Death Before Breakfast by George Bellairs Page A

when he wishes and sleeps when he feels like it. He’s beenup working several nights and went to bed as soon as tea was over. …’
    â€˜Could I have a word with you, then, Miss Macready?’
    â€˜Do you wish to question me?’
    â€˜If I may.’
    She was standing with her back to the light, silhouetted against the glow of the narrow hall. Tall and slim, with a good figure. She had changed from the house-coat of the morning into a pale blue jumper and a tweed skirt. She hesitated again and then inclined her head.
    â€˜Come in, then.’
    He followed her past the door of her brother’s room to the second on the left, which she opened. Ahead was a small kitchen, the door of which she pulled to, not before Littlejohn had caught a glimpse of disorder and a confusion of unwashed pots and pans.
    The light in the hall was covered in a red silk shade through which a warm glow penetrated on the few odds and ends of good mahogany furniture; a hatstand, a heavy chair, and a small table with a telephone on it. It was difficult to thread one’s way through it all.
    Littlejohn wondered why the doctor and his sister had chosen such an unsavoury quarter, quite out of keeping with their standing.
    Miss Macready switched on the light in the room at the back.
    â€˜This is my room. I use it as a sitting-room and whenever any visitors come, which is very rarely, I entertain them here.’
    She was still theatrical, her speech precise, punctuated by a sweeping gesture now and then.
    The room was illuminated by a standard lamp. A red carpet on the floor and the furnishing contemporary in yellows and reds. Modern armchairs and a couch like a wooden bench with a long red hassock on it. A grandpiano in one corner. It looked to be a good one. On the walls, a number of incomprehensible pictures in modern style. The heavy yellow curtains were drawn, shutting out the sordid view of shabby tumbledown property in June Street behind. The backyards of houses even more dilapidated than those of July Street. There was a faint scent on the air, not of personal perfume, but as though someone had not long ago been burning incense there; a heavy sensual odour which seemed to suit the woman who occupied the room.
    Over all, the faint noises of the road. The almost perpetual hum and rush of passing traffic.
    â€˜You wish to ask me some questions, Superintendent? Please sit down.’
    He sat on one of the contemporary chairs with a cushion upholstered in red leather which hissed like a punctured tyre as it took his weight.
    â€˜Cigarette?’
    As he expected, they were black Russians. He declined with thanks.
    â€˜Smoke your pipe, if you wish. I’ve seen you passing by with it in your mouth.’
    He slowly packed and lit it, although it seemed almost like brawling in church to fill this exotic place with pipe smoke.
    He felt that he himself might be taking part in a play. The furnishings, the sumptuous carpet, the luxurious curtains, the woman with her heavy scent and her precise speech and poses. … All in July Street, of all places. Like a set on a stage.
    â€˜How long have you lived here, Miss Macready?’
    â€˜Almost seven years.’
    â€˜And before that?’
    â€˜About two miles away along the main road. My brother was a general practitioner and this house was a surgery heopened here because it seemed a profitable thing to do. He owned the property and when he decided to retire, we moved in here and his partner took over the other house.’
    â€˜You didn’t want to get away in the country then, after so long in a quarter like this?’
    â€˜Why? Neither of us likes the country. This is a well-built house and we have made it comfortable for our purpose. It is a handy
pied-à-terre
for visits to London. Most of the neighbours were patients of my brother. They respect us and are our friends. What more could we wish?’
    There was a pause, as though one of them had forgotten a