More Deaths Than One by Marjorie Eccles

Culver and his estranged son-in-law been up to, meeting in Scotley Beeches at some ungodly hour of the night or morning?
    â€œLet’s go. You can tell me what you’ve found out about Georgina Fleming on the way.”
    â€œShe runs this business with a partner, another woman,” Kite informed him as they turned off the ring road and out onto the bypass. “In fact, it’s an all women affair, no men at all. It’s an organisation dedicated to showing small companies how to give their businesses a vital competitive edge. One which will help them achieve aggressive growth targets and a level of excellence ...”
    â€œSpare me the sales patter.”
    Kite grinned. “Translated, it means that all these new small companies who have a good product but just don’t know how to market it properly, or run the business side of their affairs, need help. That’s where Georgina Fleming wheels in. It’s called business consultancy.”
    â€œI know what a business consultancy is, but what qualifies Mrs. Fleming for it?”
    â€œShe took a degree in Business Studies and Administration, started out in a small way and worked her company up to what it is now. Like father, like daughter, seemingly. Nobody can keep up with her; they say she works twenty-five hours a day. One of those what they call hyperactive types, I reckon. No wonder she needs sleeping pills. No hobbies, except squash, which she plays to win. ”
    â€œShe should play to lose?”
    â€œNo joke, even the men are terrified of her. She plays like a tiger.” Mayo, who half an hour previously had been speculating on insurances in specific relation to Georgina Fleming’s late husband, said, “She’s not short of a few thousand, then?”
    â€œKs. It’s Ks, not thousands, in yuppyspeak. Serious money.”
    â€œOh God, come off it, Martin, give it me in basic English.”
    â€œThe answer’s no, she isn’t short. I guess she could easily have been supporting Fleming in the life to which he was accustomed and not felt a thing. But would she? I mean, they were evidently leading very nearly separate lives, weren’t they? And don’t forget that woman in the photo. Mrs. Fleming didn’t strike me as the sort to suffer anybody being a drag on her.”
    â€œThere’s more ways of getting rid of a husband than blowing his head off.”
    â€œTrue. But whether she did it or not, I’ll bet she feels it’s good riddance.”
    â€œOne thing I’d never bet on, Martin, and that’s what Mrs. Fleming might or might not be thinking.”
    Grief comes in many guises. He remembered her reaction to the sight of the body. And also, that moment of softness when she’d been speaking of the Sunday evening she’d spent with her husband, and the conviction he’d had that she and Fleming had been making love. I was right about that at any rate, he thought, I was right.
    Iron gates marked the beginning of Upper Delph’s drive, a gravelled roadway which wound for nearly a quarter of a mile before it began to rise and they came in sight of the house.
    â€œStone me!” said Kite.
    The ground rose even more steeply behind the house and a thick belt of trees climbed to the skyline. A hundred yards away was the old quarry, or delph, which had given the house its name, long abandoned and choked now with scrub hazel and gorse. The house had a grim and ancient appearance, a low rambling edifice with a few outbuildings straggling at the back, fronted only by a small paved garden inside a low privet hedge, with ivy scrambling to the slate roof, half-obscuring some of the windows so that it had a lowering, frowning aspect. To one side stood all that was left of a huge old conifer, its split trunk and remaining branches giving it the look of a one-armed sentinel, and at the other side a crumbling square tower, also ivy-covered, where rooks circled and cawed in the