Original Sin Read Free Page B

cashmere. But the physical closeness of her companion and her own heightened senses, stimulated by the novelty and excitement of Innocent House, told her something more; that Miss Etienne wasn’t at ease. It was she, Mandy, who should have been nervous. Instead she was aware that the air of the claustrophobic lift, jerking upwards with such maddening slowness, was quivering with tension.
    They shuddered to a stop and Miss Etienne hauled back the double-grille gates. Mandy found herself in a narrow hall with a facing door and one on the left. The door ahead was open and she saw a large cluttered room filled from floor to ceiling with metal shelves tightly packed with files and bundles of papers. The racks ran from the windows to the door with just enough room to walk between them. The air smelt of old paper, musty and stale. She followed Miss Etienne between the ends of the shelves and the wall and to another smaller door, this time closed.
    Pausing, Miss Etienne said: “Mr. Dauntsey works on the files in here. We call it the little archives office. He said that he’d leave the tape on the table.”
    It seemed to Mandy that the explanation was unnecessary and rather odd, and that Miss Etienne hesitated for a second, hand on the knob, before turning it. Then with a sharp gesture, almost as if she expected some obstruction, she pushed the door wide open.
    The stink rolled out to meet them like an evil wraith, the familiar human smell of vomit, not strong but so unexpected that Mandy instinctively recoiled. Over Miss Etienne’s shoulder her eyes took in at once a small room with an uncarpeted wooden floor, a square table to the right of the door and a single high window. Under the window was a narrow divan bed and on the bed sprawled a woman.
    It had needed no smell to tell Mandy that she was looking at death. She didn’t scream; she had never screamed from fear or shock; but a giant fist mailed in ice clutched and squeezed her heart and stomach and she began shivering as violently as a child lifted from an icy sea. Neither of them spoke but, with Mandy close behind Miss Etienne, they moved with quiet almost imperceptible steps closer to the bed.
    She was lying on top of a tartan rug but had taken the single pillow from beneath it to rest her head as if needing this final comfort even in the last moments of consciousness. By the bed stood a chair holding an empty wine bottle, a stained tumbler and a large screw-top jar. Beneath it a pair of brown laced shoes had been neatly laid side by side. Perhaps, thought Mandy, she had taken them off because she hadn’t wanted to soil the rug. But the rug was soiled and so was the pillow. There was a slime of vomit like the track of a giant snail gummed to the left cheek and stiffening the pillow. The woman’s eyes were half open, the irises turned upward, her grey hair, worn in a fringe, was hardly disarranged. She was wearing a brown high-necked jumper and a tweed skirt from which two skinny legs, oddly twisted, stuck out like sticks. Her left arm was flung outwards, almost touching the chair, the right lay across her breast. The right hand had scrabbled at the thin wool of the jumper before death, drawing it up to reveal a few inches of white vest. Beside theempty pill bottle there was a square envelope addressed in strong black handwriting.
    Mandy whispered as reverently as if she were in church: “Who is she?”
    Miss Etienne’s voice was calm. “Sonia Clements. One of our senior editors.”
    “Was I going to work for her?”
    Mandy knew the question was irrelevant as soon as she asked it, but Miss Etienne replied: “For part of the time, yes, but not for long. She was leaving at the end of the month.”
    She picked up the envelope, seeming to weigh it in her hands. Mandy thought, she wants to open it but not in front of me. After a few seconds Miss Etienne said: “Addressed to the coroner. It’s obvious enough what’s happened here even without this. I’m sorry you’ve