Read Online Smoke Alarm by Priscilla Masters - Free Book Online

back.’
    Expert hands took over then, shampooing, massaging the scalp, a dripping walk back to the chair and the scissors snipped their way into action. At the end of it Martha looked at herself in the mirror and approved, even giving herself a slightly smug smile. ‘Why can
I
never get it like this myself?’ she asked.
    Vernon looked even more smug. He whipped the wrap away. ‘Going anywhere nice tonight then, Mrs Gunn?’
    She eyed herself in the mirror and caught the light dancing in her eyes. ‘Certainly am,’ she said.
    â€˜And are you going to tell me where?’
    She shook her head.
    â€˜Or who with?’
    Another shake of the head. She stood up, said goodbye to both reflections in the mirror, the fantasy lady with black tresses and a slightly excited middle-aged woman.
Monday, 28 February, 8.45 a.m.
    Monday, as always, came around far too fast but the day brought its compensations. Today felt like the first real day of spring. Already the trees were beginning to burst through their winter drabness. They were
almost
green. One felt convinced that spring really was ‘just around the corner’. Bulbs were poking up through the soil to be greeted by a jolly sun beaming benevolently down on them. Anticipation, Martha thought as she drove round the ring road towards Bayston Hill, was so often better than arrival. How many summers were a disappointment? But spring? Never.
    She parked in her usual spot and pushed open the front door. Jericho was waiting to ambush her in the hall. ‘Nice weekend, Jerry?’
    â€˜Very nice, ma’am,’ he answered in his slow, Shropshire burr. ‘Quiet, just with Mrs Palfreyman and myself, but very pleasant for all that.’ He could hardly avoid adding the nicety, ‘And you, Mrs Gunn?’
    â€˜Very good, thank you.’ She could have said so much more now that Sam, her son, had moved back in with them: that he was on loan from Liverpool to play for Stoke City and her Sunday had been spent watching him play and cheering on his side. That almost as soon as Sam had walked in through the door, Agnetha, the au pair, had tearfully left, returning to her home land of Sweden to be married in a couple of months’ time and that she, Martha, had finally, finally given up her grieving for Martin’s death from cancer when the twins had been only three years old, and that she had finally dumped her normally sensible, practical, middle-aged ‘mumsy’ role to go out on a date. A proper, romantic, dinner date. She could still feel her toes tingling with the remembered anticipation. The only problem had been that the ‘date’ had been with her old friend – or rather, the widower of her late friend – Simon Pendlebury. And although the evening had been pleasant – very pleasant, Simon being an urbane, amusing and polite character – it had not been the toe-tingling, breathless experience of her early dates with Martin. When she had got home on Saturday night she had undressed and felt numb and a little depressed as she climbed into bed. It wasn’t the same.
    Dr Mark Sullivan had made an appointment through Jericho, the guardian of her gate, and appeared at 10 a.m. He’d brought with him the notes and pictures of the three post-mortems he had had to perform on Saturday. He walked in, a man of medium height and unremarkable appearance, blue eyes behind glasses, hair brown. He was a few years younger than her. ‘Basically,’ he said, ‘they all died of smoke inhalation with varying degrees of burns. As you’d expect seeing as her bedroom was directly over the seat of the fire, Mrs Christie Barton had the most severe burns, most sustained post-mortem. There is very little inflammation around the sites which were basically hands, forearms, and legs. She was otherwise healthy as was her daughter, Adelaide. The old man had some heart disease and a little underlying fibrosis of the lung