A Case of Grave Danger by Sophie Cleverly

Author:Sophie Cleverly [Cleverly, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-12-24T17:00:00+00:00

My jaw dropped.

Someone had been blackmailing Father. And worse, it sounded like they wanted him to do something bad. Very bad.

And now I was left with the question – had he done as they said?

couldn’t stop staring at the letter, my eyes glued to it as if it were flypaper. The words swam in my vision. Whatever had my father got himself involved with?

‘What is it?’ Oliver hissed in my ear.

I turned to him, certain I must look a fright. His expression became one of concern when he saw my face.

‘Blackmail,’ I whispered back, waving the letter. ‘Someone threatened Father. It sounds like they wanted him to … hurt somebody.’

Oliver looked sickened. ‘No,’ he said.

That ‘no’ echoed in my mind.

No. No. No.

I slapped the letter down on the desk.

‘No!’ I called out.

Inspector Holbrook turned round and looked at me. The other policemen stopped and stared. Bones whimpered.

‘No,’ I said again. I was shaking. ‘This isn’t true. This letter is a fake.’

The inspector raised an eyebrow at me. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘It’s typewritten,’ I told him, ‘and not signed. Anyone could have written this!’

‘Look, girl—’ he began with a wave of a huge hand.

‘Violet,’ I corrected.

He barely blinked. ‘Listen here. Your father has got himself involved with bad people. He has dangerous debts …’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ I insisted. I felt sure I would know about such a thing. ‘We may have had to cut a few corners lately, but we aren’t in financial difficulties.’

One of the policemen laughed at that, and I felt my cheeks burning. How dare they?

‘Just look at this place,’ the other policeman said.

What was he talking about? I glanced around the shop. It was a little dusty, perhaps, and some things were looking a bit worse for wear. There were some cobwebs springing up. But that was just because we were down to only one servant, wasn’t it? We’d just had to let a lot of the servants go because …

Because …

Oh no.

Doubt started to hit me, then. It wasn’t just a matter of ‘cutting corners’, was it? Things were bad. How could I have missed it? I was so caught up in myself that I hadn’t noticed the trouble we were in.

If Father really had debts to the wrong people … then perhaps they could have threatened him. Told him to do these terrible things. He wouldn’t … would he? Though if it were to protect us …

The policeman who’d laughed must have noticed the change in my expression, because now he was looking smug. ‘You’d think business would be booming in an undertaker’s in this day and age, wouldn’t you?’

‘Too right,’ the other one replied.

The inspector turned to them. ‘Quiet,’ he said, and both immediately went silent and turned back to rifling through our files. ‘Young miss, you may want to believe your father is innocent.’ His tone seemed sympathetic, but his expression was so cold and hard that no kindness shone through. ‘But you are wrong.’

Bones growled up at him. I frowned, feeling hot and shaky.

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