Death in Zanzibar by M. M. Kaye Read Free Book Online Page A

half an hour later she was sitting in front of a large looking-glass, swathed in a peach-coloured overall, while Mr Holden explained breezily to a giggling blonde hairdresser’s assistant the details of Miss Ada Kitchell’s coiffure.
    â€˜He’s a one, isn’t he? Your gentleman friend,’ said the blonde, dunking Dany’s head into a basin. ‘In films, are you dear? Must be ever so interesting. Ever been a red-head before? No? Well I expect it’ll make a nice change. You won’t know yourself.’
    â€˜Not bad,’ said Lash, viewing the result some time later: ‘Not bad at all. Though I can’t say that it’s an improvement. Definitely a retrograde step. Or is that because I’m seeing two of you? Never mind — you can’t have too much of a good thing. Let’s eat.’
    They had eaten at a small restaurant in a side-street near the hairdresser’s shop. Or rather Dany had eaten while Mr Holden had confined himself to drinking. And later that day he had deposited her at a sedate family hotel in Gloucester Road, with instructions to keep to her room and not to panic. He would, he said, call for her on the following morning on his way to the Air Terminal, and he regretted his inability to entertain her further, but he had a date that evening. In fact, several.
    â€˜You won’t oversleep, or anything dreadful?’ said Dany anxiously, suddenly terrified by a vision of being abandoned — alone, red-headed and masquerading as Miss Ada Kitchell — in darkest Gloucester Road.
    â€˜Certainly not,’ said Mr Holden, shocked. ‘You don’t suppose that I intend to waste valuable time in going to sleep, do you? In the words of some poet or other, I am going to “cram the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of drinking done”. Or know the reason why!’
    â€˜But you didn’t have any sleep last night,’ protested Dany, worried.
    â€˜What’s that got to do with it? Tomorrow is another day. Be seeing you, sister.’
    Dany passed the remainder of the day in solitude and acute anxiety, and crept out at dusk to buy the evening papers. But a fire in a large London store, a train crash in Italy, another revolution in South America and the fifth marriage of a well-known film star, had combined to push the murder of Mr Henry Honeywood off the front pages and into small type.
    There were no further details, and with repetition the accounts lost much of their horror for Dany, and became more remote and impersonal. Which soothed her conscience somewhat, though not her fears, for there had been nothing either remote or impersonal about the gun that had been hidden in her room at the Airlane. Or in the fact that someone had stolen her passport! The whole thing might sound like an impossible nightmare, but it had happened. And to her — Dany Ashton. Oh, if only — if only she had gone to see Mr Honeywood at the proper time!
    She had passed a sleepless night, and was looking white and worn when Lash collected her in a taxi at a comparatively early hour on the following morning. But a glimpse of herself in the large Victorian looking-glass that adorned the hall of the family hotel had at least served to convince her that no one would be likely to recognize her. She had not even recognized herself, and for a fleeting moment had imagined that the wan-faced young woman with the over-dressed red hair and wide-rimmed spectacles was some stranger who was standing in the narrow, chilly hall.
    Lash, however, apart from a noticeable pallor and the fact that his eyes were over-bright, showed no signs of fatigue. He exuded high-spirits and was accompanied by a strong smell of whisky and the cat Asbestos, and no one would have suspected for a moment that he had not been to bed or had any sleep at all for two consecutive nights.
    He had dismissed with a single short word Dany’s trembling assertion that she had changed