Merlyn's Isle by Elisabeth Kidd

Author:Elisabeth Kidd [Kidd, Elisabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Gothic novella
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 2016-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

-6-

The maid brought Claire’s breakfast the next morning and took away the untouched dinner tray with a disapproving look. Mrs. Hastings stopped in to see her only briefly, and Gareth not at all. Determined not to stay in bed and dwell morbidly on her hot words with him the night before, she had got up to wash and change into Elaine’s kimono—Gareth was not, after all, likely to see it today—when the maid reappeared to ask if she would see Mr. Simon Burke. Unable to imagine why he should want to see her, Claire nevertheless remembered that she had some business with him, and told the maid to show him in.

“I see you’re feeling better,” he said, smiling and shaking her hand. “I’m glad. I didn’t want to feel I was intruding. May I sit down?”

“Please do,” Claire said, taking an armchair herself.

He had a good bedside manner, she thought—doubtless the result of having interviewed dozens of distraught ladies under similarly trying circumstances. Claire liked his tweedy, country-squire look, and when he asked if he might smoke, she nodded and watched him settle himself comfortably into the window seat with his lighted pipe. When he said nothing further immediately, she forgot her curiosity to know why he had come and brought up her own business first.

“As a matter of fact,” she began, “there’s something I wanted to ask you—just a trivial thing, but since you’re here, perhaps you can help me.”

“I should be happy to try. What is it?”

“I spoke with my sister’s solicitor the other day, and he gave me a key that had been left in an envelope addressed to me by my sister. It doesn’t fit the safe-deposit box it was found in, nor any of the others Mr. Quigley knew of. I wondered if you might advise me how to trace the lock it fits.”

He looked mildly interested and asked, “May I see the key?”

Claire fished it out of her suitcase and gave it to him. He studied it carefully and measured it against some others he had in his pocket. “Have you tried to fit it to anything else?”

“Only some boxes and drawers in Elaine’s room here. No luck.”

Simon fingered the key thoughtfully, and then said, “If you have no objection to parting with it for a short time, I think I can have it traced for you. There seems to be some sort of identifying inscription on the key, which has been partially defaced, but I may be able to have it deciphered.”

That had been precisely what Claire wanted, but as soon as he said it, she began to have second thoughts. Was he interested in the key in a professional capacity? If he was, she was not at all sure she wanted to find out any more about it. He seemed to sense her uneasiness.

“Working for the police has its advantages,” he said, making light of it. “One may do favors for one’s friends occasionally.”

Claire smiled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to appear—distrustful.”

“I should be surprised if you were not.

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