For Death Comes Softly by Hilary Bonner Page B

children in any way. He stood up, still holding Stephen by the hand.
    â€˜All right, DCI Piper, talk to my children,’ he said coldly. ‘We have nothing to hide in this family.’
    Elizabeth Jeffries had remained sitting on the sofa by the fire. She got up then, walked to her husband’s side, took his free hand, and began to speak for the first time.
    â€˜I haven’t said anything before because I can barely trust myself,’ she announced. Her eyes were very dark now, her lips trembled as she spoke, yet her voice was controlled and even colder than her husband’s. ‘I just don’t believe that anyone could suspect Richard of such a terrible thing. He has devoted his life to children. He adores Stevie, look at the boy, just look at him . . .’
    I did so. Little Anna had again grasped one of her father’s legs and Stephen appeared to be trying to climb up the other. He was laughing and giggling to himself, the picture of a happy contented child, although, picking up on his mother’s distress, he did glance at her anxiously.
    â€˜It’s all right, darling, everything will be fine,’ said Richard Jeffries to his wife. ‘We must just keep things normal.’ He gestured down at Stephen and Anna. ‘Whatever we do, we mustn’t upset the children.’
    Elizabeth Jeffries visibly pulled herself together then. ‘You’re right, of course, Richard,’ she said at once. Then, with some difficulty, she proceeded to extricate Stephen and Anna from their father’s legs. ‘Come along, you two,’ she instructed, leading them out of the room. ‘Let’s leave your father to talk to the nice lady and gentleman.’
    I don’t suppose either Stephen or Anna detected the heavily laden sarcasm in her last phrase, but Mellor and I certainly did, which had no doubt been her intention.
    It was nearly seven when we left the Jeffries’ Clifton home, having arranged for the two children to be interviewed at the victim suite at Lockleaze the next day. I went straight back to my own place not far away – one untidy rented room with kitchen area and its own small bathroom, somewhat laughably described as a studio flat.
    My first four days back at work had been quite busy and fraught enough to keep any normal person’s mind occupied, and certainly, one would have thought, to stop any nonsensical fantasising about Robin Davey – a man quite clearly and literally otherwise engaged. And one with whom I had been seriously angry when I had finally left his island.
    Nonetheless, during the week or so since I had returned from Abri, almost every time the phone rang, certainly at home, I had wondered fleetingly if the caller might be Robin Davey. Ridiculous. I gave myself a number of stern and rather cruel lectures, along the lines that I was behaving in a way the likes of Titmuss would consider quite typical of a childless emotionally battered old bag fast approaching middle age. However, I still couldn’t quite get Davey out of my thoughts – although I did cross Abri Island, much as I had loved the place, off my list of possible future holiday destinations.
    The next day Elizabeth Jeffries accompanied young Stephen and Anna to Lockleaze as arranged. A woman detective constable in an unmarked car picked them up at their home, drove them to the station and escorted them in through the plain blue painted door, which faces the row of shops to one side of Gainsborough Square, and up a flight of stairs directly into the victim suite. The Lockleaze suite, used for interviewing adult victims of rape and other sexual offences as well as children, is converted from the old Inspector’s flat, dating from the days when district inspectors used to live over the shop, and its separate front door means that it can be accessed without having to enter the police station proper at all. Mellor and I and Freda Lewis, one of the most