Читать книгу Elusive Obsession - Кэрол Мортимер, Кэрол Мортимер - Страница 5

‘HAVE you just come here to gloat, Falcon?’ her father’s voice rasped disgustedly. ‘Do you find some nefarious pleasure in watching your victims in their last death throes?’

She had been sleeping unobserved behind the curtains of the seated bay window in her father’s study when the two men had entered the room a short time ago, had gone there to hide from Nanny and the lessons she had intended giving her. Having been sent home from boarding-school, because she had fallen victim to the outbreak of mumps that had stricken almost half the pupils of the school, it was completely unfair, she had thought, that she had to do lessons at home now that she felt a little better but was still contagious. There had to be some advantage to being sick, she had decided! And so she had hidden in the one place she knew Nanny would never think to look for her—her father’s study—and then she had fallen asleep in the hot sun that shone through the huge window on this clear May day.

But she hadn’t slept for long, her father’s voice, raised in anger—something she had rarely known from the charmingly mild-mannered man during her nine years of life—easily intruding into her slumbers.

‘You chose this way, Howard.’ The man who answered her father’s impassioned accusation spoke so softly that she could barely hear him, and yet still she could feel the power in his words.

‘What other choice did you leave me?’ her father scorned with obvious contempt for the other man. ‘You’ve taken it all, haven’t you, Falcon? My business, my home, my—— My God, you couldn’t even leave me my pride, couldn’t do that, could you? My God, men like you make me sick!’

Whatever initial guilty thoughts she might have had of revealing her presence behind the curtain had faded almost as quickly as they came into her head; her father wouldn’t like the idea of her eavesdropping—accidentally or otherwise—on what was obviously a very private conversation, but from the little she had already heard she knew he would be even less pleased now if she were to step out and reveal that she had heard anything at all. She might only be nine years old, but she knew this conversation was very serious indeed.

Chalford, her home, the only one she had ever known, gone? To this man, this stranger, a man she couldn’t even see properly?

She had tried to look at him around the edge of the long wine-coloured velvet drapes, but she was too frightened of being discovered to put her head out too far. All she had was an impression of size and power—oh, what power!—that seemed to emanate from his very stillness.

He seemed to turn in her direction at that moment, as if sensing he was being observed, and she quickly ducked back behind the cover of the curtain, her breath caught in her throat as she waited in terrified expectation for a hand to reach out and drag her from her hiding place to face the full force, not just of Nanny’s displeasure at the way she had hidden from her so that she shouldn’t do those awful lessons, but her father’s wrath at her behaviour too. And his disappointment in her would be much harder to bear than Nanny’s scolding…

But as the seconds ticked by on the grandfather clock that stood against one wall of her father’s study, and no hand reached out for her, she slowly began to breathe again.

Once again the reply to her father’s accusation was made quietly. ‘No one twisted your arm, Howard,’ the man dismissed calmly. ‘You did it all yourself.’

‘Oh, yes, of course I did,’ her father scoffed scathingly. ‘How easy it is for men like you to set traps for gullible men like me——’

‘Greedy men like you,’ he was corrected harshly, ‘who blame everyone but themselves, the only real culprit, for their mistakes!’

She was filled with fury against this man. How dared he talk to her beloved father like that? She wanted to go out there and kick his shins for him, demand that he apologise to her father, who had to be the cleverest, most wonderful man in the world.

But before outrage could overcome good sense her father answered the man. ‘The only mistake I ever made was in believing I could trust you!’ he said self-disgustedly. ‘Oh, get out, will you, Falcon?’ He suddenly sounded very weary. ‘Chalford isn’t yours yet, not until the dust has settled and the lawyers say it is, and until that happens you aren’t welcome in my home. Now get out, Falcon,’ he repeated harshly. ‘And take Janette with you.’

Janette? Why on earth would her stepmother want to leave with this hateful man, a man her father obviously hated? None of this made any sense to her.

‘I don’t want your wife, Howard,’ the other man told him hardly. ‘I never did.’

‘Served her purpose, has she?’ her father said with knowing contempt. ‘Well, I don’t want her any more either!’

