Laura Lee Guhrke Read Online Free PDF

but when it came to knowing just what she needed to do, she drew a blank.
    “Sophie, darling, are you listening?”
    “Hmm? What?” At the sound of her aunt’s voice, Sophie came out of her reverie and looked about her. “I’m sorry. I was woolgathering, I’m afraid.”
    “Something is wrong,” Miss Peabody said, frowning at her. “Sophie, you look quite ill.”
    “Dearest, are you all right?” Aunt Violet came to sit on Sophie’s other side. “You must still be disturbed about your dream last night.” She put an arm around her niece’s shoulders.
    “Of course she’s upset.” Miss Atwood slapped a card down on the table. “Dreams of blood and dead bodies would upset anyone.”
    “I went to the police,” Sophie blurted out.
    All three ladies looked at her in astonishment. Mr. Dawes peered at her over his spectacles as if she were an interesting species of bacteria. The colonel gave a disapproving humph and muttered, “A young lady getting herself involved with the police. It isn’t clone, I say. It simply isn’t.”
    “Oh, but the man was dead, Colonel,” Violet assuredhim. “Sophie saw it. She had a duty to report it to the police.”
    “Yes, indeed,” Miss Peabody agreed. “She couldn’t just stand by and let the man be killed.”
    The colonel had no answer to that. He once again took refuge behind his newspaper, saying nothing more.
    “What made you go to the police?” Violet asked Sophie. “I thought you had decided against it.”
    “I changed my mind.” Feeling the need to talk about it, Sophie went on, “There I was in Fortnum & Mason, and all of a sudden, I knew I had to go to Scotland Yard at once. I’m sorry, Auntie. I was so distraught, I forgot all about your lemon curd.”
    Violet waved aside the lemon curd. “So you went to the police. Then what happened?”
    “It was the most extraordinary thing. There I was, reporting the murder to some nice man in a blue uniform, when I looked up and saw
him
. The same man from my dream, the dead one. Only he wasn’t dead, of course. He’s a detective at Scotland Yard.”
    Violet gave a little gasp. “What did you do?”
    “I told him, of course. I tried to warn him, but he didn’t believe me.” Sophie slumped forward in discouragement. “He seemed to think it was all some sort of prank. He practically tossed me out on my ear.”
    Miss Peabody made a sound of sympathy. “How horrible.”
    “What else can you expect from a policeman?” Miss Atwood put down the last card with a triumphant flourish and came to sit with them around the tea tray. “Not at all our sort.”
    Sophie refrained from pointing out that most people were not their sort. Most people did not believe themselves to be reincarnations of historical personages, or have dreams of the future that usually came true, or use a planchette to contact dead strangers named Abdul.
    “We must make allowances for those who are skeptical of the spirit world,” Violet said.
    Mr. Dawes closed his book with a sigh of irritation and stood up. “It’s impossible to study down here. How can I prepare for my examinations with all this chatter going on?”
    The others paid little attention to that, and conversation about Sophie’s experience resumed the moment Dawes departed.
    “It must have been a most distressing experience for you, Sophie, darling.” Violet patted her shoulder in a gesture of consolation. “But at least you tried. You did your best.”
    “Exactly,” Miss Peabody concurred. “And there’s nothing more you can do.”
    Sophie envisioned the inspector’s face, so handsome and vibrant with life, and she sat up straight on the settee, her resolve renewed. “I am not giving up. Not by a long way.”
    Surprisingly, it was Colonel Abercrombie who endorsed her decision first. “Good girl,” he said and tossed aside his newspaper. He came forward to help himself to a strawberry tart and cup of tea. “You shouldn’t have gone to the police in the first