Killing a Unicorn Read Online Free PDF

spirit brooded over everything, so no one had ever dared to remove the portrait, and most of his original furniture remained, too — enormously heavy, plain oak tables and straight-backed, wooden bench-seats set in draughty alcoves. The windows were curtainless. Architectural gem though it might be, it wasn’t a comfortable house to live in.
    â€˜What’s wrong, Ma?’ asked Jonathan immediately. ‘What’s going on?’
    â€˜Oh come in, come in, it’s just too terrible! I can’t even bear to think of it. Jane will tell you, won’t you, Jane?’
    He heard what sounded suspiciously like a shake in his mother’s voice and looked more carefully at her. Under the make-up, under all the bravura, he saw her suddenly as she was, an elderly woman who’d had all the stuffing knocked out of her, looking her age, rather tatty round the edges, it had to be said. There was surely more grey in her black hair than he remembered. When he’d kissed her, her skin had felt soft, powdery, yielding, like the marshmallows he’d hated as a child. Against her too-bright lipstick, her teeth appeared yellow. Her shoulders sagged, she looked as if some vital spark within her had been extinguished, and for the first time in his life he had the prescience that one day she would not be there. He touched her hand gently and, as if sensing his thoughts, she smiled shakily, and almost visibly made an effort to pull herself together. But it was Jane Arrow who spoke.
    â€˜Well, I suppose someone will have to tell them,’ she answered Alyssa in clipped tones and, with her usual
directness, came straight to the point. ‘Jonathan, it’s Bibi. There’s been an accident, and I’m afraid she’s dead.’
    She stood in Alyssa’s shadow, five foot nothing, a drab little wren beside a large black crow, a diminutive figure in a Liberty print blouse and a beige cotton skirt, her straight pepper-and-salt hair drawn back unbecomingly at either side by tortoiseshell slides, showing no emotion other than to press her lips firmly together, whether in sorrow or disapproval of Bibi’s unseemly act it wasn’t possible to tell.
    Jilly gave a huge, choking gasp, and subsided on to a window seat as if her legs wouldn’t hold her. Jonathan didn’t feel too good, either. Every drop of blood felt to be pumping away from his heart. He lowered himself down beside her and a long, slow look passed between them. He put his arm round her shoulder. ‘Those damn sleeping pills?’ he asked his mother, slowly and with a great effort.
    Bibi. Dead? It wasn’t possible. Not Bibi. He felt a heavy weight of guilt, as if that stupid, pointless quarrel about her, erupting out of nowhere, had been somehow to blame. But then, beneath the guilt, something lifted.
    â€˜No, no, not sleeping pills,’ Miss Arrow said softly, ‘I’m afraid she drowned.’
    â€˜Drowned?’ This was so totally unexpected he had difficulty in taking it in. Jilly stiffened beside him. ‘How? Where?’ His voice sounded as dry and gravelly as it felt.
    He noticed Jane Arrow’s face working. He’d always had the impression that there wasn’t much love lost between her and Bibi, and he was surprised at what he took to be this belated show of emotion, until she put her finger to her lips and he realized his mistake. He saw that she was trying to tell him something. Almost before he grasped that she was attempting to warn him of the presence of someone else in the room, that someone had risen from one of the two high-backed settles by the great fireplace, the one with its back to the door, and turned to face the newcomers.

    He was a big, unsmiling man with grizzled dark hair, dark-complexioned, a shave-twice-a-day man to judge by the shadow across his jaw. He came forward and extended a large hand with dark hairs springing from the back. ‘DI Crouch, I’m in charge of