Read Online Sherlock Holmes and the Knave of Hearts by Steve Hayes - Free Book Online

Once he had laid them on the arm of the chair, he tugged fastidiously at the crease in his brown-striped cotton twill trousers.
    ‘I represent an organization that can promise you money and power, in almost unlimited quantities,’ he said. ‘And we know from our enquiries that you possess a nearly insatiable appetite for both.’
    She had made a token protest of innocence, of course. ‘I’m sorry,
m’sieur
, but I don’t know what you are talking about.’
    ‘Oh, come,’ he said. He had a gentle, reassuring voice that was entirely at odds with the hard, unreasonable taskmasterhe eventually proved to be. ‘We are both busy people. Let us waste no more of each other’s valuable time than we need to. We know all about you, Mademoiselle Denier. Or should I call you Adele Veillon, or Josette Corbeil, or Suzanne Morace?’
    Although Lydie tried not to betray anything, she knew her expression gave her away. She had no idea that any of her many aliases were known to anyone other than herself.
    ‘You are a con artist,’ Absalon said bluntly. ‘A very good one. You have worked your tricks from Brest to Monaco and just about everywhere between the two, with enviable success. I might say that you are the best in your chosen profession – and that is what we require,
mademoiselle
; the very best.’
    ‘To do what,
m’sieur
?’
    He gestured vaguely with one soft, manicured hand. ‘To arrange. To manipulate. To coerce. To guide. To listen and report back. To act as a go-between or a spy. To blend in or be noticed, as the task requires. And if you serve us well, you will be amply rewarded.’
    ‘And if I reject your offer?’
    Absalon sighed. ‘Then we should be forced – most regrettably – to release the dossier we have compiled upon you and your activities to the
Gendarmerie Nationale
, with the insistence that they hunt you down and arrest you with the utmost dispatch.’ He paused momentarily to give her a chance to think about it, then said: ‘We can do it, too. We are more powerful than you will ever understand.’
    There it was, then. Lydie had no choice but to accept. And yet, was that so bad? Absalon was right. Because she had been born into poverty she had very early on acquired an all-consuming desire for the finer things in life. She had watched her father die when she was six, her mother when she was eight. Both had died from an endless struggle to do the one thing that should have been so easy – simply, to
live
.
    Oui
, she had seen the poverty in which they had lived and expected her to live, and she had despised it and decided thatshe would never go cold, or hungry, or barefoot, ever again. From the time she was fourteen, she had decided that. And she had made good upon that promise.
    At first she had started with the so-called ‘badger game’ – using her looks to compel prominent married men to take her to bed, only to later claim to have become pregnant and threaten to tell all if they didn’t provide for her and the baby … the baby, of course, who never existed.
    Over time she had graduated to the lonely hearts columns, contacting wealthy, lovelorn men by letter, telling them everything they wanted to hear and then agreeing to meet them … if only they could first send her some money to pay for her travel and perhaps some new clothes so she would look her best for them.
    It had never failed to surprise her just how many men fell for it. Equally surprising was how many paid up in the expectation that she would actually go through with it and meet, then marry, them.
    She next turned to fraud. The money was especially good during that period. But so were the chances of arrest and incarceration . So she took up a different type of con – befriending lonely, elderly widowers, gradually gaining their trust and then coaxing them into spending their money on her. Of all her cons, this was her least favourite. She could override her conscience when it came to conniving money from wealthy