Read The Dead Lie Down for Free Online Page B

migraine.
    Charlie looked round the room, through the gaps in the clusters of sweaty bodies that surrounded her on all sides, trying to catch a glimpse of her future mother-in-law. Ugh, what a thought. Her next one was even worse, and made her eyes prickle with tears: It won’t happen. Simon doesn’t really want to marry me. He’ll pull out, when it’s almost but not quite too late.
    Did she want it to be too late? she asked herself, not for the first time. Did she want to see Simon trapped, by his own foolishness and lack of self-knowledge, in a marriage that she wanted and he didn’t? She dug her nails into the palms of her hands to put a stop to the nonsense in her head. It was nonsense; of course it was. The one thing about Simon that was beyond dispute was his intelligence. Clever people didn’t propose marriage over and over again to people they didn’t want to marry. Did they?
    Am I as stupid as Stacey? Charlie wondered.
    The function room was like a sauna—a split-level, squalid one with mustard-coloured wallpaper in a geometric pattern of diamonds within diamonds, and sash windows with grease-smeared panes that were so original their frames were rotting. All the money that had been spent on the Malt Shovel in recent years had been spent on its exterior. Here’s to deceptive appearances , thought Charlie, raising her glass in a private toast. She looked around for a member of pub staff, someone who could turn off the heating.
    Simon was over by the window, talking to DC Chris Gibbs and his wife Debbie. Charlie couldn’t catch his eye. She tried to beam the word ‘speech’ into his brain using telepathy. When that failed, she tried the word ‘parents’. Where were Kathleen and Michael? Charlie was annoyed, convinced she was more worried about them than Simon was. Please let them be having a pleasant chat with someone respectable. Inspector Proust and his wife Lizzie—that might not be a total disaster. On the other hand, Proust, though not a drinker, could be relied upon to open any conversation with a remark that would offend his interlocutor to the core. But then he generally let Lizzie do the talking when they were together, so maybe it would be all right.
    Charlie liked the inspector’s wife a lot. Lizzie was petite with cropped white hair and a surprisingly youthful face for a woman in her late fifties. She was down-to-earth, socially adaptable, a pacifier rather than an agitator. Charlie felt guilty for calling her Mrs Snowman behind her back; it wasn’t fair to extend Proust’s nickname to his wife, whose warmth was one of the few things that could thaw her husband’s freezer-compartment demeanour.
    Charlie spotted Giles and Lizzie Proust talking to Colin Sellers by the buffet table. Sellers was visibly drunk already, red in the face and dripping sweat. Proust looked unimpressed, but then that wasn’t unusual for the Snowman. He looked that way most of the time, even when not faced with a moist inebriate. Something jarred in Charlie’s mind: a twitch of discomfort beneath the surface of her thoughts. What was it? Something to do with Sellers . . . The woman yesterday, the one who’d called herself Ruth Bussey. Charlie had asked her if Sellers had put her up to telling that preposterous story about her boyfriend killing someone who wasn’t dead, as a prank to be revealed here at the party. If only.
    Charlie didn’t want to think about her, whatever her real name was. She’d got the innocent waif look down to a T: waist-length golden wavy hair, flared faded jeans, cheesecloth shirt embroidered with flowers round the neck, irritatingly feminine shoes with ribbons wound round her ankles. No socks or tights—no wonder she couldn’t stop shivering. Unless that was all part of the act. Her pleading eyes, her helpless shrugs . . . Charlie had almost been convinced she was genuine. Then she’d found an article about herself in the pocket of the coat the woman had left behind. She’d needed to