Ellis Peters - George Felse 13 - Rainbow's End by Ellis Peters

wind blowing between the sheltering trees. ‘Do go in,’ said George, remembering she was fresh from the bath. ‘You shouldn’t risk catching cold.’
    She gazed at him for a moment with an unreadable face, and then suddenly smiled at him, and turned and went back into the house without a word, and closed the door softly between them.
     
    Rainbow’s solicitors were a Comerbourne firm, a fanfare of four resounding names, not one of which survived in the company. The man George wanted was a Mr Bowes, middle-aged, thin and spry. Yes, he held Rainbow’s will, and yes, he fully understood the significance it might hold for the police investigation. ‘
Cui bono
’ is still sound sense. Until after the inquest and the release of the body for burial, he remained the sole custodian of Rainbow’s testamentary dispositions, but he made no bones about divulging them to the officer in charge.
    ‘It’s a very concise affair. There are small legacies to his assistants in both shops. Abbot’s Bale House is left to his wife, with all its contents. But the residual legatee, who gets his businesses, all his holdings in banks and stocks, the lot, is the manageress of his Birmingham shop. A Miss Isobel Lavery.’
    It was a shock, and yet it probably should not have been. The partnership with Barbara, on any but the most superficial examination, bore all the marks of a business arrangement, a mutual benefit alliance.
    ‘And I take it that the residue will amount to a pretty considerable fortune? Judging by his way of living – and I never heard that he gave anyone the impression of being a bad financial risk?’
    ‘Anything but,’ agreed Mr Bowes frankly. ‘There’ll be not far short of a quarter of a million to come to Miss Lavery.’
    Enough to provide an added incentive, supposing a wife who repented of her bargain felt the urge to break free; always supposing, also, of course, that she didn’t know she wasn’t going to get it! But undoubtedly by the same token Miss Lavery represented another possibility to be taken into account. And if she occupied so confidential a place in Rainbow’s life as to come in for the lion’s share of his property, the odds were that she, at least, not having the security of a wife, would need to know very well what was in his will. Businesswomen can usually take care of their own interests. She might, of course, be the exception.
    ‘Have you met Miss Lavery?’
    ‘Once or twice, on Mr Rainbow’s business. No doubt you’ll have to see her. You’ll be able to make your own assessment.’ Clearly he had made his, if he wasn’t willing to share it. ‘I haven’t yet been in touch with her, but I believe Mrs Rainbow has. In view of what’s happened, I suppose she may have decided to close the shop. You’d better have her home address, too, just in case.’
    As it turned out, however, Miss Isobel Lavery took a sternly business-like view even of death. The shop in Birmingham, a narrow but expensive frontage leading far back through several well-furnished rooms, proved to be open for business as usual. A young girl at a fragile Regency desk came forward to enquire his interest, and opened her eyes wide when he asked for the manageress. She vanished into the mysterious rear regions, and came back a few minutes later to lead him into a small, plain office. The elaborations were kept for the showrooms, though this austere workroom was elegant enough in its own way.
    Miss Lavery could have been called many things, handsome, decorative, even sumptuous, but not elegant. She was a tall, full-breasted blonde with an excellent figure, and a great casque of lacquered hair in pale, silvery gold. Light blue eyes artistically shadowed with darker blue gazed coolly and shrewdly out of a clear-featured face that erred only slightly on the side of coldness and hardness. She had, he thought, added a few funereal touches of black jewellery and a knotted georgette scarf to the black dress she habitually wore in