Elizabeth George - The Evidence Exposed

The Evidence Exposed by Elizabeth George The Evidence Exposed short story collection copyright 1999 by Susan Elizabeth George "I, Richard' copyright 1999 by Elizabeth George "The Surprise of his Life' copyright 1996 by Elizabeth George The Evidence Exposed' copyright 1990 by Elizabeth George This work first published in Great Britain in 1999 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline The right of Susan Elizabeth George to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 10 9 8 76 5 4 32 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 340 75063 4 Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Polmont, Stirlingshire Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St. Ives plc Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH
For Rob and Glenda, with love
Contents The Evidence Exposed I, Richard The Surprise of His Life The Evidence Exposed
The Evidence Exposed Adele Manners gave her room one last look.

The bed was made. The clothes were picked up. Nothing betrayed her. Satisfied, she shut the door and descended the stairs to join her fellow students for breakfast. The dining hall rang with the clatter of their dishes and the clamour of their talk. "Hypoglycaemia. "Hypoglycaemia.

Hypo-gly-cae-mia. You know what that is, don't you?" Adele wondered that anyone could avoid knowing since, in their two weeks at St. Stephen's College, Noreen Tucker hadn't missed an opportunity to expatiate upon hypoglycaemia or anything else. Seeing that she was doing so once again, Adele decided to take her plate of scrambled eggs and sausage to another location, but as she turned, Howard Breen came to her side, smiled, said, "Coming?" and carried his own plate to where Noreen Tucker reigned, outfitted by Laura Ashley in an ensemble more suited to a teenager than a romance writer at the distant end of her fifth decade. Adele felt trapped. She liked Howard Breen.

From the first moment they had bumped into each other and discovered they were neighbours on the second floor of L staircase, he had been very kind to her, preternaturally capable of reading past her facade of calm yet at the same time willing to allow her to keep her personal miseries to herself. That was a rare quality in a friend. Adele valued it. So she followed Howard. "I'm just a martyr to hypoglycaemia," Noreen was asserting vigorously. "It renders me useless.

If I'm not careful ..." Adele blocked out the woman's babbling by scanning the room and engaging in a mental recitation of the details she had learned in her two weeks as a student in the Great Houses of Britain class. Gilded capitals on the pilasters, she thought, a segmented pediment above them. She smiled wryly at the fact that she'd become a virtual encyclopedia of architectural trivia while at Cambridge University. Cram the mind full of facts that one would never use and perhaps they might crowd out the big fact that one could never face. No, she thought. Not now. Not now.

But the thought of him came to her anyway. Even though it was finished between them, even though it had been her choice, not Bob's, she couldn't be rid of him. Nor could she bury him. She had made the decision to end their affair, putting a period to five years of anguish by coming to this summer session at St. Stephen's College in the hope that an exposure to fine minds would allow her to forget the humiliation of having lived for half a decade in the fruitless expectation that a married man would leave his wife for her. Yet nothing was working to eradicate Bob from memory, and Noreen Tucker was certainly not the incarnation of razor intellect that Adele had hoped to find at Cambridge.

She gritted her teeth as Noreen went on. "I don't know what would have happened to me if Ralph here hadn't insisted that I go to the doctor. Always weak at the knees. Always feeling faint. Blacking out on the freeway that time. "So I keep my nuts and chews with me all the time. "So I keep my nuts and chews with me all the time.

Well, Ralph here keeps them for me. Ten, three, and eight p.m. If I don't eat them right on the dot, I go positively limp. Don't I, Ralph?" It was no surprise to Adele when Ralph Tucker said nothing. She couldn't remember a time when he had managed to make a satisfactory response to some remark of his wife's. "You do have my trail mix, don't you, Ralph?" Noreen Tucker asked. "We've got the trip to Abinger Manor this morning, and from what I could tell from looking at that brochure, it's going to be lots of walking. "We've got the trip to Abinger Manor this morning, and from what I could tell from looking at that brochure, it's going to be lots of walking.

I'll need my nuts and chews. You haven't forgotten?" Ralph shook his head. "Because you did forget last week, sweetie, and the bus driver wasn't very pleased with us, was he, when we had to stop to get me a bite to eat at three o'clock?" Ralph shook his head. "So you will remember this time?" "It's up in the room, hon. But I won't forget it." "That's good. Because ..." It was hard to believe that Noreen actually intended to go on, harder to believe that she could not see how tiresome she was.

But she nattered happily for several more minutes until the arrival of Dolly Ragusa created a diversion. Silently, Adele blessed the girl for having mercy upon them. She wouldn't have blamed Dolly for taking a place at another table. More than anyone, Dolly had a right to avoid the Tuckers, for she lived across the hall from them on the first floor of M staircase, so there could be no doubt that Dolly was well versed in the vicissitudes of Noreen Tucker's health. The words my poor blood were still ringing in the air when Dolly joined them, a black fedora pulled over her long blonde hair. She wrinkled her nose, rolled her eyes, then grinned.

Adele smiled. It was impossible not to like Dolly. She was the youngest student in the Great Houses class a twenty-three-year-old art history graduate from the University of Chicago but she moved among the older students with an easy confidence that Adele admired and a spirit she envied. Dolly reached for the pitcher of orange juice as Howard Breen said to Adele, "The Cleareys had a real blow-out this morning. Six-thirty. I thought Frances was going to put Sam through the window.

Did you hear them?" The question was spoken in an undertone, but Noreen looked up from straightening the sailor collar on her dress. "A fight?" The two words were spoken casually enough, but Adele saw how the information had piqued Noreen's interest. She had made no secret of her fascination with Sam Clearey, a U.C. Berkeley botanist. "I was talking to Adele," Howard said, not unkindly. "Six-thirty in the morning? A fight? About what?" "Maybe he was out after curfew," Adele said to deflect her. "Six-thirty in the morning? A fight? About what?" "Maybe he was out after curfew," Adele said to deflect her.

She felt Howard's foot hit hers beneath the table. Her sardonic remark it seemed had struck the truth. "What a delicious thought!" Noreen rejoined. "Was he out on the town or in on the bed? And whose?" She laughed and cast her eyes round the table. They settled on Dolly speculatively. "I love these Cambridge intrigues," Dolly said, "Just like high school all over again." "The walls are thin, Dolly dear," Noreen pointed out.