Read [Wexford 01] From Doon & Death for Free Online Page A

evening rush began. The sun had dimmed and the mackerel sky thickened until it looked like curds and whey. On the hedges that bordered the road the May blossom still lingered, touched now with brown as if it had been singed by fleering fire.
    Wexford led the way into the police station and they had Miss Sweeting's prints checked with the ones on the lipstick. As Wexford had expected, they didn't match. The student's big pitted fingertips were more like a man's than a woman's.
    ‘I want to find the owner of that lipstick, Mike ’ he said again. ‘I want every chemist's shop in this place gone over with a small toothcomb. And you'd better do it yourself because if s not going to be easy.'
    Does it have to have any connection with Mrs Parsons, sir? Couldn't it have been dropped by someone going up the track?'
    'Look, Mike, that lipstick wasn't by the road. It was right on the edge of the wood. Apart from the fact that they don't use the lane, Sweeting and Mrs Creavey don't wear lipstick and even if they did they wouldn't be likely to have one in a peculiar shade of pinkish brown like this. You know as well as I do, when a woman only uses lipstick on high days and holidays, for some reason or other, a sense of daring probably, she always picks a bright red. This is a filthy colour, the sort of thing a rich woman might buy if she'd already got a dozen lipsticks and wanted the latest shade for a gimmick.'
    Burden knew Kingsmarkham well, but he got the local trade directory to check and found that there were seven chemists in Kingsmarkham High Street, three in side roads and one in a village which had now been absorbed as a suburb into Kingsmarkham itself. Bearing in mind what Wexford had said about a rich woman, he started on the High Street
    The supermarket had a cosmetics counter, but they kept only a limited stock of the more expensive brands. The assistant knew Mrs Parsons by name, having read that she was missing in a newspaper. She also knew her by sight and was agog. Burden didn't tell her the body had been found and he didn't waste any more time on questions when he learnt that, as far as the girl could remember, Mrs Parsons had bought only a tin of cheap talcum powder in the past month.
    "That's a new line ’ said the assistant in the next shop. If s only just come out. It comes in a range of fur shades, sort of soft and subtle, but we don't stock it We wouldn't have the sale for it, you see.'
    He walked up towards the Kingsbrook Bridge past the Georgian house that was now the Youth Employment Bureau, past the Queen Anne house that was now a solicitor's office, and entered a newly opened shop in a block with maisonettes above it . It was bright and clean, with a dazzling stock of pots and jars and bottles of scent They kept a large stock of the brand, he was told, but were still awaiting delivery of the fur range.
    The waters of the brook had settled and cleared. Burden could see the flat round stones on the bottom. He leaned over the parapet and saw a fish jump. Then he went on, weaving his way between groups of schoolchildren. High School girls in pana-mas and scarlet blazers, avoiding prams and baskets on wheels. He had called at four shops before he found one that stocked the fur range. But they had only sold one and that in a colour called Mutation Mink, and they didn't put prices on their goods. The girl in the fifth shop, a queenly creature with hair like pineapple candy-floss, said that she was wearing Arctic Sable herself. She lived in a flat above the shop and she went upstairs to fetch the lipstick. It was identical to the one found in the wood except that it had no price written on its base.
    If s a difficult shade to wear,' the girl said. 'We've sold a couple in the other colours but that sort of brownish tint puts the customers off.'
    Now there were no more shops on this side of the High Street, only a couple of big houses, the Methodist Church - Mrs Parsons' church - standing back from the road behind a