Read Online Death in Disguise by Caroline Graham - Free Book Online Page A

the greensward. She stubbed out her cigarette in the honey-coloured gell. A hundred and fifty, and for what? A web of fine lines. She traced the network with the tips of her index fingers then suddenly thrust the nails hard into the delicate skin, leaving cruel half moons. Then she picked up the tranquillisers and returned to the bedroom.
    Taking out a half bottle of champagne from the tortoiseshell and ebony armoire which Guy had had converted to an ice-cool receptacle for his bedtime tipple, she put the tranquillisers on her tongue and tipped back the sparkle, letting it run all over her face and throat. In the bathroom the perfumed water overflowed, soaking the carpet, oozing outwards to the door.
    Felicity, having drunk two more bottles, curled up, shrinking and dry-mouthed on a low brocaded chair. She was trying to avoid touching the fabric which had taken on the aspect of a mysterious landscape: spiked trellises; dissolving lovers’ knots running into crimson lakes; clouds like blue-bunched fists. It was all sinisterly vivacious and filled her with foreboding.
    The encroaching tide, the slap-slap at the edge of the bath, finally attracted her attention. She tried to stand up. Her limbs were heavy and her head ached. She blinked at the water which seemed to be vigorously on the move. Feeling bereft and frightened she started to cry.
    Outside in the street a pneumatic drill started up. Drrrrrrrrrr… Felicity rammed her fingers in her ears but the sound continued, splitting open her skull. Drrrrrrrr…
    She lurched over to the window, flung it up and screamed, her voice cracking like a wet sheet in the wind, ‘Shut up you bastards… Shut up! ’
    The drill stopped independently of her intervention. She was about to withdraw when a voice directly beneath her said: ‘Mrs Gamelin?’
    Felicity craned out further. Standing on the black and white steps, looking up at the house with an expression of covetous respect, was a perfectly strange young man. She ran down and opened the poppy-red door. The young man jumped back no doubt recalling the manic shrieks from the upstairs window. Behind him, parked at the curb, was a van inscribed ‘Au Printemps: Luxury Dry Cleaning & Invisible Repairs.’ He produced a piece of paper.
    â€˜From the desk of Mr Gamelin, Mrs Gamelin.’
    Felicity gave a hawk of laughter at such pomposity but she took the paper, which listed various items of clothing and read them out. ‘One navy pinstripe suit, one grey chalk-stripe, one cream linen dinner-jacket. To be collected.’ And a signature: ‘Gina Lombardi’.
    â€˜Wait.’ She left him on the step knowing he’d be in the hall the moment she was out of sight, and climbed back upstairs. In Guy’s dressing room she pulled out the clothes noticing, as no doubt she was meant to do, the lipstick on the tuxedo lapel. An unnecessary directive. As far as Felicity was concerned Gina could have him not only mounted but stuffed.
    She walked to the landing and looked down. The front man for Au Printemps was examining his zitzy complexion in the Mexican sunburst. Felicity shouted ‘Catch’ and threw down the clothes, watching their ballooning descent.
    The young man flushed. He moved quietly into the hall where he knelt and folded each item with ostentatious neatness. Felicity was sorry for her rudeness. She had been brought up always to be polite to inferiors which, her parents had led her to understand, included everyone but the Queen, the heir apparent and, on Sundays, Almighty God.
    He did not reply. He was checking the pockets, pulling the linings out, tucking them back. He was not really put out by her behaviour. Everyone knew that the rich, like the very old, did and said just what they damn well liked. And for the same reason. Nothing to lose. This one was well away. He could always smell champagne. It would be something to tell Hazel when he got back. They always said in the office