Stone's Fall Read Free Page B

noughts dancing in my head.
    “That’s some failing,” I commented. She replied with a frosty look. “Sorry.”
    “I wish to honour my husband’s will to the letter, if it is possible. I need to inform this person of the bequest. I cannot do that until I know who he, or she, is.”
    “You really have no more information?”
    She shook her head. “The will referred to some papers in his safe. There were none there. At least, nothing of any relevance. I have looked several times.”
    “But if your husband conducted an—ah—”
    I really did not know at all how to manage this conversation. Even with women of my own social class it would have been impossible to ask directly—your husband had a mistress? When? Where? Who? With a lady in the first flush of mourning it was completely beyond my capabilities.
    Luckily, she decided to help me out. I rather wished she hadn’t, as it made me even more uncomfortable. “I do not believe my husband was in the habit of taking lovers,” she said calmly. “Certainly not in the last decade or so. Before then I know of no one, and there is no reason why I should not have known had any such person existed.”
    “Why is that?”
    She smiled at me, again with a slightly mocking twinkle in her eye. “You are trying to contain your shock, but not doing it very well. Let me simply say that I never doubted his love for me, nor he mine, even though he made it perfectly clear to me that I was free to do as I chose. Do you understand?”
    “I think so.”
    “He knew perfectly well that I would accept anything he wished to tell me about and so had no reason to conceal anything from me.”
    “I see.”
    I didn’t, of course; I didn’t see at all. My morals were—and still are—those of my class and background, that is to say far more strict than those of people like the Ravenscliffs. It was an early lesson: the rich are a good deal tougher than most people. I suppose it is why they are rich.
    “If you will excuse me for saying so, why did he make life so complicated for people? He must have known that it was going to be difficult to find this child.”
    “It may be you will find an answer to that in your enquiries.”
    She would never have made much of a living as a saleswoman in a department store, so it was perhaps as well that she was wealthy. Still, it would be an intriguing problem and, best of all, I got paid whatever the result: £350 a year was a powerful incentive. I was getting increasingly ill-humoured about the succession of bachelor lodging houses I had lived in for the past few years. I wasn’t entirely certain whether I wanted domesticity and stability—wife, dog, house in the country. Or whether I wanted to flee abroad, and ride Arabian stallions across the desert, and sleep by flickering campfires at night. Either would do, as long as I could get away from the smell of boiled vegetables and furniture polish that hit me full in the face every time I returned home at night.
    I was bored, and the presence of this beautiful woman with her extraordinary request and air of unfathomable wealth stirred up feelings I had long ignored. I wanted to do something different from hanging around the law courts and the pubs. This task she was offering me, and the money that went with it, were the only things likely to show up that could change my circumstances.
    “You have become very thoughtful, Mr. Braddock.”
    “I was wondering how I would go about this task, if I decide to accept your offer.”
    “You have decided to accept it,” she said gravely. From many people, there would have been a tone of contempt in the statement. She, on the other hand, managed to say it in a serene, almost friendly tone that was quite disarming.
    “I suppose I have. Not without misgivings, though.”
    “I’m sure those will pass.”
    “I need, first of all, to discover everything I can about your husband’s life. I will need to talk to his lawyer about the will. I don’t know. Have you