B004M5HK0M EBOK by Unknown Read Free Book Online Page B

though Emily had been waiting for her. So Emily took advantage of the situation to expound her theories about the knife throwing.
    ‘No-one has seen Zsa-Zsa since the knife throwing. Did she die right in front of me? Was she stabbed afterwards? Or is she alive?’
    ‘It might have been an accident,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘Seems like a night for mishaps. A girl just set herself on fire over there by the house. One of the performers. A silly girl with a cigarette holder and a silver flapper dress. The fringe of her dress went up, whoosh! Luckily for her your friend whatshisname, Sonny Jim, he was there to smother the flames.’
    Was he? Emily thought of Joe, heroic and strong, wrestling Elise to the ground to save her from burning– and hopefully bruising her a bit in the process.
    She said, ‘It could have been anyone at the party who threw that knife.’
    ‘But if Zsa-Zsa died, then who was it who came back again to show us that it was a prop? To show us that she hadn’t been killed with a knife? You’re not saying they did something with mirrors? Or videotape? I was watching and I saw that girl come back, large as life.’
    ‘So we have suspects,’ Dr. Muriel said. ‘But no murder. That’s interesting. That’s a conundrum. ‘Remember, remember, the 5 th of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot.’ How very apt that you should be investigating a murder that may not have happened, on Bonfire Night, a night which celebrates a regicide that never happened. You need a motive, don’t you? Though before you start with that, I’d say you need to have a murder.’
    ‘I’ve got a murder – I’ve just got to convince everyone else.’
    ‘Alright then, m’dear. You need a body. If there’s been a murder, there will be a body.’
    ‘You’re right. I need to find one. And if I can’t find one, I can at least look’.
    ‘Flower beds? Anything recently dug up.’
    ‘It’s just a tangle of weeds everywhere. Nothing has been touched for twenty years.’
    ‘The bonfire? You couldn’t really tuck a body in there without the whole lot falling down like a pile of fiddlesticks.’
    ‘Let me think.’ Emily closed her eyes to concentrate and instead of seeing where they might have hidden the body, she thought of Jessie. Even at the end, when everything else had gone: sight, hearing, back legs and sphincter, Jessie could smell a gravy bone across the kitchen. She’d have enjoyed the game of hunting for Zsa-Zsa, even if it was rather a ghoulish game. And, as Emily thought of Jessie, it was almost as though the dog was helping her with her enquiries (only almost, because of course she didn’t believe in ghosts), and she thought about that cellar with the poor dog in a cage down there. A dark cellar would be a very good place to hide a body.
    She opened her eyes and looked towards the side of the house where the cellar was situated. She could see Joe arguing with Chris and Zizi up by the locked side door to the house where Midori had vomited.
    ‘I feel that I’m going about this the wrong way,’ Emily said to Dr. Muriel. ‘I should just ask Joe. Or Zizi. Or any of them. I should ask them straight out.’
    ‘Indeed,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘But you won’t know what to ask them unless you find a body. If it was just a jolly good trick, they won’t tell you their professional secrets, will they?’
    ‘If there’s been a murder, I don’t suppose they’ll confess. Who’d want to admit to killing someone?’
    ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Dr. Muriel. ‘There are boastful people, frightened people, and those who just want to unburden themselves. You know, in my line of work, I enquire into all sorts of tricky situations, and after a while one starts to see that there is no absolute right and wrong. There is only what might be and what must be. One quickly adjusts to the idea that in certain situations, for certain people, it would be no trouble at all to kill someone.’
    Emily stood and looked down for a moment on