.
    Woodend forced a weak grin. ‘I shouldn’t have imagined they would have liked that very much.’
    â€˜They didn’t,’ Mrs Higson agreed, returning his smile. ‘At least, they didn’t like it until I informed them they could book it down as overtime. If there’s one thing that Derek and I have learned in this business, it’s that if you need to put an immediate stop to grumbling, just offer double pay.’
    The woman was a real cracker, Woodend told himself – and not just in the looks department.
    But though she’d gone to a lot of trouble to make it possible, even the thought of interviewing anyone else that day was enough to make his head start throbbing.
    â€˜You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Higson, but I think you can tell your staff they can all go home now,’ he said.
    â€˜So you’ve finished here?’
    â€˜I wish we had,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But I’m afraid we’ll be back again first thing in the morning, to begin afresh. We haven’t even started on the shop-floor staff yet.’
    â€˜You’re going to question all our craftsmen and apprentices, are you?’ Lucy Higson asked, sounding surprised.
    â€˜Any reason why we shouldn’t?’
    Lucy Higson shrugged. And she managed to make even
that
gesture seem elegant.
    â€˜There’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t talk to them,’ she said. ‘I just think it would be a waste of time.’
    â€˜Why’s that?’
    For a moment, Lucy Higson seemed unsure of how to answer.
    â€˜I don’t wish to appear to be speaking ill of the dead,’ she said finally, ‘but there’s a certain tendency among the girls who work in the office to think that they’re somehow
better
than the men with jobs on the shop floor. What they fail to realize, of course, is that it’s the craftsmen who are the real heart of the enterprise. Without them, and the superb work they do, we’d have nothing to sell. Without them, we’d all go hungry.’
    â€˜So what you’re really sayin’ is that Pamela was a bit of a snob?’
    â€˜I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that,’ Lucy Higson replied, sounding slightly uncomfortable. ‘Let’s just say that she chose to keep something of a distance between herself and those who, quite unfairly, she might have seen as mere
manual
labourers.’
    When a girl does that, it can hurt, Woodend thought, especially when it’s a
pretty
girl who you’d like to impress. And sometimes, faced with rejection, admiration can turn into loathing. Sometimes it can even make normally decent-enough men feel a strong urge to punish.

Seven
    I t had been dark for some time when