Death in High Heels by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page B

outside.”
    “I suppose you haven’t any idea as to how she might have come to take a dose of this oxalic acid?”
    “Not a sausage,” said Aileen automatically, and took her departure.
    Even Bedd’s equable pulse had been stirred by the vision of her wild-rose face and burnished hair, but he shook his head sadly after the retreating form. “Beautiful, but dumb,” said Bedd.
    “Pity she isn’t,” replied Charlesworth, and mentally crossed Aileen off, his books.
    Mrs. ’Arris provided a savoury in this feast of sweetness. A stout, red-cheeked woman, who looked as though she wore a life-belt fastened under her worn woollen cardigan, she marched into the office and, planting her feet wide apart, demanded: “Wot’s this? Perlice?”
    “That’s right. We——”
    “Well, I never done it.”
    “Nobody has suggested——”
    “I never done nothink. It’s all ’er lies.”
    “Now, please be quiet, Mrs. Harris——”
    “A bit of fish, maybe, and a few cold potatoes, no good to anybody, but nothing more I won’t allow. I’ve always bin known as a good, ‘ard-workin’ woman, and without my ’usband’s sent for, nothing else will I say.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Harris. Now please be quiet and let me put a few simple questions to you.”
    “Sending for the perlice, just for a bit a fish.”
    “This has nothing to do with fish. A young lady, Miss Doon, has died, and I’m simply here to find out what she died from. I believe the staff here have lunch in the basement and that you’re generally down there helping with the serving out and so on; and I want you to tell me whether you think it’s possible that Miss Doon had anything to eat, or any tea, between lunch-time and the time she was taken ill.”
    “Not without she ’ad some sweets or somethink in ’er office, she didn’t. Tea she did not ’ave, that I do know. She was took bad before it went round.”
    “But she ate her lunch all right?”
    “No, she did not, never being a one for curried rabbit and complaining Monday it was worse than ever.”
    “What was wrong with it?”
    “Nothink that I could see, but she was always one to make a fuss. ‘I can’t eat this ’ere,’ she says, ‘worse than usual it is,’ she says. ‘What’s for sweet, Mrs. ’Arris?’ she says. ‘Jelly, Miss,’ I says. ‘Good lord,’ she says, ‘what are we comin’ to? Well, bring me mine, Mrs. ’Arris,’ she says, ‘and take this muck away.”
    “And did you give her a jelly?”
    “Yes, cook give me a jelly through the ’atch, and I takes and gives it to Miss Doon. ‘There you are, Miss,’ I says. ‘And cook says you can ’ave another ’elping if you want it, being as ’ow Miss Gregory’s out and won’t want ’ers.’”
    “What happened to the rest of her meat?”
    “Well, there wasn’t much left. After all ’er grumbling she seemed to ’ave got through most of it. Put it all in the dustbin, I did. D’you think it was orf?”
    “Well, something did upset Miss Doon, didn’t it? I suppose the dustbins have been emptied long ago?”
    “Yes, the sergeant arst me that first thing this morning. Emptied before I got ’ere they was. I wonder if there was somethink wrong with that rabbit? Come to think of it, I ’ad terrible pains in the night, meself?”
    “What, last night? After the rabbit?”
    “That’s right, chronic they were. I says to my ’usband, ‘George,’ I says, ‘my stomach’s terrible agen,’ I says.…”
    “Oh, then you’ve had these pains before? They weren’t something new?”
    “Bless you, no. I ’as them nearly every night. Wot I suffer nobody knows, not without it’s my husband. ‘George,’ I says to ’im …”
    “But under the circumstances, you don’t think it need necessarily have been the rabbit?”
    “Well, you never know, do you? Still, the other young ladies ’asn’t complained, not without it was Miss Rose from the workroom, but that was a needle what she