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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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CHEESE
Ethel Lina White
KYPROS PRESS
Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.
This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by Ethel Lina White
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cheese
CHEESE
This story begins with a murder. It ends with a mousetrap.
The murder can be disposed of in a paragraph. An attractive girl, carefully reared and educated for a future which held only a twisted throat. At the end of seven months, an unsolved mystery and a reward of £500.
It is a long way from a murder to a mouse-trap—and one with no finger-posts; but the police knew every inch of the way. In spite of a prestige punctured by the press and public, they had solved the identity of the killer. There remained the problem of tracking this wary and treacherous rodent from his unknown sewer in the underworld into their trap.
They failed repeatedly for lack of the right bait.
And unexpectedly, one spring evening, the bait turned up in the person of a young girl.
Cheese.
Inspector Angus Duncan was alone in his office when her message was brought up. He was a red-haired Scot, handsome in a dour fashion, with the chin of a prize-fighter and keen blue eyes.
He nodded.
‘I’ll see her.’
It was between the lights. River, government offices and factories were all deeply dyed with the blue stain of dusk. Even in the city, the lilac bushes showed green tips and an occasional crocus cropped through the grass of the public-gardens, like strewn orange-peel. The evening star was a jewel in the pale green sky.
Duncan was impervious to the romance of the hour. He knew that twilight was but the prelude to night and that darkness was a shield for crime.
He looked up sharply when his visitor was admitted. She was young and flower-faced—her faint freckles already fading away into pallor. Her black suit was shabby, but her hat was garnished for the spring with a cheap cowslip wreath.
As she raised her blue eyes, he saw that they still carried the memory of country sweets...Thereupon he looked at her more sharply for he knew that of all poses, innocence is easiest to counterfeit.
‘You say Roper sent you?’ he enquired.
‘Yes, Maggie Roper.’
He nodded. Maggie Roper—Sergeant Roper’s niece—was already shaping as a promising young Stores’ detective.
‘Where did you meet her?’
At the Girls’ Hostel where I’m staying.’
‘Your name?’
‘Jenny Morgan.’
‘From the country?’
‘Yes. But I’m up now for good.’
For good?...He wondered.
Alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s that?’ He looked at her mourning. ‘People all dead?’
She nodded. From the lightning sweep of her lashes, he knew that she had put in some rough work with a tear. It prejudiced him in her favour. His voice grew more genial as his lips relaxed.
‘Well, what’s it all about?’
She drew a letter from her bag.
