Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer

Author:Georgette Heyer [Heyer, Georgette]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
Goodreads: 311203
Published: 2010-03-15T16:43:23+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

A slice of bread and butter dropped from Violet's fingers on to the floor. Leslie, seated beside her, heard her say numbly: 'But he's dead. They said he was dead!'

Antonia looked the visitor over frowningly. 'Is it really? Yes, now I come to think of it, that's whom you reminded me of. We thought you were dead.'

'Thought!' Kenneth cried. 'We knew he was dead! He's been dead for years!'

'Well, as a matter of fact, I never was dead,' said Roger Vereker, with the air of one making a confidence. 'Just at the time it seemed a good thing on the whole to be dead, because there was a bit of trouble over some money. I forget the rights of it now, but people were very unpleasant, very.'

'But why on earth did you go on being dead all this time?' demanded Antonia.

'Oh, I don't know,' replied Roger, with the vagueness which characterised him. 'There wasn't much point in coming to life again, really. It would have meant a lot of bother one way and another. I did think of it, but I was getting on quite well as I was. Fancy you being Tony! I shouldn't have known you. Kenneth's altered too. Wants his hair cutting.'

'Leave my hair alone!' said Kenneth angrily. 'If you -'

'It's all right. I wasn't going to touch it. You know, it seems very funny to me to find you two grown up. Tony had a pigtail when I saw her last - at least, I may be confusing her with someone else, but I think it was she. Long one, with a bow on the end. You were a horrid little beast. You haven't changed as much as Tony, now I come to look at you. I remember you messing about with a lot of smelly paints.'

'Well, he still does that. He's an artist,' said Antonia.

Roger heard this with a faint show of surprise, as fleeting as it was mild. 'No, is he really? Well, I'm sorry I spoke about his hair, then. One gets out of touch, that's how it is. I'm going to settle down at home now. After all, why not? You get sick of roaming about, and the man they mistook me for in that Cuban dust-up was called Harry Fisher. The man who was killed, I mean. I didn't mind at first; one name seemed as good as another. But you've no idea how tired you can get of being called Fisher. I've had seven years of it, and it's very irritating. I thought I'd come home.'

'It seems to me,' said Antonia, who had listened to this rambling speech with a good deal of impatience, 'that you might just as well have called yourself Vereker again without coming home.'

'That's just it. It wouldn't have been safe. Bloodsuckers, and things,' explained Roger. 'Besides, why shouldn't I come home?'

'Because you're not wanted!' Kenneth said tersely.

'God, it makes me sick!' He began to pace up and down, shaking his clenched fists. 'For seven

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