The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 10 by Maxim Jakubowski

Author:Maxim Jakubowski
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781780337944
Publisher: Robinson
Published: 2013-02-21T05:00:00+00:00

Croft’s house was on Belmont Hill, the Lewisham end, one of a long Victorian terrace, the tall, gabled houses running away down the steep gradient like toppling dominoes. Kip photographed the house from both sides of the road, wondering if Croft were watching him from behind the curtains. He doubted it. He had already made up his mind on the way over that Croft would not be in when he called, that the address on the piece of paper was not even his. He told himself the only reason he was going there was to prove the whole thing was a fake. He pressed the bell, trying to work out what he would say if the door were opened by a complete stranger, a large woman in a flowered bathrobe say, or an old man in a saggy green cardigan with the elbows worn through.

Excuse me, but does Mr Gaumont live here? I promised my uncle I’d change his library books for him.

Kip liked the sound of Mr Gaumont. The idea of him was so convincing that when the door opened and Croft appeared, Kip had to think who he was. It seemed for a moment that Croft was the fantasy, not Gaumont, old Gaumont who was so harmless and so plausible. It crossed his mind that Croft had done away with Gaumont, just as he had done away with Rebecca Riding.

“Hi there,” Croft said. “Come in.”

He took a step back from the door. As Kip entered the house it occurred to him that nobody in the world knew where he was. He found himself wishing he had left a note in his room, or that he had texted Sonia. He wondered how often bad things happened to people because they were afraid of looking stupid, and supposed it was often, more often than you might think anyway.

“Excuse the mess,” Croft said. “This was my dad’s place. He left it in a bit of a state. It’s taking me a while to get things straight.”

There were some black bin bags at the foot of the stairs but other than that there was no mess that Kip could see. The hallway of the house was dark, made darker by the varnished wood panelling and dull red carpet. There was a smell of mothballs and furniture polish, reminding him of the Toklins’ house, which was owned by Lyonel Toklin’s ninety-year-old mother, Violet. Lynn Kiplas always joked that Violet Toklin was so stingy she hadn’t had the place decorated since VE Day, and Kip felt half-inclined to believe her. Croft led the way through to a room at the back, home to an enormous buttonback sofa and a boiler on a tiled hearth protected by a square metal cage. There were piles of books everywhere. Kip noticed a stack of Photography Now and some issues of another magazine that he knew you could only get on subscription from America.

“Can I get you anything?” Croft said. “A drink maybe?”

Kip shook his head, then asked for a glass of water.

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.