A Murder of Magpies Read Online Free PDF Page A

puddle. “They said you’d told them to get the key from us. But I had it with me on my key ring and because you’d forgotten to tell me, Anthony couldn’t let them in.”
    â€œWhat workmen?” I was sounding repetitive, but it was the only thing I could get hold of.
    â€œI don’t know what workmen—Anthony,” she called upstairs as we went into the hall, “who were the workmen?” She didn’t wait for an answer, instead snapping back to me, confused. “If you don’t know, who were they?”
    â€œI don’t know. But no one I know.”
    *   *   *
    After dinner I tried Kit again—not work this time, just to chat. We had played telephone tag all day: He rang when I was on the phone, by the time I called him back his line was engaged again. Since he persists in refusing to learn how to use a computer, I couldn’t even e-mail him, and gossip doesn’t really carry via text.
    Finally. “Hello!” said Kit, in a startled voice. He always answers that way—as though the phone is a wonderful toy that will bring him endless good things. As of course it will, for someone who lives on gossip.
    â€œIt’s me.”
    â€œ Well, where have you been ?” Kit talks in italics.
    I ignored this insult to my intelligence. “What’s up?”
    â€œGod, I don’t even know where to begin. Alemán’s family have been stirring again.”
    â€œStirring?”
    â€œYou know, not talking directly to me—they haven’t done that since I started researching—but dropping hints to people: ‘I hear Kit Lovell, poor thing, has signed a big contract for this book, and isn’t turning anything up,’ or ‘Did you hear that Kit had to go dry out at that place in California?’ Basically, the full range, from I’ve got nothing, to I’m mad, a lush, doped to the eyeballs, or possibly all four.”
    â€œWhat’s the harm? Basically, they know you’ve got the goods and they’re scared. But they can’t do anything about it. Can they?”
    â€œNo, of course not. Vernet can refuse me access to their shows, but not having reviews in the Sunday News is more damaging to Alemán’s replacement, and Vernet, than it is to me. In fact, having to look at that awful boy’s awful stuff would damage me more. How he got through fashion college I’ll never know, although I know exactly how he got his job, and doesn’t he hate me for that.”
    Kit knows everything about everyone. Sometimes I’m glad my private life is so dull, because the thought of him passing on any juicy bits, making them juicier as they do the rounds, is too terrible—and he likes me. What he does to people he doesn’t like doesn’t bear thinking about.
    â€œKi-it.” It’s not easy to keep him focused. “They can’t do anything, Vernet are doing themselves more harm than they’re doing you. What’s the problem?”
    â€œSomeone’s been in my house.”
    â€œWhat? What do you mean? You were burgled?”
    â€œNo, that would be straightforward. Someone’s been here, but nothing is missing. You know how when you live alone a place just has a smell, almost an aura?”
    I’d have disputed this flight of fancy, if he weren’t also right.
    â€œI came in, and it was different. I thought I was being imaginative, but I looked around, and the place had been searched. Tidily, but searched all the same. A drawer I never shut entirely, because the handle is loose, was closed. The cushions were plumped up, the way I always do them, but two of them were reversed, which I wouldn’t do. Things that no one who isn’t tidy would notice, or no one who lives with someone else. But I’m tidy and alone.”
    I’m the same. When you live by yourself you have an unconscious expectation of how things will be. When that expectation