Wheel of Fate Read Free

devoid of any sign of recent tenure, as was the little attic at the top of the house, normally occupied by my daughter, Elizabeth.
    Slowly, inexorably, it was borne in upon me that Adela and my children were gone. But where? And why?
    The silence was appalling. Even Hercules had become conscious of it and had stopped badgering me for water, sniffing around the vacant rooms and whimpering pathetically. I shivered, suddenly feeling cold in spite of the thin April sunshine struggling through the oiled-parchment window panes, and I recognized it as the chill of neglect.
    With legs that felt like lead and with my heart beating so fast that it seemed as if I must choke, I turned and went downstairs again. As I reached the bottom of the flight, there was a knock at the still half-open street door. I flung it wide.
    â€˜Adela?’ I croacked.
    But the small, neatly coifed, grey-gowned woman who stood there was not my wife, although I recognized her as one of our neighbours; one of those respectable Goodies who had objected so vociferously years ago when Cicely Ford had outraged all their finer feelings by leaving a common pedlar and his family her Small Street house in her will.
    â€˜Oh, it is you,’ she said with a sniff. ‘I thought it might be, but when I noticed the door was open I decided I’d better come over and take a look.’ The brown eyes, set beneath eyebrows which were beginning to go grey, sparkled maliciously. ‘If you’re looking for your wife –’ she gave the last word an insulting emphasis which indicated some doubt of the fact – ‘she’s been gone these many weeks and the children with her. At least, I don’t know about the girl. I think she may be over with her grandmother, in Redcliffe. She’s not your wife’s child I’ve been told.’
    â€˜Is Mistress Chapman there, too?’ I demanded, choosing to ignore the unpleasant and totally unwarranted innuendo. I hoped my wife had gone to stay with my former mother-in-law.
    The woman shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know where she’s gone. Someone said London, but I wouldn’t know about that.’ She gave a small, self-righteous smile. ‘I mind my own business.’
    You lying old besom, I thought viciously, but schooled my features to nothing more than a polite scepticism, asking, ‘Do you have any idea exactly when it was that Mistress Chapman left?’
    She wrinkled her brow, the furrowed lines bobbing up towards a thin fringe of greying hair, just visible beneath her coif.
    â€˜It must have been about a week after you, or maybe a little longer. I can’t say for certain. As I told you, I’m not one of those who spies on her neighbours.’ A prim smile twitched the corners of her mouth. ‘But I can tell you it was the day after a woman called here. A young woman,’ she added, ‘carrying a baby.’
    The almost opaque brown eyes were suddenly alive with prurient curiosity. A few blobs of spittle had appeared on her upper lip. She was agog with eagerness to winkle out the truth and pass it on – no doubt with her own embellishments – to other neighbours.
    My mind was reeling as I tried desperately to think who this woman could have been and what she might have said to make Adela pack up and leave our home, taking the two boys with her. My guilty thoughts immediately turned to my recent lapse from grace with Eloise Grey, but common sense at once told me that even if Eloise had returned to England from France, there was no possible way she could have given birth to a child in the past six months.
    I drew a deep, steadying breath. Whatever else I did, I must be sure to give this nosy old busybody no food for further gossip. (I had little doubt that she and her friends had already chewed the matter over daily since Adela’s departure, and had been waiting with impatience for me to make my reappearance.)
    â€˜Ah!’ I said with