Missing Person Read Online Free PDF

thirteen-year-old Annabelle and Bobby were all playing, along with Boots and family, and Miss Polly Simms. Lizzy’s younger children, seven-year-old Emma and five-year-old Edward, were sitting at the garden table with Chinese Lady, playing snakes-and-ladders with her. ‘Come on, bowl up,’ said Lizzy.
    ‘Do it again, Mum, smash another six,’ said Bobby.
    ‘Watch your legs, Mum, I think Uncle Boots’s blood is up,’ said Annabelle.
    ‘Some hopes he’s got of hittin’ my legs or my wicket,’ said Lizzy.
    Boots did a lazy-looking run, deceptively lazy, for when he delivered the ball it whizzed through the air and fizzed off the turf. Lizzy did a little scream of outrage and swung her bat vainly at the ball. It broke the stumps.
    ‘Oh, dear, Auntie Lizzy, what a shame,’ said Rosie, ‘I think you’re out.’
    ‘Not likely,’ said Lizzy, chestnut hair gleaming in the sunshine, brown eyes defiant and challenging. ‘I wasn’t ready.’
    ‘Who said that?’ asked Ned.
    ‘I did,’ said Lizzy. Boots stood with a grin on his face.
    ‘But, Auntie Lizzy,’ said Tim, ‘your stumps are all knocked over.’
    ‘Lizzy, you’re out,’ said Polly, long-standing family friend.
    ‘I’m afraid so,’ smiled Mr Finch.
    ‘Not likely,’ said Lizzy again, ‘I wasn’t ready for that sneaky cannonball. It was supposed to be a slow one. Stand the stumps up again, Tim.’
    From the garden table, Emma called, ‘The phone’s ringing.’
    ‘I’ll go,’ said Mr Finch, and entered the house through the kitchen. The telephone in the hall was ringing its demanding note. He answered it. ‘Hello?’
    ‘I wish to speak to Mr Finch,’ said a man’s voice.
    ‘You’re speaking to him.’
    ‘Good. You are Mr Edwin Finch?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Formerly Herr Paul Strasser of Frankfurt-on-the-Maine in Germany?’
    Mr Finch stiffened, then said quietly, ‘That’s an odd question. I think you have the wrong man.’
    ‘Ah, so sorry. Goodbye.’ The line went dead, but Mr Finch hung on for a few seconds before replacing the phone. He was too experienced an agent not to accept that espionage held its surprises, alarms and dangers for all who engaged in it. Someone knew he had once been a German agent, someone he was certain did not work for the British Government. Well, what would come next? Another phone call, probably, and then a suggestion relating to blackmail? He wondered about that, but had a smile on his face as he returned to the garden.
    ‘Who was it?’ asked Chinese Lady.
    ‘A colleague,’ said Mr Finch.
    ‘On a Sunday?’ said Chinese Lady, who had always thought he worked for the Foreign Office in a kind of diplomatic capacity.
    ‘Some colleagues can’t leave work alone, Maisie, not even on a Sunday,’ said Mr Finch. ‘What’s going on out here now?’
    ‘Bedlam,’ said Chinese Lady.
    Boots had foxed Lizzy so diabolically with his bowling that she’d knocked the wicket over. By falling on it. Now she was chasing Boots all over the garden, trying to hit him with the bat. But that kind of thing was all part of the game when the Somers family were playing Boots and his family at garden cricket.
    Rosie, shrieking with laughter, thought how spiffing it was to be alive. Mr Finch thought how fortunate he was to have acquired a ready-made family with so much zest for life. Odd phone calls were by the way.
    Cassie was getting just a little fed-up with Lord Cecil or just plain awkward Cecil. She complained to Freddy that the blessed bird hadn’t spoken a word since saying hello to him. Freddy remarked it hadn’t been hello, it had been watcher, mate. Yes, fancy a royal parrot saying that, said Cassie with a frown. And then nothing else in over an hour, she said. Freddy said she’d got to face up to the fact that Lord Cecil wasn’t much of a talker. Cassie had a thought. I know, let’s take Cecil along to that lady that’s got a parrot of her own, she said, I bet she’d know how to get Cecil to talk lots.