Read Online Straw in the Wind by Janet Woods - Free Book Online Page B

the inn to take a bite of something to eat. They do a tasty steak and kidney pie there, if you happen to be hungry.’
    â€˜Indeed, I am. I’d like to thank you for your trouble, so perhaps you’d be my guest.’
    A smile spread across Henry’s face. ‘That’s right generous of you, Mr Chapman. I won’t say no to that.’
    Henry had a small circle of friends he lunched with, businessmen like himself. Adam learned more at the inn where they took their repast. A couple of rounds of ale loosened their tongues.
    â€˜Mr Chapman is making enquiries about Mrs Caroline Honeyman.’
    â€˜She’s long dead.’
    â€˜He knows that, don’t he?’
    â€˜Then why is he making enquiries?’
    Three pairs of eyes gazed at him.
    â€˜I’m making them on behalf of the relatives. They’re interested in what happened to the infant.’
    Henry said, ‘That will be Nicholas Thornton’s young woman, I reckon. She came in looking for information when she was little more than a girl. I didn’t let her down in the cellar though. It’s not a place for a young woman.’
    Another of the young men grinned. ‘Now there’s a nesh piece for a man to have in his bed. No wonder Thornton the younger didn’t bother going back to sea.’
    Laughter cackled. ‘An old codger like you wouldn’t know what to do with a woman like that.’
    â€˜I remember her aunt, Constance Serafina Jarvis. She used to live over Dorchester way.’
    Adam’s ears pricked up. Serafina again . . . the name Marianne had heard in the wind. Had it been a quirk of nature that had captured that name and placed it in Marianne’s head at that moment? Had it been more – a connection between the spirit and the living perhaps, or was it a straw in the wind? He’d solved cases on a slimmer premise.
    He threw her name into the ring. ‘Constance Serafina, a pretty name. I can’t say I’ve heard her mentioned before.’
    They hastened to enlighten him.
    â€˜No wonder, since her name was the only pretty thing about her, as I recall. They reckon the family had gypsy blood in them from way back, and Serafina was the name of some gypsy queen who married outside the tribe way back.’
    â€˜Constance was a spinster lady who had a fortune she’d inherited from an uncle. She left a small legacy to her Honeyman nieces, and the rest of it to the orphanage she started over Dorchester way. George Honeyman was furious. He’d run up a debt and was counting on it, you see.’
    â€˜He got nothing, and serve him right,’ Henry said. ‘He was a bad bastard and a rotten drunk, handy with his fists.’
    Adam allowed the conversation to run its course and hearing nothing more of use he took his leave and went over to the church. The burial register revealed nothing, and Caroline Honeyman’s memorial tablet told him nothing more than he already knew.
    He stood, the afternoon sunshine warming his back, gazing at her grave. George was buried next to her, having claimed his wife in death. Instinct was telling Adam that the youngest Honeyman daughter was still alive, though the evidence he had was only of the slimmest kind.
    â€˜Only you know whether my search will be fruitless, and you can’t tell me,’ he said to the slab.
    He held his breath when a song thrush came down and perched on the tablet. It cocked its head to survey him with a beady eye.
    â€˜I’ll believe it if you sing,’ he whispered.
    The bird flew to the branch of the nearest tree, opened its throat and sang its exquisite song.
    Adam smiled as the creature flew off. He wasn’t superstitious. He didn’t believe in signs . . . at least, not until now. He’d never wanted to before.
    From necessity he packed a lot into his day. His next destination was the orphanage at Dorchester. It was still there, and functioning. He explained his quest to the