by Jill McGown
“I’ll just pop to the ladies’ room.”
Lloyd frowned. “Why didn’t you go when you were at the station?”
“Won’t be a moment.”
She wasn’t gone long, and, as it turned out, the registrar hadn’t gone home, and she even agreed to do it. Her staff were still there, she said, so she and her assistant would conduct the ceremony, and the other two could be witnesses.
Two people he didn’t know. Still, at least he was getting married after all, and even if it wasn’t the romantic occasion he had planned, it was, he supposed, as the preceremony formalities were gone through, better than nothing.
“If you’ll follow me into the marriage room.”
He made to set his tie straight, but Judy stopped him. “Leave it,” she said.
Puzzled, he left it and followed Judy, whose cheeks were glowing a faint pink as they always did when she was excited or nervous, into the marriage room. But he couldn’t really share the excitement—this was all too matter-of-fact for him. It was one thing agreeing to a virtually anonymous wedding when she was eight months pregnant, but now . . .
He stopped at the door, blinking slightly. Everyone was there. Tom, Liz—his dad, Charlotte, Bob Sandwell and his wife, what seemed like half of the rest of Bartonshire Constabulary—everyone. The room was packed. Judy and the registrar were looking very pleased with themselves, and Tom gave Judy a little thumbs-up sign.
“It was a great reception,” said Case. “You should have been there.”
“The car park’s empty. Where are all the cars?” Lloyd asked, ever the vigilant detective.
“Distributed all over the town center,” said Judy. “Tom’s been working very hard organizing everyone and everything.”
“Your detective sergeant is a very persuasive young man,” said the registrar, beaming at him. “I don’t usually work on Saturday afternoons or conspire to trick my customers, but I somehow found myself doing both.”
Now that he was standing in front of her, Judy at his side, Tom and Liz flanking them, his friends and relations behind him, Lloyd, too, felt nervous and excited, and not just about getting married.
“This place in which you are now met has been duly sanctioned according to law for the celebration of marriages. And before you are joined in matrimony, I have to remind you of the solemn and binding character of the vows you are about to make.”
They didn’t need reminding, and they didn’t need vows. They had chosen the simplest of ceremonies, not because of Judy’s lack of romance but because Lloyd had decreed that extra promises were redundant.
Almost the simplest of ceremonies, he amended. The simplest was simply to answer, “I am,” when asked if you were free to marry, but he had vetoed that when he had seen the split infinitive and had been unable to persuade the registrar to unsplit it.
He knew now that he should have got Tom to launch a charm offensive on her, but he hadn’t known that at the time, so he was about to make a declaration. Not to Judy—she already knew what he was about to declare. Not to his father or his sisters or his two older children. They knew, too. But everyone else in this room was about to find out.
“I do solemnly declare,” he said, “that I know not of any lawful impediment why I, Desiré Daniel Lloyd, may not be joined in matrimony to . . .”
He could hear a little whisper of reaction as his name was repeated for those who had failed to catch it. Tom was grinning, and Liz was frowning at him for grinning, as Judy declared that she, too, was free to marry.
And now the contract. “I, Desiré Daniel Lloyd, take you, Judith Cornelia Hill, to be my wedded wife.” She hated her middle name, come to that, and that made him feel a little better, but not much.
Judy’s voice shook a little. “I, Judith Cornelia Hill, take you, Desiré Daniel Lloyd, to be my wedded husband.”
Tom gave him the ring; Lloyd slipped it on her finger and, with a deep sense of relief, kissed his wife. His wife. He couldn’t believe it.
Outside, in a swirl of confetti, they posed for photographs, just as the Roddams had done, but no one came and arrested any of their guests. Well, not yet. There was time . . . policemen who were already merry on free booze had been known to get a little rowdy. But the high complement of wives would probably ensure that decorum was observed, even though they had spent hours in the Derbyshire already and had every intention of returning there as soon as this bit was over.
Liz Finch was taking dozens of photographs. The happy couple, Lloyd and his dad, Judy and her mum, Judy on her own, lifting her skirt to reveal the frilly blue garter she was wearing. “Old, borrowed, and blue,” she said. “To cancel out seeing me before the ceremony.”
Charlotte was being passed from one set of arms to the other and loving every minute of it. Lloyd and Judy posed with her as a threesome; then his son, Peter, stood beside Judy and Linda joined him; Judy’s mother and his father completed the group.
Lloyd removed a circlet of paper from his tongue and smiled at Judy. “Are you regretting it yet?”
Judy smiled back, the strain of waiting over, her eyes shining with what Lloyd liked to think just might be tears.
“I’ll never regret it. And that’s a promise, whether you need one or not.”
ALSO BY JILL MCGOWN
Record of Sin
An Evil Hour
The Stalking Horse
Murder Movie
THE LLOYD AND HILL MYSTERIES
A Perfect Match
Murder at the Old Vicarage
Gone to Her Death
The Murders of Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Beale
The Other Woman
Murder . . . Now and Then
A Shred of Evidence
Verdict Unsafe
Picture of Innocence
Plots and Errors
Scene of Crime
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Jill McGown
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
McGown, Jill.
Death in the family / Jill McGown.
p. cm.
1. Lloyd, Inspector (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Hill, Judy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Police—England—Fiction. 4. Policewomen—Fiction. 5. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6063.C477 D43 2003
823′.914—dc21 2002067572
First Edition: February 2003
eISBN: 978-0-345-46354-8
v3.0
