Murder By Umbrella: (Passion) (The Nikki Sinclair Quartet Book 1)

by Jaye Rothman

  I sat down heavily on a chair. In the corner of the room, a middle-aged man lay on the floor snoring loudly.

  “That’s the publican,” said the officer. “He’s been drugged as well.”

  I’d never been so pleased to hear approaching sirens.

  Lonnie, Pat and the publican were escorted by Special Branch to the military hospital at Chichester to spend a night under observation. I paid another visit to Dr Buchanan, who put four stitches in a gash on my leg, caused by falling on broken glass, and prescribed a course of antibiotics. He strongly advised me to rest for a day or two, but I knew the chances of that were slim to nil.

  Later that afternoon, with a plastic bag taped over my wound, I took a long, hot shower, washing the plaster, smoke, sweat, blood and smell of death from me. I was stiff and sore and it would have been sensible to take Dr Buchanan’s advice and rested up, but I couldn’t. I had to see Eva: Would she confirm Bryant’s alibi for the day Mester was murdered? This could wait until tomorrow, but the truth was, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Exhausted as I was, I wanted her to burn me again with her stare as she had in the restaurant.

  After my shower, I sprayed Eau de Givenchy III, my favourite perfume, on my neck and wrists, and felt my spirits lift. With my hair still damp, I knocked on Eva’s back door; I thought this might not alarm her as much. I had picked a bouquet of spring flowers from the garden of Squirrel Cottage, a mixture of daffodils, tulips and English primroses. Eva opened the door cautiously, and when she saw the flowers, her face lit up.

  “Are they for me?” When I nodded, she took them from me and breathed in the scent of the primroses. “Thank you. You’re very kind. No one has brought me flowers for a very long time.”

  “I thought you might like them. Someone obviously liked gardening.”

  Her smile vanished. “Yes, Mester loved his garden. He spent many happy hours there.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Well, I’d better be going.” Dejected, I turned and began to limp down the walkway.

  “Nikki,” she called after me. I could hear the concern in her voice. “You’re hurt. Were you hurt in the gas explosion?” That is what the residents had been told.

  I turned back to her. “Yes. … I mean, not much. I was seeing Dr Buchanan and a piece of plaster fell on my leg. I’m OK.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  I shook my head. “No, not yet.”

  “I’m cooking dinner. You should eat. Please, Nikki, come and have some food.” She smiled shyly at me. “Please.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I would like the company,” she said firmly.

  “Pak bych byl potesen.” I told her that I would be delighted, in Czech.

  There was a transformation in Eva. She ran to me and spontaneously hugged me, laughing. “Nikki, you speak my language,” she said, in Czech. “I’m so happy! I haven’t spoken it since I left Prague. Oh, Nikki.”

  I hadn’t realised how isolated she was; her face was a picture of happiness.

  “How did you learn it?” she asked, still in Czech.

  I lied. “I had a best friend at school whose mother was Czech. She never spoke English, and over the years I spent quite a lot of time with them. I’m sorry that I don’t speak it well.”

  “But you do. You don’t know how much this gladdens my heart.” She laughed again. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  I responded with a smile. “I’d love one.”

  For the rest of the evening I spoke to her in Czech. Sometimes I faltered because I couldn’t remember a word or a phrase, but she was patient and utterly delighted that I was communicating in her native tongue.

  Eva was able to shed some light on the relationships of the three scientists. They often worked late, sometimes until after 9 p.m. Two days before Mester had been killed, Eva had witnessed an argument between him and Maksimov in the laboratory. Mester had been furious at him, screaming and shaking his fist. Then abruptly, Mester had left, leaving his paperwork strewn over his workbench. As this was against protocols, Eva had offered to tidy up. Without warning, Polakoff had marched over, grabbed her arm, twisted it painfully and told her to leave.

  She told me that she hated the fact that all communication was in Russian; like many individuals in the Eastern Bloc countries, she saw it as the language of oppression. When she had complained to the Professor, however, he had been brusque and informed her that it prevented important information from being misinterpreted.

