Heavenly Pleasures Read Online Free PDF

said, lifting the saucer to catch the scent. ‘Then—yes, ketschele, chili sauce it is. How funny,’ he said grimly.
    ‘I wonder if Juliette Lefebvre is laughing,’ I answered.
    At that, my bell began pealing, as though someone was leaning on the buzzer. I pressed the intercom.
    ‘It’s Juliette!’ said a frantic voice. ‘Corinna, let me in!’

C HA PTER THREE
    I released the door and waited. I did not hear the lift. Juliette must have run up the stairs, which is more than I could do, even under the impetus of panic. She knocked at my door seconds later and fell inside, gasping.
    ‘Don’t open those chocolates!’ she said very quickly. ‘I’m, I’m going to change the recipe.’
    Then she noticed the open box on the table and the bitten chocolate on the saucer and stopped dead with her hands to her mouth.
    ‘So that it doesn’t include chili sauce?’ I asked, still shocked. It’s like missing a step. Expecting a delicious taste and getting another, like that salt in coffee trick which the humour-impaired used to perform to Amuse Their Friends while they had them. Daniel had taken the other chocolates out of the box and was examining the undersides with my magnifying glass (I use it for splinters and fine mending).
    ‘Sit down, Juliette, let me make you some coffee, tell us all about it,’ I said.
    ‘No, I …’ She was poised for flight. Her face was the colour of vanilla cream.
    27
    ‘Have they demanded money yet?’ asked Daniel in that voice which suggested infinite understanding and compassion. It worked on homeless heroin addicts and it worked on Juliette. It worked on me, too, incidentally.
    All at once, whatever had been sustaining her gave out. Juliette sagged down into a chair and put her decorative blonde head in her perfectly manicured hands.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what they want.’ She raised her head. ‘I don’t know who they are. And I don’t know what to do,’ she added.
    ‘Not so much coffee,’ said Daniel to me, ‘as coffee and brandy, and probably something to eat.’
    I supplied the last of the chicken soup, a large cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy and slices of bread with cheese. Daniel put the spoon into Juliette’s hand and sat there willing her to drink her soup. She did. Then she ate some bread and cheese and drank the brandy. By the time she was onto coffee and apple muffins her cheeks had warmed to rose cream, if not strawberry. She drew a deep breath. I had never seen her with a hair out of place, and now she was distraught she still didn’t have a hair out of place. Some people are like that and it is not an endearing trait. But her eyes were haggard, even if her face wasn’t.
    ‘That was very nice,’ she told me. ‘Thank you. I feel much better. I must have forgotten to have lunch. And maybe breakfast.’
    ‘You’ve been worrying,’ I said.
    ‘I’ve been panicking,’ she returned. ‘Daniel, can I em ploy you?’
    ‘To find out who is poisoning your chocolates?’
    ‘That’s the thing, they aren’t poisoned, just ruined with chili sauce or soy sauce,’ she said, lacing all her fingers together and pulling on them. ‘No one would get sick eating them, just disgusted and shocked and deciding that they are never going to buy another Heavenly Pleasures chocolate again. The cops would say, no one’s been killed, malicious mischief, tut tut, and I would get all the bad publicity and they wouldn’t really be putting my shop high on the priority list, not with all these burglaries round here lately.’
    ‘True,’ said Daniel. ‘When did it start?’
    ‘That’s just it, I don’t know,’ she wailed. ‘The first one I found out about was when a customer brought back a box last Tuesday and told me that one of them had tasted foul, and I gave her some more, and I thought it was just an oversensitive person. You get that sometimes, Corinna, you know?’
    I nodded. I knew. Not only did I have to make sure there were no peanut