Death in High Heels Read Online Free PDF

restrictions. It’s used for cleaning brass and various things like that. Shall I check up and see if she bought any?”
    “Yes, sometime; but I’d like you to stick to me for the moment while I ask questions of all this dress shop lot; and see that I don’t drop any bricks. Talking of bricks, Bedd, I’ve a nasty feeling that this may be one of yours. The whole thing looks mighty straightforward to me: I bet it was nothing but an accident—muddled up the oxalic acid tin with the slimming salts, or something—though, by gum,” he added reminiscently, “she had nothing much to worry about in that direction. What’s this something fishy you’re so set on?”
    “Something fishy? I never said nothing about something fishy, sir,” said Bedd, earnestly. “It wasn’t anything in perticular, but just this: the first report from the hospital said that they suspected corrosive poisoning in crystal form, and as far as they could tell it must have been taken not long before she was brought in. Now, I thought to meself that there isn’t much in crystal form that you take in the daytime, is there, sir? Salts and them things you take first thing in the morning; of course, that’s very broadly speaking—there might be lots of stuff a woman would take, but I couldn’t think of any. 1 wondered if it could be suicide by any chance, so I thought I’d better make a note of it; it wasn’t anything you could call fishy, sir.”
    “Have you inquired at her home?”
    “I was only there a minute, just to tell them not to disturb things. It’s not very far in the car; would you like to drop in before we start at the shop?”
    They stopped at a dubious-looking door in a Bloomsbury street. An old woman, consumed with curiosity, showed them into a large and rather musty room, still in the state of almost incredible disorder in which Doon had left it. “I done nothink to it, sir,” said the harridan, observing Charlesworth’s look of surprise. “Miss Doon she used to leave it till she come ’ome in the evening as often as not. I did it out two days a week for ’er, and I would ’ave come in and straightened it up a bit to-day, though it’s not my day, properly speaking; but this gentleman ’ere, ’e told me not to touch it.” She started automatically to pick up a few scattered garments and fling them on to the bed. “She was a one and no mistake,” she went on, regarding the confusion with an indulgent eye. “Poor girl, this is a terrible thing, sir, ’er dying so sudden. Oo’d ’ave thought it? Accident I suppose it was, if you’ll pardon me askin’?”
    “I suppose so,” said Charlesworth, abstractedly, his mind occupied with the discrepancy between the expensive scents and lotions on the dressing-table, the profusion of extravagant clothes and possessions, and the cheap and dingy appearance of the lodgings. “You have no reason to think it was anything else, have you? She wasn’t depressed or anything?”
    “Oh, I don’t think so, sir. Oh, no, nothink like that, sir, I don’t think. Why, only yestidy, as she was going out in the morning, she says to me, ‘’Ow do you like me new ’at, Mrs. Briggs?’ she says; ‘pretty good, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘It is, indeed, Miss,’ I says; ‘that’ll fetch the boys,’ I says, ’aving me joke, like. ‘That’s good,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a lunch date to-day that’s going to change me ’ole life,’ she says.”
    “But she had lunch at the shop,” said Bedd.
    “Well, I don’t know nothink about that, sir. Them’s the words she said to me, ‘I’ve got a lunch date to-day as’ll change me ’ole life,’ she says.…”
    “Had she lived here for long?” asked Charlesworth
    “Best part of a year, sir. It isn’t nothink grand, but she liked it; she wasn’t one to fuss, Miss Doon wasn’t, and if she could ’ave ’er parties and make a bit of a row now and agen and nobody to arst any questions, she didn’t mind if a lick of paint was