For Death Comes Softly Read Online Free Page A

he does have an attack he is capable of completely losing his short-term memory.
    â€˜He had a grand mal while you were on the Pencil and he was hovering around in the inflatable. He passed out and then went into a kind of trance. By the time he had fully recovered consciousness the boat had drifted almost back to the shore – the tide was coming in if you recall. Jason had absolutely no memory of dropping a visitor off at the rock and had completely forgotten why he was out at sea at all.
    â€˜We are all terribly, terribly sorry, and both Jason and his father will be up here this afternoon to apologise to you personally.’
    I stared at him in amazement. ‘As simple as that?’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sure Jason is a very nice young chap and everything, but nobody with that affliction should be in charge of a boat at all, let alone carrying unsuspecting passengers around the place.’
    â€˜I know.’ Robin Davey sighed resignedly. ‘He wasn’t supposed to do what he did, of course he wasn’t. I employ him as a porter and an odd job man, but his family have fished off Abri for almost as long as mine have been here. We let him use the boat and do a bit of fishing because he loves it, but he’s not supposed to carry passengers, he knows that.’
    â€˜Mr Davey, I could have died,’ I said.
    â€˜Call me Robin, please,’ he responded. ‘But no, you had to be missed, we were always going to miss you. You must realise that. We only take a maximum of about twenty staying guests on the island, and there are just a dozen of you here at the moment. As soon as you didn’t turn up for supper at The Tavern, we reckoned something was amiss. One of the waitresses remembered seeing Jason bring the inflatable into the landing beach quite late in the day and that when she spoke to him he had seemed confused and unwell. We put two and two together . . .’
    I wasn’t entirely convinced. I reckoned I’d had a very lucky escape indeed. All Abri’s accommodation had at least elementary cooking facilities and some guests did their own catering. It was fortunate that I had trotted along to The Tavern at about six every evening for my first drink of the day followed by an early supper. Had I not been both bone idle when it came to any kind of domesticity, and also such a creature of habit, I might not have been so fortunate. I might not have been missed until the next morning, and I was quite sure that I would have been unable to survive an entire night clinging to the Pencil. The very thought of my fate had my ordeal lasted much longer brought me out in a cold sweat.
    No wonder Robin Davey was showing so much concern. Idly I wondered how much I could sue the bugger for, and I did obtain a certain rum satisfaction from watching him turn a dull shade of green when I casually told him my job.
    I don’t look like a Detective Chief Inspector. In fact I don’t look like a copper at all, although I’ve never been quite sure whether that has by and large been an advantage or a disadvantage to me. I have quite a lot of very curly fair hair, and as I had allowed it to dry naturally that morning, it had formed itself into a fuzzy blonde halo around my head. I had once overheard a couple of particularly chauvinistic Avon and Somerset wooden-tops describe me as ‘a Barbie-doll with a brain’. However, being all too aware of the average copper’s opinion of women in The Job, certainly in senior positions, I had merely counted myself fortunate that they’d allowed that I had a brain. On this occasion it was pleasantly entertaining to watch Robin Davey’s reaction to my profession and my rank. He was a quick recoverer though.
    â€˜I see,’ he remarked, trying, somewhat desperately I thought, to sound light-hearted. ‘I’d better watch my step then, hadn’t I.’
    Even the twinkle which seemed to be permanently in his eye