[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled Page 25

  ‘Yes. Hamlet, isn’t it?’

  The oval face filled with delight. ‘That’s right. Richard wouldn’t have known that. He thought that anything but science was so much frippery.’

  ‘But you were too clever for him. You chose an occasion when there would be lots of other people around him. People who might be more obvious suspects than you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Again a horrid tremor of her own cleverness shuddered her body for a moment. ‘But I don’t think I thought of it like that when I planned it. It just seemed to me appropriate that Richard should die in front of his colleagues. Particularly if they could include the woman he’d raped. I wasn’t sure until the day that she was going to be at the table, but that seemed very appropriate to me. Doesn’t it seem appropriate to you, Detective Sergeant Hook?’ It was Lambert on this occasion who stepped forward and announced the words of arrest.

  Alison Cullis nodded at the formal phrases she had heard before, as if participating in some familiar religious ritual. 'Amen to that,’ she said, almost happily, as she prepared to accompany them to the police car and the cells.