A Dead Liberty Read Online Free Page A

usual,” Sloan said, “to bail people on murder charges anyway.” A certain tenacity of purpose was needed sometimes to keep the superintendent to the point; equally he could on occasion be like a terrier who wouldn’t let go. “Not,” went on Sloan, “that I think she would have skipped it. Not the sort.”
    For someone who had remained totally silent throughout all manner of proceedings—legal and otherwise—Lucy Durmast had managed to project a very definite image.
    Leeyes grunted again. “Let’s get this quite straight, Sloan. The accused is alleged to have killed a man.”
    â€œKenneth Malcolm Carline,” supplied Sloan. That part was easy. There had been no difficulty at all in identifying the victim.
    â€œAnd there was no doubt about how he died?”
    â€œNot according to the Calleford pathologist.” Sloan paused and added cautiously, “He’s new and young, of course.”
    â€œThat’s a sight better than being old and hidebound,” responded Leeyes crisply. “Naming no names, of course.”
    â€œOf course,” agreed Sloan diplomatically. Dr. Dabbe, the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District Hospital Management Group, was neither young nor new at his job.
    â€œWhat killed Carline?”
    â€œPoison.”
    â€œA woman’s way,” mused Leeyes. It was a response that would have upset a great many campaigners for Women’s Liberation.
    â€œYes, sir.” Even the most committed defence lawyer would have had to agree that there were precedents for poison’s being a woman’s weapon.
    â€œWho was he, then?” asked Leeyes. “The victim, I mean.”
    â€œA young man who worked for her father’s firm.”
    â€œOne of the old stories?” enquired Leeyes.
    â€œSir?”
    â€œHim wanting to marry the boss’s daughter and Daddy telling her she must and her not being keen.”
    â€œNo, sir, it wasn’t like that at all.” There was a certain simplicity about famous legends that didn’t equate with life.
    â€œSloan,” said Leeyes unexpectedly, “you know there’s a time in every fairy story when the frog turns into a prince?”
    â€œYe-es,” agreed Sloan warily. The superintendent’s discursiveness could lead anywhere. Anywhere at all.
    â€œThey’ve just discovered that there are some of those funny inheritance things—DNA molecules—in the phosphate in the skin of the frog.”
    â€œReally, sir?” said Sloan politely.
    â€œFunny, that.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œEspecially when you think how often it was the frog that got turned into a prince.”
    â€œYes, sir.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t like that at all with this young man Carline.”
    â€œNo?”
    â€œIf you ask me,” ventured Sloan consideringly, “it was more of a case of him not wanting to marry the boss’s daughter.”
    â€œDoesn’t happen so often, of course,” commented Leeyes sagely. “It’s the quickest ladder to the top.”
    â€œWhat I mean is,” amplified Sloan, “that Kenneth Carline had just announced his engagement to someone else.”
    â€œAnd instead of saying ‘Hard Cheddar’ to herself, this Durmast girl reaches for the arsenic?”
    â€œNot exactly, sir,” temporised Sloan. By any standard that was an over-simplification.
    â€œWell, I’m not to know, Sloan, am I, unless you tell me?” said Leeyes. “Calleford Division handed the whole case over as a package after Trevor Porritt got hurt.” He sniffed ominously. “It was meant to be a complete package, too, with no loose ends. That’s what they said.”
    â€œTrevor Porritt didn’t leave any loose ends,” insisted Sloan. “Calleford said it was all cut and dried and it looked as if it was.”
    â€œWhat’s the difficulty