Walking Into Murder Read Online Free Page B

was debonair, charming.
    The man was incapable of being serious, Laura thought furiously. Didn’t he care that an innocent woman was lying there dead, had probably been murdered? Why else all the subterfuge, the mask that must have been deliberately placed on the victim’s face earlier to hide her identity? And then someone must have come back and removed it…
    She shuddered, aware for the first time that a member of this household could be a murderer. But who? Not Nigel, surely, even if he was the mask maker. He had been genuinely upset when he realized Lottie was dead. More likely someone else was taking advantage of his talent, must have counted on using Nigel’s life-like mask to conceal the real victim, perhaps to buy time as well as confuse people.
    Tom Smith interrupted these morbid speculations. “Shall we find a more suitable space in which to exchange confidences?” he asked lightly. “I for one have had enough of the green room for the evening.”
    “I have no confidences to make,” Laura retorted. “As far as I can see, all the confiding has to come from you – starting with why you told these people that I was your wife.”
    Tom Smith regarded her speculatively. “That isn’t completely true,” he countered. “For instance, you might confide what sort of a doctor you are. I really ought to know, if I’m to be your husband.”
    “That is not guaranteed,” Laura shot back. “But if you must know, I am a professor. I teach and do research at a college in the United States, and I am in England to teach a seminar as well as to walk. Now let’s get back to you.”
    “What kind of research?” His interest sounded genuine.
    “On sex differences,” Laura replied maliciously, “like why men prevaricate when asked questions about themselves. And why they hide their emotions behind various facades, like charm.”
    “Ouch!” Tom Smith looked suitably chastened. “Is that really what your research shows they do?”
    “Not exactly,” Laura admitted. “It’s a good deal more complex than that and in my case goes back a few thousand years to the evolution of gender differences. Now – who are you? And no more prevarications, please.”
    The sound of water running in the bathroom reminded them that they weren’t alone. When it stopped, Nigel appeared. “Sorry,” he said. “So sorry.” He slouched toward the door, his face twisted with tears, and hurried down the hall.
    “Poor guy,” Tom Smith commented when Nigel was out of hearing range. “He really didn’t know. He must feel terrible. He’s talented, though, isn’t he, at impersonation as well as mask making.”
    “More talented than you,” Laura replied coldly as they left the room. “Tom Smith – really! Couldn’t you have thought of a more original name?”
    He chuckled. “Sorry. Unfortunately, that is my name. Gets me in and out of all sorts of trouble. If you like, you can call me Thomas instead. It sounds loftier, more suitable for solving crimes, which at the moment I seem called upon to do. Or perhaps Langley. That’s my other name.”
    “Is that really your name?” Laura asked suspiciously.
    “Which one?” he countered. “Tom Smith or Langley?”
    Exasperated, Laura regarded him stonily. The man changed personalities – and names as far as she knew - from one moment to the next, and she couldn’t for the life of her tell what was real and what a pose - or whether to believe a word he said. Relying on him to help her was definitely out. If she hadn’t been able to trust Donald, a man she had often sworn would never in his whole life do anything unexpected, how could she trust a man who never did anything predictable at all?
    Laura rubbed her aching forehead. The more she knew about gender, the less she seemed to understand the kind of men who inhabited the world today.
    “Both, I guess,” she replied faintly, and sank down on a bench in the hall. Her legs felt too weak to support her, and a welcome numbness