Free A Little Murder by Suzette A. Hill Page B

drawn, and which despite the once undoubted style was already wearing an air of embalmed indifference. Pausing diffidently in the centre of the Aubusson carpet, she scanned the stiff settees, console tables, tasselled standard lamp, and the art deco cocktail cabinet assertive in a corner. On its top stood a trio of half-finished bottles – gin, vermouth, Cointreau – a collection of dusty glasses and a tarnished cocktail shaker. These, plus a pile of
Tatlers
loosely stacked on a coffee stool, a tattered Edgar Wallace and a discarded cigarette box, were the only signs of the room having recently housed a human presence – unless one counted the photographs.
    There were four of these, grouped together on one of the consoles: a snapshot of Marcia and Donald on a beach, looking more than fond and which must have been taken early in the marriage; one of a man she did not recognise (a lover?), and the two she had come for – the snapshot of her parents clasping herself and her sister as tiny tots, and a studio portrait of them on their own looking absurdly young (younger than herself now) giggling into the camera. She examined the photographs, studying the past with its faces frozen palely in time and already alien, and felt an unbearable spasm of loss … Yes, she would rescue those two all right. And taking the frames from the table she placed them carefully in the holdall; and then surveyed the room again.
    Was there really nothing else she wanted? Ornaments, cushions, the art deco wall clock, the Japanese vase? No, not really: there was nothing there that couldn’t be found at Heals, and certainly nothing of any sentimental value. But the photos were nice and would be nicer still enhanced bysilver frames. She hesitated, wondering whether to add the one of Marcia and Donald. Left here it would presumably only be discarded, lobbed into a dustcart. She stared down at her aunt’s bold features, the wide laughing mouth and heavy Veronica Lake hair – and caught unawares in a wave of inexplicable nostalgia, thrust it into the bag with the others.
    Then, remembering her mission for the wretched fur coat, she was about to turn away, but stopped, gripped by the thought that it was presumably in this very room that the charlady had discovered the body. Where – by the window? Next to one of the sofas? Perhaps the spot where she was actually standing! She shifted uncomfortably, but with relief recalled the police sergeant saying it had been in the anteroom, the curtained alcove where Marcia kept her writing desk and the mammoth radiogram … No, she had no need or desire to investigate there. So retreating to the hall and the placid donkeys she started to mount the staircase.
    On the landing she paused trying to get her bearings. She had only once before been upstairs – to comb her hair and use the lavatory – and now felt oppressed by the silence, the listless shafts of yellowing light from the small Pugin window, and the blankly closed doors. She opened one of these to find a bathroom familiar from her previous visit: a guest bathroom with green linoleum tiles, piles of faded monogrammed towels and an elderly splay-footed bath harbouring a spider. The next door opened into a bedroom, but like the bathroom obviously a spare one intended for guests and of a bleakness Rosy had often encountered: north-facing , chilly and cheerless, with marble washstand, a bare mahogany chest of drawers and a couple of divans lookingdistinctly of the utility mode. The air held the faintest whiff of mothballs.
    She wandered back to the landing and tried another door … Ah, much more like it. No mistaking this for a spare room! It was spacious, well padded and well mirrored, with modern chromium wall lights, thick cream carpet and an enormous bed draped in a coffee-coloured satin counterpane. Piled on a small chaise longue were a couple of hat boxes and three delivery cartons marked
Harrods
and
Debenham & Freebody
. Tissue paper and bits of string