Rubies in the Roses (Cornish Castle Mystery, Book 2) by Vivian Conroy

Author:Vivian Conroy [Conroy, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

They all went out and found Max circling a bush in a pot that was attracting bumblebees and butterflies. He pushed the release button on his camera again and again. The presence of several policemen tapping on the flagstones and checking cavities in the walls didn’t seem to bother him at all.

As he turned to follow a butterfly, he noticed them and lowered the camera to hang by the strap around his neck. ‘Hello. What’s up?’

‘I just wanted to ask if you took something from my library,’ Bolingbrooke opened without preamble. ‘The copy I had of the article Vex was going to publish in his magazine.’

Guinevere held her breath at this straightforward approach, but Max looked unperturbed. ‘Yes, I wanted to read through it and see what the fuss was about. Wadencourt was being so mysterious about everything. I was on an assignment I knew next to nothing about. I just wanted to get an idea of what he was looking for.’

His face was relaxed, his eyes wide and innocent. ‘I need a bit of background before I can do my work. I intended to put it back in place as soon as I had read it.’

At that moment a police officer came over and asked Max what he had in his pockets. He put his hands in them and produced from one pocket a pen, paper, chewing gum, and a magnifying ring for his camera. From the other a facecloth filled with something.

‘That is my homemade beanbag,’ he explained. ‘It’s filled with rice. I use it to balance my camera on for shots where I need more stability.’

The policeman extracted a knife from his pocket, switched out the blade, and cut through the facecloth. Rice rained onto the yard’s cobbles.

‘Hey, what …’ Max watched with wide-open mouth as the police officer spread out the rice until he had seen all of it. He said, ‘Just making sure there are no rubies and diamonds in here.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Max cried. ‘Those stones were removed from the goblet a long time ago. I saw the rust on the places where they have been.’

‘That was created by chemicals.’ The officer looked up at him. ‘Sorry about this, but we have to be thorough.’

Max huffed as he sat on his haunches to gather the rice and put it back into the facecloth.

‘I can lend you needle and thread to sew it up again,’ Guinevere offered.

‘Thanks.’ Max smiled up at her. The dimple in his left cheek showed again.

Guinevere felt a flush crawl up her neck. Max never failed to confuse her. That he had taken the copy of the article bothered her, because he had not asked even though she had come upon him in the library while he was looking for it. He had also just said he had intended to put the article back in place as soon as he had read it. But apparently he hadn’t done that, or they wouldn’t have found it missing.

Max rose to his feet with his damaged property in his hands.

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