Death at Rottingdean by Robin Paige

Author:Robin Paige [Paige, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf

17

A weapon is an enemy, even to its owner.

—Turkish Proverb

It was past two in the afternoon when Charles and the Chief Constable crossed The Steine and made their way up North Street, then through the South Gate of the Royal Pavilion Estate and along a wide gravel walkway that bisected the western lawns. They passed in front of the huge domed building that had been erected in the early 1800's to accommodate the royal stables, then let as cavalry barracks in the fifties and sixties and later reconstructed as a concert hall. In Church Street, they walked several blocks in a westerly direction, and turned right into a narrow lane. Several doors up. Sir Robert stopped before an unassuming brick-fronted shop with a painted sign board that read simply R. W. Barker & Son. The mullioned window was protected with iron bars, curtained with gray draperies to deter prying eyes, and topped conspicuously with a burglar alarm. A discreet brass medallion beside the door bore the Royal Lion and Unicorn and the inscription Armorer, by Appointment to Her Royal Majesty.

"The family has been in business here for at least half a century and is considered very reputable," Sir Robert said. "They provided arms for the cavalry officers when the company was stationed in Brighton. If there is any knowledge in Brighton of a new type of firearm, my lord, we should find it here."

Charles nodded, hoping that Sir Robert was right. He did not want to take the time to make a trip to London, especially when he had promised Kate that this holiday was to be theirs alone, a retreat from the pressures that had made life so difficult for the past few months, a time to heal whatever rifts had opened up between them. At the thought of Kate, sitting alone at Seabrooke House waiting for him, Charles felt resentful of the task that was taking him away from her, and yet—and yet, there was a certain compelling excitement in it, too. The thrill of the chase, was that it? he asked himself, with a kind of self-mockery. The scent of danger on the wind, the exhilaration of the game? Well, if that was it, he could forget all that heroic silliness. He squared his shoulders. The hunt for a killer was not a schoolboy's lark but a very serious affair. Two of the Queen's officers were dead, and unless he was mistaken, the net of treachery that had snared them had been flung very wide indeed.

Sir Robert pushed open the door and Charles followed him into the narrow shop. It smelled richly of gunpowder, machine oil, and leather, and was lit by a row of gaslights along each long wall. The gaslight gleamed softly on the polished wooden butts of the rifles and shotguns that filled the wall racks, and on the glass tops of the oak cases on either side of the narrow aisle down the middle of the shop, in which a wide selection of handguns was displayed.

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