The Charmers Read Free

as well as some Italians: a Raphael, a Caravaggio, whatever his advisors recommended. None of them impressed him but they were expected of a man in his position. This Turner painting had become an obsession and he was a man who got what he wanted.
    Right now, the thing he liked best of all that he owned was the fifty-foot Riva he sailed himself, at top speed the length of the coast from Marseille to Menton, leaving other boats awash in the great surge of its wake. There’d been a few insurance claims as a result but of course he’d settled quietly, out of court. In that sense, he was a man of his word, and held respect for his fellow sailors.
    He was aware though, of how impressive he looked to those in the passing boats, with his great height, his white captain’s cap with the gold braid and navy-blue anchor, his sun-browned chest, shaved of hair so he did not quite resemble a bear, which is what some woman had told him, mocking him, while he ran his heavy hands over her own lithe body.
    Actually, he had liked the comparison; he’d chuckled over it, looking at himself in the mirror over the bed, a great bear, full of power. That was him.
    And he wanted his condos on that land, and the painting, the Turner, on his wall. Everything Jolly Matthews had denied him in life would be his now that she was dead. And if that meant removing Mirabella Matthews from the scene, so be it.

 
    2
    Mirabella
    My name is Mirabella Matthews, a name you might recognize as I am a well-known author of suspense novels. I’m on the train from Paris to Nice, attempting to ignore the fraught-looking young blonde sitting opposite, and whose problems I certainly do not want to hear, though I can tell she is dying to unburden herself. I turn my head away, hoping not to be the one who has to hear it all.
    I am returning once again to the scene of the crime: the villa I had visited several times and which I have inherited upon the sudden and unexplained death of my Aunt Jolly, a tragedy that is taking me from an apartment in London to the shores of the South of France. They have not yet found out who killed her, nor have they discovered why.
    She was simply gone, “in the twinkling of an eye,” as they say, and I became a rich woman. I had not always seen eye to eye with Aunt Jolly, who disapproved of my youthful antics. She once invited me to stay and I stood her up for a more tempting offer from a man I could not resist. More fool me. It didn’t last. Aunt Jolly’s attention did. I learned the hard way, but then, don’t we all?
    The villa lured me with a magic my family home in Scotland never had. “Home” in my childhood was a Victorian turreted redbrick monstrosity, from which I longed to escape, especially after Mom “went over the wall,” as Dad succinctly put it, with an American tourist, leaving him to cope with an obstreperous and angry ten-year-old.
    It was my job to help clean out the stables, morning and evening. The horses knew I was afraid of them and would lean on me, trapping me against the wall, or do a nifty little back-kick that invariably got my shins. I hated it, but I liked the outfit, the tight little cream jodhpurs, the black jacket, and cute velvet helmet.
    I guess when Dad had had enough, he sent me off to live for a while with what he termed “foster parents,” though they were no relation and simply made a living from taking in boarders like me. Life there was not much different, except it was in Wyoming. Both were equally cold in winter.
    After a couple of years they sent me back, having also had enough, I suppose. Back in Scotland, I wore a pleated tartan kilt fastened with an oversized safety pin to protect my modesty from the everlasting wind that blew it apart, displaying more, I’m sure, than anyone ever wanted to see. I also wore heavy woolen shooting socks, the kind made specially for men and days out in the woods and fields, gun in hand, ready to