Deadly Admirer

by Christine Green

  Hubert mumbled something then about ‘tangled webs' and Vanessa managed to smile.

  ‘Thank goodness Colin Tiffield didn't turn out to be my father. I think the burden of worrying about my having children with his genes in them would have been too much.’

  I nodded in agreement.

  As Vanessa turned to go she said, ‘I'd like to keep in touch and I'm sorry I've caused you so much worry. If only I hadn't thought it was a man following me I might have noticed her. She used to walk around Longborough quite openly, you know. And I never noticed.’

  ‘She was very clever,’ I said. ‘Near but not too near.’

  ‘She was like that all my life, said Vanessa sadly. ‘It could have been different.’

  Vanessa insisted that we need not show her out and we listened as her footsteps walked quickly and confidently down the stairs. From the window we watched as she approached her car. There was a figure in the car who stepped out to meet her. They talked for a moment and then walked off arm in arm along Longborough High Street.

  ‘Well!’ said Hubert. ‘That's a turn up.’

  ‘Good genes there,’ I said. ‘Well, respectable ones anyway.’

  They looked a strange pair. Christopher with his arm in a sling, a baseball cap on his head and a spring in his step. A spring in both their steps. And Vanessa, as elegant from the back view as the front, walking unafraid, head held high.

  ‘She's been lucky, unlike that poor girl dragged from the river.’ Was she, too, the victim of some deadly admirer?