The Water Lily Cross by Anthony Eglin

Author:Anthony Eglin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Traditional British, Mystery & Detective, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781429988339
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-05-01T23:38:08+00:00

Alison Greer was lying. What other explanation was there? Why would she concoct such a story to mislead him so duplicitously? She had been so convincing. Not only convincing, he had even taken a liking to her. He laughed to himself. On the drive home from her cottage he had toyed with the idea of finagling a way to see her again under more sociable terms. Such stirrings had been rare, almost nonexistent during his many years as a widower.

Oddly, he wasn’t furious about what she had done. He was more at a loss as to her motivation to have gone to such lengths to deceive him. In a perverse way, it was an admirable performance. Nevertheless, he’d made up his mind, regardless of Desmond’s admonitions, that he would confront Alison Greer to find out who had put her up to it and what was going on. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. Now was as good a time as any. He picked up the phone and punched in the number she had given him.

It rang for some time before he heard the message: “Sorry we missed your call …” Kingston put the phone down, not too gently, and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s odd,” he said under his breath. “We missed your call.” Was someone living with her? Wouldn’t she have said so? Or was it the editorial “we” again?

Kingston lay awake half that night, thoughts and visions of Alison Greer coming and going as he tried to rehash their conversation of that morning at the cottage. By the time first light sliced through the shutters, projecting an abstract light show on the wall, his mind had long since been made up. Today was Saturday and if the weather was half decent, he would take a spin down to Hartley Wintney with the intent of surprising Miss Greer and having it out with her.

Dressed in his navy terry robe, he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Waiting for it to boil, he called her again, just in case he had mistakenly dialed the wrong number yesterday. He heard the same message.

Several minutes later, a cup of tea and a bowl of steaming Scott’s Porridge Oats on the table, and Alison Greer off his mind for a while, he cast his eyes over The Times crossword and read a few clues. Cleverly concealed anagrams—some eleven- and twelve-letter words or longer—often appeared. He had become a whiz at ferreting out and solving them. Now and then, just for fun, with nothing better to do, he would look at words in magazines, on packages, in waiting rooms—wherever—and make anagrams of them. By shuffling the letters of “Alec Guinness” he’d made Genuine Class. “Marriage” became A Grim Era. One of his all-time favorites, though not of his making: “Eleven Plus Two” translated to Twelve Plus One. He’d been staring at the Scott’s Porridge Oats package for many years before thinking of turning it into an anagram: Go stir paste, doctors, was the best he’d been able to come up with.

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