The Riddle of Sphinx Island Read Online Free PDF

turned out not to be, lost! I’ll have to reshape the whole thing. Doesn’t bear thinking about! Maisie, would you help Lady Grylls?’
    ‘The right person for what?’ Lady Grylls was now fully awake.
    ‘The right person for the job.’
    ‘What job? Hate it when people talk in riddles.’
    ‘ The takeover . That’s how I think of it.’ Mrs Garrison-Gore spoke with an air of aimless defiance. ‘I keep my fingers crossed he is the right man. If he is not, it’s back to the drawing board and square one!’
    What a tedious woman. Mrs Garrulous- Bore. Brought to mind a scout mistress. Lady Grylls couldn’t abide scouts mistresses. Self-preoccupied, interfering, bumptiously self-important and such a loud voice . Lady Grylls then remembered Mrs Garrison-Gore served a very definite purpose – but surely Sybil could have hired someone less annoying?
    ‘Maisie, I really do think you should –’
    ‘Leave the gel alone. I can manage. My good woman, you fuss too much. You make it sound as though my time to depart to the shades has come.’
    ‘Not to the shades, Lady Grylls, only to the library,’ Mrs Garrison-Gore said.
    Lady Grylls suppressed a groan. Who was it who said that the meaning of our lives was the impact we have on other people, whether we make them feel good or not? If that were true, she reasoned, then Mrs Garrison-Gore led a singularly meaningless life.
    ‘I have not yet reached the stage gerontologists call “twilight senility”. Whenever I am asked what it feels like to be eighty-six. I invariably say that it’s so much better than the alternative. My doctor warned me I have the typical physical constitution of a likely centenarian. Apparently my mind is most likely to go some time before my body, but then one can’t have everything, can one?’
    Clasping her stick, Lady Grylls rose to her feet. She gave Maisie a little wink.

    Mrs Garrison-Gore stood in the corridor outside the library, frowning down at the open folder in her hands. Although she had managed to work out all the details now, she was assailed by the ghastly feeling the whole thing was all going to be a complete fiasco … Chin up, she murmured as she pushed open the door.

5
THE WAR IN THE AIR
    The Game Book, bound in black morocco leather, lay on his desk and the sight of it cheered him up considerably. He knew of no other morale-booster that could ever rival the Game Book!
    It had belonged to his great-grandfather; it had then passed to his grandfather, then to his father. His grandfather had shot with the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Screwing up his face, John de Coverley adjusted his silver-rimmed monocle in his left eye. Pheasants 456, Hares 90, Rabbits 99, Woodstock 57, Boar 15, Grouse 47. He turned a page, then another.
    He picked up his pen and started writing. Herring-gulls 18 . Lesser black-backed gulls 4. Bonaparte gulls. 3 Black-legged Kittiwake 4. Sybil gulls 4 –
    No, not Sybil – Sabine – Sabine gulls! Funny mistake to make – a ‘Freudian slip’. Well, sometimes he did see Sybil – his impossible older sister – as a seagull. It wasn’t only his imagination. She did resemble a seagull. The way she walked, the way she put her head to one side, the quizzical look she gave him. Most irritating of all, there was her cawing laugh. He had nearly taken a pot-shot at her the other day. There were times when he felt like wringing Sybil’s neck.
    John knew the exact number of seagulls he had killed the night before. Also the precise genus they belonged to. He had examined each corpse carefully by the light of his lantern. Every time he shot a gull, he made an entry in his little notebook; he later transferred all the entries to the pages of the Game Book.
    The gulls were familiar with him by now and they tried to fight back in various ways. Sometimes they were too lazy for a full-on attack, then they tried to scare him off with their ominous ‘gagagaga’ and when they failed, they subjected him to a low