Corpse in Waiting Read Free Page A

no, I had not run in to him with twigs in my beak, the man had finally cracked, carted me off into the warm and practically raped me.
    All he had needed was practice.
    â€˜Are you still working as a PA?’ Patrick asked.
    â€˜I was never a PA, darling. You’re mixing me up with someone else again. I was a model – that’s how we met at the fashion show – but not now. God, no, I’d had more than enough of the catwalk. I run an agency now which I’m transferring down here. London’s a truly ghastly place these days.’ She was drinking her wine rather quickly.
    â€˜A modelling agency?’ I said, thinking perhaps I ought to take a bit more interest.
    She rounded on me. ‘No, haven’t I just said I was sick of that life?’ She did not quite add, ‘stupid’.
    â€˜So you’re living in Bath now?’ Patrick said quickly.
    â€˜Not yet, I’m house-hunting, right here in the city,’ Alexandra replied. ‘I’ve just decided that’s where you come in, darling. Someone to tell me about the pitfalls, what to look out for. I mean, I’ve always rented before and wouldn’t have the first idea what dry rot looks like but you must have had lots of experience with your parents living round here.’
    â€˜You can get dry rot everywhere,’ Patrick pointed out. ‘In cities and the countryside. I take it you want an old house then?’
    â€˜Ancient and with masses of character,’ she cried triumphantly, causing a few heads to turn.
    Rising damp, I thought gleefully, wet as well as dry rot, woodworm, death-watch beetle, bats, spiders, woodlice, rats, mice . . .
    â€˜D’you remember that old place that was for sale in the village wherever the rectory was that we went and had a look at? Like that.’
    I willed him not to tell her.
    â€˜Hinton Littlemoor. We’re living there as well now,’ Patrick said. ‘It was the old mill cottage and well on the way to falling down if I remember rightly. You wouldn’t recognize it now – they had to spend a fortune to get it right.’
    â€˜Oh, I’ve got money. That’s no problem. I just need a guiding hand.’ Here the woman simpered at him in little-girl fashion that caused my hands to clench into tight fists.
    â€˜I’m afraid I work in London. This is just a week’s break Ingrid and I are having.’
    â€˜I’ve arranged to see several places tomorrow. Or have you made other plans?’
    Patrick looked across at me and I remained as inscrutable as a herd of sphinxes.
    â€˜Yes, it would be interesting,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Would you rather go shopping while we do that, Ingrid?’
    â€˜No, I love looking round houses,’ I replied, quite truthfully as it happened. But was I going to leave him alone with this harpy? No.
    Alexandra pouted but made no comment. Then she said, ‘D’you remember on that weekend when we went to Bath races and that enormously fat woman sat down in a plastic café chair and it collapsed and she went hurtling backwards into a flower bed? I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in my life, although you got annoyed with me and said we ought to try not to let her see us.’
    Patrick grinned reflectively and then uttered a hoot of amusement. ‘No, what really made us laugh was the owner of the café rushing out, demanding they pay for it and the woman’s husband punching him on the nose so he ended up in the flower bed too.’
    The pair howled with laughter.
    We had not brought our car with us – with Bath’s traffic it made no sense to do so – but Alexandra had hired one and we arranged that she would pick us up outside our hotel at nine thirty the next morning. She apparently ‘didn’t do mornings’ but her first property appointment was at ten, a flat somewhere on Lansdown Hill. I was hoping she would be fit to drive by then