  Eva also confirmed that the Professor was a fluent Russian speaker, and she thought he must have lived there to have such a good command of the language. When I was at university, I had spent a month in Leningrad on an exchange visit, but I hadn’t become a completely fluent speaker until three years ago, when I had spent three months babysitting two important Russian defectors. So the Professor must have spent time there to be fluent. Why hadn’t this been checked rigorously?

  Perhaps because of his fluency, as well as his empathy with the defectors, the Professor was extremely popular with the Russian scientists, and spent most of his free time socialising with them. On Fridays the Professor would come into the lab at lunchtime and give them a pep talk in Russian. (He himself had omitted to tell me this nugget of information.) Only three of them were from other Eastern Bloc countries.

  Eva had spoken to Mester about having to speak Russian and he had become quite animated, saying it was “disgusting and degrading” to have to use it at all. Privately, he had told her that he wondered at times who he was actually working for.

  Why hadn’t Bryant reported to Braithwaite that all communication in the labs was in Russian, right down to the Professor’s Friday pep talks to the scientists? I was sure that Bryant was involved. Would his motive be ideology, blackmail or money?

  Despite all of this fascinating information, I felt distracted during dinner, although Eva didn’t appear to notice. She had made a superb beef goulash, and until I started eating I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. I even managed to remember enough Czech to tell a simple joke about public transport in Prague that she found hilarious, although it wasn’t particularly funny. I found her to be enchanting and, before long, she had completely captivated me.

  After dinner we adjourned to the living room, which was tastefully decorated in blue and soft greys. I sank gratefully into the sofa. The room was comfortable and welcoming, and it struck me as a sharp contrast to my mainly brown sparsely furnished apartment. For a few minutes we made small talk and sipped our coffee. I enquired whether she was responsible for the décor; she nodded enthusiastically and confided that if she had had a choice of careers, she would have loved to be an interior designer. I made a throw-away comment about engaging her to refurbish my apartment. Her eyes sparkled, and I didn’t think it was from my offer of work.

  Now, Eva crossed the room and sat close to me on the sofa. It was as if I was her only connection to her homeland and she wanted to be as close to me as she could. I decided to introduce the subject of Bryant, hoping she might tell me the truth.

  “Eva, I couldn’t help but hear you and Bryant the other night.”

  Her face flushed with shame and perhaps embarrassment. “I’m so sorry you were disturbed.”

  “I was concerned about you.”

  “Were you?’ She gave me a grateful smile. “He keeps pestering me, and I tell him no, please leave me alone, but he won’t.”

  “What does he want? Is he blackmailing you?”

  She looked puzzled. “No, he wants to sleep with me, but I’m not interested anymore.”

  “Anymore?”

  She hung her head and didn’t look at me.

  “Yes, he used to visit me and ….”

  “And?”

  “I’m ashamed to say I slept with him because I was so lonely.”

  I pushed. “Was Bryant with you the afternoon Mester was murdered?”

  “Yes, he had invited himself here, and we had a few drinks. I don’t know why I dr
ank with him, because I don’t like vodka. The inevitable happened. It was….” She brushed her hair away from her face with her hand. “It was not good for me. I don’t know how to explain it well. I thought it might help ease the pain of my heart, but it didn’t. It made me feel worse. He wasn’t what I liked … I mean, wanted…”

  “Isn’t he your type?”

  “No, not really.” Eva blushed a fiery red.

  I decided to push a little harder. “Sometimes, it’s hard to find someone you can relate to.”

  Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “This I know to be true. When I lived in Prague I fell in love with someone. It was such a wonderful feeling and I believed my feelings were returned.” She sighed and it was heartfelt. “They were married, and didn’t feel they could leave their marriage. It would have been political suicide for their partner. So they ended it, and I was left broken. I couldn’t believe it.” Tears had started to roll down her face. “So I threw myself into my work, and worked many hours, because this was now all I had.”

