Murder on Embassy Row Read Free

ambassador’s personal secretary, Melanie Callender, came up to Nigel Barnsworth and said, “Good show, heh?”
    Barnsworth ignored her.
    They were a contrasting pair. Barnsworth, whey-faced and frail, a tick in his left eye and a perpetual sneer upon his lips, was grudgingly admitted to be the best administrator in Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but had been denied an ambassadorship throughout his career because of his foul disposition.
    Callender, on the other hand, was tall and robust, a thirty-year-old from Liverpool, with cheeks the color of cherries, large, sparkling opalescent green eyes, and an irrepressible personality that could erupt into raucous laughter with minimal provocation. Because she was privy to many of James’s personal contacts and phone calls, she was constantly pressed by the household staff to provide juicy gossip about the ambassador. She steadfastly refused, although there were moments when she would comment upon his dour nature. She was more vocal about Nigel Barnsworth, often referring to him as “the git” or “a nasty little snail.” Never to his face, of course.
    “I said, ‘Good show,’” she repeated.
    “Codswallop,” Barnsworth said.
    “’Tis not,” said Callender. “I think it’s lively and lovely, just what the ambassador needs. Do him some good.” When Barnsworth said nothing, Callender asked, “Why do you hate him so?”
    Barnsworth cocked his head, looked up his nose, and said, “Be careful, Callender. You’re not liked here.” He left her and went to the main kitchen off the ballroom, where a dozen men and women were in a frenzy of activity. The head chef, who’d once created the acclaimed cuisine for London’s Savoy Hotel, was busy slicing salmon so thin it was diaphanous. A young woman created flowers out of raw carrots and radishes, another peeled jumbo shrimp to replenish a dwindling supply.
    The chef’s wife, Eleanor, a plump woman who managed the kitchen while her husband concocted the embassy’s daily bill of fare, leaned over to an assistant chef they’d brought with them from London and said, “Look who’s ’ere,” referring to Barnsworth. “Let’s cut ’im up and plop ’im in the soup.” They laughed. She turned to where a young woman was buttering thin, crustless slices of bread and said, “Get on with it, now. You know ’e hates it when the bread runs out for his caviar.” The girl finished buttering, arranged the slices on a tray that also contained unbuttered toast and a fresh supply of chopped egg yolks and onions, bustled past Barnsworth, and pushed through swinging doors.
    Barnsworth skirted a large butcher block cutting table and went to where Nuri Hafez leaned against a floor-to-ceiling wall of stainless steel refrigerator doors, some of which were padlocked. “What are his plans tonight?” Barnsworth asked the young Iranian.
    Hafez wore a white butler’s jacket over a blue shirt and maroon tie. He touched the genesis of a black mustache and shrugged.
    “Oh, come on, Hafez, you know. He tells you everything.”
    “I think they plan to be with their friends from London.”
    “The Palingtons?”
    “I am busy, Mr. Barnsworth. Excuse me.” Hafez slid along the refrigerator doors, picked up a tray heaped with orange and red vegetable flowers, and left.
    “Snotty bastard,” Barnsworth muttered.
    “Pardon?” said Eleanor, who’d come up behind him carrying a large, gleaming kitchen knife.
    “Nothing.” His eyebrows went up at the sight of the knife.
    “You wish something, Mr. Barnsworth?”
    “No. Make certain we don’t run out of anything out there.”
    “Yes,
sir
.” She smiled and turned away.
    Marsha James was standing with the Palingtons in front of a 1930s sixfold leather screen on which scenes of the Spanish Armada’s attempted invasion of England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign were portrayed. “Of course we understand,” Sylvia Palington was saying. “The strain,” added Morris