Death in High Heels Read Online Free PDF Page B

missing ’ere and there. She paid well, she did, and I’ve nothink to complain of.”
    “Funny thing about the lunch,” said Charlesworth, as he and the sergeant climbed into the car again. “I do believe it’s beginning to look a bit fishy after all.”
    “Well, I couldn’t ’elp wondering.”
    “I hope your wondering comes off, anyway. We should look a couple of fools, ferreting out a bit of carelessness among a pack of women—my God!” exclaimed Charlesworth as they pulled up at the silver door. “What’s this—this isn’t the shop?”
    “Pretty ’igh class, sir, isn’t it?” said Bedd, with proprietary satisfaction.
    High blue heels pattered across the floor. “Can I show you something?” asked Victoria with her sweetest smile.
    “I am an officer from Scotland Yard,” said Charlesworth, severely; “and I should like to see the manager. Did she think I’d come to order my trousseau?” he muttered to the sergeant, as they followed her across the thick carpet.
    “I rather doubt it, sir,” said Bedd, innocently. “She’s seen me ’ere this morning, and she must know who we are. I’m rather afraid, Mr. Charlesworth, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so, that the young lady was pulling your leg!”
    Bevan was in his office, a slim, grey-haired man of middle height, in an obtrusively well-cut suit. He had an odd trick of turning his head with a sharp movement away from the speaker, and looking at him out of the corners of his eyes. He did so now while Charlesworth introduced himself and explained the reason of his visit.
    “We have definitely established the cause of Miss Doon’s death, and I hope you can make it convenient to allow me to ask some questions of the people who worked here with her.”
    “Yes, yes, the sergeant was round here this morning and arranged all that. This is a ghastly thing to have happened.” He swung himself round in his black and chromium chair and glanced sideways at Charlesworth again. “I hope to goodness there’s not going to be a whole lot of publicity. It’ll be terribly bad for the business.”
    “I’m afraid that simply depends on the Press,” explained Charlesworth. “If they get hold of a story and plug it, we can’t stop them. Lack of information from the police is the last thing they’ll worry about. However, if it turns out to have been just an accident …”
    “Of course it was an accident; what else could it have been?”
    “Well, Mr. Bevan, Miss Doon died of corrosive poison, taken in crystal form. She took an awful lot of it, and it’s difficult to see how she can have made a mistake about it. Of course she may have thought she was taking something else and that’s the easiest answer; but we’re bound to make sure that she mightn’t have taken it deliberately.”
    Bevan went grey, and Charlesworth followed up the lead. “Or, of course, that it wasn’t given to her deliberately.…”
    “That’s simply nonsense!”
    “Yes, it may be, but as I said, we’re bound to find out. I suppose you couldn’t think of any motive there might have been to get Miss Doon out of the way?”
    “My dear Inspector, this is simply fantastic. Girls don’t murder each other in respectable dress shops.”
    “Well, it has been done,” said Charlesworth, nonchalantly. “And, of course, it needn’t necessarily have been someone in the dress shop. Do you know any of her associates outside her work?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “You didn’t know her outside the shop, I suppose?”
    “No, I didn’t—that is, I saw her occasionally.”
    “How did you come to employ her in the first place?”
    “She answered an advertisement for a sales assistant, but she was much too valuable to be left in that kind of post; she did some secretarial work for me and a certain amount of buying and two years ago I gave her the management of the stock—models and materials and so on. Heaven knows what I shall do without her; I was going to …”
    “Were you going