The Luck Runs Out by Charlotte MacLeod

Author:Charlotte MacLeod [MacLeod, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781453277546
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, SHANDY slept a good deal longer than he’d meant to. A smell of fresh-brewed coffee and a sound of gentle womanly voices from belowstairs gave him a sense of well-being until he recalled that his first duty of the day must be to beard Thorkjeld Svenson on the delicate subject of Goulson’s using the college horses, and that his next would no doubt be at least equally obnoxious.

He got up and went to the window for the innocent purpose of seeing what sort of day it was, and his eye alit on two ladies in earnest conference down in the Crescent. They were Lorene McSpee and Mirelle Feldster. At that point, he pondered the wisdom of going back to bed and hiding under the covers, but Shandy was no poltroon. He shaved, took a shower, put on a plaid shirt of somber hues and a pair of work pants, and went to face whatever must be faced.

As his first encounter was with his wife and his second with Iduna’s radiant smile, he began to perk up. The pair of them led him to the breakfast table and began to heap bounty upon him.

“How about some pancakes?” Iduna suggested.

“Oh, don’t bother for me.”

“It’s no bother. We mixed them up for Professor Stott, and there’s plenty of batter left over.”

“Stott was here and you have leftovers? Good Gad, the man must be falling apart!”

“Peter, he is,” said Helen. “It’s heartrending. He’s been out since before dawn hunting for Belinda. I don’t know what’s going to happen to that man if she doesn’t turn up soon.”

“Are the students out again?”

“In force. He’s got them organized into platoons and squadrons and I don’t know what all, armed with geodetic survey maps and under orders to leave no stone unturned. It simply doesn’t seem possible she could, be far away, considering the short span of time the pignappers had to work in. We know Miss Flackley couldn’t have been killed much before midnight because she was with us, and it was only about four hours later that Professor Stott showed up brandishing that jar of pigs’ feet.”

Shandy speared a piece of pancake. “And by then he’d spent a certain amount of time dithering about the doormat and been down to the pigpens and back up to Svenson’s house, and he doesn’t exactly move with the speed of light. They must have discovered the body just about the time he arrived here, and after that there were police all over the place.”

“I did wonder about the possibility of her having been transferred to another van and got out of town that way,” said Helen, “but that doesn’t seem likely because they’ve had all those roadblocks out for the men who held up the Carlovingian Crafters, and I can’t imagine a policeman’s not remembering a truck that had a great big pig in it. I expect they’d have given it a specially careful search, don’t you? It would seem like such a good dodge, hiding the gold and silver in with Belinda.

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