A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw (top 10 best books of all time txt) 📗

been missing for an hour and a half to wait for at least twelve hours before sounding the alarm. There was no reason the Tucson police would be interested in a story about his wife not coming back from a shopping trip. But Martinez might be interested because the one clear possibility was that someone had thought Lane had seen something incriminating about someone on the day of the murder.

He went into every likely shop on the street and it appeared she had spent a good deal of time in a shop that sold clothing and Mexican weaving just around the corner from the restaurant.

“She was very interested in one of the shawls, but said she was going to look a bit more and might be back. That was, oh, an hour ago, easily. I’m afraid I didn’t see where she went after that.”

Conscious of time passing, Darling checked for likely businesses Lane would have visited, but no one had seen her. It was as if she’d gone up in smoke.

Martinez sat frowning and then shook his head. “It seems very unlikely to me, sir. Though we haven’t found the weapon yet, I’m fairly certain we have our man, and woman, for that matter.”

Darling sat back, his lips set in a grim line. “It’s been more than three hours now, Sergeant Martinez. I can tell you for a certainty my wife would never have disappeared for that length of time without letting me know.”

“Listen, I can put out a missing persons on her, of course. I think we should give it a little longer. My advice is that you go on back. For all you know she’s come back and is waiting for you.”

“Is Assistant Chief Galloway in?” Darling momentarily considered going over Martinez’s head, but even as he asked, he knew the sergeant was following established police procedure.

“He isn’t, sir. He hasn’t been in today.” Martinez glanced towards Galloway’s office. Where was Galloway?

The room was desolate in its silence. Darling walked into the bathroom and then back again, stopping at the dresser. He picked up Lane’s hairbrush, put it down, and looked toward the wardrobe, where he took up a handful of her cocktail dress—the one she’d married him in—and held it to his nose breathing in, his hands clutching tightly at the skirt, hearing it swish as he pulled at it. A kind of despair he had not thought possible flooded him. It was robbing him of any ability to act, he could see that. He closed the wardrobe firmly and went to sit at the desk. Pulling open the drawer he took out stationery and pen. He could occupy himself making notes, thinking through things, like she did. He was about to close the drawer when he saw her black notebook. He’d never asked to see it, and she’d never offered. He went to push it back, but his anguish drove him to open it instead.

Land and sky, here they balance

On a golden edge.

Heaven and earth, I am like that mystic

Of the Middle Ages, who looks with wonder

At the terrifying expanse above him.

My hand half raised to reach out,

Pulled to touch the starry eternity

That threatens to engulf.

And yet, it is not fear I feel

But yearning.

There were crossings out and additions. Darling imagined Lane whittling the poem—somewhere away from him in a place she kept only unto herself, words and partial words falling around her while she found her way to clarity. Desolation threatened to engulf him again. He closed the notebook and held it momentarily in his hand. He had read her poetry before and wondered at it, at the singular act of isolation that was required to write it. Even a Lane who went off somewhere he couldn’t follow to write was a Lane he devoutly wished for at this moment, rather than the one who seemed to have been snatched off the face of the earth, as if, he thought fancifully, into the very firmament she described.

He closed the drawer gently, picked up the phone, and was put through to the police department. Martinez wasn’t immediately available but would be called to the phone the minute he was free. Darling waited.

“Inspector Darling. I hope you are calling to tell me she is with you.”

“I am calling to tell you she is not, and I am not satisfied to wait any longer.”

“As it happens, Assistant Chief Galloway came in shortly after you left, and I spoke with him about it. We were preparing to mobilize in the event she was still missing. The boss has specifically said he wishes to take charge. I will let him know you have called, and I believe his first action will be to have you brought here.”

“I appreciate that. Tell him I am grateful.” He didn’t feel grateful. He only felt frightened, and the prospect of having to go anywhere with Galloway did nothing to make him feel better.

Eleanor Armstrong, postmistress of King’s Cove and a dear friend of her neighbour Lane, was looking out the window a little disconsolately. She felt bad about her mood—after all, who could be truly unhappy with a daily companion like her husband, Kenny? She could see him outside chopping wood for the stove, dressed in his ancient black wool pants and his thick maroon sweater with the rolled collar, his inevitable costume until it got too cold to go out without a jacket. She had knitted the sweater for him a few years after they married, and she thought it rather sweet he still reached for it on a cold autumn morning. Alexandra, their west highland terrier puppy, had gone out to help with the wood and now sat alertly watching and shivering intermittently.

I should knit her a little sweater, Eleanor thought. It cheered her up to think of having a project. The fact was she was missing Lane