Murder Is Academic Read Online Free Page A

listening.
    He was gazing towards the house.
    â€˜Stephen?’
    â€˜Wait a minute.’ He held up his hand. ‘The telephone, I think.’
    I had to concentrate to hear it. At this distance it was more like a pulse in the air than a sound.
    â€˜Oh, God. I should have put the answering machine on. I can’t face talking to anyone now.’
    â€˜We’ll just leave it. They’ll probably have given up by the time we get back to the house.’
    It was impossible to talk knowing the phone was ringing on and on. We sat and listened in silence until at last it stopped.
    It was almost completely dark now, and the evening was growing chilly.
    â€˜Come on,’ Stephen said, standing up. ‘We’re not going to get anywhere tonight. We’re just going round in circles. Let’s go to bed.’
    He pulled me to my feet and we made our way hand in hand up the garden along the creek. It was almost as broad as the house, but it was silted up now and flowed sluggishly.
    While Stephen stayed in the kitchen to clear away the dinner things, I went up to bed. The first flight of stairs opens straight on to the big, low-ceilinged room that comprises all of the first floor. I really must get round to putting up some more bookshelves, I thought, just as I did every time I came up those stairs. But that day I seemed to see the room with fresh eyes. There were white painted bookcases under the long, low window seats and in the alcoves on either side of them, but it wasn’t enough. There were books everywhere; stacked under my desk, lined up on the window seat, piled all round the edges of the room and up the stairs. Stephen had offered to do some DIY, perhaps I should take him up on it. But this was a familiar thought, too, and I knew I never would. I didn’t want to let him that far into my life, not yet anyway.
    My cat, Bill Bailey, was asleep on top of some books arranged in two adjacent piles: the complete works of Thackeray. When I clicked my tongue at him, he opened sleepy slits of eyes and got to his feet. He stretched, arching his back and yawning. The tower of books swayed. With an air of unconcern, he turned round, positioned himself in exactly the right place, carefully lowered himself down, and curled up again.
    I went on up the steep oak stairs with its rickety handrail to my bedroom on the second floor of the house. The air was heavy with the accumulated heat of the day. I opened a window to let a current of cooler air flow. Resting my arms on the sill. I gazed out across the fens. The window on the other side of the room looked out onto the little city of Ely several miles away, standing proud of the plain and topped by the floodlit towers of the cathedral. But from this window the only signs of human habitation were the tiny scattered lights of a few distant farmhouses. The vast fields and the long straight drainage channels that ran to the horizon were covered now with a darkness as soft as velvet, and above them stretched the huge East Anglian sky, pricked by a few stars. Down in the garden, white roses glowed. The light from the kitchen illuminated a tangle of green water-weed just below the surface of the creek. The kitchen light went off and the creek, too, was absorbed into the night.
    Stephen clattered up the stairs. Then his footsteps were muffled by the rug on the bedroom floor. There was a click as he switched on the bedside lamp and a warm yellow light suffused the room. I didn’t turn round. I felt his hands on my shoulders. He said nothing, but slowly began to press his thumbs into the sore places of my upper neck. I sighed and pressed my shoulders back against his hands.
    He said, ‘I’ll understand if you’d rather I didn’t stay tonight. I know you sleep better when I’m not here.’
    â€˜And you’ve got work tomorrow.’
    â€˜Could get up early.’
    I hesitated. We didn’t usually spend the night together during the