Angel and the Actress Read Online Free

number 24?’
    The woman came out again. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘But you could try there and ask.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Er, right. Er, thank you very much. Erm … I notice that you have a very big garden, haven’t you?’
    Mrs Sellars frowned, then raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips. She breathed in deeply, eyed him closely and said, ‘What do you really want, young man?’
    He avoided her eyes and said, ‘I wondered if you were looking for … I wondered if you needed a gardener.’
    She blinked. ‘No. We don’t, thank you,’ she said. ‘We already have help in that regard. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go.’ She withdrew into the house and began to close the door.
    ‘Do you know anybody who does, missis?’ he called.
    ‘No. Sorry,’ she said and closed the door firmly, turned the key in the lock and leaned back against it. She frowned. She wasn’t pleased. She sensed that there was something odd about the man, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She walked thoughtfully down the polished parquet hall to the kitchen door and went inside. Maybe he was simplyvery lonely. There was a lot of loneliness in the world. Or maybe he needed a job. Maybe the man he was looking for – a Mr Cross – was seeking a gardener.
    She looked round to see what she had been doing before the disturbance. She saw the coffee percolator on the worktop with its lid off and a new packet of coffee by its side. She had just picked up a kitchen knife to make a hole in the packet when she noticed a cold breeze at the back of her neck. She whipped round to find the back door slightly open. That was strange. She was certain it had been closed. The wind suddenly picked up and blew it wide open.
    She crossed the kitchen quickly, grabbed hold of the door handle, then stepped outside and looked around. A cloud of brown, black and red leaves swirled around the doorstep. The wind blew a strand of hair across her face. She moved it back over an ear. Then she noticed the back gate was slightly ajar. It had certainly not been left like that. It never was. It was always closed and the latch down. Then the penny dropped: while her attention had been taken talking to that man at the front door, somebody had been in the kitchen.
    She quickly came back into the house, closed the door and turned the key. She looked round the kitchen to see if anything had been taken.
    Her handbag had been on the table. It had gone. Her heart missed a beat. Her hand went up to her chest. She suddenly felt as if she had a frozen cannonball in the middle of her stomach. Her handbag had contained about a hundred pounds in cash, her credit cards, her mobile phone, several family photographs and items of no interest to anybody else but of great value to her.
    Then she had a thought. She rushed back up the hall to the front door. She unlocked it and opened it to see the rear of her new blue Ford Mondeo disappear up the drive and out into the road.
    The car key had been in the handbag.
    Her chest tightened. Her breathing accelerated. She promptly turned back into the house, picked up the phone in the hall, dialled 999.
    A constable asked a lot of questions about her and about the car, and required a description of the man, which she patiently gave to him in detail. Then he repeated all the information back to her to be sure that he had it all down correctly and that any unusual words were spelled correctly.
    She had just put the phone down when it rang out. She snatched it up. It was her husband phoning from his office in the centre of Bromersley, about a mile away. Before she had chance to tell him her news, he said, ‘I’ve been trying to reach you, Vera. My car has just been stolen. One of the girls saw a man simply walk up to it, unlock the door, start the engine and drive it out of my parking space. He must have had a key.’
    Her mouth fell open.
    The spare key to her husband’s silver Volkswagen Jetta had also been in her