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In the interest of good client relationships, I agreed with Mayfield immediately, admitting that there could be no other intent of my engagement and that the error on my part was just being distracted by my own thoughts when she had arrived. She seemed to accept this explanation and apology. Now, this would not be the first time that I had been engaged to investigate the same matter by two different clients, each offering to pay me for the same investigation. At first sight, this might seem like an easy way for the unscrupulous PI to extract a few more bucks from the more gullible members of the public. Even so, my experience, honed over many decades, is that when two parties each want you to investigate the same crime, at least one of them has a hidden motivation. This invariably leads to additional complexities, or even the risk of me getting my head shot at. So I felt no qualms about accepting double payments for the same piece of work, realising that it would probably be taken out of my hide sometime in the near future. "So," I asked in a mollifying tone of voice, "Tell me what happened after I was taken off to the police station." There was little enough to tell, according to Mayfield. Sergeant Tewel had been very kind, very sympathetic. He asked a few gentle questions. He gave the impression, she reported, he was only doing it because that's what was required by procedure, that he was simply going through the motions by the book. Mayfield had not formed a very good impression of Tewel's commitment or competence in tracking down what she took to be a ruthless, indeed heartless killer of her favourite grandmother. This was a view which seemed entirely at odds with the passionate outburst he had directed at me, but perhaps he was trying to spare the younger Westwood's feelings. But she had seen it as a weakness, not a kindness, and so she wanted me to work independently to find out who had been responsible for Lady Strowan's death. She seemed steely calm about the whole thing, despite her inconsolable weeping when she had first learned the dreadful news. There was a surprising degree of mental toughness about this lady, a resolute iron core to her being which would neither break nor be bent away from her own desires, her own view of the rightness of things. It was really quite impressive to behold.
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Part 23