Dark Dawn Over Steep House by M. R. C. Kasasian

Author:M. R. C. Kasasian
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Pegasus Books

49

Bedbugs and the Gettysburg Address

SIDNEY GRICE WHISTLED three notes very softly. ‘I think this might be an opportune moment.’

‘For what?’ I asked and he clacked his teeth together.

‘For Miss Bocking to show us the evidence.’

‘What evidence?’ I looked at him and then at her.

Lucy hesitated. ‘I know I should not have—’

‘Then why did you?’ He appeared to be miming the shuffling of a pack of cards.

‘I had to be . . . to be certain.’ Lucy stumbled over her words. ‘I searched Freddy’s room.’ She puffed her lips. ‘I would never dream of doing such a thing normally.’

‘Are you telling us that you dreamed of doing it abnormally?’ He dealt us three imaginary cards each on to an invisible table.

‘I meant that I would not think of doing it under normal circumstances,’ she clarified, lifting a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. ‘Why do you keep interrupting me?’

‘Because I have yet to hear anything to which it is worth listening.’ Mr G turned his cards over expressionlessly.

‘You have hardly given me a chance to speak yet,’ she complained.

‘You have been permitted to manufacture ten sentences.’ My guardian dealt himself another card. ‘Which is as many as so-called President Lincoln required one score years and one ago for his address at the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg.’

Lucy had quite pointed ears, I noticed, and they had gone rather pink.

‘What did you find, Lucy?’ I asked gently, and Lucy leaned backwards to open a drawer of her desk.

‘This.’ She placed a red-backed book on the flat surface.

‘May I?’ I picked it up and opened the first page.

The diary was printed in gold lettering on the flyleaf and on a glued-in plate was handprinted This book belongs to Freda Wilde and beneath that If found please return to Steep House, Abbey Road, London.

All the pages were blackened around the edges. ‘Was this rescued from the fire?’

‘I assume so.’ Lucy locked her fingers. ‘This is the first I have known of it.’

‘Freddy never mentioned it?’

‘If she had done so Miss Bocking would be foolish indeed to have made her most recent assertion.’ Mr G collected all the cards from where he had dealt them in mid-air and came close to peer over my shoulder.

I went to the first of January and there was written in violet ink, ageing into brown, A lovely crisp start to the year.

‘It is the last entry that worries me.’ Lucy’s voice had a slight tremor. ‘I have bookmarked it.’

‘For the benefit of idiot detectives,’ Sidney Grice mumbled, but she did not react.

Lucy Bocking’s eyes were fixed on me as I went to the back of the diary.

The final few pages were blank and crumbling to my touch, and the last entry was badly charred, but I could still make out the words.

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