[Inspector de Silva 08] - Taken in Nuala by Harriet Steel

Author:Harriet Steel [Steel, Harriet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9798627572093
Google: UuqAzQEACAAJ
Amazon: B085QN99LF
Goodreads: 53500849
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: 2020-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Sprawled on the floor with a chair half over him, as if he had upended it trying to pull himself to his feet, O’Halloran was alone in the room. His hands were tied behind his back, and a gag forced his mouth into a grotesque parody of a smile. The candles on the mantelpiece were still burning, but the two on the table were out. One of them had fallen out of its candlestick and lay on the open book. A pool of rapidly congealing wax spread like a bloodstain across the page. There was a pungent odour of singed paper and tallow. It was fortunate, thought de Silva, that a fire hadn’t started; the building was probably dry as tinder. But what alarmed him more was what he saw on the right-hand wall.

The curtain that had covered the mirror had been pulled aside, as had the mirror itself, to reveal a hole in the wall about the size of a doorway. Patterson was already going through it. Briefly, de Silva deliberated whether he should follow him straight away or stop to help O’Halloran. He decided on the latter. Crouching down beside him, he removed the gag and undid the rope around his wrists.

‘What happened, sir? Are you hurt?’

Feebly, O’Halloran shook his head then winced. ‘Just dizzy. I was hit over the head, but I’ll be okay. It’s Phoebe you need to worry about. They came through that hole in the wall and took her away. Get after them.’

De Silva saw there was some blood in his hair, but he decided to believe him when he claimed he wasn’t badly injured. Hurrying through the door after Patterson, he found that the room he entered was empty apart from a pile of rubble and some tools, including a heavy hammer and a pickaxe. A few floorboards had been torn up, presumably to provide the wood that braced the rough opening in the wall. The other difference between the room and the one where he had left O’Halloran was the door to his left; it was open. He headed for it and went through.

What little light there was came from a skylight, but from the direction he was going in, his guess was that he was inside the archway that he had noticed spanning the houses on either side of the market lane. He emerged into the house on the other side and eventually found Patterson on the ground floor.

‘They got away,’ Patterson said angrily. ‘There’s a door back there.’ He pointed to the rear of the hallway.

De Silva’s heart sank. This was a disaster. ‘Please go and find out if Mr Frobisher saw anything,’ he said. ‘I had better return to Mr O’Halloran. He needs help.’

Back in the medium’s room, O’Halloran had dragged himself to a chair and sat with his head in his hands. He looked up at the sound of de Silva’s footsteps and groaned. ‘I can see from your face you were too late.’ He swayed and would have fallen out of the chair if de Silva hadn’t reached him quickly and steadied him.

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