Christmas is Murder Read Free

loose.”
    “Unlikely. However, he was taking medication for a weak heart.”
    “Charley was advising Henry on his medications,” Yvette said proudly.
    “Well, not advising, exactly,” her husband corrected, “but he did discuss his condition with me.”
    “Mercifully, it was quick,” Anthony said.
    Miriam Greenbaum glanced up from her manuscript. “Until the proper authorities get here, I guess we won’t know exactly what happened. Someone could have murdered the poor old guy, for all we know.”
    “What makes you think that?” Anthony demanded.
    “It would be pretty easy. I happen to rep some of the best mystery writers in the business, so I’m something of an expert. I bet I could commit the perfect murder and get away with it.”
    Rosie returned at that moment to summon the guests into dinner.
    Patrick set aside his sketchpad. “I hope you’re wrong about the food poisoning, Miriam. I’ve got a very delicate stomach.”
    “ E. coli or salmonella could have crept into the kitchen,” Anthony supposed aloud.
    Miriam rose from the sofa with an indulgent smile. “Oh, how you do fuss, An th ony!”
    Anthony Smart stared daggers at the American’s back. “Why couldn’t it have been her instead of Henry?” he murmured to his partner as they followed the others to dinner.

Huffing and puffing up the gently sloping hill in the snow on tennis racquets laced to his boots, Rex caught his first glimpse of Swanmere Manor after almost forty years. The steep-pitched roofs with verge board trim bristled with chimneys, crushed beneath the weight of the leaden sky.
    He remembered the house only vaguely from when he’d visited as a child, before the Smithings fell on hard times and turned it into a hotel. The late Colonel Smithings had made unwise investments in the Far East, forcing the couple to take in paying guests, though Mrs. Smithings drew the line at actually advertising her establishment. Reservations were by invitation only—once she had made the necessary inquiries. Nobody off the street was permitted to stay, and consequently, there was not as much as a sign at the driveway entrance.
    The invitation rested in his trench coat pocket where he had placed it the day before. No matter that Mrs. Smithings and his mother had gone to boarding school together and their husbands had served in India at the same time: Dahlia Smithings was a stickler for formality. In his other pocket snuggled a half-grown, white-and-tan puppy that he’d found whimpering in the snow by the station. Other than weighing down his coat on that side, the dog proved no trouble. Rex had no idea what he was going to do with it.
    As he passed through the tall, wrought-iron gates, he fancied he recognized the dormer window of the attic room where he’d spent a childhood summer. Coiffed with snow, it peered blearily from above the board-and-batten siding of the second story. Bereft of their leaves, climbing vines clung to the red brick as though for warmth, the circular driveway that once welcomed visitors to the stone porch buried beneath the snow. Only the smoke billowing from the chimneys gave any sign of habitation, and yet Mrs. Smithings had said there would be a half-dozen guests for Christmas dinner.
    Tramping across the white-carpeted lawn on the pair of racquets, a suitcase skating behind him at the end of his belt, Rex watched as the front door opened and a figure in black stepped onto the porch.
    “Reginald, my dear, you got here after all,” Dahlia Smithings cawed across the driveway. “I would have recognized you anywhere with that shock of red hair, but my, how you have grown! Last time I saw you, you were in boy’s shorts with your socks constantly escaping your garters,” she said as he reached the porch. “I trust your mother is well?”
    Rex winced inwardly at the vision of himself as a lad. He had indeed been an untidy-looking child, his mother attempting to anticipate his gargantuan growth spurts by buying him oversize