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

Eggescombe’s red brick. She curled her glass against one arm and brandished the other arm at the boy. “Give it to me.”
    “Darling, have you a light?” The boy put the cigarette again to his lips and waggled one eyebrow in a saucy, come-hither fashion.
    “Maximilian!”
    “Oh, darling, you
must
have a light.”
    “Stop it, Maxie.” Whatever ill temper Lucinda had brought with her to the terrace now evaporated like mist drenched by sun. A tiny smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, setting a kindling light to her deep blue-violet eyes.
    “What do you think? Is it me? Is it
one
, rather?” The boy struck a number of mannequin poses, all with the cigarette in hand.
    “It would be, if you weren’t eleven years old.” She laughed, with a quick confiding glance at Tom. “Now give that to me.”
    Max ignored her through a couple more poses, then said with exaggerated effect, “Darling, I’ve run out of cigarettes, why don’t you have this one?”
    “Thank you, darling,” Lucinda responded, now Gertrude Lawrence to Max’s Noël Coward, taking the offending item.“I’m Lucy fforde-Beckett”—she turned to Tom, fixing him with her remarkable eyes—“and this is my nephew Max, who may have a career in theatre.”
    “And you’re the Reverend Tom Christmas,” the boy said, offering a hand. “I’m
so
pleased to meet you. I’ve been having a splendid time entertaining your charming daughter. Don’t get up.”
    “I don’t think I’m allowed,” Tom replied from his sun lounger, taking the small hand in his own. “Your grandmother is insistent I stay off my feet for a while.”
    “Mr. Christmas is spending the weekend.” Lucinda rolled the cigarette thoughtfully between the fingers of one hand and raised her glass to her lips with the other.
    “I say, how wizard! I’m so pleased. I have a theological question I should like to ask you.”
    “Oh?” Tom replied.
    “For instance, if Pater’s emergency parachute hadn’t opened—”
    “But it did open, Maxie.”
    “If it
hadn’t
opened,” Max continued, ignoring his aunt, “and he had died, would his soul have gone to hell?”
    Tom started. “Well—”
    “Maxie, for God’s sake, surely you have enough RE at Ampleforth.”
    “Yes, but I should like to have Mr. Christmas’s views.” Max adjusted his monocle and explained, “We’re Roman Catholic.”
    “Ah, yes.” Tom knew that from a spot of Googling. “I believe the Catholic conception of the afterlife teaches that those who die in unrepentant mortal sin go to, well, hell. ButI’m sure there’s no danger of your father …” He stopped, troubled at the wave of uncertainty that rippled across Max’s features.
    “Perhaps Pater was given the wrong kit. Perhaps someone
wanted
him to die.”
    “Max, don’t be horrid.” Lucinda contemplated her now empty glass. “Why would you think such a thing?”
    “I heard … Miranda and I heard,” the boy amended, “someone say so.”
    “The emergency chute opened,” Tom said gently.
Though it took a bloody frighteningly long time
. “They almost never fail. Your father made a perfectly safe landing. He’s very practised at this, of course. He was an officer in the Parachute Regiment.”
    “Long before you were born,” Lucinda added unnecessarily.
    “If Pater died, then I would become eleventh Earl of Fairhaven, wouldn’t I.”
    “Max, darling, buzz off.”
    The boy flashed his aunt a faltering glance before straightening himself and brushing an invisible dust mote from his jacket. “Yes, I really must see to my guest. I left Miranda in the drawing room.”
    “Gruesome child,” Lucinda laughed when he had disappeared behind the French doors.
    “ 
‘Wizard’?
”
    “The antique slang, you mean? I suspect his grandmother’s influence. Sending him copies of Enid Blyton to read. Or what are those old books about that silly pilot …?”
    “Biggles.”
    “Or perhaps Wodehouse. Saki? I’m not sure. Anyway, he seems