The Sting of Death Read Online Free PDF

There’s no sign of it in his eyes. He says he’s had a good life, done most of the things he set out to do, and really loves the idea of his atoms turning into grass.’
    ‘The perfect customer,’ Maggs nodded.
    ‘Or would be, if it wasn’t for the Wicked Daughter.’ Mr French had two daughters, Mrs Jennings and Mrs Huggett, the Good one and the Wicked one respectively. Mrs Huggett didn’t like burials, hated the idea of a semi-permeable cardboard container which would allow entry to worms and water and other substances below ground. She had phoned Drew and berated him for his disgusting practices. Mrs Jennings, on the other hand, was entirely supportive of her father, and had written Drew a note to that effect, giving her phone number and making it clear that she would be one of his more hands-on customers when it came to preparing the body for burial.
    ‘I’m going to be quite sad when he doesdie,’ Drew admitted. ‘He’s a really nice man.’
    ‘Occupational hazard,’ Maggs said, with scant sympathy, effectively curtailing this topic of conversation.
    Drew had some difficulty in broaching the subject of the missing Justine. Maggs had been very much more closely involved with his last brush with mysterious death than Karen had, and was party to most of its more embarrassing aspects. The fact that yet again the central characters were all female was sure to cause his business partner some amusement.
    He decided to come at it obliquely. ‘Had a visit from Karen’s cousin yesterday,’ he began. ‘Did I tell you she was coming?’
    Maggs frowned. ‘Can’t remember,’ she said. ‘Did you do that piece for the Natural Death outfit?’
    ‘I made a start. The cousin stayed hours longer than we expected her to.’
    ‘Visitors can be a pain,’ she said vaguely, turning her attention to the post that had been sitting inside the office door. ‘Hey, look! The Briggses have paid at last. And they want to know if we can supply a hazel tree over the grave. Hazel – we haven’t had one of them yet, have we? Don’t they grow nuts?’ She grinned. ‘Doesn’t that mean that if you eat the nuts, you’ll be eating bits of Old Lady Briggs?’
    Drew had had enough. ‘Maggs,’ he blurted, ‘are you doing anything this evening?’
    She turned her clear black eyes on him, widening them to show the very white whites. It was a trick she had, that Drew always enjoyed. He looked at her, her brown skin several shades darker after two months of summer sunshine, her ample contours clearly outlined in a tight T-shirt and stretchy pedal-pushers. She’d worked for him for nearly two years now, and they understood each other to the core. ‘Why?’ she invited.
    ‘Um – detective work,’ he said quickly.
    She tilted her head sideways. ‘Oh?’
    ‘This cousin – her name’s Penn – she’s worried about another cousin, Justine—’
    ‘Whoa! Too many cousins. Explain.’
    ‘Right. Well, Karen’s mother and Penn’s father were brother and sister. Are brother and sister, I should say. So they’re first cousins.’
    ‘Penn – this person’s called Penn?’
    ‘Right. After William Penn, the well-known Quaker.’
    ‘Who founded Pennsylvania. Got it. And …’
    ‘And Penn’s mother is Roma Millan’s sister. You know Roma Millan – the woman who sells the honey in Pitcombe.’
    Maggs shook her head. ‘We get our honey from the supermarket.’
    ‘Shut up and listen. Roma has a daughtercalled Justine. So she’s first cousin to Penn as well, but on the other side of her family. They’re quite close buddies, it seems – see each other all the time. I suppose the cousin bit doesn’t really matter, the point is, Justine’s gone missing in the past two or three weeks, and Penn’s getting very worried. Splurged it all out, just as she was leaving. And then stayed about two more hours filling in the background.’
    ‘Hmmm,’ Maggs adopted her sceptical face. ‘Did she already know you were Drew Slocombe, Ace