Midnight Murders Read Online Free Page B

edged securities to make work a pastime she could give up any time she chose.
    But she had discovered that money was no substitute for emotional and sexual satisfaction. She was tired of singles groups, the bridge club dominated by obscenely happily married couples, and sleeping alone. Peter Collins was a hard man, but he was physically fit, more than passably good-looking in a clean cut, military way, and she had a shrewd suspicion that if she ever succeeded in enticing him into her bed she’d find his soft centre.
    She didn’t doubt that he had one. In her opinion, all men did. It was just a question of the right handling. All she had to do was make the initial breech through his defences.

CHAPTER TWO
    â€˜Take this wheelbarrow and shovel,’ Jimmy Herne, the chief gardener at Compton Castle, thrust the implements at Dean Smith, his seventeen-year-old trainee. ‘Proceed to that point beneath the willow tree, where I’ve marked the turf with lime,’ he continued. ‘You listening to me, boy?’ he bellowed.
    Dean shrugged his shoulders, which irritated Jimmy even more. Dean was used to being screamed at, and not only by Jimmy Herne. His parents had done so for as long as he could remember, and as soon as he was old enough to go to school, his teachers had followed suit. As a result, he was immune to any display of anger from anyone in authority.
    He lived for the hours he spent shooting aliens and outwitting commandos in the gaming arcades, and ogling girls while downing pints of illicit beer with his mates in the Little Albert – the only bar in town that catered for under-age drinkers.
    â€˜I’ll check on you in ten minutes,’ Jimmy threatened. ‘And if you haven’t finished lifting the turf, and digging out a good couple of inches by then, you can look out. You hear me, boy?’
    â€˜Yes, Mr Herne.’ Dean threw his spade into the barrow and trundled to the willow tree. He poked the spade half-heartedly into the grass, and gingerly lifted the turf he’d cut. If he didn’t trim the edges neatly, it would set the old geezer off again, and that would mean sweeping leaves and clearing gutters for the rest of the week. He and Jason Canning, the other trainee assigned by the council’s horticulture department to Compton Castle, constantly vied with one another for the dubious privilege of being the lowest common denominator in Jimmy Herne’s bad books. Fortunately for him, today was Jason’s turn. Jimmy had caught him chatting up Mandy Evans in the kitchen when he should have been bedding out geraniums, so it was Jason who was doing the dirty work.
    Dean lifted out four square inches of turf, laid the tiny sod in the centre of the barrow, leaned on the shovel and rested before lifting out the next section. A fat, pink worm was oozing back into the darkness of the soil. It didn’t ooze quickly enough. Dean chopped it in two with his spade, and watched both ends writhe.
    â€˜Here, boy.’
    A prod in the back with the pointed end of an umbrella diverted Dean’s attention from the worm.
    â€˜Dig over there.’ The umbrella swung in the direction of the flowerbeds he’d dug out the week before.
    The woman was short, with a beaky face that reminded him of a teacher who’d taught him in primary school. But she was wearing a white jacket. And that put him on his guard. Only doctors wore white jackets, and even Jimmy Herne listened to doctors.
    â€˜I dug out those beds last week, miss.’ He lapsed into the jargon of his recent schooldays.
    â€˜I don’t care when you dug them out. You will dig that one out now!’
    The “now”, coupled with her air of authority, made Dean jump to it. Throwing his spade into his barrow, he wheeled it to the flowerbed.
    The woman reached the spot before him. She ground the heel of her shoe into the loose earth, and pinpointed the place where she wanted him to dig. ‘Here, and