Where Death Delights by Bernard Knight Read Free Book Online

drive down from Garth House.
    â€˜It would be good if she could type as well,’ added Angela. He looked at her suspiciously for a second, wondering if she was being sarcastic, but she was serious.
    â€˜Look, we thought Sian might be able to type the reports, as well as work in the lab,’ said Angela. ‘But have you seen her trying to use that typewriter? I can do better with two fingers.’
    â€˜I thought she had been to a secretarial college in Newport?’ he objected.
    â€˜For two months after she left school, that’s all,’ said Angela. ‘She hated it, she told me, that’s why she got a job in a hospital lab.’
    â€˜OK, so we need someone who can cook, clean and type! A bit of a tall order out here in the sticks, isn’t it?’
    â€˜It was your idea, Richard. We can only try, as like you, I’m fed up with living out of tins and making my own bed. Thank God there’s a good laundry service in Chepstow.’
    He gave her a brilliant smile, making her think that he wasn’t such a bad looking fellow after all, with that wavy brown hair. A pity about those awful safari suits, though.
    â€˜Right, I’ll see what we can do. Maybe Jimmy will know someone, he probably knows every single person between here and Monmouth.’
    Angela looked doubtful. ‘God knows what sort of people he knows – probably find us a gypsy who can only cook hedgehogs!’
    â€˜Who cares, as long as she can type!’ he said facetiously.
    They both burst out laughing, almost euphoric with a sudden realization of how much of a task they had taken on with their new venture.
    In the car on the way back, she told him that while he was out that morning, she had had a phone call from a solicitor in Newport wanting to arrange a blood test in a disputed paternity case.
    â€˜A doctor in the Royal Gwent Hospital recommended us,’ she said. ‘He was in your year in medical school in Cardiff.’
    Richard was delighted at some new business coming in already. ‘Who the hell would that be, I wonder? How did he know I was here?’
    â€˜Your pal the coroner, it seems. He’s spreading the word around, thank God.’
    â€˜Have you got all the necessary stuff for your serology yet?’ he asked, as Garth House came into view.
    â€˜Yes, it’s all under control. Though we’ll need a new fridge to keep the sera and other things in, especially in this weather. We can’t put everything in that old relic in the kitchen, alongside our food.’
    Encouraged by the prospect of cases and income, Angela went off with Sian to continue their blitz on the laboratory shelves and cupboards, while Pryor went outside to look for Jimmy Jenkins. The land belonging to Garth House sloped up fairly steeply from the main road towards the dense woodland beyond. The house was built in the lower part, within fifty yards of the road below. There was a patch of kitchen garden near the house, just behind the outhouses, but the rest of the four acres was rough grass and bushes, neglected since his aunt and uncle had died.
    â€˜Only good for a few sheep, that is,’ said Jimmy, leaning on his hoe, with which he had been weeding between a few rows of beetroot, runner beans and carrots. He wore his usual baggy corduroy trousers, but his plaid shirt was hanging on a nearby bush, exposing his barrel-shaped chest to the hot sun.
    â€˜I’ve got plans to start a vineyard there eventually,’ declared Richard. It was one of his recent fantasies to plant vines on the south-east facing slope and make his own wine.
    Jimmy looked at him from under his poke cap as if he was mad. ‘You’d be better off with a few sheep. Grow your own meat, boss, not bloody wine!’
    Jimmy drank only beer, at least a couple of pints a day down at the Three Horseshoes in Tintern and his tone suggested that he thought wine was a drink fit only for ‘nancy boys’, as he