Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens

Author:Robin Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141373836
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

4

But we had only taken a few steps when we were stopped in our tracks by Lysander. He must have heard our voices, for he came out of his dressing room and blocked the corridor in front of us, standing with his arms crossed and his thin legs wide apart. In the low-ceilinged space, with only a dim light behind him, he suddenly looked as enormous as a bogeyman. I remembered how he had spoken to Rose, and felt a stab of fear.

I stopped short. Daisy, though, kept moving.

‘Step aside, if you please!’ she said in an annoyed voice. Daisy never does see danger. Nothing is as big as she is in her own head.

‘Now, now,’ said Lysander smoothly. ‘What have you two been doing? You’re scuttling about like mice, so I think you’re up to something. And I don’t like that.’

‘None of your business!’ said Daisy. ‘If you must know, we’re playing a game.’

‘No you aren’t,’ said Lysander. ‘You’re pretending to be little girls, but you’re too old for games. Tell me the truth.’

And he reached out, seized Daisy’s wrists and pulled her towards him so sharply that she fell against his chest.

I felt dizzy all over. This was such a shockingly inappropriate thing to do that I simply did not know how to respond. I was frozen with horror. But of course Daisy and I are very different, and Daisy never freezes.

She gave a little gasp, and then in one swift movement she twisted out of his grasp and brought her right knee up smartly between his legs.

Lysander went down sideways, swearing (quite rude words that I will not write here, of course), and Daisy bent over his prone body.

‘Never underestimate little girls,’ she hissed. ‘And never do that again.’ Then she turned and held out her hand to me.

‘Come on, Hazel,’ she said.

I rushed towards her, and together we walked away from him down the corridor.

I realized then that I was still shaking.

‘It’s all right, Hazel,’ Daisy said.

I looked at her and saw that her face was set and pale. ‘You’re all right and so am I. I shall never let any harm come to either of us, you know that. Or, at least, not the physical kind of harm. I can’t save you from seeing awful things, for example.’

‘I know!’ I whispered back. ‘But that was horrid! I think he really wanted to hurt you!’

‘He was most certainly rattled,’ said Daisy. ‘Which is useful to us, really. We have seen that he’s nervous, and behaving foolishly because of it – he is most certainly a good suspect. And I also believe we have seen something else: he doesn’t mind hurting women. We know that he and Rose were … flirting … and we also know that she had begun to go sour on him because he was so upset by all those flowers in her dressing room. He was furious with her – and he really might have done something awful. Men like that can do dreadful things to women they think have wronged them.

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