Palmer-Jones 04 - A Prey to Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

left them, without apologizing.
    ‘I’ll be in the office for the next hour, Richard,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you could come to see me later so we can complete the arrangements for tomorrow.’
    With Eleanor’s departure the mood of the evening changed. They sat uneasily round the table drinking coffee. The rest of the room was dark and quiet. No one seemed willing to pick up the thread of the conversation.
    ‘What did you mean,’ George asked Veronica abruptly, ‘when you said your mother seemed mad?’
    Veronica glanced briefly at her husband. He thought her anxiety about Eleanor was misplaced. Eleanor was a tough old boot, he said. She probably had her own reasons for making such a fuss about the birds. But his long, mild face gave nothing away.
    ‘She’s obsessed with the peregrines,’ Veronica said. ‘ She wandered about on the hill at night because she says someone’s planning to take the young. No one else believes her: I don’t know what to do.’
    ‘Why does she think someone’s planning to steal the birds?’ Molly asked. She had been quiet all evening. The dinner had been Eleanor’s show and she had not wanted to spoil the performance. Now she, at least, felt more comfortable.
    ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Veronica said. ‘There was a blue van parked at the end of the lane by the barn and Mother was convinced that it belonged to people who were looking for the nest. There was no reason at all why it should have done.’
    ‘Did she get the registration number?’
    ‘Not in detail. She just recognized that it wasn’t a local one. When she first mentioned the van she didn’t seem too worried by it but it seemed to prey on her mind so that now she’s got the whole thing out of proportion.’
    ‘She didn’t seem very eager to discuss it tonight,’ Molly said.
    ‘No,’ Veronica said. ‘That just shows how illogical the whole thing is.’
    ‘Did anyone else see the van?’ George asked.
    Veronica shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The second time Mother saw it she came in and told me. She said there was a man sitting in the passenger seat. I was going to find out who he was and ask what he was doing there, take down the registration number, but when I got out no one was there. The van must have driven away.’
    Throughout this conversation Richard Mead was silent. He gave the impression of scepticism, as if he wanted to reassure his wife that Eleanor was as strong as she had always been.
    ‘I shouldn’t worry about Eleanor,’ he said. ‘She’s never struck me as the sentimental sort and I’m sure she’s perfectly sane.’
    He stood up, gave them his lopsided smile. ‘ I’d better go,’ he said. ‘She’ll be expecting me.’
    Veronica watched him leave the room with a kind of desperation, as if he too were deserting her. She sat for a few minutes longer, then she left them too.
    That night George went to bed with the unsettling, unreasonable depression which troubled him occasionally. He felt that Eleanor did not trust him. His pride was hurt because he had driven all the way to Herefordshire to help her and she had treated him like one of the paying guests. The promise of the evening was unfulfilled.
    When she left the dining room Veronica Mead went straight upstairs by the back staircase from the kitchen. She was confused and unhappy and did not want to meet any of the guests. She would go in to the girls, she thought, and settle them for the night as she had when they were babies. The idea gave her some comfort. The Meads had a series of rooms on the top floor. Once they had been used as a nursery and servants’ quarters, but that had been long before Veronica had been born. Now they were airy and attractive and formed a retreat from Eleanor and the hotel.
    Helen was still up, dressed in night clothes, sitting at her desk writing.
    ‘Oh darling,’ Veronica said, impressed by her elder daughter’s academic dedication. ‘It’s too late for homework.’
    ‘It’s not