Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) Read Online Free PDF

their parachutes, but instead one of them broke from the rhythm of glancing grabs and held on to another man, pulling him close, raising his arm and—as the Jamie-cam made clearer—attempting to drive it towards the other man’s stomach. A murmur rose from the crowd, as the two engaged in an aerial ballet of their own, pushing and tugging at each other.
Is this part of the show?
Tom recognised the stupidity of the thought when an arm, now giant on the screen, pushed in between the two figures, as if to peel them apart. Two enormous scowling faces, each behind a plastic shield, turned to the screen.
    “It’s Hector and Olly.” Jane’s hand went to her mouth. Somewhere someone screamed. “What are they
doing
?”
    “They’re fighting like schoolboys. At twenty thousand feet in the air!” Marguerite gasped, adding, “Bonzo!” to quell the barking dog.
    The top corner of the screen showed the airplane camera’s view. As Hector and Oliver grappled and Jamie struggled to part them, the others abandoned formation. Deploying chutes was now critical, and in a twinkling the whole screen exploded with seven crimson blossoms. Seconds were eternities, and after an eternity Hector and Oliver, figures in the corner screen, broke apart. Instantly, the whole screen again filled with crimson from two blossoming parachutes.
    “Oh, thank God!” Jane cried as Jamie’s camera picked out the rigging of his open canopy, the suspended figure of the second man drifting by gently in nearby view—Oliver, Tom thought, judging by the slimmer figure. A collective sigh ofrelief sounded all around them. Then suddenly the sighs turned to perplexed and frightened mutterings. On the TV, cascading from view, as if into a hole in the screen, a figure dangled from the end of a tangle of lines themselves connected to little more than a flapping crimson flag.
    “The chute didn’t open!” someone cried.
    “Oh, God.” Jane’s hand went again to her face as they watched the figure, growing tinier now, seem to struggle to disentangle the lines.
    “Who is it?” Tom muttered, cold with horror.
    “I think it’s Hector.” Marguerite’s voice was steely, disbelieving, but Tom noted her knuckles whiten as her hands gripped the edge of his trolley.
    “Jamie, turn your camera away. I can’t stand this,” Jane pleaded. “Just turn all the cameras
off
!”
    “Hector, for heaven’s sake, deploy the emergency chute.” Marguerite stared at the screen. “The emergency chute! He was always such a bloody-minded child.”
    And they watched in growing horror as the crippled parachute with its human cargo plummeted, fluttering, towards the earth’s heartless embrace, disappearing into a tiny red dot.

CHAPTER THREE
     

 
    “ H ello. Are you off to a fancy dress party?”
    “No,” the boy replied fiercely.
    Tom regarded the diminutive figure curiously carapaced in well-tailored evening wear: black jacket with shawl collar, low-cut waistcoat, black silk bow tie, and patent-leather Oxfords glinting in the evening sunshine. If there were anyone on the terrace better dressed for a weekend country house party, it was this bright young thing in full formal fig. He was wearing a monocle, too.
    “Aren’t you a little young to be smoking?”
    “They’re Turkish cigarettes.”
    “I’m not sure that answers my question.”
    The boy placed the cigarette against his lips, affected to take a long drag, then waved his hand away, raising his head to the sky to release a long plume of imagined smoke.
    “Where did you get that?” A woman’s voice sounded sharply behind the open French doors, startling them both.
    “Uncle Olly gave it to me.” The boy edged away.
    “Yes, and that’s precisely how it begins.” A moment later a sandaled, tanned foot slipped onto the terrace to the tinkle of ice cubes, followed by the figure of Lady Lucinda fforde-Beckett, pale skin flushed, though not, Tom considered, by the roseate refraction of sunlight on