The Connicle Curse by Gregory Harris

Author:Gregory Harris [Harris, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

Edmond Connicle’s face, neck, and shoulders were horribly swollen and discolored in angry shades of purple, blue, magenta, and black. If the rest of his body was equally assaulted I feared he might not live through the night. Miss Porter had already been by to positively identify him, which was good, given that I could easily have been convinced that he was one of a thousand other brown-haired men, and even Varcoe wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

Edmond was slender and of modest proportions, but other than the color and fullness of his hair I could draw no conclusions. His eyes were mere slits, pinched shut and oozing from within the confines of eye sockets so inflamed that they rose well above his brow. His nose seemed to stretch from one cheek to the next and I could tell that it was broken just above the bridge. I suspected his right cheekbone had also been fractured, given the peculiar angle at which it disappeared under his hairline, but we would not know until the swelling had at least partially receded. The worst of it, however, was his labored breathing, rattling from deep within his chest. Edmond Connicle, a man thought to have been already dead, was now perilously close.

“Was he conscious when your men found him?” Colin asked Varcoe as he leaned in close.

“He was muttering some at first, but nothing anyone could make out.”

“And what of the man who did this? Could they describe him?”

Varcoe gave a foul expression as he shook his head. “Average height. Solid build. Not much else. They said it was too dark and he ran off down the quay as soon as my men saw what was going on. They had no idea the victim was Mr. Connicle until they got him down here and went through his pockets. That’s when they sent for me,” he added with a note of pride.

“Does Mrs. Connicle know?” I asked, anxious for her to know that she was right even as much as I did not want her to see her husband’s present state.

“Nah. Just that Porter woman. I’m hoping they keep that balmy wife of his sedated until he recovers.”

“That seems a bit harsh, given that she was the first to insist her husband was still alive,” I scolded.

He shrugged dismissively and folded his arms across his chest. “Then you and Pendragon can tend to her when she gets here.” He pulled some papers out of his pocket and handed them over to Colin. “They found these in his pockets. They’re receipts.”

Colin thumbed through them quickly before passing them over to me. “They’re all dated in the future. . . .”

I glanced down and found four hotel receipts covering a week’s stay each. One for a hotel in Paris, one from Lyon, one from Lausanne, and one from Geneva. And true to Colin’s word, all of them were dated with consecutively running future dates, starting with the hotel in Paris and ending with the one in Lausanne.

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