Truth Will Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

arranged to meet him during their holiday – meeting for lunch in the Romilees Hotel on the third day, to be confirmed. His wife had understood that he couldn’t resist the chance to kill two birds with one stone. Time was money.
    He then unwrapped a painting that had been delivered the previous day just as they were closing. The artist was new to them but he was hopeful. Lionel set the painting up on a spare easel and stood back to study it. It was a watercolour of boats at anchor in Folkestone harbour and he knew from experience that it would find a buyer within a week or so. There was something about the sea that touched people. In this particular painting the sea was calm and the boats seemed to rock gently. It was a tranquil scene and would appeal, he imagined, to people with fraught lives. Normally, once a picture had sold from a new artist the gallery would commission further pictures . . .
    He heard a key in the street door and glanced up, pleasantly surprised. Miss Dyer was five minutes early. Smiling broadly, he crossed the room to let her in.
    Startled, she cried, ‘Mr Brent! I thought you were going on holiday today. I didn’t expect to see you here – not that I’m objecting.’ She blushed faintly.
    ‘We are off to Hastings, Miss Dyer, but it will probably be later in the afternoon before we arrive there. I wanted to check up on a few things here before I go. A couple of phone calls . . . Would you be a dear and make me a cup of tea?’
    ‘Of course, Mr Brent, and would you like a butterfly cake with it? My mother made them and I brought two in but you can have Mr Barlowe’s and he needn’t know.’
    He thanked her with a conspiratorial wink and she hurried away to the kitchen, beaming broadly.

TWO
    T he Romilees Hotel was situated on high ground opposite the pier from where some of the rooms enjoyed a sea view. It boasted ten bedrooms, three of which were single and one of which was a family room with three beds. The rooms were named after flowers and the one that had been booked in the name of Brent was the Rose Room, which meant that the eiderdown was of pink silk, the wallpaper design was pink and silver stripes and the matching lampshades were edged with pink fringing. It was one of the rooms with a sea view.
    Penny and Meg worked together in the room, stripping the bed and remaking it for the couple who were due to arrive in the afternoon.
    ‘Mr and Mrs Brent,’ Meg informed her colleague. ‘He’s something in London, I think. Arty. A bit posh so might get a decent tip out of them. They’re coming about four.’
    ‘How “arty” exactly?’ Penny pushed a stray lock of frizzy ginger hair back under her white linen cap. ‘You mean he paints pictures?’
    ‘I s’pose so.’
    They smoothed the pillow slips and hauled the eiderdown from the chair over which it had been draped.
    Meg glanced up at the wall above the bed. ‘I wonder what he’ll think of that?’ The picture showed a bowl of blowsy roses from which a few petals had fallen on to a highly polished table. The colours were brighter than might be expected and the picture frame was of intricately carved wood.
    ‘What’s wrong with it? I like it. It’s lovely.’
    Meg shrugged. ‘It’s a bit like the lid of a box of chocolates.’
    They arranged the eiderdown and stood back to approve their work and give the room a final inspection before the beady-eyed owner made her rounds.
    Meg gathered up dusters and polish and put them in the bucket. ‘We went to see the show on the pier last night. Didn’t see you there.’
    ‘We didn’t go after all. Tom felt a bit upset because he had another run in with the chap next door to him – the funny one who hardly ever went to school.’
    ‘Jem, you mean. When he did go he was in my class.’
    ‘Not often, then. Anyway he disappeared for two days last week and his mother worried herself to death about him.’ Penny ran a critical finger along the window sill, frowned at the dust