The House at Phantom Park by Graham Masterton

Author:Graham Masterton [Masterton, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781801104012
Publisher: Head of Zeus

18

When Lilian arrived at St Philomena’s the following morning, she found Martin Slater beside the porch, trimming the purple wisteria around it with a pair of shears.

He lowered his shears as she approached, and stepped back, smiling at her with that smile that made her think every time she met him that he had discovered some embarrassing secret about her but wouldn’t tell her what it was.

‘Oh, you’re back, then, Mr Slater.’

‘I reckoned the wisteria was overdue for a prune,’ he smiled. ‘Late summer is when I usually cut it.’

‘You disappeared rather quickly the other day.’

‘Did I? I must have had some urgent business to attend to. Now and again, I do have urgent business to attend to. Gardening, that’s not all I do.’

‘You missed seeing what I discovered in the wood.’

‘I guessed you might have found something, because I saw that tent down there this morning, and those police tapes all around it.’

Lilian looked at him with narrowed eyes, trying to read his expression, but he was giving nothing away. All she could detect was that secrecy, and that hint of amusement, as if no matter how tragic anything turned out to be, he would see the funny side of it.

‘It was bones. Human bones. A whole skeleton in fact, minus the skull.’

‘Well, how about that. A skeleton. But no skull, you say?’

‘You don’t happen to have any idea why they might have been buried there, those bones? The police were interested in talking to you about them, but of course you’d vanished, and I don’t have any way of getting in touch with you. You should give me your mobile number.’

Martin Slater continued to smile at her, but he didn’t answer her, and after a while he went back to snipping at the wisteria stems.

‘Did you know they were there?’ Lilian persisted.

‘I know something about wisteria, and it’s the same with people.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘The harder you cut wisteria back, the wilder it spreads. So next time you have to cut it back even harder.’

‘I’m not talking about wisteria. I’m talking about that skeleton I found in the woods. The forensic officer told me that it was a man, most likely.’

‘I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t know, could I?’

‘What do you mean, you couldn’t know?’

‘When I cut off these here branches, do you think they know where they came from?’

Lilian was about to snap back at him, but she realised that he was playing with her, and he was never going to give her a serious answer.

‘Write down your mobile number for me, if you would. And there’s every chance the police will be back here this morning, so if you know anything about that skeleton you’ll be able to tell them yourself.’

Martin Slater continued to smile, and continued to prune the wisteria. Snip, snip, snip.

After Lilian had stepped in through the front door, though, and was about to close it behind her, he called out after her, ‘Those men you said you saw? Did the cops find any trace of them?’

‘No, Mr Slater, they didn’t.

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.