Death in High Heels Read Free

chemist, a trifle grimly. “I think everyone knows her in the small shops around here. But I can’t be a party to her murder, you know.”
    “Don’t listen to Mrs. David,” said Rachel, “she reads too many detective stories. I want to clean a straw hat, that’s all it is.”
    “Ah, yes, I believe I’ve heard of oxalic acid being used for that. How much would you want?”
    “How much would kill a person?” asked Victoria, sticking to her point.
    “Well, let’s see—about a drachm, I should say. Not quite a teaspoonful.”
    “Then we’d better have nine teaspoonfuls for Gregory,” said Toria, laughing. “How does one buy it? By the ounce, or what?”
    “I think an ounce would be enough for the hat, certainly. That would be about—er—about four big teaspoons.”
    “Righto, we’ll have an ounce. Can we weigh ourselves for nothing on your scales?”
    “You always do, so why bother to ask?” said Rachel. “She only does it to annoy, Mr. Mitchell, because she’s so much lighter than me. Don’t we have to sign the poisons book or anything?” she went on, as he handed the little packet across the counter. “I’m quite willing to, in fact I’d love to.”
    “No, no, nothing like that. I know you ladies, you see; it isn’t as if you were strangers to me—I believe I’ve even seen Mrs. Gay’s panama hat!” They were out of the door by the time he added: “Anyway, you don’t have to sign for oxalic acid.”
    They plonked their pennies down upon the counter and dodged their way back across Regent Street. “Easy enough to kill anybody, wouldn’t it be?” said Victoria, strolling in through the showroom door, “as long as you weren’t too particular about being found out; I suppose they could always trace you through the chemist, though. Look at this mouldy little packet—it’s only a flimsy bit of paper and it’s got a hole in it already. Oh, Rene, I’m so sorry, I’m dropping poison all over the carpet; look, a little paper-chase with Rachel’s oxalic acid—isn’t it sweet?”
    “Don’t be silly, Toria, there’s only a few grains there,” said Rachel as Irene bustled forward. “Put the rest of the stuff on my table and I’ll help Irene pick up the bits. Here you are,” she added a moment later, tipping half a dozen grains of crystal on to the rest of the heap; “that’s most of it. Sorry, Rene, my pet, but it wasn’t very bad.”
    Irene threw two or three crystals on to the little pile, and dusted her hands over it. “Supposing Mr. Bevan had come in or a customer, and found us picking dirt off the carpet!” she said, irritably. “I do think you two are inconsiderate. It’s so childish.” She went off to her desk in the corner of their little room and turned her back on them.
    Rachel and Toria tipped the crystals on to a sheet of paper and began rubbing feverishly at the hat. Twenty minutes’ work showed little improvement. Judy strolled over from the mannequins’ room and stood watching them, automatically going through her tummy exercises and inquiring anxiously as to the reduction of her almost non-existent behind. She was a curly-haired blond who would one day be Rubenesque and was for ever preoccupied with the postponement of this tragedy. Aileen, who ate heartily without ever suffering the slightest deviation in her measurements, was her envy and despair; she said so now as the elegant figure drifted past, on a languid progress down from the workroom.
    “It’s no use being cross with me, dear,” said Aileen, unruffled. “If I went to fat like you do I’d just starve, I wouldn’t eat a thing; not a sausage,” she added, applying this phrase literally for the first, and probably only, time in her life. Her wandering attention was diverted to the panama. “What on earth are you doing to Rachel’s hat?”
    “Cleaning it,” said Rachel, “but it’s still pretty mucky.”
    Aileen picked up the hat and perched it on her red-gold hair. “It looks like a