Читать книгу A Fatal Mistake: A gripping, twisty murder mystery perfect for all crime fiction fans - Faith Martin, Faith Martin - Страница 14

Reginald Porter (Reggie to his family and very few friends) leaned nonchalantly against the wall surrounding the Ashmolean Museum, and glanced casually up and down Beaumont Street. On another hot summer’s day, the place was crowded with shoppers and tourists. Down the way a little, a couple of students were sitting on the steps leading up to the world-famous museum, smoking French cigarettes and talking animatedly about something to do with Oriental art. With a sneer of contempt, Reggie ignored them. What did it matter what the overeducated, overprotected little sods thought?

Two business types in a pair of matching neat, pin-striped, dark-blue suits and bowler hats swept past, discussing the tennis.

‘I tell you, mark my words, the men’s finals will turn out to be an all-Australian affair this year,’ one of them said to his companion, with a shade of bitterness in his Home Counties accent. ‘Wimbledon nowadays seems to belong to them.’

‘Really? Which one do you think will lift the silver then? Rod Laver or Neale Fraser? Not that I really care – I’m more of a cricket man myself. Have you been following the second test against South Africa? Disgraceful, I call it…’

They passed on, their equally banal chatter about meaningless sport wafting past and over him. Instead, Reggie kept his eyes fixed on the progress of his quarry. He’d followed him all the way down the Broad after he’d stepped out of his college gates. Mind you, Reggie mused viciously, it was easy enough to keep track of him, with that head of hair so ostentatiously fair it was almost white, and his swagger telling the world he thought he owned it.

Right now, he was crossing the road alongside the Martyr’s Memorial, and was heading, of course, for lunch at the Randolph hotel. Where else, Reggie Porter thought contemptuously, would someone like Lord Jeremy Littlejohn go for a snack?

He’d been keeping tabs on the peer now, off and on (as his working hours permitted), for over a month. Because of this, he was working up a general picture of the man and his habits. Which was why Reggie knew all about His Lordship’s select little list of eateries.

He sighed as the fair head disappeared into the hotel. He’d been wearing his usual trademark white – today, in the form of a crisp white shirt and white linen summer jacket over pale-grey flannels.

It hadn’t taken Reggie long to notice that his quarry had an affectation with regard to the colour, and again his heart twisted bitterly in his narrow chest. What a poseur! What a nancy boy! And how inappropriate! That Lord Jeremy Littlejohn of all people should favour white – the supposed colour of innocence! He just couldn’t understand what Rebecca, his little sister, had seen in him.

As he thought of Becky, Reggie felt his heart give a sickening lurch. Just where was she? What had happened to her? Had she really run away to London as everyone insisted? And if she hadn’t, where was she? He had to find out. It was killing him, not knowing.

He remembered her being brought home to the house by his parents when he was barely seven years old. A tiny scrap of a thing, he’d resented her at first for turning his life upside down, and threatening to steal all his parents’ love, which had once been his alone.

But he’d been fascinated by her not long after – as a squalling infant, and then a chubby toddler, taking her first steps. As a child, she’d been simply adorable, with a riotous mop of fair curly hair, just tinged with the faintest hint of copper, and a pixie-like, gamin face. Precocious, funny and a little wild, naturally, she’d soon been able to twist him around her little finger, just as she had everyone else.

As soon as she’d hit her teens, she started to sing and dance, wear too much make-up and express an interest in being a ‘star’. Somehow, the naivete of her extravagant dreams had only led to her family indulging her all the more. Of course, underneath all her pseudo-sophistication, she was still a total innocent.

His face twisted as he thought of her now, alone and helpless somewhere in the big, wide, nasty world, without her family to protect her. It was then that he noticed a woman passing by with a shopping basket in one hand giving him a startled look, and hastily stepping out past him.