Deadly Petard Read Online Free Page A

assurance: a barrow-boy made good. He’d learned to flatter, yet sound sincere, to make a solitary, neryous, unapproachable spinster feel like a princess.
    She’d known him as an inveterate liar, yet she’d listened when he had told her she’d become beautiful. (After all, wasn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder, not the mirror?) She could judge he was broke, yet did not draw the obvious conclusion that that was why he had reappeared. He’d moved into her flat and immediately made himself completely at home, listing all his likes and dislikes.
    She hadn’t cared how outrageous his demands were. Love was a word that meant different things to different people: to her, it meant being wanted . . .
    He’d disengaged skilfully, yet not quite able to hide his apprehension that she might become hysterical and make life difficult for him. Which only showed that he’d never even bothered to understand what kind of a woman she was. He’d told her he was only going away because he couldn’t bear to live off her any longer and when he’d made his fortune he’d be back and nothing would ever again keep them apart. And she had let herself believe him.
    She’d become commercially very successful. She’d sold the flat and, fulfilling an ambition, had bought a cottage in the country: Queenswood Farm, three hundred years old, with oak beams, inglenook fireplaces, and a couple of inside walls still with original plaster. Eighteen months after moving into Queenswood Farm, she’d first heard that Keir was engaged to be married. The news had shocked her even if, had she been able to admit this, it should not have surprised her. Then she’d learned that his fiancee was Barbara Hardy, a very wealthy woman, from a county family, at least ten years older than himself. Whereas others had found it degrading that he should so obviously be marrying for money, not love, she had found it comforting . . .
    They’d met a few times after the marriage. To her own surprise, she’d found those meetings far less emotionally charged than she’d expected: experience had hardened and taught her. Yet even so, there were times during these meetings, when he smiled at her, when he held her hand a little longer than necessary, or when he chuckled as he told one of his risque jokes, when she experienced a moment of bitter loss.
    Then, one late October morning when some trees had begun to shed their leaves and the air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay . . .
     

 
CHAPTER 4
    The three upstairs bedrooms in Queenswood Farm faced north and she had had a large skylight installed in the end one to turn it into a studio. She was painting there when she heard a car drive in. She swore, hating interruptions when working.
    The front doorbell rang and she crossed to her right to put down the palette, but even as she set it on the table, the front door was opened and a man shouted: ‘So how’s the Last Supper coming along: have you got as far as the pud?’
    She recognized Keir’s voice and experienced a momentary sense of panic.
    In sharp contrast to her paint-stained overalls worn over an ancient sweater and jeans, he had on under a vicuna overcoat a cashmere cardigan, a roll-neck, puce coloured shirt, perfectly creased trousers and twin-coloured brogues. Depending on one’s terms of reference, he was either smartly or preciously dressed.
    He kissed her. She drew back quickly.
    ‘Gertie, I’ll swear you look younger every single time I see you! What’s the secret? Come on, tell me: I could do with a drop of the elixir.’
    He looked tired and troubled. She wondered what was worrying him? Money had usually been his only concern, but since marrying Barbara surely he’d plenty of that?
    ‘Don’t look at me in that way.’
    ‘In what way?’ she asked.
    ‘As if you were trying to dissect my soul.’
    ‘Where’s the knife sharp enough to do that?’
    He laughed, put his arm round her waist, and squeezed. ‘One of the many things I so like