Dead Funny Read Free

really taken care of herself. Her fingernails were beautifully manicured, her lips were neatly slicked with lipstick. She wore a long, white silk dress trimmed with a red-and-white striped sash that was tied in a great big bow on her hip. She looked like she was about to walk down a red carpet with a load of photographers clicking away at her. I noticed that the heel of one shoe had snapped and was dangling by a strip of leather from the sole. And the poor woman’s neck must have snapped too, I thought: her head was twisted at such a strange angle. It was a deeply disturbing sight. She was like a china doll that had been smashed by a spoilt child: delicate, expensive, fragile and now damaged beyond repair. No amount of superglue would put her back together.
    As Graham and I were absorbing the details, Sylvia Sharpe’s tightly-laced shoes padded over the marble floor towards us, closely followed by the soft thump of my mum’s trainers.
    “How awful!” gasped Mum. “Poor, poor thing!”
    “Oh no!” Sylvia said. “How appalling! I am so very sorry you’ve had to see this. Dear, oh dear. What a ghastly accident! I guess she tripped?”
    “I suppose so…” I agreed hesitantly.
    “I think her heel came adrift,” added Graham.
    I looked at the staircase. It was certainly steep enough to kill anyone. If her shoe had given way at the top and she’d fallen, she could easily have broken her neck on the way down. Broken all her bones, in fact.
    So why didn’t I quite believe it?
    I took another look at Miss Sugarcandy. She was immaculately dressed, from her dangly diamond earrings to her pedicured feet. But there was something not quite right. What was it?
    Her hair’s wrong, I thought at last. I remembered the photograph of her that Graham had found in his
Guiness World Records
. Baby Sugarcandy had styled her hair in a beehive, backcombing it, winding it round and piling it on top of her head until it looked like an enormous ice cream. But now it was a mess, squashed and crumpled like a badly-made bird’s nest. What’s more, it was slightly damp, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. I sniffed. A faint whiff of bleach was coming from it.
    Sylvia had bent down and was now extending a hand towards the corpse. “I’ll carry her to her room,” she said. “Her daughter Judy will be home soon. I don’t want her to be troubled.”
    “No!” I said sharply. “Don’t touch a thing!”
    Sylvia looked at me, astonished. “It was an accident, young lady. We can’t just leave her here. If Judy sees her mother like this she’ll be in therapy for ever.”
    But it was too late. At that moment, a theatrical sigh of immense weariness was followed by a series of thuds as several heavy bags were dropped on the marble floor.
    I turned to see a thirty-something-ish blonde standing amid a pile of designer shopping bags. She was the complete opposite of Sylvia: all lace and glitzy jewellery and heavy make-up. Her heels were scarily high, her bust was thrust forward in a menacing fashion, and she wore so much lipstick that I was surprised she could speak – it looked as though her lips ought to be gummed together. I assumed this was Baby’s daughter, Judy. “Sylvia,” she said, “take these bags up to my room, would you? And then fix me something long and cool to drink. I’m
exhausted
.”
    Sylvia didn’t move and Judy looked at her with a frown of annoyance. “Didn’t you hear me?” she said. “Why are you just standing there?”
    “Miss Ford,” Sylvia said slowly. “Judy, I—”
    “Yes?”
    “I’m afraid there’s been a terrible accident.” Sylvia stepped aside so that Judy could see her mother’s body.
    Judy’s eyes narrowed for a moment as she took the scene in. “Is she dead?”
    “I’m afraid so,” replied Sylvia.
    A strange look passed across Judy’s face: it wasn’t sorrow, it wasn’t shock, it was satisfaction. She tried but failed to smother a smile of pleasure. Her heels clacked