Ellis Peters - George Felse 12 - City Of Gold and Shadows Read Free Page B

would stay the course. She wondered if he himself had survived it. She closed the little book between her palms, and put it away in her handbag. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I look forward to setting foot in my uncle’s field.’
     
    She was not sure herself how much in earnest she was, at that stage; and if she had had any other agreeable reading matter to fill up her evening, she might never have started on
Aurae Phiala
at all. But she had no concert, and no engagement socially, since she knew hardly anyone in London, the small hotel in Earls Court was not productive of amusing company, and the television was surrounded by a handful of determined fans watching a very boring boxing match. Charlotte returned almost gladly to the recollection of her morning interview, and in retrospect it seemed to her far more strange and mysterious than while it was happening. She had never been brought face to face with her great-uncle, and never devoted any conscious thought to him. He became real and close only now that he had vanished.
    Such a curious thing for an established and respected elderly gentleman to do, now that she came to consider it seriously. How old would he be now? Her grandmother, his elder sister, would have been seventy if she had been still living, and there were several years between them. Probably sixty-three or sixty-four, and according to the photographs she had seen in newspapers and geographical magazines, and his occasional appearances on television, he looked considerably younger than his age, and very fit indeed. Say a well-preserved sixty-four, highly sophisticated, speaking at least three languages, enough to get him out of trouble in most countries, and with a select if scattered network of friends and colleagues all across the Middle East, to lend him a hand if required. And on his last known move obviously still in full control of his actions. A taxi had dropped him and his luggage at the main railway station, he had walked in through the entrance with a porter in attendance; and that was that.
    On the face of it, a man about whom the whole world knew, whose life was an open book—no, a succession of books. But what did she really know about him? She roamed back thoughtfully into childhood memories, hunting for the little clues her mother and grandmother had let fall about him, and the sum of them all was remarkably meagre. A handsome, confident man, who had managed to retain his friends without ever letting them get on to too intimate ground. No wife ever, and (as far as anyone knew!) no children anywhere, but all the same, his kinswomen had spoken of him tolerantly, even appreciatively, as an accomplished lady-killer, evading marriage adroitly but finding his fun wherever he went. An eye for the girls at sixty no less than at twenty; and silver-grey temples, blue eyes and a Turkish tan were even more dangerously attractive than youth. He played fair, though, her mother had said of him generously. Not with the husbands, perhaps, but with the ladies. They had to be more than willing, and as ready as he to part without hard feelings afterwards. Doubtful if he ever dented a heart; more than likely he gave quite a number of hearts a new lift after they’d imagined the ball was over for them.
    It seemed she did, after all, know a few significant things about him. He lived as he chose, one foot in home comforts, the other shod for roaming. She understood now what Mr Stanforth had meant by describing him as a man who had deliberately evaded certain responsibilities and involvements, and even kept his affairs in scrupulous order mainly to avoid being badgered, or giving anyone a hold on him. And she thought suddenly, with a totally unexpected flash of dismay and sympathy: My God, you overdid it, didn’t you? You were so successful at it that in the end you could vanish without leaving a soul behind sufficiently concerned about you to kick up a fuss—only a solicitor worried about the legal hang-ups, and