Deadly Sin Read Online Free Page A

station’s charlady for more years than anyone could remember, she probably solved more crimes than many of the less inspired detectives. The number of criminals convicted in the five years since Daphne handed in the keys to Westchester police station’s tea cupboard has decreased annually, though no one at the weekly C.I.D. meeting would dream of attributing the decline to her absence. However, no one would deny that whenever she slowly lowered her polished copper pot onto the detective inspector’s desk, scratched her forehead, and mused, “That’s funny — my milkman (or baker or butcher) was telling me about …” anyone with any sense would put down their tea and pick up a pen.
    â€œI told little Miss Marple straight. I said, ‘I was cleaning the constables’ toilets here before you pooped your first nappy.’”
    â€œI bet that went down well,” mutters Bliss, but Daphne fails to see why diplomacy should trump the truth.
    â€œCall themselves detectives,” she rants. “Most of them couldn’t spot a turd in a toilet, and as for …” but Bliss tunes out her diatribe, knowing he’d probably agree and guessing that much the same would have been said of him and his peers in his early years.
    â€œIf I had neighbours like that in olden times I could have bribed a witch to put a hex on their virgins and poison their goat,” Daphne is concluding when Bliss comes back, and he laughs it off.
    â€œNow don’t go getting yourself in trouble. I’ve bailed you out often enough.”
    â€œBailed me out, Chief Inspector! I seem to remember —”
    â€œAll right, Daphne,” says Bliss, needing no reminder of the times the shoe was on the other foot. “Only you’ll have to join the queue. I’ve already got one little old lady on my plate this week.”
    â€œOld!” snorts Daphne indignantly, as expected, though she calms once he’s revealed the identity of his other charge.
    â€œI suppose I’ll have to yield to royalty,” she says as she puts down the phone and refills the teapot. “Keemun,” she muses as she pours, knowing it is the Queen’s favourite, and then she has an idea.
    â€œYour Majesty,” she writes, after she has dug a monogrammed Sheaffer fountain pen and a bottle of India ink from her bureau.
    â€œSubversion: the art of demoralizing the enemy by persistently undermining their morale,” writes Daphne in a notebook, once she has leant on the Queen for support, then she pours another tea, sits back, and closes her eyes in an effort to blot out the neighbours’ noise.
    Images from another lifetime take shape, images undimmed by more than six decades: corrugated iron huts draped with camouflage netting in the woodland behind a solid Victorian mansion; the air heavy with the stench of latrines, cigarettes, and cheap floor polish; a hundred keen and excited women in drab fatigues being groomed for death — young women, most barely in their twenties, who a year earlier would have been giddily choosing dresses for engagement parties and coming-out balls.
    â€œDishearten, demoralize, and discourage by destroying, disrupting, and denying,” ran the mnemonic of the psychological warfare officer as Daphne and her classmates were prepared to take on the Nazis in occupied France, and Daphne recalls it with a clarity that proves conclusively toher that she’s not coming down with Alzheimer’s, but twenty minutes later she puts the kettle on again. It’s not that she’s entirely bereft of ideas for ousting the enemy on her doorstep; she simply has no way to get her hands on the necessary explosives, detonators, or strychnine. “I’ll have to be subtle,” she tries telling herself, but in her mind she sees a plume of smoke rising from the rubble, while sombre-faced undertaker’s men carry charred bodies to a black van and someone dumps