Ron Meade followed up an anonymous tip-off to find Stephen Bentley in his office shot through the head. An appointment with Kate Briggs at 9.30 was pencilled in on his desk pad, which was more or less the time of death according to the police doctor. A routine check of his bank transactions showed a cheque for fifteen-hundred pounds paid in several days ago and drawn on Kate Briggs’s account and his body was found holding another cheque dated today and again signed by the lady in question. Blackmail sprang into Meade’s mind.
It didn’t weaken his suspicions to see shock followed by relief rather than displeasure on Kate Briggs’s face when he told her of the detective’s death. Both emotions seemed genuine enough and on instinct alone the wily Meade tended to rule Kate Briggs out of the murd
