The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) by Nuttall Christopher

Author:Nuttall, Christopher [Nuttall, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC022060 FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Historical, 3JH, FIC040000 FICTION / Alternative History, FIC009030 FICTION / Fantasy / Historical, FM Fantasy, FJH Historical adventure
ISBN: 9781908168375
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Published: 2013-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Most of the reporters seemed to have decided that Mortimer Hall wasn’t going to give them anything more newsworthy and left, leaving only a handful of junior reporters to watch the gates. Gwen rolled her eyes as she jumped down from the carriage, said goodbye to Lady Elizabeth and walked up towards the policeman on duty outside the gates. He looked surprisingly pleased to see her.

“Too many relatives have come to try to see the house,” he explained, as he opened the gates. “Several of them even wanted to argue with the Inspector when I refused to let them in.”

Gwen had to smile as she walked up to Mortimer Hall. It might have been falling apart, but it was still in a very wealthy part of London. Whoever owned it could use it to boost their status – if, of course, they had the money to renovate it. They might discover, eventually, that they had inherited a white elephant. Gwen knew enough about household management, thanks to Lady Mary, to know that parts of the house would simply rot away without constant maintenance. A single servant could not have hoped to keep pace with everything that had to be done.

“Lady Gwendolyn,” the Sergeant on duty at the door said. “The Inspector is in the reading room, studying the late owner’s papers.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said, keeping her amusement hidden. She knew that Lestrade hated paperwork – and if the case wasn’t so political, he would have passed it down to someone lower in the department. But then, she felt the same way too. “I’ll see him in there.”

The reading room was a small library in its own right, Gwen realised as she stepped through the door. Each of the walls were lined with bookshelves, mostly copies of history’s finest works of literature. The complete works of Cicero, Cato, Caesar and hundreds of other famous Romans dominated one wall, while another held more recent books from England, France and Russia. One section held a number of books written in Arabic; Sir Travis must have brought them back from Turkey. And there were even a couple of books on magic, one written by Benjamin Franklin in his final years. Franklin’s contribution would never be officially recognised, but he’d added greatly to humanity’s understanding of some of the talents.

Lestrade was seated at a desk, a cup of tea beside him, reading through a stack of papers. He looked pleased to see Gwen too, if only because he had an excuse to put the papers to one side. Gwen couldn’t help wondering if Mycroft had sent some of his clerks to recover anything classified before Lestrade started his investigation, before deciding that it probably didn’t matter. Lestrade might have had only a very limited imagination, but he was one of the most trustworthy men in Scotland Yard.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, as he turned the chair around to face her. “There was a curious development earlier this morning.”

Gwen sat down on a rickety sofa and smiled at him.

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