A Taste of Death: The gripping new murder mystery that will keep you guessing. H.V. Coombs

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       PROLOGUE

       Friday, 15 January

      I heard about the first murder while I was making meringues.

      Meringues, so simple, yet so fiddly. They are like a metaphor for leading a good life. On the face of it so easy, yet the potential for disaster is huge. So, there I was in the kitchen, the gigantic Hobart mixer was running, fitted with a balloon whisk attachment. I had separated five egg whites and put them in the large stainless steel mixing bowl with a hundred and sixty grams of icing sugar. Sugar gives a meringue both body and weight. Body and weight. Always crucial, for both people and solidified foam dishes.

      There was a pounding on the kitchen door. As insistent as the noise of the mixer, but not as comforting. It wasn’t a polite announcement of someone’s presence, it was an angry statement of intent. I slowed the mixer down, and it quietened itself from a deafening rattle to a comforting whir, then I went to open the door. I think I knew who it was before I even touched the handle.

      ‘Do come in, DI Slattery,’ I said politely.

      The inspector entered with his usual air of haughty disdain. In the short time, only about a week, that I had known him, I had learned that the DI had what is charitably known as a forceful personality. It was typical Slattery that, instead of politely ringing or knocking on the front door, he had let himself into the kitchen yard and used the kitchen one, off limits to the general public. But that’s Slattery for you, given to making statements as well as taking them down. His cold, СКАЧАТЬ