The Unpleasantness at Baskerville Hall (Reeves & Worcester Steampunk Mysteries Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

found a stiff one worked even better when one was lying.
    “Pan, you say?” said Stapleford. “How does that work? Are diamonds denser than the native rock?”
    I shrugged — as much as a person with both arms securely pinned could. “Don’t ask me. All I know is that it works. Others may disagree, but I swear by it. One can’t make one’s fortune without getting one’s feet wet. Many a month I’ve spent knee deep in the Orinoco.”
    “I thought you found your fortune in Argentina,” said Stapleford, looking more and more like Weaselly Beasley, the class swot from my old prep school. “Isn’t the Orinoco in Venezuela?”
    “It’s a long river,” I said. The room was far from warm, but I could feel the first bead of perspiration forming on the Worcester brow.
    “I expect Roderick gets very confused with names,” said Emmeline. “I know if I were hit by a train I wouldn’t know the Thames from the Severn.”
    “I’m sure Roderick wouldn’t get confused about the name of his intended though,” said Ida. “You do have a fiancée back in Argentina, don’t you?”
    I had a strong urge to feign a heart attack. This was the horniest dilemma I’d ever been impaled upon. If I invented an Argentinean fiancée, I wouldn’t be able to monopolise Emmeline without being labelled a bounder by the Baskerville-Smythes. And If I denied any betrothal, I’d spend the next ten days fending off the formidable Ida!
    And I had a strong feeling that even a feigned heart attack would not dislodge Ida from my arm. She’d probably volunteer to nurse me back to health!
    I opened my mouth in the vain hope that something clever might make an appearance.
    It rarely does.
    “Perhaps she was hit by a train too?” suggested Lady Julia.
    “Or,” said Emmeline. “Perhaps she broke off the engagement because she didn’t like living in a shack over your diamond mine in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Yes!” I said. I could have hugged Emmie. If I’d had a spare arm.
    “You’re a veritable mind reader, Miss Fossett,” I continued. “Conchita — that was my fiancée — wanted me to buy an estate in Buenos Aires, but I’m too fond of my old home. We fell out over it, and parted brass rags. It was a painful episode. But I’m sure you’d appreciate my humble home, Miss Spurgeon. The way the corrugated iron catches the sun at dawn... And we rarely have yellow fever in the camp now.”
    Ida’s grip slackened.
    “I doubt you have that many head hunters these days either,” said Emmeline.
    “Not since the crocodiles ate them all.”
    ~
    I was free of Ida, and no longer the centre of attention. The Stapleford cove gave me the odd look or two, and Lady Julia unleashed a couple of withering looks that would have cowed a lesser man. But I was a chap whose skin had been thickened by repeated exposure to disapproving aunts.
    And I had Emmeline on my arm.
    Ten minutes later though something odd happened. Henry was talking about his new moving picture when he suddenly stopped.
    “Do you hear that?” he said, looking towards the windows.
    Everyone stopped and inclined an ear. There was a faint wailing noise. Henry ran to the nearest window and opened it. The wailing noise grew. I’d never heard anything like it.
    “It’s the siren,” said Henry. “Someone’s escaped.”
    “Escaped from where?” asked T. Everett.
    “Dartmoor prison,” said Henry. “It’s six miles away across the moor.”
    “Don’t worry, they won’t come here,” said Sir Robert. “Grimdark Mire stands between us and the prison. Anyone heading this way will be swallowed whole and never seen again.”
    “Aye,” said Stapleford. “Grimdark never gives up its dead.”
    “I wouldn’t like to be out on a night like this,” said Henry, peering into the dark. “Berrymore says there’s a storm coming, and the wind certainly looks to be picking up.”
    “Do close the window, Henry,” said Lady Julia. “Before we all perish from the cold.”
    No