Read Online Dread Murder by Gwendoline Butler - Free Book Online Page B

look.
    â€˜Safe enough from me?’ thought Mearns. ‘What the hell does the beggar mean?’ Denny always meant something by his looks.
    â€˜There’s one in the Castle who’s been seen looking at Mindy.’

    â€˜She’s a handsome woman,’ said Major Mearns.
    â€˜Aye, and this is one who knows it.’
    â€˜Yes,’ thought Mearns, ‘me too.’
    They were walking towards Mindy, who had seen them coming and was smiling.
    â€˜And this one is hard to deny.’ This was Denny again.
    By now they had caught up with Mindy.
    â€˜I don’t want to stay,’ she told them. ‘Let’s walk up the hill together, please.’ She was always polite.
    â€˜I came with Felix but he …’ she shook her head, ‘he can’t leave yet.’
    The Major nodded. ‘I know.’
    â€˜Felix sent a message back to me; a poor soul has been strangled. He didn’t say more, but all around people were saying it was a woman called Dol. Mr Pickettwick says so.’
    â€˜How did he know?’
    â€˜The boy Charlie told him.’
    â€˜Oh, he’d know all right,’ said Denny. ‘Can’t keep anything from that one. Not anything he wants to know anyway.’
    â€˜Denny doesn’t like Charlie,’ announced Mearns.
    â€˜Oh, I do like him; he’s a taking lad. But he frightens me …he looks through me. Like he could see a joke the other side.’
    Â 
    As Denny had aged, so his voice had got deeper and more uneven; he was a great smoker of a large pipe, which had probably contributed to this. But as well as deepening, so his voice had become gruffer.
    â€˜Oh, you’re barking,’ said Mindy with amusement.

    â€˜Like a dog, he can do that!’ Mearns smiled.
    â€˜A nice little terrier, though, Denny,’ said his friend Mindy – ever anxious not to hurt his feelings.
    Â 
    Charlie watched the Major and Denny leave with some wistfulness. He liked Miss Fairface and he enjoyed the atmosphere of the Theatre, but he also felt drawn to the Major and his Sergeant. They were men. He knew this was what he would be one day, but he had not quite got there yet.
    Now Charlie had something important to consider: just how safe was it in the Theatre? There had been one murder, perhaps there would be more. He knew it depended on the nature of the killer and his reason for killing.
    Charlie had lived and worked in a rough part of London by the river where he had seen violence, and heard of much more, so he was informed about death. He remembered one old fellow he met in the house where he lodged in London saying that there was never just one murder; another always followed, and perhaps another still. ‘Remember what I tell you boy,’ the old man had said, ‘and it may save your life one day.’ Even if Charlie did not believe all the old chap had said, and on the whole he did not, he remembered those particular words. So he told himself perhaps he should be wary in the Theatre. And he had another reason for unease: he thought he might know who the killer was.
    He stood watching as the Major, Denny and Mindy walked out of sight, and then he turned back to what he
was beginning to think might be a dangerous sanctuary.
    â€˜I know what I’ll do,’ Charlie said to himself, ‘I’ll write it down. Make a story out of it. Then I might show it to someone.’
    Â 
    As Mindy and her escorts approached the Castle, Denny looked up. The first set of windows he saw belonged to Princess Augusta, and next to those were the rooms of Princess Amelia. The two sisters were close in age, unmarried still, and not likely to marry now. The old King, their father, had not encouraged them to think of husbands. They kept themselves old-fashioned in clothes and manner, wearing the hoops and ruffles that the smart ladies of the ‘ton’ had long since abandoned. They knew they were out of date, but considered that