Death Trap Read Online Free Page B

you feel like a meal later?’ he asked.
    Kate shook her head. ‘I need to get back to see what’s going on at the house,’ she said, very aware that the invitation seemed more seductive than it had when it had last been issued several months ago. At some point, she thought, the invitations would stop coming and she was not sure that was really what she wanted, but that was the last thing she wanted Barnard to know just now. He smiled again and shrugged.
    â€˜Never mind,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t had to go back home to Liverpool anyway. I may see you around.’
    Kate strap-hung her way back to Notting Hill Gate on the crowded Central Line tube, and then walked slowly through the dusty streets of Victorian terraces towards the only place she could so far call home in London, and that for not much longer. Most of the houses she passed were high and shabby, with basements below pavement level and attics three or four floors up, just like the one she was living in with Marie and Tess. Very few were in a good state of repair, the woodwork was unpainted, the stucco cracked and flaking, the steps under the porticos broken down and the columns themselves sometimes looking positively dangerous. And now she looked closely she could see that many of them had rows of doorbells which seemed to indicate an unfeasibly large number of flats within, and generally those were the houses where the occasional resident going in or out seemed to be almost always black. It looked as if Harry Barnard’s analysis was accurate. She must remember to ask Marie who their landlord was.
    Kate was familiar enough with black faces. Liverpool had sheltered a black community for generations, as seamen had arrived in the city from around the world and settled, mainly in Toxteth. But she could not say that she had ever really known anyone black. The communities in the city lived parallel lives, the minority almost invisible to the majority. You did not often see a dark face in the centre of Liverpool. Here, she thought, black and white lived cheek by jowl with, as far as she could tell, not too much friction, though she knew there had been riots and lads had been jailed. And she knew that the colour bar Harry Barnard had mentioned was real enough. She had seen notices on houses renting rooms which made it quite clear: no blacks, no Irish, no dogs. From an Irish family herself, they made her wince. Perhaps Marie’s flat was protected like that, she thought, since all the tenants in the house were white. She glanced at a West Indian passerby, a smartly dressed woman in a flowery hat, and felt uneasy. There was a lot more going on around here than she and her friends understood, she thought. Notting Hill’s a rough old place, Harry Barnard had said. She and her mates from the north obviously hadn’t a clue.
    Just as she was about to climb the worn steps to her front door she heard a noise from the area entrance to Cecily Beauchamp’s flat and glancing down she saw the old woman herself in the doorway, gesturing in her direction imperiously.
    â€˜Hello,’ Kate said. ‘Are you all right?’
    Mrs Beauchamp beckoned again. ‘Could you spare me a moment, young lady?’ she said. ‘I’d be most grateful.’
    Slightly reluctantly Kate turned down the steps and followed Cecily Beauchamp into her flat. Something must have happened, she thought, for her to be allowed over the threshold this time. The basement flat was extensive but the ceilings were low and the windows, half below ground level, let in little light, and the walls and woodwork cried out for a coat of paint. But the carpets and furnishings looked expensive and every surface – the mantelpiece, shelves and side tables, were covered in fragile looking china and glass, with an occasional piece of silver in pride of place. Mrs Beauchamp, Kate thought, must be loaded, which was nice, but if so, this was an