Preface to Murder by M Morris (best books to read for success .txt) 📗

‘Ah, young love,’ said Vanessa. ‘But I’m glad they’ve gone out for a short while. I wanted to talk to you on your own too.’

‘What about?’ Whenever Vanessa had something to discuss, it usually involved telling Bridget off, or offering her some unsolicited advice about how to run her life.

‘Come into the kitchen. You can stir the gravy while I tell you.’

Bridget followed her in with some trepidation. She had never before been trusted with such an important job in Vanessa’s kitchen. She accepted a wooden spoon and began to stir the aromatic brown sauce on the hob while Vanessa donned a pair of Cath Kidston oven gloves and checked the progress of the Yorkshire puddings. Satisfied that they were rising nicely and that Bridget wasn’t about to ruin the sauce, Vanessa leaned back against her Smallbone cupboards and began to speak. ‘It’s Mum and Dad. I’m worried about them.’

‘Why? Has something happened?’

After a rift lasting many years, the barriers that had separated Bridget and Vanessa from their parents had finally been broken down during a family reunion at Christmas. Now Bridget was enjoying regular phone calls with her mum and dad and, although their weekly conversations were not long, she felt closer to them than at any time since they’d moved away from Oxford to retire to Dorset. Her father always said that everything was going well and then asked her about her work. Her mother would give a brief update on her state of health – new pills from the doctor, a check-up at the hospital – and then ask after Chloe and Jonathan. Bridget felt that she was pretty well informed about the state of things in Lyme Regis. But had they been hiding things from her? Was it possible that everything wasn’t quite as rosy as her father claimed?

‘Mum’s health is not at all good,’ said Vanessa.

‘Well, yes,’ said Bridget. ‘I know that.’

Just before Christmas, their mother had fallen and sprained her wrist. She had become quite doddery and was no longer able to manage the stairs. And yet she was only in her seventies. How frail could she be?

‘They gloss over the facts, but I’ve been doing my own research with the help of Dr Google. Her eyesight’s going, you know. She has glaucoma and it’s starting to affect her peripheral vision. That’s why she keeps bumping into things and falling over.’

‘I had no idea,’ said Bridget. ‘But can’t that be treated?’

‘Damage to the optic nerve is irreversible. She’s taking eye drops now, which will hopefully stop it getting worse, but it’s already too late to restore her lost vision.’

‘I see,’ said Bridget, then immediately chided herself over the tactless expression. Vanessa gave her a dirty look and Bridget immediately resumed her stirring of the gravy, which had lapsed momentarily.

‘And she’s on blood pressure tablets too. She’s at risk of having a stroke or a heart attack. She’s really not well at all. Dad pretends he’s coping with everything, but it’s getting too much for him down there. Lyme Regis is far too hilly for people of their age.’

Now Vanessa was sounding ridiculous. ‘But lots of old people retire to Lyme Regis,’ protested Bridget. The gravy was starting to bubble and thicken and she stirred it more vigorously to prevent any lumps from forming. She was beginning to suspect that Vanessa had assigned her the task so that she could be blamed when it went wrong.

She was wondering how she could extricate herself, both from Vanessa’s hypochondria by proxy and also the burden of responsibility for the gravy, when her phone buzzed with an incoming message. ‘I have to check this,’ she said. ‘It might be important.’

‘Yes, of course,’ sighed Vanessa, taking over the stirring of the gravy. ‘It always is.’

Bridget studied her phone and found a text message from Michael Dearlove. After the previous day’s conversation walking around Radcliffe Square, the journalist had fixed up a meeting for her with his contact at the Saudi Embassy in London. That was quick work. She was still waiting for Grayson to sort out something with MI5. Dearlove didn’t give the name of his contact, but the meeting was scheduled for tomorrow at ten o’clock.

Bridget slipped the phone back into her bag with a smile. What had James advised her? To get on and solve the case? It looked like she might just be about to do that.

Vanessa handed her the tureen of gravy. ‘You can carry this through to the dining room.’

‘Did it turn out all right?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Vanessa grudgingly. ‘Not bad.’

Perhaps there was hope for Bridget in the kitchen too.

16

It seemed that every time one of Bridget’s problems was solved, another appeared in its place. Chloe might be safely home from London, but Vanessa had planted fresh worries about their mum’s state of health. Even so, Bridget couldn’t allow herself to dwell on that now. She barely had enough time for a quick team meeting before she would need to dash off to catch her morning train to London. In the briefing room, she asked everyone to give a quick update on what they’d discovered so far.

‘Jake, Ryan, you can go first.’

‘We managed to speak to most of Diane’s colleagues at the Blavatnik,’ said Jake.

‘It was the weekend, so some of them took a bit of work to get hold of,’ added Ryan.

‘A few of them reported hearing raised voices coming from the Head of Department’s office a couple of days before Diane was killed. But no one thought anything of it at the time.’

‘Really?’ said Bridget. ‘Why not?’

‘Apparently, heated arguments between Professor Al-Mutairi and Dr Gilbert weren’t that uncommon.’

‘Did anyone say what the argument was about?’

‘No one knows for sure,’ said Ryan. ‘It took place behind closed doors, and people were reluctant to listen in. But one person thinks