Shadows Fall Away Read Online Free Page B

I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask the bearded guys in the old-fashioned get ups.
    Wait. They were dressed the way I’d been. The girl was dressed similar to Agatha. They must be part of the costume party. “Where’s Agatha?”
    “Agatha?” the inspector asked. “You address your mother that way?”
    I laughed, regretting it instantly as pain lanced through my head. “Hardly. She’s my aunt. I traveled here to London with her. So are you guys with the convention, too?”
    “Convention?”
    Seeing the confused looks of the doctor and the skeptical one of the inspector, I touched my forehead and winced then leaned back against the table. “Look, I’m sure I’ll be okay in a bit. And if not, I’ll go to the emergency room. I don’t want to hold you up if you need to get back to the party.”
    “Party?”
    “The big Saturday night costumed gala…thing.”
    “Today is Monday,” Dr. Trambley informed me.
    My stomach lurched. “Monday? No…it…If these guys weren’t part of the convention, there was no good reason for them to be dressed in those old-fashioned suits. Unless they had some strange fetish.”
    The doctor checked my pulse. “Memory lapse is not unusual with a head injury,” he said with a clipped professional tone that also implied it wasn’t always the case. “Do you know the date?”
    “August sixth?”
    “Do you remember what happened?” The inspector moved closer.
    I knew I was on shaky-ass ground and decided the less said, the better.
    “Agatha insisted on taking a walk—”
    “In this weather? It’s not fit for man nor beast out there!” the inspector cut in.
    I nodded. “I told her it looked like rain but she’s a bit eccentric. Anyway, the lightning started and…” What had happened then? “That’s all I remember until the cop…and then some woman…a maid?”
    “And when was this?” the inspector asked.
    “Saturday. I thought it was Saturday.” Something’s not right. “But if today’s Monday…no, I couldn’t have been lying in the park the whole time.”
    “Indeed,” the inspector replied. “And you’ve no recollection of your activities since Saturday then?”
    “No.” My body trembled deep down inside. “One minute I went back to get Agatha’s shoe, and the next thing I remember is a bolt of lightning, then falling to the ground. That’s where the cop found me.”
    “As I said,” the doctor cut off the inspector’s line of questioning, “Memory loss is not uncommon. It also seems as if he’s suffering some form of shock that may have been induced by proximity to the lightning. His clothes do show signs of blackening. It’s remarkable he’s alive, actually.”
    The inspector seemed to accept this. Grudgingly. “Your man said something about him being a relative of mine?”
    Relative?
    I stared. I had a bad feeling on this and decided to go for Trusted Tactic # 2: try to sneak away. The most I could do was inch to a chair along the wall and sit down.
    The doctor took a letter from the top of his desk. “He had this in his pocket. Apparently from you to your sister in America.”
    They were discussing the letter I’d had as if it was a current event, even though it was over a hundred years old. Written by a man long dead! This was definitely crazy. “You’re Ian Fraser?” I blurted out, before I realized what was leaving my mouth.
    The inspector turned on me, dark eyes narrowed. “How did you come by this letter?”
    The shock made me woozier than the bump on my head. It couldn’t be! I wanted very much to disappear and I did. Sort of. I passed out.
    When I came to, I heard the doctor and the inspector talking, so I stayed as still on the exam table as I could.
    “…No money, no papers of any kind in his pockets. He had only the watch and letter,” the doctor said.
    There was a silence before the inspector answered. “He might very well be the nephew my sister warned me might turn up. But this nonsense of traveling with an Aunt