Read Online More Deaths Than One by Marjorie Eccles - Free Book Online Page A

tidily racked, with a shelf beneath holding cartridges and cleaning materials. Four guns, and a space where Culver said the twelve-bore should have been.
    â€œIt was there on Sunday, I know. I oiled and cleaned it with the rest and put it back.” No, he said, he wouldn’t necessarily have noticed if any of the guns had been missing until the next time he came to clean them. “This is the one I normally use.” He indicated another twelve-bore which hung near the door. “I just unlock the door and reach out for it, or stick it back, without giving more than a glance. So used to doing it, I could put my hand on it in the dark.”
    â€œWhat do you keep in the safe, Mr. Culver?”
    â€œPersonal papers, a bit of loose cash.”
    â€œWould you mind checking to see if anything’s missing?”
    Culver raised his eyebrows but made no objection. The safe, though very large, contained nothing more than a tin cash-box and a bundle of papers which he quickly looked through and said were all present.
    â€œAnd the cash-box?”
    Culver unlocked it. The bit of loose cash would have amounted to a couple of thousand, possibly more, Mayo thought. “Habit of a lifetime,” Culver remarked. “Can’t get used to being without a bit on hand. It’s all right, it’s all here.”
    He closed and locked the box, and then the safe.
    Once a scrap metal dealer, always a scrap metal dealer, Mayo thought. A roll of notes in your pocket that changed hands, no questions asked. He made a mental note that almost certainly Culver, though nominally retired, wouldn’t be averse to doing a deal or two on the side now and then.
    â€œWhen did you last see your daughter, Mr. Culver?” he asked, as Culver was closing the door of the little room.
    The other turned to him with a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Yesterday afternoon, as a matter of fact,” he said dryly.
    â€œIs that so? I was given to understand there was some friction between you and Mrs. Fleming as well as with her husband?”
    â€œ Was , yes. Happily, that’s now a thing of the past. I was seventy years old yesterday, Mr. Mayo, and Georgina came to wish me a happy birthday. We both thought it time all that was put behind us.”
    â€œBecause the source of the friction had been removed?”
    â€œAh, but we didn’t know that then, did we?”
    â€œDidn’t you, Mr. Culver? I hope that’s true, for both your sakes.”
    Culver smiled. He said, as he opened the front door, “I’m not going to say I’m sorry he’s dead, because I’m not. But you’re barking up the wrong tree, if you think I’d put my own life at risk because of him.”
    He stood watching the policemen’s car disappear down the drive. It was true that he felt not the slightest pang at the death of Rupert Fleming. Georgina was free at last, after seven years, free of Rupert Fleming, and it didn’t much matter to him how this had come about.
    His daughter had been born unexpectedly after several years of marriage, when he and Evelyn had long since ceased to expect children. He had felt momentarily let down when he was told that the child was not a son, one he could have moulded to his own pattern, but the disappointment had lasted only until he held her in his arms and looked into the tiny unformed mirror-image of his own face.
    Evelyn’s life had been sacrificed to give him the child. He deeply regretted that, though they had never been passionately in love; each had initially seen the other as a convenience, but their marriage had been amicable and when she died he had felt a sense of loss and sadness that had surprised him. They had married for practical reasons, because he had been able to provide her with the money she needed for the luxuries she thought essential to her, while she had given him, through her father, the entrée he wanted into a world where business