Echoes of Lies Read Online Free

wouldn’t take their money. But there was something in the photograph that just might help. She didn’t want to draw attention to it: too much honesty could cost her three thousand pounds. She’d get the magnifying glass out after the client had left.
    She lifted a pen. “I’ll need your name and address.”
    The woman’s eyes flared. “Is that necessary? I’ll be paying cash.”
    â€œI’m sorry, it is necessary. But don’t worry, I really will treat the matter with absolute confidence.”
    â€œOh, very well. Mrs” - she emphasised the word just slightly - “Selma Doyle, 57 River Drive, Dimmock.”
    â€œYou won’t want me calling you,” said Brodie. “Call me here tomorrow afternoon. I should be able to tell you then if I can help.”

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    â€œI take it you could,” said Jack Deacon.
    â€œOh yes,” said Brodie Farrell bitterly. “Helpful is my middle name.”
    â€œHow? With just a bad photograph?”
    â€œI was right,” said Brodie, “there was something else in the picture. When I put it under a magnifying glass I could see what it was.”
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    It was a telescope. Quite a big telescope: as tall as the man, with an aperture as broad as his fist.
    Brodie faxed a copy of the photograph to the Astronomical Association in London. Though it was a bad picture to start with and would be worse by the time they saw it, they might still be able to identify the subject.
    And so they did. “Your photograph shows a 100-millimetre skeleton reflector of Newtonian design, apparently home-made. Suggests the owner is a serious amateur. This is about the largest telescope that would be conveniently portable: anything bigger would be on a permanent mounting.”
    So the man she sought, the man who wasn’t Charles Merrick, was serious about astronomy. He would be known in places where star-gazers met.
    The “Yearbook of Astronomy” alerted her to three forthcoming meetings within a thirty mile radius of Dimmock. Brodie took the grainy picture along to the first, a lecture in Eastbourne that evening.
    There she learned his name. Daniel Hood wasn’t present but people who recognised him were. Or rather, people who recognised the telescope. Faces seemed to be just so much wallpaper to them, but a 100-mm skeleton Newtonian reflector, well, you don’t see one of those every day.
    â€œWhere would I find him?” she asked.
    They weren’t sure. They only ever saw him at gatherings like this. They supposed he had a home and a job somewhere, but those were
things that took place in the daylight and astronomers mostly come out at night.
    Armed now with a name, she trawled the membership lists of astronomical societies across southern England until she found him. And where she found him was only quarter of a mile from where she was sitting: a flat converted from a netting loft on Dimmock’s shingle shore.
    She was less than honest with the club secretary. She claimed they were cousins, she’d promised to look him up when she moved to the area only she’d lost his address. “What does he look like? I’d hate to fling myself at the wrong Daniel Hood.”
    The secretary thought for a moment. “Mid twenties, small, fair. Terrible eyesight, which is a major problem to an astronomer. You need your glasses to find what you want to observe, then you take them off to use the eyepiece. But the finderscope isn’t lined up, so you put them back on to adjust it. Then you take them off to look through the telescope again. And it’s dark, you see, so if you put them down you have to remember where …”
    â€œOh yes,” said Brodie with certainty, “that’s cousin Dan.” The bottle-bottom glasses had been clear even on that photograph.
    A scant twenty-four hours had passed. When Mrs Doyle phoned immediately after lunch Brodie was able to pass on the