Murder Most Merry Read Online Free Page B

went back out to his car for his suitcase. The wind had ratcheted up its howl by several notches and was chasing streamers of snow down the road and across the drifts. But that was all right. He wasn’t going anywhere. As he started back up the walk someone inside the house switched off the light on the bed-and-breakfast sign.
    Sorley came out of his room pleased with his luck. Here he was settled in for the night with a roof over his head and a hot meal and a warm bed in the bargain. Suddenly Sorley felt eyes watching him, a sensation as strong as a torch on the nape of his neck. But when he looked back over his shoulder the hall was empty. Or had something tiny just disappeared behind the lowboy against the wall? Frowning, he turned his head around. As he did he caught the glimpse of a scurry, not the thing itself, but the turbulence of air left in the wake of some small creature vanishing down the stairs ahead of him. A mouse, perhaps. Or. if they were seagoing people, maybe the Kays kept rats. Sorley made a face. Then, shaking his head at his overheated imagination, he went downstairs.
    Mrs. Kay fed him at a dining room table of polished wood with a single place setting. “I’ve already eaten.” she explained. “I like my supper early. And Father. Mr. Kay. never takes anything before he goes to work. He’ll just heat his up in the microwave when he gets home.” The meal was baked finnan haddie. Creamed smoked haddock was a favorite Sorley had not seen for a long time. She served it with a half bottle of Alsatian Gewurtztraminer. There was Stilton cheese and a fresh pear for dessert. “Father hopes you’ll join him later in the study for an after-dinner drink,” said Mrs. Kay.
    The study was a book-lined room decorated once again with relics and artifacts of the sea. The light came from a small lamp on the desk by the door and the fire burning in the grate. A painting of a brigantine under sail in a gray sea hung above the mantel. Mr. Kay, a tall, thin man with a long, sallow, cleanshaven face, heavy white eyebrows, and patches of white hair around his ears, rose from one of two wing-backed chairs facing the fire. As he shook his guest’s hand he examined him and seemed pleased with what he saw. “Welcome, Mr. Sorley.” Here was a voice that might once have boomed in the teeth of a gale. “Come sit by the fire.”
    Before sitting, Sorley paused to admire a grouping of three small statues on the mantel. They were realistic representations of pirates, each with a tarred pigtail and a brace of pistols, all three as ugly as sin and none more than six inches tall. A peglegged pirate. Another with a hook for a hand. The third wore a black eye patch. Seeing his interest. Mr. Kay took peg leg down and displayed it in his palm. “Nicely done, are they not? I’m something of a collector in the buccaneer line. Most people’s family trees are hung about with horse thieves. Pirates swing from mine.” He set the statue back on the mantel. “And I’m not ashamed of it. With all this what-do-you-call-it going round, this historical revisionism, who knows what’s next? Take Christopher Columbus, eh? He started out a saint. Today he’s worse than a pirate. Some call him a devil. And Geronimo has gone from devil incarnate to the noble leader of his people. But here, Mr. Sorley. Forgive my running on. Sit down and join me in a hot grog.”
    Sorley’s host poured several fingers of a thick dark rum from a heavy green bottle by his foot, added water from the electric teakettle steaming on the hearth, urging as he passed him the glass, “Wrap yourself around that.”
    The drink was strong. It warmed Sorley’s body like the sun on a cold spring day. “Thank you.” he said. “And thanks for the excellent meal.”
    “Oh, we keep a good table, Mother and I. We live well. Not from the bed-and-breakfast business, I can tell you that. After all, we only open one night a year and accept only a single guest.”
    When Sorley