Read Online Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Free Book Online

said. ‘I suppose she used the launderette.’
    ‘Look in the cupboards.’
    ‘I’m looking. Sometimes I dig for buttered rolls. Does it occur to you that we’ve nothing to go on in this case, nothing at
     all?’
    ‘It occurs to me.’
    There was a good stock of dry goods, herbs and spices, tea and coffee, rice and sugar, but little in the way of fresh food.
     A bottle of milk in the fridge was open and part-used but still fresh. There were five eggs, two packs of unsalted butter,
     a wrapped sliced loaf, and a piece of hard cheese wrapped in tin foil.
    ‘She wasn’t intending to eat at home that night, at any rate,’ said Slider.
    As he straightened up the word VIRGIN caught his eye, and he turned towards it. Behind the bread bin in the far corner of
     the work surface were two tins of olive oil, like diminutive petrol cans. They were brightly, not to say gaudily, decorated
     in primary colours depicting a rustic scene: goitrous peasants with manic grins were gathering improbable olives the size
     of avocados, from trees which, if trees could smile, would have been positively hilarious with good health and good will towards
     the gatherers.
    Atherton, following his gaze, read the words on the face of the front tin. ‘VIRGIN GREEN – Premium Olive Oil – First Pressing
     – Produce of Italy.’ He pushed the bread bin out of the way. ‘Two tins? She must have been fond of Italian food.’
    The words set up echoes in Slider’s mind of his lunchtime fantasy about her. Coincidence.
    ‘She was,’ he said. ‘Packets of dried pasta and tubes of tomato purée in the cupboard.’
    Atherton gave an admiring look. ‘What a detective you’d have made, sir.’
    Slider smiled kindly. ‘And a lump of Parmesan cheese in the fridge.’
    Atherton lifted the second tin and hefted it; unscrewed the lid and peered in, tilting it this way and that, and then applied
     a nostril to the opening and sniffed. ‘Empty. Looks as though it’s been washed out, too, or never used. I wonder why she kept
     it?’
    ‘Perhaps she thought it was pretty.’
    ‘You jest, of course.’ He turned it round. ‘Virgin Green, indeed. It sounds like a film title. Science fiction, maybe. Or
     pornography – but we know she wasn’t interested in pornography.’
    ‘Do we?’ Slider said incautiously.
    ‘Of course. She didn’t have a pornograph.’
    Slider wandered back into the living-room and stared about him, his usual anxious frown deepening between his brows. Atherton
     stood in the doorway and watched him. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything. It all looks very professional’
    ‘Somebody went to a lot of trouble,’ Slider said. ‘There must have been something very important they didn’t want us to know
     about. But what?’
    ‘Drugs,’ said Atherton, and when Slider looked at him, he shrugged. ‘Well, it always is these days, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes. But I don’t think so. This doesn’t smell that way to me.’
    Atherton waited for enlightenment and didn’t get it. ‘Have you got a hunch, guv?’ he asked. No answer. ‘Or is it just the
     way you stand?’
    But Slider merely grunted. He walked across to the music corner, the only place with any trace of Anne-Marie’s personality
     about it, and picked up the violin case, sat down on the bed with it across his knees, opened it. The violin glowed darkly
     against the electric-blue plush of the lining with the unmistakable patina of age. It looked warm and somehow alive, inviting
     to the touch, like the rump of a well-groomedbay horse. In the rests of the lid were slung two violin bows, and behind them was tucked a snapshot. Slider pulled it out
     and turned it to the light to examine it.
    It was taken on a beach in some place where the sun was hot enough to make the shadows very short and underfoot. A typical
     amateur holiday snapshot, featuring the shoulder and flank of a lean young man in bathing-trunks disappearing out of the edge
     of the picture, and