Hunting the Spy by Tyler Flynn

Author:Tyler Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

The vestry of the Chapel of Ease was as dark as the grave. When Kennett carefully lit the candle in the lantern, shadows leapt out at them like phantoms. Peter shied away from a curtain that fluttered away from an alcove, revealing a white human shape. He swore.

“Damn it! Why do priests keep their vestments in such stupid places!”

Kennett rearranged the curtain over the surplice and the cassock hanging behind it, secured the curtain at the side. “The wind’s getting up again and this place is draughty.”

“Wonderful places you take me to,” Peter grumbled. “A windmill, a ruined farmhouse and a draughty chapel. Exactly the sort of places I usually seek out for a good night’s sleep.”

The candlelight drifted into corners as Kennett raised the lantern high. “You like your comfort.”

A moment’s pause. Peter sighed. “That’s meant to refer to my ‘luxurious’ house in London and my mansion in the country, isn’t it? Very well. I have money and I am the latest representative of an ancient and aristocratic family, and you are a tradesman’s son who has to make his own way in the world. I will grant you I have led the easier life. Can we now dedicate ourselves to finding Boulton?”

Kennett eased open the vestry door and peered out into the chapel itself. How had he managed to get himself into this situation? After all his vows otherwise. He ought to have sent Peter straight back to London. He needed to concentrate. He had a traitor to find.

Unless there was a tramp taking shelter in a corner by the bell rope, the chapel was empty. Except for the body on the bier in the nave.

Peter peered over his shoulder and started to laugh. “Devil take it, Nathan—this has to be our worst refuge yet. Sleeping with the dead! I wonder why there are no mourners keeping vigil.”

“She looks elderly enough to have outlived them all.”

He walked down the nave, towards the west door. It was closed but when he tested it, the latch lifted easily and the door slid open with a protesting squeal. He shut it again and turned to the shelf of psalm books, started to take them down one by one. “The notes are usually slipped into a psalm book as if being used as a bookmark.”

Peter took down a book or two, worked through them. No pieces of paper. Kennett took out the note he had written at the Three Kings. The paper and ink Farrance’s serving girl had provided him with was hardly the sort of quality Boulton would use but he flattered himself he had imitated Boulton’s handwriting tolerably. St. Margaret’s Bay, Wednesday evening. And the addition of a threat, because that was what Boulton would have done. Bring the information or it will be the worse for you.

Peter had shied away from that threat as he looked over Kennett’s shoulder. When Kennett looked up at him questioningly, he had merely shaken his head. “I don’t like threats. They usually make the receiver even more recalcitrant.

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