THE SMART WOMAN'S GUIDE TO MURDER a twisty, darkly comic take on the classic country house murder mystery by VICTORIA DOWD

Author:VICTORIA DOWD [DOWD, VICTORIA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books crime thrillers and mysteries
Published: 2020-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Rule 17: Remember, jealousy can be a powerful weapon.

READ ALL THE SIGNS

I insisted to Mother that we hadn’t wasted our time by visiting the Angels. ‘We need to be patient and read all the signs. Even the minutest detail could be the key to exposing the truth—’

‘Read all the signs? You mean like this monstrosity!’ Mother shouted and stormed into the sitting room. The cheap brass plaque was slanting and tarnished.

NO SMOKING

Someone had hastily scrawled underneath in black Sharpie or any form of e-cigarettes. Clearly there was some awareness of the outside world here.

The fire was dwindling and the sitting room had slipped into a stale coldness. Bridget wasn’t there now, presumably doing serious book club work upstairs with Mr Bojangles. When they were left empty, the rooms settled quickly back to their loneliness. A foetid air easily took hold when it went unchecked and a lifeless pallor infected the light, giving it a morgue-like quality.

Although, I’ve never actually been in a morgue. All the dead people I’ve seen, three so far, have been in the real world. Dad, Doreen Dellamer and now Less. Not yet corpses, still dead people. Corpses are empty shells, not people of any description — dead or otherwise. The corpse in the funeral parlour was just an image of the man I knew. But Dad was still Dad when the breath slipped from him and his eyes turned up to the sky.

This room was a corpse. Life had long since departed. I imagined the room teeming with life, a family, children playing on the lawn with the family dog outside this window. The Angels had known it like that.

Mother slumped into the sofa and stared at the dwindling embers of the fire. I wanted to go and sit with her, but I knew what she’d say. She always said it when I was a child and dared to put my arms around her. She’d hold me for a moment, before saying, ‘You really must control yourself.’ Then she’d let go. Children remember being let go.

‘Bridget didn’t come and help, I notice.’ Mirabelle edged in next to Mother on the sofa, leaving no space for anyone else. ‘What else did she have to do? Bloody dog.’

‘Fire needs stoking,’ Aunt Charlotte announced.

Mirabelle stood. ‘I’ll do it.’

‘I can manage, thank you Mirabelle.’ Aunt Charlotte pulled aside the vast, slightly bent, fireguard. It had almost survived being wedged under the wheels of a four-by-four but would never really be the same again. Resembling a shot-putter in tweed, Aunt Charlotte grabbed the poker as if it were a weapon.

It was a weapon.

She held it out in silence.

‘Diana’s arrow,’ I said.

There, in Aunt Charlotte’s fist, was the large metal arrow that was missing from the stone statue at the front of the house. It had a thick, congealed layer of blood around its tip. Aunt Charlotte stepped towards Mother and Mirabelle and, for a moment, I imagined her slamming it down on them both. Instead, she laid it carefully on the coffee table and we all stared down at it.

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