A Date With Death: Cozy Private Investigator Series (Flora Lively Mysteries Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

striped Bermuda shorts. The shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his smooth brown chest. He looked exactly as Flora had expected.
    Celeste and he spoke for a minute in Spanish, then he turned to Flora and smiled.
    ‘Flora, encantado de conocerte .’ Eduardo lifted Flora’s hand to his lips, never taking his eyes from her face. She blushed, then shrugged and looked at Celeste.
    ‘I’m going to have to learn some Spanish, aren’t I? Otherwise I’m going to look very stupid.’
    ‘Oh, Eduardo speaks English quite well. He’s just trying to charm you.’
    ‘And you speak Spanish really well,’ Flora said. ‘Did you learn in the few months you were there? You weren’t this good at languages at uni.’
    ‘God, no. I’ve been having lessons since we got back to the UK. Jack’s been helping me.’
    ‘Jack?’
    ‘Jack Harding, of course. He’s our very own language consultant.’ Celeste paused as Eduardo spoke in Spanish again. She said, ‘Well, yes. He hasn’t only been helping with the language barrier. But you’ll find out about all that later,’ she told Flora. ‘At the gala dinner.’
    Flora was still processing this new information. ‘Jack Harding is here? At Hanley Manor?’
    ‘He’s not staying here, he lives just down the road. You look stunned. Didn’t I mention it on the phone?’
    She hadn’t, and she knew perfectly well she hadn’t. And Flora knew why. Celeste had wanted to retain the element of surprise.
    She’d certainly managed that.
    ***
    Flora said goodbye to Celeste and Eduardo, then headed back down the main staircase, her hand trailing along the polished curved banister, enjoying the feel of the old wood under her fingers and imagining the countless hands that had done the same over the last two hundred or so years. She figured she’d retrace her steps to get back out to the garden, then head across the lawn and go into the trees at the same point Sidney and Marshall had disappeared from view. This Nook place couldn’t be that difficult to find.
    At the bottom of the stairs she saw Sidney heading towards her. He was carrying a large silver tray piled with dirty dishes and muttering to himself. Flora, on an impulse she didn’t understand or analyse, ducked into a recessed doorway next to a huge Chinese-patterned urn. Sidney strode past, still muttering. He stopped across the hall in front of a closed door, then reached into a deep pocket with his free hand, pulling out an enormous ring of keys. He rattled it like a jailer, then grabbed a key and jabbed it into the keyhole. As he swung the door open and hoisted the tray through it, Flora caught sight of another long corridor, dimly lit and narrow. Then the butler kicked the door closed with his heel, and Flora heard it being locked again from the other side. She frowned. Odd to keep a service door locked like that. Wouldn’t it make life difficult for him and the other staff? Every one of them would have to have a key, for a start, and locking and re-locking doors all the time didn’t seem very safe from a fire safety point of view. Wouldn’t it be simpler to put a No Entry sign up and leave it at that?
    She stepped out of the doorway. Weird. Maybe the family who owned Hanley Manor insisted on keeping doors locked, to stop prying eyes. A shuffling sound to her left caught Flora’s attention, and she turned to see a young woman step out of an alcove only five or six feet from where Flora herself had been hiding. The woman’s eyes flashed in alarm when she saw Flora; she whirled around in a mass of wild, dark hair and fled into the music room. Flora followed, but there was no sign of the woman in either the music room or the next room along.
    ‘Hello,’ Flora said. Her voice sounded hollow and too loud in the vast space. Every wall was crammed with ancient paintings, some so dark and discoloured it was impossible to discern colours or features. She turned in a circle, wondering if the woman was hiding in here. Which would be