Don’t get me wrong, she was a beautiful girl, but we’re well warned in our line of work

Brian’s voice was insistent, “I’ll ask you again, did Lucy Simmons have a crush on you?” There was utter silence in the small room. Then, “Yes,” the word was barely audible. “Speak up.” “Yes.” Plumley raised his head. He gazed, wildeyed, at the detective. “But it isn’t…” He put his hands to his face. “Wasn’t…what you think.”

“How was it, then, Guy?” Brian flipped open the folder in front of him. “You don’t mind if I call you Guy?” He took out a notebook and pulled a pen from his inside pocket.

“Lucy was a lovely girl.”

“Fancy her, did you?”

“No,” Guy groaned. “Not at all. Lucy Simmons was a serious girl. Studious, diligent – wanted to do well. During the first semester, she was so quiet you’d hardly know she was in class. But suddenly, after the Christmas break, she brightened up: started asking lots of questions. Too many questions, for my liking. Then she began to follow me around. It was at this point that I decided the girl was developing an unhealthy interest.”

“So,” Brian leaned in close, “what did you do about it?”

Ambitious

Guy pulled a folded handkerchief from his top pocket. “Nothing.” He mopped his brow. “Lucy was very much her own person,” the academic looked up. “Ambitious, determined. It would have been difficult to prevent her from doing something she really wanted to do.”

“Like following you?” Brian was fishing here. Guy Plumley uttered a long sigh. “I suppose so.” “Following you home, even? Am I right in saying that you live at the foot of the Chanonry?”

“That is correct.”

“Which brings me to the question of your whereabouts on the day of Lucy Simmons’ death. I understand you’ve already given a statement to one of our uniformed officers to the effect that you were at home that evening?”

Dumbly, Guy nodded assent.

“But just for the record, let me ask you again. Where were you, Plumley, on that Tuesday evening?”

“I-I was at home,” Guy stuttered. “I told the constable that.”

“All evening?”

“Yes.”

Brian changed tack. “Then let me ask you another question. You were going to tell me how it was with Lucy.”

“I was bored, I suppose.”

“Bored?” Brian eyed the man. The academic’s face was the picture of misery.

“Yes. I’ve been in the job too long. No chance of a change,” Plumley rolled his eyes in mute appeal. “Wife doesn’t want another move, you see. The kids are settled in school, and not a hope in hell of promotion. Dead men’s shoes and all that,” he uttered a bitter laugh.

“So…” Brian wished Plumley would get to the point.

“My wife…” Plumley went on.

Brian nodded once more. He reckoned he knew where this one was going.

“She… Well, she’s not interested, if you know what I mean?”

The detective knew only too well.

“And besides, she’s let herself go a bit, my wife. And…”

Coming from Plumley, that was rich, short little man that he was. Brian drew a series of squiggles on his notepad.

“I know it was stupid, but…”

He stopped doodling, pen poised mid-air. “When someone came on to me, I was up for it.” “And that someone was Lucy Simmons?”

“No. No. You’ve got it all wrong.” “Enlighten me, then.”

“It wasn’t Lucy.” The man was clearly agitated now. “Don’t get me wrong, she was a beautiful girl, but we’re well warned in our line of work,” Plumley broke off. “It would be madness, don’t you see?”

Clandestine

Brian nodded yet again. “Go on.”

“It was the Dean’s wife.”

“The Dean?” He reckoned he’d soon be an authority on all things academic.

“Professor Kowalski. He’s deputy principal this year. Has to travel all over the place. So Marta…” “Marta being the wife?”

“Yes, the Dean’s second wife. A good bit younger than him. A bit of a girl, you might say,” Guy offered a sheepish grin. “Been around a bit,” he eyed the detective. “If you know where I’m coming from?” Brian responded with a curt nod.

“I knew from the very start that I was fooling myself, that there was no future in it.” Once again, Plumley buried his face in his hands. “But I just got caught up in the affair.” He lifted his head. “It was fun. Did wonders for my ego. Made me feel a man again… at the beginning, anyhow. The clandestine meetings, the wild sex…”

Too much information, Brian decided.

“And then?”

“Then?” Guy bunched his hands into fists. “I lost the plot, I suppose. Began to take stupid risks: dodging off work, ringing Marta at all hours, hanging around the Chanonry in the hope I might bump into her.”

The silence hung heavy in the room.

Brian spoke first. “And that’s what you were doing on the evening Lucy Simmons met her death?’

Guy Plumley looked up. “I’d been bathing the kids. I’ve got four,” he sighed. “The mess, you wouldn’t believe it. And then Lalage and I fell out. Something quite trivial. And my wife looked so bloody hideous, I took myself into my study for the evening. I’ve always got papers to mark, you see, or reading to do.” “But you didn’t stay there?”

“No. Kowalski was in Cambridge, giving a paper at some conference or other. I thought I’d just nip out for half an hour. I was hoping for a quickie. But I was out of luck.”

Lies

Brian returned a hard stare. “I put it to you, Dr Plumley, that whilst you were loitering in the Chanonry, you might just as easily have happened across young Lucy Simmons.”

“No.”

“A young woman who, by your own admission, was beginning to make a nuisance of herself.”

“No.”

“A young woman whose continuing attentions might have cost you your job, your marriage,” Brian was in full flow, “your affair, even.”

Guy was quietly sobbing now.

“You admit to lying to our officer?” Brian asked. Guy nodded.

“And earlier, to me?”

Plumley couldn’t meet his eyes.

“I suppose this lady – Marta, did you say her name was? – can corroborate your version of events?”

Guy raised a tear-stained face. “Do you have to? I mean…”

“We do. Yes. And your wife, of course.”

“My wife? Is that strictly necessary?”

“It is.” Brian felt a twinge of sympathy for the man. He’d seen this too many times before. “Well, I think that will be all. For now,” he shut the folder in front of him with a snap. “We may also ask you to take part in a line-up, Dr Plumley.”

Cross Purpose (£8.99) is the first in Claire MacLeary’s Harcus & Laird crime trilogy, featuring an unlikely pair of middle aged female private investigators. The second, Burn Out, and the third, Runaway, are available now. All published by Saraband Publishing https:// saraband.net