  She brushed the tears from her face. I offered her a cigarette and let her compose herself. She lit it with a shaky hand and continued. “One day I was asked by an acquaintance of mine if I was interested in a new life, which would be in the West. I had nothing to keep me in Prague, and it was so painful for me, because I saw her at work each day…” Her voiced petered out. She knew I would pick up on her unguarded error. She blew a long plume of smoke out of her mouth.

  “Eva, it’s OK. I know.”

  “How? How do you know? Who has told you?”

  Fear, wonderment, horror and desire crossed over her face.

  “No, Nikki… You can’t be. … You’re like me? No, this is not possible.” She shook her head. “No, this is a trap.” Abruptly, she stood and walked to the other side of the room.

  “No, it’s not a trap, Eva. Why would I lie? You could inform my superiors and that would be the end of my career.”

  She gnawed her lip and wrapped her arms around herself. She was shaking.

  “Please don’t send me back, I can’t go back. They will imprison me, and….”

  “They” were probably the Czech Secret Police. I sat immobile, watching her; it was down to Eva. I would let her decide where this went.

  After a long silence, I said softly, “I’m not going to tell anyone. Ask yourself how I knew. Was it the way you held my hand? Was it the way your stare burnt me? Was it the way you looked at my lips? I think lesbians have a sixth sense, and we just instinctively know. We don’t have to speak: we know. You knew I was a lesbian when you stared at me in the restaurant, didn’t you, Eva? You knew.”

  “I thought you might be, but I didn’t dare hope. Nikki…” She had crossed the room again and stood tantalisingly close to me. I could smell the scent of her soap on her skin, and I desperately wanted to kiss her.

  “Yes, Eva, I’m exactly like you,” I whispered.

  She reached out and grasped my hand, and lightly ran her thumb over my wrist. I gasped softly. Had she heard me? My breathing had quickened, and I knew from the small smile that played around her mouth that she had. It required all my concentration to stay focused. Was she waiting for me to make the first move? Would I be invited to stay the night?

  She looked at me for the longest time; it was as if she wanted to memorise every detail of my features. Then she brought her lips to mine and it was a heart-stopping, extraordinary kiss, full of promise and expectation. My heart was thumping wildly in my chest.

  “I knew when I was a teenager. It was tough at school,” I confided. But why had I said this? Probably because the sight of the Manor House had triggered memories of the despair and loneliness that I had endured at Bolton College. Like Eva, I had been completely isolated and alone.

  Eva stroked my cheek gently. “I think I did too, but I fought against my feelings. I was in my final year of university and my professor…” She gave a little shrug. “I admired her intelligence and that she had managed to progress so far in the system. She offered extra tuition for a group of us, and one evening the others couldn’t attend. I went alone, and after my tutorial, as I was leaving, she kissed me. This was an enormous risk for her as I could have reported her to the authorities. But that kiss, that kiss… I couldn’t help but respond. It was unlike any kiss that I’d had before. Anyway, she took me to bed and it thrilled me to the depth of my soul, Nikki. She must have realised or sensed. I don’t know…”

  Eva sighed deeply. “After that I knew I would never find happiness with a man.” She looked away and concentrated her gaze on her chintz curtains. “I’ve been so lonely since arriving here. In Prague I knew women like me. Not many, but we would meet and talk together. But here, it’s like being in a gilded cage. I never leave because I don’t know where to go to find someone like me. So I let Bryant into my bed because I thought that if my attraction to women had diminished, it would be easier. But of course, it hadn’t. I think it had only deepened….”

  She took my face in her hands and kissed me again, slowly and tenderly. I could not help but respond. Her lips were soft and, as she deepened our kiss, I tried to hold on to my willpower, which was fading fast. I knew where this would lead, and it wasn’t going to be very professional on my part. But, I countered, we were both adults and desired each other.

  “Would you like to stay the night, Nikki? We don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to.”

  My breath caught. “What if I do?’

  Eva gave a slow smile. “Then that would be wonderful.” Her lips sought mine again.

