Boomerang Read Online Free Page A

restlessly up and down the carpet between them, waving his arms dramatically.
    “I’m fed up with Bullard, I tell you. He’s upsetting the students and ruining my course.” His voice rose shrilly. “The only time I can get any teaching done is when he’s not around. When he’s there, he destroys the friendly feeling I try to build up with the party.”
    Reggie sipped his whisky. “A nasty piece of work, all right. Luckily I don’t have much to do with him, but I’ve heard him a couple of times.”
    Parry shuddered.
    “I get him all the time. He’s a menace, and I’m not sure I can take much more. He poisons the atmosphere.”
    “Oh, I expect you’ll manage, Keith. You usually do.” Val forced a smile. “You’ve had difficult students before.”
    “Difficult, yes. But no one like Bullard—he’s impossible. I swear he enjoys making trouble. I’m convinced he came here only to cause trouble.”
    “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?” Reggie protested. “I mean, he wouldn’t know anyone before he arrived, would he?”
    Parry stopped pacing to brood. “He might. I don’t know. I thank my lucky stars I’ve never encountered him before. He’s a sadist—I’ve never had such an unhappy week.”
    Val said, “He’s managed to upset Joyce as well. If she leaves, we’re really in trouble.”
    Parry began to pace up and down again, then turned to face her. The Mozart recording came to an end and his high-pitched voice sounded twice as loud in the silence.
    “You’re the brains of this outfit, Val. It’s up to you. You’ve got to do something to stop him, or this studio is finished!”
    * * * *
    Miss Isabel Eaton sat in a swivel chair with her feet on the desk and contemplated her legs below the hem of a brightly coloured dirndl skirt. They reminded her of a pair of hockey sticks.
    She poured liquid from a square bottle labelled Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey into a tumbler and sipped. The label was genuine.
    At her back, the window was wide open and the dust and heated air and traffic noises of Grays Inn Road came in. Her small office on the third floor smelt of stale cigarette smoke, and the building cleaners had firm instructions not to disturb the layer of dust on a rusting green filing cabinet.
    A cigarette burnt itself out in a metal ashtray. Miss Eaton didn’t much care for smoking but it helped the image she was trying to build up. There was a cigarette burn on the desk and the metal waste bin, ex-army supplies like the filing cabinet, overflowed with junk mail. Everything about the shabby office was a pose.
    She picked up a much-thumbed copy of Death Wears Red Garters , a favourite Sam Pike novel, and read:
    A man came through the door with a gun in his hand. It was a big .45 automatic. There was a streak of red flame and a slug blasted over my head.
    Suddenly there was the smell of fear in the room, like sludge from a sewer.
    I dived across the blonde on the bed—she was a genuine blonde, I noticed in passing—and slammed into the mobster. He bounced off the wall and slumped to the floor....
    The obligatory blonde; the real life of a private eye was never like that. Miss Eaton reflected sadly. She never ended up in bed with a hunk of man, nor had she ever been slugged in a dark alley or fired a shot in anger.
    The telephone rang and she put on her tough American voice to answer.
    “Eaton Investigations.”
    “Belle? It’s Val Courtney. Val, from St. Agatha’s—the name was Forbes then. Remember?”
    Middle-age dropped away from Miss Eaton along with her tough accent. St. Agatha’s College for Young Ladies, gym tunics and the class bell, hockey and sausage-rolls in the dorm after lights out....
    “Of course I remember, Val! How are you? Are you in London?”
    “I’m harassed, and speaking from Porthcove in Cornwall, along the coast from Penzance. My husband, Reg, and I have a studio here, and we need advice. I read somewhere that you’re running a private detective agency and thought