Burying the Crown (A Guy Harford Mystery) by TP Fielden

Author:TP Fielden [Fielden, TP]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2021-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He painted her that night. The dawn light was carpeting the floor by the bedside table when he came back from Windsor, bouncing up off the bare boards, illuminating her face as she slept. Rupert had gone, the business of the night was done, and as she lay in the vast bed she looked like a fledgling in a nest, minute and still.

He worked silently and quickly, the lines on the canvas chasing each other in their hurry to be done. I hadn’t expected this, he thought. I’ve known you for a year and I’m seeing something in you I never saw before: an innocence which you so cleverly disguise when you wake. By day you are artful, capricious, noisy and argumentative, but lost in sleep you are serene and vulnerable.

After a couple of hours the work was done, though there would be adjustments later. As he cleaned his brushes and washed his hands in the sink he looked round at the cluttered bedroom and suddenly he was touched by fear at the prospect of the task ahead.

She slept on as he wrote a note, leaving it on the kitchen table before quietly letting himself out of the front door. On the short walk to Chelsea Barracks his thoughts cleared and he focused on the day ahead – the bus ride to the aerodrome, the flight to Bristol, the transfer to the Lisbon plane, the long journey through the air back to the place that was his spiritual home.

He presented a pass to the guard on the gate and was led down to a clearing centre, actually no more than a wooden shed by the bus depot, where he dropped his kitbag on the floor and sank into a canvas chair. He picked up a days-old newspaper and opened it but he was thinking, not reading.

‘Hello,’ said a crisp voice, charming but disciplined. Guy woke from his thoughts to see a woman in naval officer’s uniform standing over him. Beneath her cap, strands of ungovernable black curls tried to make their escape, while down her nose slid a pair of owlish spectacles.

‘You must be Second Officer Dimont – hello. You’re going to hold my hand, I’m told.’

‘Not literally,’ came the dusty reply. ‘There’ll be a briefing – we’ll do that at Bristol as there’ll be quite a wait there. Or on the airplane.’

‘Are you going all the way to Tangier?’

‘Possibly,’ she said distantly, looking at her watch. ‘I hope you aren’t the kind who’s easily airsick. The Ansons we use can be pretty bumpy.’

‘No, I’m pretty reliable that way.’ I wonder whether she’s like this with all the chaps, thought Guy, mildly nettled by her stand-offish manner. What a chilly travelling companion I’ve found myself.

‘Hop aboard, then. We’ll talk later.’

The bus took for ever, each mile seeming longer than the last. From time to time Guy glanced out at the passing landscape but his thoughts were already in Tangier, his small house with the big windows, the sunsets over the Pillars of Hercules, and the people waiting for him there.

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