Death in High Heels Read Online Free Page A

couldn’t just ‘get a new one’.”
    “Oh, no, I’m not saying it as against Judy, Rachel. Poor darling, I think she went through hell, and I think she still does in a quiet way; she isn’t changeable like Doon; I’m simply saying that you couldn’t make Doon understand a thing like that.”
    A Sister came into the room, spruce and immaculate, with gentle eyes in a mask-like face. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I have to tell you that your friend is dead.”
    They sprang to her feet: Victoria took two or three steps towards her, holding out unconsciously pleading hands…. “Dead!—she can’t be dead?”
    “I’m afraid so; I did explain to you, didn’t I, that there wasn’t any hope?”
    “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Sister, only—couldn’t we have gone to see her or something?”
    “She was quite unconscious. It was better not to, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes, we know that, really,” said Rachel, miserably, “Thank you, Sister, for coming and telling us and for letting us wait here and all that. Do we—what do we do now? Shall we just go home?”
    “Yes, I think you’d better go and get some sleep. We’ll arrange all the rest. You aren’t relations, are you?”
    “No,” said Rachel. “Just friends.”
    They went down the broad steps and walked in silence along the deserted pavement. “I can’t help howling,” said Victoria at last, half apologetically. “Poor Doon … somehow one can’t believe that she of all people can be dead. That Sister must have thought I was an ass—she’d explained to us that Doon was going to die.”
    “I couldn’t think of anything, when she was telling us, except the little wart on her nose,” said Rachel, reminiscently. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I can see it now, a horrid little brown wart on her quite nice face. It’s funny how things take you—I was really fonder of Doon than you were, and yet when I hear she’s dead all I can think of is a little brown wart on somebody’s face. You’d better take a taxi, darling.”
    “Yes, I can’t face a bus with my eyeblack all running and a moustache of dirt, as you so kindly put it. Good night, darling; go to bed like the nurse said and try to forget about it for a bit. I’m afraid it’s going to be hell to-morrow.”
    Rachel dragged herself up her stairs and opened the front door of her tiny flat. Here were the relics of her first happy years of married life: two good, comfortable chairs covered now with an inexpensive linen; a Persian carpet, a couple of water-colours, silk brocade curtains that once had framed windows looking out on to country fields. The chairs had been made up into some sort of bed for herself; from her divan in the corner a small voice greeted her: “Mummy! I thought you was never coming.”
    “Oh, Jess, darling, couldn’t you have gone to sleep?”
    “Well, I did but then I woke up, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”
    “I had to go out, my rabbit; I’m so sorry. That’s the worst of Mummy working in London, isn’t it? It’s very boring for you stuck here all day long with Alice.”
    She sat down on the edge of the bed and took the child into her arms. Jessica wriggled free and, moving up to the top of the divan, perched herself on the pillow and regarded her mother with shining, precocious eyes. “I don’t like being mauled,” she said, deliberately.
    Rachel flinched. “Jessica dar ling!What do you mean? Where did you learn to say that?”
    “I’ve heard you say it to Daddy.”
    “Have you, Jessica? But that must have been a long, long time ago. We haven’t seen Daddy for a long time now. You ought to forget those things.”
    “I saw him to-day,” said Jessica, her voice full of an uncomprehending hostility against she knew not what.
    “You saw Daddy to-day? Where?”
    “He came and saw me here. Alice went to answer the bell and there was Daddy. He told Alice she could go out for half an hour and he stayed and played with me. He gave me a