The Bee's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

before him at first sight recalled a pale-faced, languorous and frankly erotic woman seen in a painting by an Austrian painter whose name eluded him. ‘Decadent’ was the word that came to mind. Her dark red hair, unfashionably long, lay spread, dishevelled and blood-soaked, a fitting frame for the smashed and distorted white mask of outrage and hate it outlined. So must the Queen of the Iceni have looked, he thought, as she snarled defiance at the Roman legions.
    She was wearing her evening dress, an ankle-length gown of green taffeta. Joe knelt by the body, noting with a stab of disgust that the bodice had been torn. The seams along each shoulder had been wrenched apart with considerable force and her small white breasts lay exposed. The urge to cover her nakedness was almost overwhelming but Joe steeled himself to observe and note.
    To his further embarrassment Constable Westhorpe came and joined him. A well-bred young girl should have kept her distance, pretended to look the other way, even called weakly for smelling salts, he thought resentfully.
    ‘Terrible sight,’ he said and would have said more. Would have suggested that she might like to leave this next distressing part of the enquiry to him but she looked down calmly enough at the body.
    ‘Is it Gustav Klimt,’ he wondered out loud to bump them over the awkward moment, ‘the painter that this lady’s appearance calls to mind?’ Too late he remembered that a reference to a foreign painter with a reputation for decadence would be bound to be offensive and shocking to the good taste of a young lady of Tilly Westhorpe’s background. But, with a bit of luck, she would never have heard of the chap.
    The constable considered for a moment. ‘Oh, yes, I see it . . .
The Kiss
, you mean? It’s the angle of the head, I think. No . . . I’d have said rather Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His darkest nightmare.’ She looked stonily down at the battered features and then, caught by an emotion Joe could not fathom, she spoke again as though to herself.
    ‘Evil, evil old devil!’ she said passionately. ‘Killing’s too good for her!’

Chapter Three
    Joe let the words lie between them for a moment, puzzled and apprehensive.
    ‘Would this be a good moment to explain just how familiar you were with this lady, Westhorpe? And what exactly was the nature of your personal reason for coming up here to see her? Sir Nevil has asked for you to be associated with this enquiry but if there’s the slightest suggestion of an interest other than professional, you’ll be asked to withdraw.’
    Calmly she took her eyes off the corpse and transferred her gaze to Joe. Direct and searching, it had the effect of making him feel himself to be the one undergoing questioning. ‘We were never introduced. As far as I know she was perfectly unaware of me. The party tonight is the first occasion on which I have ever seen her. But sir! Surely you cannot be unconscious of her reputation? In the circles in which
I
move, I can assure you, Commander, Dame Beatrice is not venerated . . .’
    She was just getting into her swing and Joe was eager to hear more when something prompted her to cut short her attack on the character of the deceased. ‘But this is hardly the place to swap gossip, I think. And one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and all that . . . Oh, for goodness sake! What am I saying? You
ought
to be aware, sir, and, in the circumstances, there will be few enough to tell you . . . The woman was a monster! Dissolute, degenerate, debased . . .’
    ‘Run out of d’s, Westhorpe?’ said Joe, taken aback and trying to take the sting out of her remarks, almost sacrilegious, he felt, when delivered with such vehemence over the cooling body. ‘What about, er, Dame . . .? Darling of the navy . . .? Doyenne of London society?’
    ‘I’m trying to be helpful, sir,’ she said repressively. ‘You are not obliged to give any weight to my information but if you enquire in the right quarters