The Consequences of Fear by Jacqueline Winspear (the best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

the manuscript again, secure it with the string and keepthe whole thing safe until a Miss Dobbs comes to collect the parcel.” Pause. “Joan, I’m sure she knows where Tunbridge bloody Wells is, so would you simply do as I say?” Pause. “Joan, I don’t have the time to discuss anything else at the present time, but please just indulge me and do as I ask withoutargument.” Pause. “As a matter of fact, it is a matter of life and bloody death, so just get on with wrapping the manuscript and stop questioning my every instruction!”Slamming the telephone receiver onto its cradle, he picked up a pen and scribbled on a sheet of paper, which he handed toMaisie with a pained expression. “Miss Dobbs, my daughter is a first-class editor, but as you may have gathered, she’s ather home in Tunbridge Wells today. You can have a good look at the manuscript when you meet. All right?”

Maisie stood up and took the sheet of paper with an address in Tunbridge Wells, folded it and put it in her shoulder bag. She extended her hand. “Thank you very much, Mr. Hillman. I’m sorry if I’ve caused family discord, but this is very serious.”

“I’m sure it is. And please don’t worry, Joan and I snip at each other all the time—actually we all get on famously, consideringthis is a family business. Do take care of the manuscript though.”

“Of course—you have my word.” Maisie smiled and walked toward the door, turning back to Hillman as she reached for the handle.“By the way, Mr. Hillman—about Dr. Maurice Blanche’s papers. I thought you might like to know that he bequeathed them to me,so I have them. All of them. Every last page.”

 

Maisie left a message at her office for Billy, to let him know that she was going directly to Tunbridge Wells and might spendthe night at the Dower House. Given that it was so close and a short journey on the local branch line, if she were late itwould make sense to remain in Kent, rather than return to London.

There was another reason. Throughout the visit to Hunter’s Mecklenburgh Square home, she had felt watched. It was a familiarfeeling when working on a case and one that Maurice had described during her apprenticeship. “Remember, Maisie, that in identifyingand focusing on the evidence we collect, we are also putting everything we know under the microscope to shed light on ourinquiry, and without realizing it we also put ourselves under the same microscope. All that vigilance can make us feel asif we, too, are being watched—yet it is ourselves who are doing the watching when the task of looking inward becomes rote.You must be ever conscious of the landscape surrounding you, as well as that which is inside you.”

Might Hunter’s attacker have not left the environs surrounding her home following his incursion, but instead hidden in plain sight? And might he have followed Maisie to Bedford Square, taken note of the office she had entered and then concluded the reason for her call? Could he now be waiting for her? If that were so, then she would have to take utmost care in planning her journey to Tunbridge Wells.

 

By the time Maisie reached her destination, it was getting late. She had traveled by motor coach to Sevenoaks and from therecaught a train to Tunbridge Wells, before the final leg of her journey in a taxi. She had studied every passenger on the coachand found nothing to concern her among the motley assortment of travelers. By the time she arrived in Tunbridge Wells, shewas sure she had not been followed.

“You must be Miss Dobbs,” said Joan Hillman, as she answered the door of her Georgian house situated on a street close toThe Pantiles. She was an interesting study, slender verging on thin, wearing a pair of wide-legged trousers with pleats ata wide waistband. A collarless white shirt made for a man was tucked into the waistband, giving a blouson effect, and shewore her blond hair drawn up in a hurried topknot secured with a pencil, completing her ensemble with a floral folded silkscarf pulled around from nape of neck to crown and tied in a bow. On her feet she wore ballet slippers that were just visibleunder the trouser cuffs. She held a cigarette between two fingers as she answered the door.

“Yes, that’s me,” said Maisie.

“Come on in then. My study is at the back of the house.”

Joan Hillman continued speaking as she walked ahead along the hallway, stubbing out the cigarette in an ashtray on a side table as she went. “I was going to come to the door with the manuscript, but I thought I’d better not in case someone was there waiting to have a go at me with a cosh—after all, my father made it sound all very cloak and dagger.” She opened the door to an orangery filled with all manner of exotic plants growing in large terra-cotta pots around the perimeter of the brick and glass room. A circular patterned carpet was positioned in the center of the flagstone floor, with a desk situated in the center as if it were the bull’s-eye on a target. A single log smoldered in a small cast iron firebox at one end of the room, and a pair of armchairs upholstered in a deep burgundy heavy-duty linen flanked either side of the heat source. A calico cat was asleep on a blanket thrown across the seat of one chair. A walnut drinks cabinet was set to the left of the double doors that led back into the house, and a matching walnut filing cabinet stood on the other.

“Is it really that bad?” said Hillman, turning to Maisie.

“It’s fairly serious. Miss Hunter is now in hospital, having suffered a grievous attack in her home.”

Hillman looked at Maisie. “Come on, sit down and take the weight off your feet. I’ll get the manuscript for you.”

Maisie was grateful to sit back in the armchair, while Joan Hillman