Murder Fortissimo by Nicola Slade

always say, to marry into some families.’
    An inarticulate sound was Doreen’s only response, her features frozen in horror, so Christiane turned her attention to Fred Buchan, nodding cheerfully to Vic as she drew her chair nearer.
    ‘How are you, Mr Buchan? I see your father’s in one of his moods today; still I suppose it can be hard to cope in another language, I know that for a fact. I was lucky, of course, I’ve got a good ear and some people have told me they’d never have known I wasn’t English. Funny that,’ she gave Vic a genial smile and indicated his father. ‘Funny how some people are like me and have no trouble at all learning English and others can be like your dad and still sound really foreign after years and years.’
    Vic agreed politely and she went on, turning the screw. ‘Well, we’ve all had our moments too, I daresay, I know I have. I betyour dad could tell us a tale or two about what he got up to in the war, eh? And some of the others here too, no doubt.’
    With that she nodded gaily and wheeled herself off leaving a puzzled Vic, flanked by a frozen father and wife sagging limply in her chair, her face drained of all colour.
     
    Alice hurried home from the shopping precinct and flung herself into her latest bargain, a silk dress of dull cardinal-red silk, an extravagant £14.99 from the Friends of the Hospice shop, and brushed her long shining black hair. Up? Surely not down, no – I’d look like a superannuated teenager, she decided, but I’m not screwing it back in that tight bun. Finally she managed to pin it up into a more or less secure French pleat then, with a dab of eye shadow, a quick dusting of blusher on her sallow cheeks, a trace of lipstick, and she was ready.
    The woman in her mirror was a stranger. ‘Goodness,’ she exclaimed. The stranger was, if not a beautiful woman, certainly an attractive one. When had that happened? It wasn’t just the make-up, it wasn’t just the dress, in spite of its designer label; this new confident woman had been trying to crawl out from under her stone for several days.
    Ever since I walked into the office that day and found Neil there. She shuddered. Ever since Mother went to Firstone Grange. And now Neil had asked her out to dinner.
    The wheezing chime of the front door bell was a welcome interruption to her thoughts; she raced down the hall, slowing her headlong rush as she reached the lobby with its encaustic floor tiles.
    ‘Hi,’ Neil was his usual friendly self but there was a new, surprised glow of admiration in his eyes. ‘Ready?’
    As she went back to the kitchen to pick up her bag Neil took a look round. He was eyeing up the carved and antlered hat stand when she returned.
    ‘That was my grandfather’s pride and joy,’ she told him, turning up her nose. ‘It’s the worst dust trap in the house and that’s saying something.’
    ‘I think your valuation was pretty much spot on,’ he remarked as he handed her into his car. ‘I wouldn’t have said anything very different. Will you sell, do you think?’
    He manoeuvred the car down the overgrown drive and through the crumbling brick gateposts then once they were out and driving up past the old flour mill and through the village, he repeated the question.
    ‘I don’t know.’ She turned her anxious brown eyes on him and confessed. ‘I don’t know what possessed me to do it, Neil. Mother will kill me when she finds out. I’ve told the auctioneer’s agent to collect most of the furniture on Monday and I’ve done all the paperwork to put the house on the market then too.’
    Her hands twisted nervously in her lap as she fell silent, retreating into the anxiety that was now constant. Who owned the house? Had Alice any right to sell it? Had her father left it outright to Christiane or to both of them? She bit her lip. She’ll kill me, she faltered silently as she stared out into the rain.
     
    The guests at Firstone Grange had all gone to bed and Gemma was on the