Brighton Belle by Sara Sheridan Read Free Book Online Page A

variety of native speakers. As
a result she spoke each language like a native – with no trace of a foreign accent.
    ‘Liebe, liebe Henrietta,’ the old man was saying.
    That, Delia knew, was the old man’s wife.
    She stroked his head gently. He was falling asleep at last. Perfect. When he began to snore Delia slipped out of the bed and poured a cup of cold coffee. She removed her smudged make-up and got
dressed. Then she rifled through the old man’s pockets. There was some money and a few identification papers – she left all of that but took a gold coin that he had secreted in his
inside pocket. She weighed the coin carefully in her hand. It would be nice to have a souvenir, she thought, as she bit the metal and smiled. It was real. She wondered if perhaps it was a
sovereign. She would find out. She had once seen a sovereign pierced and used as a fob for keys. She might do that. It was stylish. Feeling sly, she slipped the coin into her pocket for later.
    Delia drew a deep breath. She was ready now. It was time. She picked up her suede handbag and carefully drew a needle and syringe from the magenta velvet interior. She knew he would wake up when
she punctured his skin so she’d have to be quick once she started. At first she had considered drugging the old man but had quickly discounted it because drugs would leave traces in his
blood. Alcohol was the best thing she could think of to slow him down and cause confusion. He’d had a bucketful and then she’d sat in a hot bath with him – a move designed to
enhance his drunkenness. Now, if she injected him, it would look like an embolism. Well, it would be an embolism. But it wouldn’t be a natural one. Of course the doctors would assume it was,
especially in a man of this age – there was really very little way to tell the difference if you weren’t looking out for the signs, and the evidence literally disappeared during the
post-mortem examination if the coroner wasn’t alerted to take steps to preserve it in advance. In a provincial town like this, with the corpse of an old man, Delia knew the coroner would be
unlikely to take those steps.
    Delia considered her options and decided for the last time to administer the injection between the toes. It was easier to hold him down by the legs. The old man sighed in his sleep and turned.
She waited for a moment, standing over him and relishing that she was here at long last. And then Delia plunged like a bird of prey, the hypodermic shooting its deadly load into the old man’s
bloodstream. He woke immediately, trying to pull back, shouting and confused. Straight away Delia refilled the syringe with air, holding down his calf with her elbow and his foot with the other
hand. It would take two syringes to do the job. Just air. Necessary for life but deadly in the bloodstream. God’s little joke, or one of them. She plunged the needle in a second time.
    ‘What are you doing?’ he shouted. ‘That hurts.’
    He pulled back as she let go but it was too late. And then Delia said the words that any old man in his position dreaded hearing most. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’
    But before he could reply or even think which one she might be, before he could reason with her or try to explain, or run out into the hall and get help, the old man found quite suddenly that he
couldn’t breath any more.
    ‘Jews,’ he gasped, his eyes bright with terror.
    It took two minutes. Delia watched him struggling, gasping, pissing himself. A lady she met once at a society party in London had remarked that lilies smelled of death: ‘Makes me quite
morbid, my dear, the smell of lilies.’
    The scent now wafted over from the bright crystal vase on the side table and Delia thought to herself that the lady was wrong – lilies didn’t smell like death at all.
    At the end she stood for a long while over the old man’s still body. A quick end was a luxury he hadn’t deserved but it was the best she could do. Death by