Read Online Deadly Virtues by Jo Bannister - Free Book Online Page B

granny missing from the graveyard.” Hazel thought Gabriel Ash had at least one granny buried a long way from Norbold.
    “Othello!” he exclaimed, startled by the way the memory had returned. As if it had bitten him.
    “Come again?” Hazel Best’s mother had thought it was a terribly common expression, but she’d never quite cured her daughter of using it.
    “The Shakespeare reference—what he called his dog. He called it Othello.”
    “Did he?” she said levelly. “Okay.”
    Ash seemed to think it mattered. “Why did he want me to know that? That’s not casual conversation. He was being taken to another cell, but he hung back long enough to tell me that he once had a dog called Othello. Why?”
    If he was remembering correctly, it was odd. “Did he say anything else about it?”
    “He said it was a sniffer dog.”
    Hazel frowned. “That’s not a breed. You can’t go out and buy one. Could he have had a security-trained dog?”
    “I don’t think he had. I didn’t think so at the time. He didn’t talk like someone who had dogs. If you know what breed it is, you say so—if you don’t, you say it’s a mongrel or a crossbreed, or a Heinz fifty-seven. Or a lurcher.” He looked down at his own dog with a smile. “That boy didn’t know what kind of dog Othello was. I asked if it was a spaniel and he said it was, but he didn’t sound as if he’d ever thought about it. I don’t think it was a real dog. I think it was a piece of information he wanted me to have.”
    “You mean like a secret message?” It was as improbable as the house.
    Ash nodded. “I think so. He wanted to give me some information without the policeman realizing what he was doing.”
    “What policeman?”
    “The one who came for him.”
    “But…” There was no point. She tried another tack. “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Hazel thought, worrying the idea like a terrier, but nothing came to mind. “Othello. Othello the sniffer dog.”
    “Sniffer dogs look for drugs.”
    “Or explosives. Or dead bodies. Or various other things, actually. You can train them to associate just about any smell with a reward.”
    “Othello strangled his wife.”
    “Jerome Cardy wasn’t married.”
    “But he was black.”
    “You think that’s relevant?” It wasn’t a criticism—she genuinely wondered.
    “I have no idea,” confessed Ash. “But it wasn’t an off-the-cuff remark. It meant something to him, and he thought it might mean something to me.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a gesture of despair. “God help him.”
    “All right,” said Hazel. “So what do we know about Othello?”
    Gabriel Ash had had a good education once. But it was getting to be a long time since he’d studied English literature. “He was a Moor. Wasn’t he the governor of Cyprus? He killed his wife after his sidekick convinced him she was having an affair. She wasn’t. She loved Othello, and he loved her. But he killed her just the same.” His eyes had gone distant again and there was a hint of bitterness in his voice.
    “It was jealousy that killed Desdemona,” Hazel recalled. “Is that what Jerome was trying to tell you? That someone was jealous of him?”
    “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    “And why tie it up in ribbons? If he thought someone was going to hurt him, why not tell you who, and why?”
    “Because we weren’t alone. He wanted me to know. He didn’t want the policeman to understand.”
    The mysterious policeman again. “Ash, are you sure about that? That someone took Jerome to the other cell? That he didn’t just wander off by himself?”
    He looked momentarily offended. But he did her the courtesy of running through it in his mind once more. He reached the same conclusion. “Someone came to the door. He told the boy he’d freed up a cell for him. He seemed to think Patience might bite him, or”—he glanced apologetically at the dog—“worse.” He mouthed the word fleas at Hazel, as if it would cause offense if