6 - Superfluous Death

by Hazel Holt

  ‘He’d have done it sooner or later,’ Michael said. ‘I don’t think he could have lived with himself after all that.’

  We sat in silence for a while, then I said, ‘I didn’t tell Roger anything about what Jenny said to me.’

  ‘But Ma ...’

  ‘There’s no need for him to know. He’s solved the murder now and that’s that.’

  ‘But when they catch her she might—’

  ‘But will they catch her?’ I asked. ‘It’s very easy for a woman to alter her appearance. She could cut that beautiful hair of hers and dye it, put on a pair of spectacles, change the way she dresses. She’s had two days’ start, she could be anywhere. Abroad, even. I think we may have seen the last of her.’

  I looked at him hopefully.

  ‘Maybe,’ Michael said, ‘but that doesn’t change things, you know that, Ma.’ He smiled at me affectionately. e aionfonYou know you’d always feel uncomfortable if you didn’t tell Roger all about what Jenny said. What was that thing Pa was always quoting? About always seeing things more clearly from the high moral ground.’

  I got to my feet. ‘You’re right, of course,’ I said and dialled Roger’s number. Foss leapt up on to the telephone table, as he usually does when I’m trying to make a call, and I stroked his head to give me courage.

  ‘Hello, Roger? It’s Sheila. Look, it’s a bit embarrassing, but there’s something I should have told you ...’

  Mrs. Malory Mysteries

  Published by Coffeetown Press

  Gone Away, or Mrs. Malory Investigates (1989)

  The Cruellest Month (1991)

  The Shortest Journey, or

  Mrs. Malory's Shortest Journey (1992)

  Mrs. Malory and the Festival Murder, or

  Uncertain Death (1993)

  Murder on Campus, or Detective in Residence (199 ew >De4)

  Superfluous Death, or Mrs. Malory Wonders Why (1995)

  Death of a Dean (1996)

  Other Mysteries by Hazel Holt

  Published by Coffeetown Press

  My Dear Charlotte (2010)

  Hazel Holt was born in Birmingham, England, where she attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and went on to work at the International African Institute in London, where she became acquainted with the novelist Barbara Pym, whose biography she later wrote. She also finished one of Pym’s novels after Pym died. Holt has also recently published My Dear Charlotte, a story that uses the actual language of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra to construct a Regency murder mystery. Holt wrote her first novel in her sixties, and is a leading crime novelist. She is best known for her Mrs. Malory series. Her son is novelist Tom Holt.