So Young to Burn by John Creasey

Author:John Creasey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Chapter Thirteen

Open Door

Hilary Reed stepped outside the door, closed it with a sharp click, opened it again on the instant, and stood there with her fingers on the handle, listening and looking about her. She was on the first floor landing, a mahogany staircase, darkly lustrous, stretching above and below her, A wide passage ran in either direction, with two doors leading from it. The receptionist was downstairs but there was no telling who might come out of these doors.

‘… no,’ breathed Lark again.

There was another silence. A door opened below, and Hilary was ready to move. Footsteps were muffled by a carpet but the street door was opened, and the receptionist said in her cool, impersonal voice:

‘Good evening, Mr Laidlaw, please come in … Dr Lark won’t keep you long.’

Now Lark was speaking again and the movements and noise below made it hard to hear what he was saying.

‘… dreadful, I didn’t think … Yes, of course we must be very careful indeed or we shall spoil everything … But we cannot throw away all we have done, it would be such a waste … Yes, I will see you later … Dreadful, quite dreadful. I’m shocked. Deeply shocked.’

There was a ting! as the receiver went down.

Hilary moved away, repeating to herself all he had said over and over again, reached a window overlooking the back of the house and saw a tall conservatory, the glass roof lined with big leaves of exotic plants; green, purple, red, even blue-tinged. She opened her bag, took out a diary, and noted the words which Lark had uttered, in shorthand. There was no sound now. She looked about, wondering how long Lark would keep her, whether, indeed, he would finish the interview. What were those plants? Castor oil – rubber – these were certainly among them. From this tall window it was like looking down on a jungle from an aeroplane. She shifted her position, her eye caught by a profusion of vivid yellow flowers. Beyond them was another conservatory filled with orchids in great variety.

There was no warning sound, just Lark’s voice, close behind her. She started violently.

‘Admiring my plants, Miss Reed?’

‘Yes. Yes, they’re remarkable,’ she said, recovering quickly.

‘Not beautiful?’ He gave the impression that he was thinking about something else.

‘Some of them are.’

‘Yes, indeed. You are yourself a very attractive young woman, Miss Reed.’

Here it came.

‘How kind of you to say so.’

‘Truth is the truth. One of the things I am constantly trying to instil into my patients is the need for truth—above all, truth about oneself. You are, for instance—and you have admitted that you are—lonely.’

‘My mother—’ Hilary began.

‘A comfort, at times. A burden and a liability at others. You need the company of younger people and of the opposite sex.’

‘I—I suppose I do.’ She stood with her back to the conservatory, looking straight into his face. The skin was smooth textured and in its way exceptional. There was a delicacy, a refinement about his features which had an almost feminine appeal.

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