Beware of the Beast Read Free Page A

recalled the little she had known of his enjoyment in gambling, the few occasions when he had surprised her with a present, some gift in celebration of a horse which had beaten its opponents past the post. Had she been too young to see a deeper meaning behind it all? And, like a drug, had it gradually gained a stronger hold upon him? Encouraged no doubt by men like Alex Faulkner !
    But whatever had possessed him to put his name to such an infamous document as that contract she had read with such loathing? How could he, even for a moment, have considered such a solution? And then to take his own life like that... For now she felt convinced that that was what he had done. Some people said that suicides were cowardly, afraid to face life. In her present frame of mind, she was inclined to agree with them, Whichever way you looked at it, it was a horrible mess - on the one hand cheating her, and on the other cheating the insurance companies. It was as though the man she had known and loved had never even existed and it was a devastating realization.
    Even so, she could not bear to think of what her father's erstwhile colleagues would say if they ever discovered to what depths he had sunk. Something, some inner sense of pride, made her flinch from their hidden laughter, from the pitying sympathy which would be hers if ever this got out. So - if she went through with this, she would be doing it for herself, and not for her father, she thought bitterly. Was Alex Faulk ner so astute? How cynical was his assessment of his fellow man?
    One of the capsules, which the doctor had given her to help her to sleep immediately after her father's death, brought oblivion towards dawn, and she awoke feeling headachy, and with a nasty taste in her mouth, around noon. At first, she couldn't imagine why she should have slept so late, and then the remembrance of the previous day and night's events came back to her, and she rolled over to bury her face in the pillow. If only she could just bury Alex Faulkner, she thought violently, and then kicking off the covers, she got up.
    When she came downstairs about a quarter of an hour later, slim and pale in mud- coloured levis and a green tee-shirt, her silky hair gathered back with a leather hair-slide, she found
Laura Winters, their daily, busily slicing vegetables into a saucepan. Laura was a West Indian woman in her thirties, divorced now, with two young children of her own to sup port. She occupied a flat in a block just round the corner from Glebe Square, and had been   working for the Mortimers for the past five years. She looked relieved when she saw Char lotte, although she noticed the dark rings around the girl's eyes with some concern.      ..
    "I was beginning to wonder if I should wake you, Char ley," she said, shaking her head. " You been staying out late?"
    Charlotte shook her head. "No. I didn't sleep well, Laura. You okay?"
    "Yes, I'm fine. I've got young Jessie off school with a stomach ache, but she'll be all right. Been eating too many of them plums, that's all. That tree in the garden has been full this year. I must have made more than fifteen pounds of jam."
    Charlotte bit her lip. Her father used to love Laura's M home-made jam. Going to the steel sink, she ran herself a glass of water and sipped it slowly, watching Laura's deft hands as she dealt with the onions and carrots. Then she said: '' "Have there been - any calls for me?"
    Laura frowned. "Sure, and I was forgetting." Charlotte tensed. "That lady you was working for called." Charlotte relaxed again. "She said to tell you she doesn't get half the young men coming into the shop she used to do."
    Charlotte acknowledged this with a slight smile, and Laura went on: "What's up with you? You're looking awfully pale. Not still grieving over your pa, are you? It don't do no good. He's gone. life goes on. just pull yourself to gether, Charley."
    Charlotte put down her glass. "I — I may be going away, Laura," she said