A Thrust to the Vitals by Geraldine Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

questioned Roy and Keith Farraday, the identical twins who had been  in the same school  year as Mickey, Nigel, Randy Rawlins and Seward. Rafferty reminded himself that the twins had been the school sneaks; if it was a practise they still indulged in in their maturity, Rafferty intended to find out.
    Like the rest, the Farradays proclaimed total ignorance of Seward’s violent demise and refused to be shifted from this stance. The hotel staff on duty in Seward’s suite — Randy Rawlins, the clearly now openly gay cocktail waiter and barman and Samantha Harman, the busty waitress — took a similar line. Even at this unsociable hour, the latter was apparently not too tired to flirt. But Rafferty, now too exhausted even for such a harmless diversion as flirting, sent them all off into the night. He was willing to give them the benefit of any doubt for now, but he was also willing to give them enough rope to implicate themselves if any of them had reason to nurse a guilty conscience.
    It had become apparent, during his questioning of the guests, that Seward, as well as receiving his civic honours, had also taken the opportunity to revisit his past. And gloat about his success to the failures who littered it? From what Rafferty had so far discovered, he had treated the people who had populated that past and who had failed to shine in life with the same lack of civility as he had treated them in their youth. Had one of them decided it was payback time?
    Rafferty saved the best till last. He felt he deserved a treat and had deliberately made his cousin wait till even the help had been questioned. Perhaps he was being petty, but, given their past differences, he felt that he owed Nigel little in the way of consideration. Besides, there was nothing more likely to get his cousin’s dander up and encourage him to blurt out things better left unsaid than making him wait until last to be questioned. And, anxious to prove his society credentials, Nigel might even tell him the truth about how he had got his name on the guest list.
    Getting any kind of truth out of his devious cousin inclined Rafferty to make use of every weapon in his arsenal, petty or not. And if petty swung it by angering “dear” Nigel, Rafferty wasn’t too proud to stoop to that level.
     

Chapter Four
    Nigel Blythe, Rafferty’s sharp-suited estate agent cousin, strolled nonchalantly into the ballroom, gazed around at the party litter with a disinterested air that didn’t fool Rafferty for a second, and after making them wait a good ten seconds, finally condescended to saunter across the floor to the table where they had set up operations.
    Nigel had yet to open his mouth, but, never mind hoping to make his cousin’s dander unwisely rise, Rafferty could feel his own equilibrium wobble. He was also discomfited by the calm presence of Llewellyn at his side. Ready to take notes, his sergeant was studying Nigel as if he were some rare anthropological specimen that he had not previously known existed. Rafferty envied him his scientific detachment.
    When eventually he deigned to take a seat and be questioned about his presence at such a lavish, VIP function, Nigel languidly explained that he had met Sir Rufus at a house-warming party to which, as the selling agent, he had been invited by Sir Rufus’s house-purchasing friends.
    Nigel being Nigel, he would have made the most of the opportunity. Rafferty didn’t doubt that his cousin had milked this potentially lucrative house-warming for all it was worth and then some. Almost as a reflex action, he would have left piles of his arty, oh-so-tastefully-produced literature, describing his determinedly up-market estate agent business, in the various rooms to which, as a guest, he had access, as well as a few that he most definitely didn’t.
    But Nigel had never believed in waiting for business to come to him. As Rafferty had learned when his cousin was placing his first, exploratory, foot in the shark-infested waters