Read Online The Old Vengeful by Anthony Price - Free Book Online Page B

“It didn’t make sense. They wanted to know about the Vengeful … and Father’s trips to France.”
    “So what did you tell them?”
    “There wasn’t anything I could tell them. He said he’d got Father’s notes, but that they weren’t any use. But I don’t know anything that isn’t in the typescript—and I didn’t even go to France with Father… I tried to tell him that. But he wouldn’t listen.” She shivered.
    “Yes?”
    “Then he tore … my dress.” She drank again.
    “Okay—forget that, Elizabeth.” He shook his head sympathetically. “It didn’t make sense because you couldn’t tell him his answers—is that it?”
    “It wouldn’t have made sense even if I could have answered him.” Elizabeth tried to concentrate. “Father was only researching for a chapter he was re-writing—that was why he went to France. I do know that much.”
    “A chapter about the Vengeful ?”
    “Yes. But…” Concentration still didn’t make for any better sense.
    “If the man wanted to know about your father’s ship—“ Paul Mitchell stopped suddenly. “What is the connection between his ship and France? I wouldn’t have thought there was much—1941 and 1942?” He frowned.
    “That’s the point. It wasn’t his ship—it was for the chapter on Number Seven.”
    “Number Seven?”
    “The seventh Vengeful .” She nodded. “We used to call them by their numbers. Father’s was Number Eleven.”
    “Which was Number Seven?”
    “She was a frigate—a 36-gun ship in the Napoleonic War. She was wrecked off the French coast after she’d been damaged in a fight with a French frigate named the Fortuné . They both went down, actually— the Vengeful captured the Fortuné , but the French ship herself was lost off Portsmouth when the prize crew were bringing her in.” She gestured helplessly. “But that was all back in 1812.”
    “You never went to France with your father?”
    “No.” She could never remember going anywhere with Father, let alone France. “No.”
    He thought for a moment. “Did the Vengeful —Number Seven— have anything interesting on board?”
    “Interesting?” It was a stupid question. “She was just an ordinary frigate coming home for a refit. Or maybe to be broken up—she was in a rotten state even before the fight with the Fortuné … What do you mean ‘interesting’?” Elizabeth heard herself slur the word, and shook her head. “Interesting?” she repeated.
    “I mean treasure, or something like that, Elizabeth.”
    “Treasure?” Another stupid question. “Good heavens, no! She’d been on convoy duty for months and months, escorting supply ships for Wellington backwards and forwards, and backwards and forwards … Nothing at all interesting happened to her until she was coming home that last time, and met the Fortuné —the French ship. She was so dull before that, that Father had to put in pages and pages about frigates, and how they were built, and so on, and so forth …” She nodded. “I typed out his books—and cooked his bloody meals, and cleaned his bloody house, and washed—“ What was she saying !— “I mean … I know all that because I did his typing for him.”
    He was staring at her, maybe with surprise, maybe with embarrassment, maybe with pity. But it didn’t really matter much now, because she was obviously useless to him as a source of information if that was what he wanted.
    “So, you see, it really doesn’t make any sense at all—twice over, it doesn’t.” She wanted to go on talking now that she’d started, even though she had nothing to give him. “A man … a man like that, wanting to know about Number Seven—the seventh Vengeful , I mean … or any of the other ones, come to that… It’s just naval history, you see, that’s all… And if it wasn’t… I mean, if it was something to do with Father in France … then I’d be the last person to ask.”
    “But your burglar didn’t know that,” said Paul.
    “No, I