The Aylesford Skull Read Online Free Page A

brick, which scraped past beneath him as he was swept downward in the flood, pulled from the grip of the man who was endeavoring to drown him. He lurched upward, gasping in a breath of air and twisting around, getting his feet under him so that he managed to half stand up. Immediately he was struck hard on the right cheek with something heavy and flat – the blade of a shovel? – and he reeled back against the wall of the tunnel, his cheek throbbing with pain, holding out his hands to keep the blade away from his face, hoping that his assailant was equally blind and that it had been a lucky blow.
    He saw that the distant lantern bobbed toward him now – almost certainly a second assailant, coming at a run to finish him off. The word “imbecile” was no doubt writ large on his own face where the shovel had struck him. Then he realized that he was looking upriver and not down – that the lantern was coming down from above – two lanterns, in fact, come to rescue him. He heard his assailant’s splashing footfalls receding down the tunnel. There was no lantern to be seen downstream at all now, no sound of turning axles, nothing but dark silence.

TWO
    HOME AT LAST
    “Y ou say that you followed these men into the darkness alone, Langdon?” Alice asked.
    “Not men, do you see. One man.”
    “But you said that you believed one to be pushing a cart with a lantern on it while the other one lurked behind to waylay you. I count two.”
    “Lurked, as you so accurately put it. I had no idea of anyone lurking, not until he sprang out at me.” St. Ives helped himself to a second slice of cold beef and kidney pie and poured more ale from the pitcher on the breadboard. Moonlight shone through the bullseye glass in the kitchen window, casting circular shadows on the wall behind him.
    “Lurkers are clever that way,” she said. “They’ve been schooled in the art of lurking. That’s why one doesn’t wade into dark tunnels to seek them out. You’ve still got black grit along the edge of the wound.” She dipped a cloth in a basin of water and wiped gingerly at the dried blood.
    The wind had come up outside, and the night beyond the wall was alive with moaning and creaking. It had been a hellish trip out from London – a three-hour wait outside Gravesend for repairs to be made to the tracks, and with every hour that passed St. Ives had regretted not having taken a coach. Walking would have made considerably more sense than waiting, or at least wouldn’t have been so wretchedly frustrating. Despite the noise of the wind, Alice had opened the front door the moment she heard him step up onto the veranda half an hour ago. She had been up waiting for him, perhaps watching from the bedroom window upstairs.
    “You’re quite fortunate that you were turning away from him,” she said, peering closely at his face. “He might easily have disfigured you. You’ll have an untidy scar.”
    Her dark hair was tousled from sleep, giving her a slightly wild air, and she wore a silk robe that made her appear... lithe, perhaps. She was tall, nearly six feet, and under certain circumstances could appear to be quite formidable – at the present moment, in fact – largely because of her eyes, which had the keenness of those of a predatory bird, and were intensely beautiful. It seemed to him now that he had been away a foolishly long time, and he wondered what she was wearing beneath the robe.
    “What I feel most,” he said, shifting the subject into a safer realm, “is the death of the book thief. I didn’t want that. I’m certain that I behaved as a complete flat throughout. The escapade seems to me too contrived, elaborately choreographed up until the point of the man’s death, which was a grotesque accident.”
    “But it’s done now, if I follow your story correctly.”
    “Done and done, as was I – done to a turn.”
    “Indeed. First by this mysterious book thief, and then by yourself, and then by a man with a coal