A Great Deliverance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,3

his marriage. Both were successful, deeply satisfying. His wife was perfection: a rock of devotion, an intellectual companion, a loving mother, a sexual delight. He admitted that she was the very centre of his existence, that his three children were merely tangential objects, pleasant and diverting, but nothing at all of real importance compared to Laura. He turned to her - his first thought in the morning, his last thought at night - for virtually every need in his life. And she met each one.

For Webberly it was different: a career that was, like the man, plodding along, one not brilliant but cautious, filled with countless successes for which he rarely took credit, for Webberly simply was not the political animal he needed to be to succeed at the Yard. Thus, no knighthood loomed seductively on his professional horizon, and this was what had put the enormous strain upon the Webberly marriage.

Knowing that her younger sister was Lady Hillier clawed at the fabric of Frances Webberly's life. It had turned her from a shy but complacent middle-class housewife to a social climber of the pushiest kind. Dinner parties, cocktail parties, dreary buffets which they could ill afford were given for people in whom they had no interest, all of them part of what Frances perceived as her husband's climb to the top. And to them all the Hilliers faithfully went, Laura out of sad loyalty to a sister with whom she no longer lovingly communicated and Hillier himself to protect Webberly as best he could from the piercingly cruel comments Frances often made publicly about her husband's lacklustre career. Lady Macbeth incarnate, Hillier thought with a shudder.

"No, not there," Webberly was responding. "It's merely that I thought I'd got Nies and Kerridge sorted out years ago. To have a confrontation crop up again between them is disconcerting."

How typical of Malcolm to take responsibility for the foibles of others, Hillier thought.

"Refresh my memory on their last fray," he said. "It was a Yorkshire situation, wasn't it? Gypsies involved in a murder?"

Webberly nodded. "Nies heads up the Richmond police." He sighed heavily, forgetting for a moment to blow the smoke from his cigar towards the open window. Hillier strained not to cough. Webberly loosened his necktie a fraction and absently fingered the frayed collar of his white shirt. "An old gypsy woman was killed up there three years ago. Nies runs a tight CID. His men are meticulous, accurate to the last detail. They conducted an investigation and arrested the old crone's son-in-law. It was an apparent dispute over the ownership of a garnet necklace."

"Garnets? Were they stolen?"

Webberly shook his head, tapping his cigar against a dented tin ashtray on his desk. The action dislodged debris from previous cigars, which drifted like dust to mingle with papers and manila folders. "No. The necklace had been given to them by Edmund Hanston-Smith."

Hillier sat forward in his chair. "Hanston-Smith?"

"Yes, you're remembering it now, aren't you? But that case was after all this. The man arrested for the old woman's murder - Romaniv, I think his name was - had a wife. About twenty-five years old and beautiful in the way only those women can be: dark, olive-skinned, exotic."

"More than a bit enticing to a man like Hanston-Smith?"

"In truth. She got him to believe that Romaniv was innocent. It took a few weeks - Romaniv hadn't come up before the assizes yet. She convinced Hanston-Smith that the case needed to be reopened. She swore that they were only being persecuted because of their gypsy blood, that Romaniv had been with her the entire night in question."

"I imagine her charms made that easy to believe."

Webberly's mouth quirked. He stubbed out the tip of his cigar in the ashtray and clasped his freckled hands over his stomach. They effectively hid the stain on his waistcoat. "From the later testimony of Hanston-Smith's valet, the good Mrs. Romaniv had no trouble keeping even a man of sixty-two more than busy for one entire night. You'll recall that Hanston-Smith was a man of some considerable political influence and wealth. It was no difficult matter for him to convince the York-shire constabulary to become involved. So Reuben Kerridge - he's still Yorkshire's chief constable in spite of all that happened - ordered Nies's investigation reopened. And to make matters worse, he ordered Romaniv released."

"How did Nies react?"

"Kerridge is his superior officer, after all. What could he do? Nies was wild with anger, but he released Romaniv and ordered his