  I followed Eva up the narrow wooden stairs to her bedroom. She turned on the bedside light and then closed the curtains. As she was doing this, I glanced around the room. It was simply furnished with pine furniture, and the floorboards had been varnished. There was a bright red rug next to her bed and a pile of textbooks on her bedside table. For some reason, I felt nervous. What would she be expecting? Did she think I was an experienced English woman? Would that make her anxious?

  Some of this must have shown in my face because she immediately became concerned for my welfare.

  “It’s alright, Nikki. We can go as slow as you like.” Then she untied my hair and shook it loose. “I love long hair on a woman,” she murmured.

  She ran her fingers along my neck and leaned in to kiss me, slowly and thoroughly; I didn’t want her to stop. When we finally pulled back, I think both our hearts were doing double time.

  “Mmm... Your perfume is Givenchy, yes?” she said, inhaling deeply.

  “Yes.”

  Eva slid her cool hands up my back and undid the hooks on my bra. Pushing it aside impatiently, she found my breasts and cupped them in her hands. “Nikki,” she breathed.

  She ran her hands all over my upper body, taking her time and gently caressing my nipples with her talented fingers. She then took a step back and undid the buttons of her own blouse and unclipped her bra. She took me in her arms. The feel of her naked skin on mine was incredibly arousing. She pressed into me and then I felt her hand moving south between my skin and my underwear. Eva groaned when she felt my wetness. Goose bumps had erupted all over my body and I wanted her with a passion that I hadn’t felt in years.

  “Please, Eva…”

  She kissed me deeply again with increasing yearning and excitement, which I returned with growing urgency.

  In a voice ragged with desire, she commanded me, “Take your jeans off. I want you in my bed.”

  I removed all of my clothes and let them drop onto the floor. Eva had undressed and lay under the quilt, watching me. She lifted the bedclothes so that I could slip in next to her. Her body was toned, as if she worked out in the gym, and she was a natural blonde. She reached out for me, pulling me on top of her. I gasped as our bodies met full-length, unclothed, for the first time. For me, it was powerful and electrifying, and I think it was the same for her.

  “Do whatever you want, Nikki. I’m all yours,” she whispered.

  And I did. I lost
myself in her body. Every place I touched she responded with moans and sighs. I kissed and caressed her firm breasts, sucking and licking her nipples, causing her back to arch from the bed. Slowly I inched my way down her body until I lay between her legs. Glancing up, I could see that Eva’s right hand was gripping the sheet tightly, the other hand gently keeping my head in place. I took my time in getting to know her responses, as I wanted to prolong her pleasure as long as I could. Eva’s breathing was coming in short gasps; her climax wasn’t far away. I kissed her again and her hips rose to meet me, as she shuddered again and then again into my mouth.

  “That was wonderful, truly wonderful.”

  I crawled up her body, and she held me in her arms and hugged me as if she didn’t want to let go. “I can’t believe you’ve found me, and I so wanted to be found.”

  There was something in the emotion of the words that profoundly moved me. Perhaps the events of the last few weeks had caught up with me. I don’t know, but I could feel the pricking of tears in my eyes. I blinked twice but a tear escaped and fell on to her breast. Eva lifted my chin with her hand and gently cradled it. Then she kissed me with a tenderness that took my breath away. “Darling Nikki.”

  I lay in her arms as the sound of an April shower pattered on the roof. Eva softly kissed my forehead, my nose and then my mouth. She groaned when she could taste herself on my lips.

  “Is it all right if I touch you?” she whispered.

  “Yes, yes. I want you to.”

  With surprising strength, she flipped me over on my back and her hands stroked and caressed my body, stopping to linger where it gave me particular enjoyment. She murmured, “Nikki, does it hurt? Am I hurting you?” Her lips brushed gently against my bruised skin.

  “No, no.” I whispered.

  Then her wonderful mouth started to work their way slowly down my body, kissing my breasts and abdomen until she found my core. Heat radiated through my groin and stomach, sending waves of undulating ecstasy through me. Her tongue was insistent, soft and knowing and when I eventually surrendered to her, something had fundamentally changed in me.