Free A Spider on the Stairs by Cassandra Chan Page A

come as a very great shock,” said Gibbons sympathetically.
    â€œYes,” agreed Rhys-Jones simply.
    â€œWhile she was here,” continued Gibbons, “did she make any enemies? Or perhaps leave someone in the lurch when she went?”
    Rhys-Jones was shaking his head before Gibbons finished the question. There was a faint, reminiscent smile on his thin lips.
    â€œYou don’t understand,” he said. “You wouldn’t, of course, not having known her. Jody was everybody’s friend, and even when she said or did something that would ordinarily irk you, well, with Jody one just laughed. Not,” he added, “that I mean to paint her as any kind of angel. She was very eccentric, very much her own person.”
    â€œI see,” said Gibbons, taking this at face value. “So you can think of no reason someone might want to kill her?”
    Rhys-Jones sighed. “Not specifically,” he said. “But Jody was very inventive—she came up with quite wild schemes sometimes. If anyone wanted to kill her, I can only think it had to do with one of her schemes gone wrong.”
    But when Gibbons asked for an example of such a scheme, Rhys-Jones could not come up with one, though he appeared to be thoroughly ransacking his memory.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said at last. “I just can’t remember—I never paid much attention to any of them, you see. They were so unrealistic.”
    Gibbons nodded and let him go then, requesting that he not contact his fellow employees until after Gibbons had spoken to them all.
    Rhys-Jones seemed a little startled when asked to leave by the back door.
    â€œBut—” he said, and then, “Oh! I didn’t—I mean, I suppose the shop will have to remain closed today?”
    â€œI’m afraid so,” answered Gibbons. “We’ll be in contact with Mr. Mittlesdon as to when he can reopen. Hopefully that will be very soon.”
    He had been ushering Rhys-Jones to the door as he spoke and now he held it open, politely but firmly. Clearly confounded by events, Rhys-Jones stepped through without further objection and walked off into the cold.
    Bethancourt was eyeing the rows of shelves in the room.
    â€œDo you know,” he said, “a bookshop would be an excellent place to hide something. You’d have practically no chance of finding it unless you knew where it was.”
    â€œSomebody might happen on it accidentally, though,” replied Gibbons. “That would make me think twice about hiding anything I valued here.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know,” said Bethancourt. “I expect there would be certain sections where it would be worth the risk.” He turned back to Gibbons, abruptly abandoning the subject. “I thought,” he said, “that Mittlesdon didn’t recognize the body?”
    â€œHe claimed not to,” agreed Gibbons placidly.
    â€œIt seems a little odd, since she was one of his employees at one time.”
    â€œVery odd indeed,” said Gibbons. “Let’s see what the others have to say before we reach any conclusions, though.”
    â€œI’ve already got lots of conclusions,” volunteered Bethancourt, following his friend back towards the front room. “I’m trying to narrow them down, but they just keep proliferating.”
    â€œLet me know if one of them starts to stand out from the pack,” said Gibbons dryly.
    Under the watchful eye of PC Murphy, two more employees were sitting in the little reading area, chatting animatedly with each other.
    One was a heavy woman in her mid-to-late twenties with golden hair and pendulous breasts, her face revealing a certain prettiness beneath the fat. The other was much younger, perhaps eighteen, a thin whip of a boy with soft brown hair that fell into his eyes, an aura of geekiness about him.
    They seemed a slightly odd pair, but there was no doubt they were getting on famously. The