by J M Gregson
Peach said with a reluctance which was real, not simulated. ‘We’ll have to take you to the station. You’ll be formally charged there and put in a cell overnight.’
Edward said with a belated touch of pride. ‘I’ve made my dispositions. Settled my money and my property upon my daughters. That was well before I disposed of James Capstick. It was as if I was getting ready for this.’
They took him outside to where the second police vehicle was waiting as arranged behind the one Lucy Blake had parked. Lanchester took a last look at the handsome elevations of the house where he had lived for half a century. He dropped back into the dialect of his boyhood as he said to no one in particular, ‘My Eleanor was nobbut a lass when we moved in here.’
DC Clyde Northcott was waiting with two uniformed officers to take their man to the station. Peach said on impulse, ‘Let DS Blake sit in the car with Mr Lanchester. He isn’t going to give us any trouble.’
If Northcott was surprised, he knew better than to show it. He slid into the driving seat of the Mondeo, adjusted it for his long legs, and drove Peach back in silence to the station. In the car ahead of them, they could see Edward Lanchester between a uniformed constable and Lucy Blake, turned slightly towards her, voicing the occasional words to this woman with whom he seemed to have formed the lightest and most intangible of bonds.
Peach rode in silence, wondering exactly what was passing between this odd couple. As they approached the station, he realized that his driver had been smiling for some minutes. It was an unusual lightening of the normally stern black features. He said, ‘What is it you find so amusing, DC Northcott? That’s a decent man we’re about to lock up for the rest of his life.’
‘It’s not that, sir. I wasn’t thinking about Edward Lanchester. I was just revising a few anecdotes about you for my best man’s speech at the wedding.’
