The Secret of Annexe 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

the admissibility of
‘Caribbean’. (What an unpropitious omen
that
had been!) But these minor worries could hardly compare with the consternation caused on the Monopoly front by a swift-fingered
checker-out from a Bedford supermarket whose palm was so extraordinarily speedy in the recovery of the two dice thrown from the cylindrical cup that her opponents had little option but to accept,
without ever seeing the slightest evidence, her instantaneously enunciated score, and then to watch helplessly as this sharp-faced woman moved her little counter along the board to whichever square
seemed of the greatest potential profit to her entrepreneurial designs. No complaint was openly voiced at the time; but the speed with which she bankrupted her real-estate rivals was later a matter
of some general dissatisfaction – if also of considerable amusement. Her prize, though, was to be only a bottle of cheap, medium-sweet sherry; and since she did not look the sort of woman who
would ever own a real-life hotel in Park Lane or Mayfair, Sarah had said nothing, and done nothing, about it. The snooker and the table-tennis tournaments were happily free from any major
controversy; and a friendly cheer in mid-afternoon proclaimed that the ageing charlady from the Chilterns (who appeared to be getting on very nicely thank-you with the ex-publican from East
Croydon) had at last managed to hit the dartboard with three consecutive throws.
    Arbiter, consultant, referee, umpire – Sarah Jonstone was acquitting herself well, she thought, as she emulated the impartiality of Solomon that raw but not unhappy afternoon. Especially
so since she had been performing, indeed was still performing, a contemporaneous role at the reception desk.
    In its main building, the Haworth Hotel boasted sixteen bedrooms for guests – two family rooms, ten double rooms and four single rooms – with the now partially opened annexe offering
a further three double rooms and one single room. The guest-list for the New Year festivities amounted to thirty-nine, including four children; and by latish afternoon all but two couples and one
single person had registered at the desk, just to the right of the main entrance, where Sarah’s large spectacles had been slowly slipping further and further down her nose. She’d had
one glass of dry sherry, she remembered that; and one sausage roll and one glass of red wine – between half-past one and two o’clock, that had been. But thereafter she’d begun to
lose track of time almost completely (or so it appeared to those who questioned her so closely afterwards). Snow had been falling in soft, fat flakes since just before midday, and by dusk the
ground was thickly covered, with the white crystalline symbols of the TV weatherman portending further heavy falls over the whole of central and southern England. And this was probably the reason
why very few of the guests – none, so far as Sarah was aware – had ventured out into Oxford that afternoon, although (as she later told her interrogators) it would have been perfectly
possible for any of the guests to have gone out (or for others to have come in) without her noticing the fact, engaged as she would have been for a fair proportion of the time with form-filling,
hotel documentation, directions to bedrooms, general queries, and the rest. Two new plumbing faults had further exercised the DIY skills of the proprietor himself that afternoon; yet when he came
to stand beside her for a while after the penultimate couple had signed in, he looked reasonably satisfied.
    ‘Not a bad start, eh, Sarah?’
    ‘Not bad, Mr Binyon,’ she replied quietly.
    She had never taken kindly to
too
much familiarity over Christian names, and ‘John’ would never have fallen easily from those lips of hers – lips which were slightly
fuller than any strict physiognomical proportion would allow; but lips which to John Binyon always looked softly warm and eminently kissable.
    The phone