The Child's Child (36 page)
Authors: Barbara Vine
“I wish we’d had a civil partnership,” he said to me, “and then I could have counted as his next of kin.”
The knife thrusts had missed his heart, but one of them had destroyed his spleen. “Who needs a spleen?” he said when he was recovering. “I don’t even know what it does.”
Did he know I sat beside his bed along with Fay and, as soon as he was allowed to, James? I never asked, and when I knew he was himself again and sitting up and talking, I went into his room in fear and trembling, sure he would turn away and cover his face in the bedclothes. That didn’t happen. He was talking to Fay, saying (in typical Andrew fashion) that she would say the trial ought to be postponed for months whereas . . .
He looked up when I came in. Holding out his arms, he said, “Mind my wounds. Hi, Sis.”
© JERRY BAUER
RUTH RENDELL,
writing here as Barbara Vine, has won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writers’ Association. Her remarkable career has spanned more than forty years, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she lives in London.
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COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER
ALSO BY RUTH RENDELL
To Fear a Painted Devil
Vanity Dies Hard
The Secret House of Death
One Across, Two Down
The Face of Trespass
A Demon in My View
A Judgement in Stone
Make Death Love Me
The Lake of Darkness
Master of the Moor
The Killing Doll
The Tree of Hands
Live Flesh
Talking to Strange Men
The Bridesmaid
Going Wrong
The Crocodile Bird
The Keys to the Street
A Sight for Sore Eyes
Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
The Rottweiler
Thirteen Steps Down
The Water’s Lovely
Portobello
Tigerlily’s Orchids
The St. Zita Society
THE INSPECTOR WEXFORD SERIES
From Doon with Death
The Sins of the Fathers
Wolf to the Slaughter
The Best Man to Die
A Guilty Thing Surprised
No More Dying Then
Murder Being Once Done
Some Lie and Some Die
Shake Hands Forever
A Sleeping Life
Death Notes
The Speaker of Mandarin
An Unkindness of Ravens
The Veiled One
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter
Simisola
Road Rage
Harm Done
The Babes in the Wood
End in Tears
Not in the Flesh
The Monster in the Box
The Vault
BARBARA VINE NOVELS
A Dark-Adapted Eye
A Fatal Inversion
The House of Stairs
Gallowglass
King Solomon’s Carpet
Asta’s Book
No Night Is Too Long
The Brimstone Wedding
The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy
Grasshopper
The Blood Doctor
The Minotaur
The Birthday Present
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ISBN 978-1-4516-9489-5
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