The Shape of Snakes Read Online Free PDF Page B

the pair of us because they think you're as mad as she was."
    Two decades on, and once he'd ruminated at length on the bizarre coincidence of having Sheila Arnold as our GP for a second time-"You've got to admit, it's pretty damn spooky ... It's only a couple of days since Jock reminded me of Graham Road"-he was surprisingly interested in what Sheila and I had been talking about. I thought I knew why. He was never inclined to believe anything I said, but he rolled over to have his tummy scratched by doctors ... particularly female ones.
    "Does she agree with you? Does she think Annie was murdered?"
    "I'm not sure," I answered. "All she said was the house had been ransacked."
    He ruminated some more. "When? Before Annie died, or after?"
    "What difference does it make?"
    "If it happened afterward," he said reasonably, "then it means somebody knew she was lying in the gutter and grabbed the opportunity to break in." He gave his jaw a thoughtful scratch. "Which in turn means she was probably out there a damn sight longer than the coroner said she was."
    "That's one way of looking at it," I agreed, before wandering off to the kitchen to prepare some lunch. Old habits die hard, I find, and the subject of Annie had been taboo for so long between us that she wasn't easily resurrected from her grave.
    Sam pursued me. "And if it happened before she died," he went on. "that might explain why she drank herself into a stupor. It must have been a terrible shock to go home and find all her treasures gone. Poor woman, I've never understood why she did that. I mean, we saw her pretty tipsy on occasion but never so paralytic that she didn't know what she was doing." He flicked me an apologetic smile. "I've always had a problem believing one of her neighbors pushed her under a lorry. Okay, some of them were shits, and some of them made her life miserable by complaining about her, but that's a far cry from committing cold-blooded murder."
    I opened the fridge door and wondered what sort of meal I could make out of half a can of tomatoes, some staggeringly old cheese and iceberg lettuce. "She was five-foot-nine-inches tall and weighed fourteen stone," I murmured, "and was exactly fifteen milligrams over the legal driving limit-the equivalent of five shots of spirits or five pints of lager. By any stretch of the imagination that does not amount to drinking herself into a stupor." I pulled out the tin and inspected it for mold. "In fact the chances were she wasn't even tipsy because she was a practiced drinker and could probably consume twice as much as the rest of us before showing any signs of drunkenness." I smiled at him. "Look at yourself, if you don't believe me. You're a stone lighter and two inches taller, and you can put away eight pints of lager before you become embarrassing."
    He retreated into his shell immediately because it was one thing for him to introduce the subject, and quite another for me to challenge the facts from superior knowledge. "Everyone said she was paralytic," he said huffily.
    "Even if she was," I went on, "what makes you think one of her neighbors didn't give in to a spur-of-the-moment temptation to shove her into the road? It was dark ... It was raining ... She was mad as a hatter ... deeply irritating ... the street was empty ... and there was a truck coming. One quick shove and, hey presto, problem solved. No more blacks on the road and property values rise immediately." I lifted an amused eyebrow. "No one ever said her murder was planned, Sam."
 
    Two or three days later, a folder of photocopied documents arrived in the post from Sheila Arnold with "Annie Butts" written on the front.
    "Thought the enclosed might interest you," she wrote on a compliments slip. "It's not much, I'm afraid, because I gave up when I realized I was beating my head against a brick wall! PS How delightful to run into you both again."
 
    By coincidence, it was the same day that Sam and I went for lunch in Weymouth, and Sam took against