Murder At Wittenham Park Read Online Free PDF Page A

glance—“can we, darling?”
    â€œPersonally,” Hamish said, sensing double meanings and changing the subject, “I’m hoping they make me Hercule Poirot, the detective.”
    â€œYou hardly look like a Belgian with a waxed moustache,” Dulcie commented. In fact, Christie’s detective hero had been quite a small man, and so was Hamish, but in every other way they were opposites. Hamish had undistinguished features and a bland, faintly superior expression, which seldom displayed emotion. His personality was a level playing field—at a very good school, of course. What had attracted Dulcie had been their their shared love of opera. It had not proved enough.
    â€œThey must expect us to dress the part,” Hamish insisted, earning a look of amazement from Dulcie. What was he up to?
    â€œYou really think so?” Adrienne brightened. “Then we might all get a bit of a giggle after all.”
    *   *   *
    W HILE D ULCIE was considering how to handle this delicate subplot to the murder weekend, two of Gilroy’s other guests, approaching from the London direction in a Ford, were debating quite different concerns. Jemma and Jim Savage were father and daughter, and Jemma was airing a reasoned mistrust of what her father had arranged.
    â€œDaddy,” she was saying, as they approached the Oxford bypass, “are you sure you explained? I mean, sharing a room with you would not be my idea of a fun weekend.”
    â€œNor mine, as a matter of fact.”
    â€œSo what did you tell them?”
    â€œWhat should I have? That I’m a redundant insurance adjuster of fifty-two, who would have opted out of the weekend if his daughter hadn’t railroaded him?”
    â€œWhat did that counsellor say?” Jemma was shepherding her father through the traumas of a redundancy that had come within months of his second wife’s leaving him. “He said you must go on with whatever you’ve planned. Don’t let anyone know you’re upset. Come on, Daddy, you’ll enjoy the weekend, and it’s not as though we’re completely broke.”
    â€œNo thanks to Pauline.”
    â€œShe’s off the payroll. Forget her.” Jemma never had liked her stepmother much. “At least you got the American Express card back.”
    â€œEventually. Anyway, I did not tell Lord Gilroy that I was out of work. I told him I had a journalist daughter who was an Agatha Christie freak—”
    â€œDaddy! I’ve never read any of her.”
    â€œâ€”and who,” Savage persisted, “is absolutely fascinated by the whole idea.”
    â€œSo he expects me to write about it? You’re a pig. Why should I?”
    â€œAll the best frauds originate in telling someone what he or she wants to hear. Lord Gilroy wants publicity.”
    â€œReally, Daddy!” Sometimes Jemma was astonished at her father’s innocence. “If I’d known, I might have got it for free. Except that my mag isn’t interested in hypothetical crimes.”
    â€œYou want real blood all over the floor?”
    â€œYou know we do.”
    â€œOr blondes in black leather with whips?”
    â€œDaddy, please! Crime and Punishment is a monthly review of interpretative analysis and holistic vision, devoted to improving understanding of the criminal mind. So there.”
    â€œTalking of which,” Jim remarked, “Lord Gilroy has quite an unusual handwriting. If I was assessing a claim from him I’d go through every detail with a fine-tooth comb.”
    â€œI bet you would. With a very fine-tooth comb. Whatever that is.” She smiled, teasing him about the cliché, yet remembering his reputation as an assessor whom it was hard to fool. Her father had the memory of an elephant, coupled with great persistence.
    The relationship between the two of them had always been close, and his wife Pauline’s precipitate departure had