Preface to Murder by M Morris (funny books to read txt) 📕

She was stressed, tired and hungry, and needed to get home to Oxford.

She walked a little further, as far as the Tate and was wondering whether ten minutes spent browsing the Pre-Raphaelite collection might put her in a better mood, when her phone buzzed with an incoming message. She was delighted to find a text from Jonathan. He’d landed at Heathrow and was on the Heathrow Express to Paddington, from where he would catch a train to Oxford.

Bridget called him back straight away. ‘Hi, it’s me. Don’t catch a train. I’m in London too. I’ll meet you at Paddington.’

‘See you by the clock?’ said Jonathan.

‘I’ll be there,’ said Bridget.

She made her way to the nearest underground station at Pimlico, and twenty minutes later she was standing under the famous three-sided clock on platform one as hassled commuters hurried towards the trains. Only the bronze statue of Paddington Bear, sitting astride his battered leather suitcase beneath the clock seemed at rest in the busy station.

When Jonathan emerged from the crowds, wheeling a small black suitcase, Bridget ran into his arms.

‘Well, this is romantic,’ he laughed. ‘We just need a steam train and some orchestral music.’

‘I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you too. Next time you’ll have to take time off and come with me. Are you hungry?’

‘I’m starving.’

‘Come on then,’ said Jonathan, taking her hand. ‘I know the perfect Italian restaurant in Soho. Their tagliatelle with truffle cream sauce is to die for.’

20

‘Before I go into details about my trip to London yesterday,’ said Bridget, ‘does anyone have any updates for me?’

She was still feeling full after the previous night’s dinner in Soho. The restaurant had been tucked away in the maze of streets off Shaftesbury Avenue. Over delicious bowls of pasta, rich chocolate dessert and a bottle of the house red, Jonathan had told her about his time in New York and she had told him about the Saudi Embassy and MI5, without of course going into the details of the case. She had listened contentedly while he talked about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Frick Collection, and all the colourful characters he had met during his trip. They had finally caught a late train back to Oxford and Bridget had fallen asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Now she was acutely aware that she had spent an entire day away from the office, and was keen to hear what progress everyone had made in her absence.

Ryan was first to deliver his news. ‘We got the toxicology report back,’ he said, waving a sheaf of papers in the air. ‘Definitely no Novichok so we can rule out the Russians.’ It was a bit too early in the morning for one of Ryan’s witticisms and his remark was met with little more than a polite chuckle. ‘However,’ he said, pressing on undaunted, ‘she was definitely poisoned. They found unusually high concentrations of phosphorous, magnesium and potassium in her blood. The guys in the lab were quite excited about it.’

Bridget raised a querying eyebrow.

‘Yeah,’ said Ryan. ‘They’d never seen that particular combination before. Magnesium poisoning is extremely rare because the kidneys normally remove it from the bloodstream, but in very high quantities it can cause cardiac arrest. Potassium can also lead to heart failure in very high blood serum concentrations, so a combination of magnesium and potassium injected directly into the heart… well, that would be very nasty.’

‘And phosphorus too, you said?’

‘Yeah. They weren’t too sure about the effects of that. But they were confident that the three substances mixed together would make a deadly cocktail, with almost instantaneous results.’

‘Which helps to explain why Diane was still in her bed when we found her,’ said Bridget. ‘She didn’t have time to move, or even to scream for help.’ It was yet another indication that the attacker had known exactly what they were doing. ‘Jake, how about you?’

Jake was sitting at the back of the room, his hands wrapped around his Leeds United coffee mug. He had a distracted air about him, but looked up when his name was mentioned. ‘Yes. I got hold of her phone records. There were no calls on the night of her death, but in the preceding twenty-four hours she made and received calls to her agent, her publisher, some of her work colleagues at the Blavatnik, and family. Oh, and also the journalist, Michael Dearlove.’

‘I expect that was about the interview at the literary festival,’ said Bridget. ‘What about her bank accounts?’

‘Ah, now that’s where things get more interesting. Diane had one bank account, and I’ve worked through all her statements for the past year. She spent a lot of money. As well as regular restaurant bills, clothes, and so on, she’s had a lot of refurbishment done to her house in the past twelve months. And it’s not what you’d call cut-price work.’

Bridget recalled the high-spec décor of the house and her impression that it was showroom-new. ‘Had she come into money recently?’

‘Well, there was a payment from her publisher a month ago.’

‘I suppose that would have been the advance for her book,’ said Bridget. ‘Enough to pay for all the work she had done on the house?’

‘Not by a long way. She also gets a monthly salary from the university. I checked and it’s in line with what you’d expect for a lecturer of her years of experience. Similar to a detective inspector’s salary in fact, ma’am.’

‘Enough to pay the bills, and put a little aside.’ Bridget managed well enough on her income, but it certainly didn’t allow her to splash out on expensive refurbishments of her house in