The Camelot Caper Read Online Free PDF Page A

five minutes later wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, amid a chorus of good-natured jeers from the passengers. They all seemed to know him by name.
    Jessica’s stomach made sympathetic noises. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and panic, she had found, dried one’s throat. A nice cup of hot tea would have been more to her taste than the beverages on tap at The Cross and Anchor, but at that point she would have settled for a glass of water.
    In her capacious handbag, bought especially for the trip and almost as big as her suitcase, she had a general guide to England and a map. She had already examined the map and found ituseless; the villages on their route were too small to be mentioned.
    They passed a church and a scattering of small thatch-roofed houses, then the bus jerked to a stop in a village somewhat larger than any she had yet seen. It possessed a marketplace, with an ancient stone cross, and a particularly appetizing tea shop. Jess’s mouth would have watered if she had had any extra saliva. For a moment she considered getting off the bus, but she knew such a move would be folly. Eventually her pursuers would pick up her trail. Someone might have seen her board this bus, and even if she had not been seen, there could not be more than half a dozen buses that would have left the station before the trackers reached it. All they had to do was to follow these buses, and if the pace of this one was typical, that process wouldn’t take forever.
    Three of the passengers got off in the marketplace; there were now only seven people left in the bus, including herself. No, she couldn’t leave the bus in this sleepy hamlet without being observed. She would have to stay on the bus, “all the way”—wherever that might be.
    The driver finished his philosophical discussion with an elderly native who was sitting by the market cross, looking as if he had grownthere, and the bus started off again. The little boy on the other side of the fat lady said something in a soft, plaintive voice, and the woman—his mother?—said robustly,
    â€œWell, you can hold it in a bit longer. We’ll be home soon.”
    Jess was sorry that subject had come up. Almost too tired and uncomfortable to worry, she leaned her head against the windowpane and idly contemplated the lurid cover of the thriller in her lap. She had pretended to read it, not only to occupy her mind—it hadn’t worked—but to put off the lady beside her, who looked as if she might enjoy a chat. From her sole bus trip before the debacle, Jess had learned that the standoffishness of the English was a myth; they were the friendliest souls in the world, especially when traveling, and loved to talk to foreigners. On the Southampton-Salisbury trip this trait had given her much pleasure, but she wasn’t in the mood for idle chitchat now.
    She opened the book again, noting that she seemed to be on page forty-six; at least that was where her thumb had been inserted as a book-mark. Not surprisingly, she couldn’t remember anything of the first forty-five pages. “Althea crouched against the wall, her heart pounding.How long had she been entombed in this dark, dank hole? Four hours? Five? It seemed like an eternity.”
    Jess wondered who Althea was. The heroine, clearly; only heroines crouched in dark dank holes for that length of time. She didn’t remember how Althea had gotten into the hole, or why, and she didn’t care. Silly wench, Althea. She swallowed, through a dryness that felt like a patch of the Sahara, and tried to ignore her other distressing discomforts, and wondered how on earth the heroines of these stories managed to get around the simpler, more basic necessities of life. Four or five hours was a pretty long stretch, and when you were as nervous as all that…
    It was useless, she couldn’t keep her mind on Althea’s troubles. Silly woman, she thought again, and wondered if her