The Riddle of the River Read Online Free PDF

a note sent to me immediately,’ I told her, writing down my name and address on a piece of paper which I handed her together with a modest financial encouragement. She flushed.
    ‘I can’t take this,’ she said.
    ‘This is a job I am asking you to do for me,’ I said. ‘It is work, honest work. It is quite all right. In fact, it is very important – you do realise that? A girl hardly older than yourself has died. We must find out who she was and how she died.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do see that. Even if she was just a…even if, well, what I mean is, whoever she was, she was enjoying her life and didn’t deserve to die. I see what you mean. Even if she is dead, this is still like giving her a helping hand. I’ll do it.’
    Our eyes met across the counter, scattered with its litter of objects, delicate, frivolous, artistic objects, all made uniquely for pleasure – the pleasure of young girls. Her eyes like deep pools showed me anxiety, concern, a consciousness of suffering, a search for meaning.
    ‘She shouldn’t have died,’ she said again, thoughtfully. ‘She was happy.’
    ‘That’s an interesting remark,’ I said. ‘Do you think she was in love with the gentleman?’
    ‘Him? Oh, no. That was just – well, professional. She was very nice to him. He was a gentleman friend. And she liked the bracelet. No, she was just happy in general, I think, happy and excited. Maybe a little too excited. Maybe almost nervous. I can’t remember exactly.’
    An unwed girl, ‘professionally’ befriending an elderly gentleman, a baby on the way…and yet the impression she gave – to another girl of her own age, no less – was of being happy. Why happy? Would not a girl in such a situation be rather fearful and troubled, if not in despair? Yet she seemed happy. And days later, she was dead.
     
    ‘Vanessa – you’re waiting again,’ said Arthur, after dinner had been cleared away and the twins sent upstairs to be put to bed.
    ‘Who, me?’ I said, dropping a ball of wool which I had taken out of my workbasket and put back twice already.
    ‘Yes, you. Listen, nothing is easier to observe than a waiting Vanessa. You fidget and don’t do anything.’ Rising, he came to lean over me and smiled.
    ‘I won’t ask you what you’re waiting for, but I will ask you if you’ll have to wait long.’
    ‘I don’t know, that’s the trouble. It could be days and days. Oh, Arthur, you’re right, I do hate waiting and not being able to do anything. It’s my worst defect, I know. I really ought to cultivate the Eastern art of patience.’
    ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘since you haven’t done that yet, let me suggest instead that you relieve the anxiety by spending the weekend in London with me. You know Ernest Dixon and his wife have been inviting us for ages – they have an extra room in their flat. He’s just written to me about it again, and he even asked what we’d like to see. Do let’s go, it would do you good.’
    ‘Oh, I would love to,’ I said eagerly, thinking secretly that Robert Sayle’s is closed on Sundays anyway. ‘But how can I leave the children for a whole weekend?’
    ‘Stuff,’ he said. ‘Sarah will spoil them rotten and they’ll simply love it. And we’ll come home on Sunday. We’ll spend just one night away.’
    ‘But what if the message I’m waiting for comes while I’m gone?’ I worried. ‘I don’t expect it so soon, and yet that is just what
would
happen, isn’t it?’
    ‘Well, there I can’t give you any advice, as I don’t know what kind of message you’re waiting for. Once it comes, what need you do?’
    ‘Well, that will depend on what it says,’ I admitted, wondering what the shopgirl – whose name I suddenly realised I had stupidly omitted to ask – could possibly write, even if she did spot the familiar gentleman.
Come at once
–
he’s in the tea-shop?
Or better,
Have managed to talk to him and found out his name?
No, no, she mustn’t do that!
    ‘Yes,