Love You Dead - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Peter James (39 Sunday 1 March) #42

39 Sunday 1 March

While Rowley lay fast asleep, snoring beside her, Jodie was wide awake in bed, in their luxurious cabin, sitting up with her laptop balanced on a pillow, feeling the gentle motion of the ship rocking her in the light swell. Taking stock.

The daily ship’s programme for tomorrow lay in front of her. The shore visit lecture; line dancing class; carpet bowls; craft class with Jill and Mike; bridge lessons; keep-fit classes — one in particular had made her grin, titled, ‘Sit and Get Fit!’ The evening highlight was the comedian Allan Stewart.

But she wasn’t interested in any of the items. She was totally focusing on the plans she had made for her future, all those years back. The rich man Cassie had said she would marry only in her dreams. Well, there was one rich man who might be dreaming right now, judging from his rapid eye movements. And this time tomorrow she would be married to him. Sure, her right to inherit could be challenged by his family, but whatever the result she would be coming away with a handsome chunk of change after he died. All he had to do was make it through the night.

Then from tomorrow, with a ring on her finger and the marriage certificate signed, she could make her move. She looked at him. Mouth open, droning snore, drool running from the corner of his mouth, that same self-satisfied expression that so much reminded her of her father.

God, how I would love you dead!

She found a diary entry she had made way back in her teens — and, like all her old diaries, had scanned into a password-protected electronic document for safekeeping.

This entry, she remembered, must have been just before the time she’d put a nine-inch diameter Colombian Huntsman spider in Cassie’s bed. The spider was totally harmless to humans, but both Cassie and her parents had a major sense of humour failure over it. And over the snakes and frogs — all harmless — that she liked to let roam free around her room.

All her arachnids and reptiles — even the ones her parents had actually bought her (at her request) for birthday and Christmas presents — had been confiscated, this time permanently. Afterwards she wrote:

There are a lot of myths about snakes — in particular about the venomous ones. Listen. The saw-scaled viper is called the world’s deadliest snake, because it kills more people than any other. In India alone it kills 58,000 people every year — 13,000 more than are killed in car crashes in the United States!

But it’s not actually the world’s most venomous snake — that title goes to the Belcher’s sea snake — one bite has enough venom to kill one thousand people! But because it lives in the waters of South East Asia and Southern Australia, it rarely bites humans.

The black mamba is pretty cool. It’s the world’s fastest snake — it moves at twelve miles per hour and its bite can kill in thirty minutes. The king cobra can kill an elephant in an hour. The inland taipan can kill a human in fifty minutes.

I love that!

So many people are scared of them. Not me, though. No snake ever told me I had a hooked nose, no snake ever told me I had no tits. I don’t judge them and they don’t judge me. They need me to feed and water them. In return, they do me favours.

I feel they should be rewarded for services rendered. But how do you reward a snake? What do they appreciate? Food, shelter, water? Sometimes I think when I come back in the next life, I’d quite like to be a snake. Much less complicated. Did you ever see a snake look in a mirror and pull a face? Did you ever see a snake that had a complex about how it looked?

Me neither.