Read Online Murder At Wittenham Park by R. W. Heber - Free Book Online Page B

looking superb in a long flame-coloured dress, with a diamond choker and diamond earrings.
    â€œMeet Mrs. Louise Sketchley,” she said genially, “rich widow and blackmail victim. This might be the last occasion she’ll be able to wear her best jewels, unless the blackmailer is defeated, so she’s loaded on the lot.”
    â€œWhich will remind her relations of just how much she’s worth and what they stand to inherit,” added Gilroy, who wore a well-cut dinner jacket, yet somehow still looked as if he had only hired it for a salesman’s conference. “Since you’re the first down, would you like to read the first clue?”
    â€œWhy not?” Jemma agreed.
    â€œBut first,” he said, childishly pleased with all this “first” punning, “you can be the first to have the first drink. What’s your poison, ha ha?”
    â€œAn orange juice and lemonade, please. And I hope it won’t kill me!”
    A look of panic came over Gilroy’s dimpled features, as though he had suddenly realized that his rented trousers were unzipped. For a moment Jemma thought she might be the first intended victim. What had actually taken him aback was that he had failed to reckon on non-drinkers. They had orange juice on the drinks tray, but Dodgson needed to go to his pantry to fetch lemonade. It was a relief when Jim Savage asked for an ordinary “G and T,” the standard drink of the Surrey stockbroker belt where he and Jemma lived. Gilroy winced at the expression, but at least gin and tonic was easy and he poured it himself, mixed another for Dee Dee, and gave himself a Scotch and soda.
    â€œHere’s to the weekend.” He raised his glass and they all toasted its success. “And here”—he took two slips of paper from a small pile on a table—“is the first clue.”
    The text ran: “This evening two characters are overheard in fierce argument. Who are they and why are they in dispute?” Dee Dee was planning to stage an argument with Welch, which would not be hard to bring about, and give a red-herring clue as to why he might be the murderer.
    â€œWe seem to be ahead of the action,” Jemma remarked to her father as she read this.
    â€œPossibly,” Jim conceded in his dry way, appreciating that during this weekend his own instinctive caution was going to be overruled by his daughter. Just as she had insisted that they didn’t cancel, in spite of his losing his job, now she was going to find mysteries at every turn. She had all the curiosity and ghoulish imagination of a born crime reporter.
    Gilroy overheard Jemma’s comment and had an alarming presentiment that events were already spiralling out of control, in the way that his business ventures invariably did. He had begun to think of it as the curse of the Gilroys. If he really had been a car salesman, pieces would have fallen off his cars during the test drives and gearboxes disintegrated. It would be typical of his luck if there actually was a murder this weekend. What exactly had the girl meant? What row could she have already overheard? There was going to be one with Welch, all right. But that would be after dinner, and he thought he’d been pretty clever to weave it into the “murder” clues. “Dashed neat, darling, don’t you think?” he had said to Dee Dee. So what the heck was all this?
    â€œWhen will this argument be?” Jemma asked, sounding innocent.
    â€œCould be any time.” He tried to put a bold face on the reply, but his discomfort showed through. Luckily he had to break off to welcome Dulcie and Hamish, who were soon followed by Loredana and then by Welch and his wife. Dee Dee had already guessed that only Dulcie and the Savages would put any effort into making the weekend work, and she was right. Loredana’s interest in the evening went precisely as far as tricking herself out in a skimpy, clinging silk dress,