The Wicker Tree Read Online Free PDF

'We thought that truly magnificent Imperial you culled deserved some lasting recognition.'
    Beame at once turned his gaze from his employers and looked up at the wall above the great oak door. There, the noble head of a stag with sixteen points to his huge antlers gazed glassily into the hallway. But his nostrils seemed to be sniffing the air as if he sensed the nearness of his enemy.
    'The colour of those glass eyes is no exactly right, sir. But I can fix that later…' Beame was waiting for their reaction.
    'You're an artist, Beame. That's what you are. I think it is splendid. And it looks perfect up there, my dear,' Lachlan added, turning to Delia.
    'I really don't know where else we could have put it,' she laughed, looking around at the serried ranks of stuffed game's heads on the entrance hall's walls. Buffalo, moose and deer of different breeds and sizes, a white rhino, a Bengal tiger, a wild boar and even a giraffe, they were all the trophies several generations of Morrison lairds had brought back from a now defunct British Empire, where they and their relations had once played their small part in ruling a quarter of the world.
    Beame, pleased at their reaction to his artistry, had already hurried out to open the door to the big Phantom III, the 1936 model with headlights that looked like silver soup tureens, in which he was to drive them to Glasgow. For Beame, being a butler was playing a role, one in which, however suitable his costume, he was always slightly uneasy. Being a chauffeur was simpler, a peaked hat sufficed, but he still thought of it as a role and the flourish with which he opened the car door was one he had seen in an old Hollywood movie. Only in his capacity as a taxidermist was he truly in his element. Working for the Morrisons, he had occasion to do really interesting taxidermy, and his roles as chauffeur and butler were not all that onerous. Beame was a relatively happy man and Delia, who made a practice of observing everyone who worked for her and for Lachlan quite closely, believed that he was incapable of any lateral thinking whatever. She therefore trusted him and urged her husband to do the same.
    The back of the vintage Rolls had a cocktail cabinet in a burled walnut case, into which Lachlan had installed a sophisticated Danish sound system. There was also an elaborate contraption by which the passengers could communicate with the chauffeur on the other side of the glass barrier. This had not been used since before the Second World War. When communication with Beame was called for, Lachlan simply shouted.
    Driving through the rolling countryside they soon crossed a mediaeval stone bridge over the River Sulis and passed into one of the region's rare forests. Huge beech trees, under which very little but ferns and wild mushrooms grew, towered on either side of the road. Deer grazed here unconcerned by any passing traffic. The herd belonged to Tressock Castle and only Lachlan or one of his gamekeepers was authorised to cull them, this being done usually in anticipation of the May Day feasts. As the Rolls emerged from these woods, the huge smooth deciduous trees giving way to meaner spruce and fir, they were suddenly in an enormous clearing, where the river had snaked back to meet them.
    Upon the other side of the Sulis, monstrous in its scale, hideous in its utterly functional cacophony of steel pipes and concrete blocks, stood the Nuada Nuclear Power Station. Armed police idled outside its gates while two of the utility's own security guards came up to greet the Rolls and to escort Lachlan into the guardhouse, where one of his executives and his secretary were awaiting him for a brief conference.
    Delia remained in the car, allowing herself to think about the problems Lachlan faced as chairman of Nuada – and doing this to distract herself from the prospect of what must very soon be done in Glasgow. Chernobyl was a word no one ever actually mentioned in relation to Nuada. But the melt-down at