A Quiet Kill Read Online Free PDF

there were letters, ugly letters. Three of them aimed at Natalie directly. They were a bit—what’s the word?—corny, though.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œThey were of the style popular in crime fiction—you know, letters cut out of magazines and pasted to a page.”
    â€œWhere are they now?” asked Liz.
    â€œI don’t know. In Natalie’s files, I expect. She might have thrown them out. She believed they were sent by some crank, and asked me not to make a fuss. Nevertheless, she did inform all High Commission security personnel and reported the matter back to Ottawa.”
    â€œWhere were you last night, Colonel?” asked Hay abruptly.
    â€œI left the office about six o’clock. I had a few errands to run on Oxford Street. Dry cleaning, that sort of thing. I stopped for a drink at a pub around the corner. As my wife is back in Canada for a holiday, I had dinner at a tandoori place. Not one of the best, I’m afraid. Anyway, I was reading a book at the time and stayed at the restaurant longer than I’d expected to. I think that I left at about nine and went home on the tube.”
    â€œHow long have you been at the High Commission?” asked Liz.
    â€œThree years.”
    â€œAnd prior to that?”
    â€œI spent eighteen months in Bosnia. Before that, Somalia. This has been a nice change of pace.”
    As the interview was winding down, Inspector Forsyth unexpectedly asked the colonel if he would take her riding in Hyde Park the next morning. The colonel graciously acquiesced, and they made the date.
    â€œI suppose women might find him attractive, but I didn’t think he was quite that attractive,” commented Hay afterward. “Or are all you Mounties simply that horse-mad?”
    Liz was chewing her pencil. “Just an idea. Anyway, I’ve always wanted to ride in Hyde Park.” She looked ruefully at the gnawed pencil end and asked, “Anywhere around here I can have a cigarette?”
    So it had come to this. One of the finest chefs in England reduced to making sandwiches for policemen. Luciano Alfredo Carillo cleaved a large lobster open in high dudgeon. And the high-handed fashion in which Mrs. Bloody High Commissioner had spoken to him! He was treated like a flaming short-order cook in this place. He was alright, the High Commissioner, but then he rarely dealt with the kitchen. But her —a hard-faced cow if he’d ever met one. She was a lot younger than the boss, that was for sure. And very beautiful—seductive even. The chef, himself a handsome man with jet-black hair, an aquiline nose, and an admirable waistline given his profession, had even initially been somewhat attracted to Mrs. Carruthers when she first arrived at the High Commission, and had flattered himself that the attraction was mutual. But that was before the first dinner party that the Carrutherses had hosted. The chef thought it had gone perfectly well, and was most satisfied with the dinner that his kitchen had produced. Except that when it was over, Madame had barged into the kitchen and begun banging on about tough squid (it wasn’t), underdone steak (it was done to a perfect medium rare), and undercooked chocolate tart (it was a lava cake for God’s sake). This harangue was carried out in front of the kitchen staff and the hired waiters and without any regard for the chef’s status, much less his feelings. From that day forward, a fierce hatred had burned in Carillo for the Bitch from Toronto, as he privately thought of her. Even now, at the recollection of that dreadful evening, his face began to resemble the color of the shellfish he was ruthlessly tearing to pieces.
    And now she had asked—no, told —him to make sandwiches for the whole bleeding police force. Had he been reduced to cooking in a police canteen? Well these would be sandwiches unlike any they had ever tasted before. He had his pride and a reputation to uphold. He