Free Death Line by Geraldine Evans, Kimberly Hitchens, Rickhardt Capidamonte Page B

Still,” she pursed her lips. “It's none of my business. If you'll wait here for a minute, I'll ask if she'll see you.”
    It was hot in the hall, and Rafferty was grateful for an opportunity to ease his shirt collar away from his neck without being observed. Ellen Hadleigh opened one of the doors to the right side of the hall. It led into a small sitting room that overlooked the shrubbery. Rafferty edged forward and caught a glimpse of Sarah Astell through the open door. Her eyes were closed and she was stretched out on a chaise-longue beneath the old fashioned French windows. Long, stick-like wrists and ankles protruded from beneath the brown mound of the blanket; pale beneath the soil rich colouring of the cover; like the bones of a recently disinterred skeleton, they looked unused to sunlight. The shrubs bordering the house, already denuded of leaves, appeared to crouch over her body like so many under-nourished triffids ready to devour her. Their stems whipped back against the window by the strengthening east wind tap-tapped a staccato, vaguely Hitchcockian rhythm. Beneath their eerie tapping, the house was hung about with an almost monastic silence.
    Ellen Hadleigh's brisk voice shattered the silence to announce the visitors. Mrs Astell's head swivelled towards them. It was a pinched, unhappy face, mauve-shadowed under the eyes.
    Passing them as they entered, Ellen Hadleigh cautioned before closing the door behind them, “Please try to keep it short or I'll be in Mr Astell's bad books. He won't have her upset.”
    Even before the door had closed, the hot-house atmosphere of the room engulfed them. Rafferty had felt stifled in the hall, but this room was far more oppressive and must be several degrees hotter. He assumed that the temperature was kept high for Mrs Astell's sake; she was certainly thin enough to need the extra warmth. Rafferty knew she was only 38, but she looked much older, her skin covered with a network of fine lines which gave the impression she might crack at any moment.
    Quickly, aware he had been staring, Rafferty introduced himself and Llewellyn, shuffling forward cautiously, feeling out of place in the dainty room. What with bottles of sleeping pills, and tranquillizers and stomach mixtures littering one table, and photographs and delicate knick-knacks crowded on another, he was scared he would blunder into one of them and break something precious. Strange, Rafferty mused. Why was it that women who seemed to have everything – film stars, models, leisured wives – often found their easy, pampered lives difficult to cope with? So many seemed to develop nervous problems behind which they nursed a drink or drug habit. Rafferty had never understood it. His mother had had more pressures to contend with than most. Left widowed with six kids to support, she had never turned to anything more than the occasional bottle of Babysham to sustain her. Of course, she had barely had enough money to pay the bills, never mind indulge expensive tastes.
    He started to sweat, the deodorised male odour mingled with the smells of sickness; of menthol, cough syrup, liniment, and were swallowed up as efficiently as a snapping dog swallows a fly.
    Sarah Astell gave them a wan smile. “Do please sit down, gentleman,” she invited, voice weak, the words well-spaced out between shallow breaths. “I imagine you're here about Jasper Moon's death?”
    “That's right, Mrs Astell,” Rafferty replied quietly. The heat and the smells in the unventilated room brought back painful memories of his wife's stay in the hospice. Angie's had been a lingering, painful death, the pain not always, at the end, successfully alleviated by drugs. His shoulders hunched as he remembered the rows he'd tried to avoid, the smouldering resentments they had both felt, in his case compounded by guilt that he no longer loved her – if he ever had. He shouldn't shut his mind off from them, his doctor had advised, they should be faced, but Rafferty