“There’s been gossip already, has there? Bound to be, I suppose. Still, they might have let the poor creature rest in peace.”
“If you lived in this neighbourhood you’d know that that was the last thing they’d be likely to do. If what they’re saying is true, she was no loss.”
Fayre was struck by the bitterness of his tone.
“You never met her, did you?” he asked.
“I must have paid a couple of calls at Staveley while she was there, but I did not run across her. From all accounts, though, she was a pretty average rotter.”
Gregg’s tone was brutal and Fayre felt his instinctive dislike for the man increase.
“I’ve come across that type once or twice in the course of my life and I don’t blame the man that killed her,” Gregg went on. “She probably richly deserved it.”
“Well, the poor woman’s dead and, unfortunately, her secret, whatever it was, has died with her,” answered Fayre, in a voice calculated to put an end to the discussion.
But Gregg was not so easily quenched.
“Very pretty sentiment,” he allowed, with something very like a sneer. “But it’s neither just nor logical. It’s a hard fact that the evil people do lives after them and I don’t believe in the whitewashing process myself. The world’s the better for her removal, so why not say so?”