Depths of Deceit Read Online Free PDF

into the ashtray, and allowed it to go out.
    â€˜Wayneflete’, he continued, ‘knows very well that those bits of tile came from somewhere else. They’re suspiciously like those that you can see on the damaged tessellated pavement at Crowton Magna in Dorset. I wouldn’t put it past Sir Charles Wayneflete to have pocketed a few bits of that pavement when he was down there in ’84, and then dropped them through a hole in his pocket when he visited Newbie Mains. Don’t tell him I said so, though. He may sue me for slander!’
    Everybody laughed, and began talking of other matters.
    Roderick Ainsworth closed his eyes, and listened to his friends talking among themselves – the genial and mischievous Mackay, the learned Sillitoe, Murdoch Stuart – another practical archaeologist – and the others, all scholars of note, and all unequivocal admirers of himself. Yes, it was good to be in Scotland once again. As a young man he had often travelled up from Newcastle, where the family’s shipyard had been established for a couple of lifetimes , and savoured the brilliant intellectual life of Scotland’s capital, ‘the modern Athens’.
    Wayneflete…. It was generally accepted that Wayneflete was his academic rival, but to regard him in that light was a vexing travesty of the truth. He, Ainsworth, was a professional academic, Cordwainers’ Professor of Antiquities in the University of London. His discovery of the Clerkenwell Treasure in 1887 had confirmed his status as an investigative scholar of the first rank. And, then, of course, his uncovering of the Mithraeum at Clerkenwell had been a triumph, kindling the public’s imagination , and making him overnight a popular figure in the lecture halls.
    As to Wayneflete…. The man was a dabbler, who had never mastered any academic discipline. Was he really a charlatan? Well, perhaps that was too strong an accusation. Sir Charles Wayneflete, Baronet, was a titled amateur, jack of all trades andmaster of none. He lived beyond his income in a crumbling town mansion in Lowndes Square, eccentric and reclusive, tended now by an elderly housekeeper, who was said to bully him.
    It was ludicrous to see Wayneflete as a rival in any sense of the word. But there was no doubt whatever that he was a dangerous man, whose mind held some obscure and threatening secrets. He was, too, consumed by jealousy – jealousy of him ,Ainsworth. Wayneflete was a man to despise, but never to ignore.
    â€˜And how is your family faring, Ainsworth?’
    Roderick Ainsworth immediately opened his tired eyes and gave his full attention to Murdoch Sillitoe, who had asked the question.
    â€˜My family? They’re in fine fettle, Sillitoe, thank you. Zena’s sculpting gets better and better. It’s all massive stuff, you know, big bronze affairs. They’re calling her the second Rodin. And Margery – my daughter – is developing into a pianist of concert standard. She can play all that finger-breaking stuff by Chopin – rattles it off, you know, as though she’s been doing it all her life. And that other fellow with the shock of white hair – she can play him, too. Liszt.’
    â€˜Isn’t that the chap who died a few years ago?’ asked David Mackay. ‘Funny-looking fellow, who wore a floppy hat? Fancy being able to play him !Or do I mean Wagner?’
    Professor Ainsworth hauled himself out of his comfortable leather chair. He smiled at the assembled company. How good it was to see them all again.
    â€˜Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘although it’s only half-past three, I must retire to my room and sleep for a couple of hours. I’m absolutely exhausted. I will appear once more in the land of the living at six o’clock, consume a cold collation of chicken in aspic with a single glass of chilled hock, and then sally forth to the Royal Caledonian Institution. Till then au revoir !’

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