Long Time Coming by Robert Goddard

Author:Robert Goddard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
Published: 2010-11-26T07:11:11.687000+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

The Quilligan residence in Ballsbridge was a handsome bay-fronted red-brick house adorned with decorative plasterwork and wide, railinged steps up to an arched porch. Stained-glass panels around the front door depicted songbirds and seasonal scenes of sowing and harvest. Swan, but lately recovered from a hangover best described as stout, assumed the door would be answered by a maid or someone of the sort, and was surprised when it was actually opened by a woman who was quite clearly Isolde Quilligan.

She was wearing a demurely long-sleeved, round-necked, pleated dress, although its purplish colour somehow suggested reined-in fervour. She was thirty or so, young but no longer girlish, with shortish red hair and an ivory-pale, placid face on which calm contemplativeness seemed more fitting than a smile, as the modesty of the smile she offered him went some way to confirm.

‘Mr Swan,’ she said. ‘Do come in.’

‘Thank you.’ He stepped into a wide hallway where a marble Nubian slave-girl supported a miniature fernery next to a hatstand. Swan shook Miss Quilligan’s cool, soft hand and hung his fedora among the assorted straws and felts. He was already aware that his hostess was the sort of woman to whom he was strongly attracted, confounding his expectations of the spin-bowling solicitor’s sister. More confounding still, he had the strange sense that Miss Quilligan was also aware of this.

‘Ardal’s told me all about your encounter on the cricket field yesterday, Mr Swan. I’d have come along if I’d known you’d be there, though, to be honest, I don’t share my brother’s passion for the game.’

‘Strictly between us, Miss Quilligan, neither do I.’

She laughed gently. ‘It’ll be our secret. Do come into the drawing-room.’

He followed her into a large room with a bay overlooking the garden. The fireplace was monumental, the cornicing and rosetting ornate, but midsummer sunlight and pastel-hued carpet and furniture kept Victorian glumness at bay. Ardal Quilligan, looking scarcely less formal in his weekend attire than his office kit, advanced to greet Swan with a smile. They shook hands.

‘Well played yesterday, Mr Quilligan,’ Swan said. ‘Exceptional bowling.’

‘You must call him Ardal, Mr Swan,’ said Miss Quilligan. ‘And you must call me Isolde. I do hate all the misters and misses and madams of what passes for respectable society.’

‘Very well … Isolde. Then you must call me Eldritch.’

‘An unusual name.’

‘I’ve tried to live up to it.’

‘I’m sure you have. Now, sit down while I see to the tea. You might have fared better on another day, Eldritch. Edna deserts us on Sundays and Wednesdays and we have to fend for ourselves. Ardal tells me my scones aren’t a patch on hers.’

‘I tell her nothing of the kind,’ her brother protested.

‘He doesn’t tell me in words, of course,’ she explained as she left.

Ardal waved Swan into a chair and sat down opposite him. A cooling breeze, scented with blossom, drifted in through the open bay window. ‘Well … Eldritch, our business … can be swiftly concluded. I visited Desmond on Friday and told him Cardale’s signature on the document his solicitor supplied gives him exactly what he wants.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.