The continuing silence worried me. I stared through the door towards Helen’s office. ‘Do you think she’s shot herself? Has she shot him? What’s going on in there?’
‘Of course she hasn’t shot herself,’ said Markham scornfully. ‘She’s a doctor. It’s far more likely she’s shot someone else. Halcombe would be my first choice.’
I settled back down with a sigh of relief. ‘Good for her. Sometimes the medical profession really comes through.’
‘Nobody’s shot anyone,’ said Leon, voice of reason, dispeller of happy fantasies and nappy changer. ‘Although I can understand the necessity for desperate measures at the thought of spending the rest of your life shackled to an historian.’
‘Pity,’ said Markham with regret. ‘Shooting Halcombe would have solved so many problems. I’m sure doctors shoot their patients all the time. We could all swear it was an accident.’
I nodded. ‘And help bury the body afterwards. Well, not me, obviously, because I’m on light duties, but I’d be happy to urge the rest of you on with word and gesture. We’d have to do it behind Leon’s back of course, because he never lets me have any fun. Husbands!’ I threw him a scathing look.
He grinned amiably, seemingly ignorant of the lowly position of husbands in the scheme of things.
‘You do realise,’ I said, ‘that with Leon and me shackled together until the end of time, and if Helen does say yes and Tim survives the shock, then that just leaves you and Hunter. Can we expect a happy announcement any time soon?’
We both looked at him expectantly, but without a great deal of hope. The precise nature of his relationship with Hunter was a mystery to everyone.
He put his hands in his pockets, looked out of the window, sighed, and turned back into the room again – mischief written all over his face.
‘No need, really. We’ve been married for years.’
And then he was out of the door before either of us was able to utter a word.
THE END