‘That’s between the two of you,’ the other man dismissed without emotion. ‘I’m only interested in——’

‘I know why you’re here, Falcon,’ her father cut in heatedly. ‘And I’ve told you, you have everything else—the house you’ll have to wait for. And much joy may it give you every time you think of how it came into your possession!’ There was the sound of the door behind wrenched open. ‘I’ve asked you to leave twice; if I have to do so again I’ll call in the police and have you forcibly removed—I wonder how that would look in newsprint?’

There was silence for several long-drawn-out seconds after this direct challenge, and she suddenly realised she was holding her breath again, this time without even knowing she had been doing it. She didn’t understand half the conversation she had unwittingly overheard, but she did recognise the raw emotion behind her father’s words as he once again ordered the man Falcon to leave Chalford immediately.

‘Very well,’ the other man finally conceded, and there was the sound of him moving towards the door her father obviously still held open for him. ‘I suggest we talk again, Howard, when you feel in a more reasonable frame of mind.’

‘And I suggest,’ her father returned tautly, ‘that in future you stay well away from me and my family!’

The door was closed with only slightly repressed violence as the other man finally seemed to have left, and with his departure the room was suddenly filled with an ominous silence, a silence that seemed endless.

She wanted to run out into the room, put her arms around her father and tell him that she thought the Falcon man was hateful too, that she didn’t want him to have her beloved Chalford, that he couldn’t let that awful man come and live here! But if she did that she would give away her hiding place, reveal that she had been eavesdropping on their conversation. And, indulgent as her father was with her, she knew that would make him cross all over again.

No, she would just have to wait here now until her father left his study, and then creep quietly away herself. It was almost teatime, so she shouldn’t have too long to wait, and her stomach rumbled hopefully; her father always joined them in the small family sitting-room for tea.

She could hear him moving about his study now, knew he had sat down at the desk, that he was opening and shutting the drawers as he looked for things he wanted. And then the room fell very silent, and as the minutes passed the muscles in her legs began to ache from the effort of having to sit completely still so that she wouldn’t be detected.

Suddenly, when she was beginning to think she would have to move anyway and face the consequences, without any warning, except perhaps the smallest of clicking noises, the silence was shattered by a deafening roar.

For a moment she was just too stunned to move, and then her surprise at the sudden noise turned to puzzlement. She had recognised the sound only too well, often having accompanied her father on his seasonal ‘shoots’. But he had always impressed on her, on those occasions, the importance of never having a loaded gun anywhere near the house, of always making sure the safety catch was on before handling a gun at all.

And yet she knew, without a doubt, that it was the sound of a gun being shot that had reverberated around the room seconds ago.

There was the sound of running feet in the hallway outside now, the door to the study being thrown open, the babble of the voices of the people who had entered the room—she guiltily recognised Nanny’s as being one of them, and there was Sylvester the butler too, and Mrs Hall the housekeeper—coming to an abrupt and sudden end … possibly so that her father could reprimand them for entering his study without knocking, as they were supposed to do!

‘My God…!’ Sylvester finally groaned raggedly.

She wondered why Nanny hadn’t rebuked him for the blasphemy, as she knew the elderly lady would have done if it had been her. The old lady had been Daddy’s nanny first, was almost at retirement age now, and her old-fashioned morality lingered on with this, the second generation.

But her curiosity was now fast overtaking any fear she had of a reprimand for disappearing in the way she had after lunch, until finally she couldn’t stand it any longer, silently leaving her hiding place, edging quietly into the room in the direction of her father’s desk, which seemed to be where everyone else’s attention was centred. So intent were they all that they didn’t even see her.

What she saw when she reached the desk made her eyes widen with disbelieving horror, and all the colour drain from her cheeks. That—that couldn’t be her father! It was too grotesque, horrific, unrecognisable as a human being, even. And the blood. Good God, there was blood everywhere. Everywhere. All over the pale blue shirt and checked jacket she knew her father had been wearing earlier in the day!

She opened her mouth to scream as she realised it was her father. But no sound passed her lips. And the silent scream went on and on and on…