This Way Out Read Online Free Page A

as soon as she was woken – they were usually of non-violent burglaries of her flat. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, they reinforced her disinclination to return to it.
    He rolled reluctantly out of bed. Christine was already up and putting on her dressing gown. ‘Don’t you come, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve already had a bad night, and I know you’ve got an important meeting tomorrow. She isn’t your responsibility.’
    â€˜It’s not her sake I’m coming for.’
    They followed their routine, Christine going to rouse her mother from her uneasy sleep, Derek going downstairs to make a pot of tea. He carried it up on a tray, with cups for all of them.
    Christine met him at the door of her mother’s room. It was on occasions like this, when his wife was without her brave daytime camouflage, that he grieved for her most. Her eyes were hugely weary in her pale face. Loosened from its pleat, her once-lovely dark hair hung as though it too was exhausted. In the absence of the prosthesis that she wore in the cup of her bra, the empty right side of her dressing gown sagged against her mutilated body.
    â€˜I must go to the loo,’ she said. ‘Be a love and take in Mum’s tea. She’s perfectly all right – she just needs someone to talk at.’
    Enid was sitting up in bed, capped by a mauve sleeping net, flushed and cheerfully garrulous. Derek put the cup on her bedside table and let her talk on. His attention was concentrated on her throat. Now that he could see it properly, scarfless, drooping against the lacy plunge-neck of her nightgown, he knew that it was not the same throat that he squeezed in his dreams. That was inert, a column of putty. This was a warm trembling dewlap – something that he would be even less able in reality to bring himself to grasp.
    Enid lay back against her pillows. Having related every inconsequential detail of her dream, she allowed her eyelids to droop. In that moment it came to Derek that his fixation on strangling was as unnecessary as it was fearful. There would be a much less distasteful method of killing his mother-in-law.
    He had no need to touch her slack flesh at all. He could simply snatch up a pillow and press it over her face.
    It would be so simple, so merciful, such an easy way out. Not now, this moment, of course; but when he’d had time to get it all planned.
    Except that he wouldn’t ever be able to do it.
    He knew quite well that he couldn’t use the pillow method, any more than strangulation. It was a matter not of technique, nor of the fear of discovery, but of morality. He looked at his mother-in-law, now fully recovered and happily sipping tea. However much he longed, for Christine’s sake, to remove the old woman permanently from their home, he couldn’t possibly take her life. His respectable background, his Sunday school and Scout upbringing, his own sense of values would always stay his hand.
    For a decent, honourable man, there was no way out.

Chapter Three
    Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Rowland Lumsden, OBE, MC, late the Suffolk Regiment, was dead and buried but by no means forgotten.
    Born and educated in Yarchester, he had dedicated his life since his retirement from the army to the service of the cathedral city. As a boy he had been a chorister in the cathedral. Latterly – until shortly before his death – he had been honorary secretary of the Friends of Yarchester Cathedral, the volunteer fund-raising organization that kept the fabric of the great building in good repair. It was therefore entirely appropriate that, some weeks after his death, a thanksgiving service in his memory was held in the cathedral he had loved.
    The service, on a bright cold morning in March, was well attended. Colonel Lumsden had been involved in many local organizations and he had a large number of friends, regimental and civilian, who were glad to take the opportunity to honour his life and