The Case of the Missing Bronte Read Online Free Page B

only been back home a week.’
    â€˜Aunt Kate said, as we were leaving, that we could never come too often for her.’
    â€˜I remember,’ I said. ‘Because I repressed with difficulty the impulse to say that we could never come too seldom for me.’
    â€˜You are a swine, Perry. If Daniel and I go up there it will be an immense saving in phone bills for you. And youcould drop by at the weekend. Spend the odd night.’
    I raised my eyebrows and said no more, trusting that Jan would not have the gall to ring Harpenden and suggest it. I just threw a few basic clothes into a travelling bag, and took a taxi to King’s Cross to wait for the next train to Milltown. It was a pleasant trip up, marred only by the dreadful meal in the restaurant car (three items on the menu, two of them off — I really don’t know how they have the hide . . .). I was met at the station and driven to police headquarters, where I was filled in by Detective-Inspector Capper, the gentle, rather harassed chap to whom I had talked on the phone.
    â€˜This is the picture, as far as we have it,’ he said, his forehead creased, a sigh in his voice that suggested that the visit of the Prime Minister was the final straw that might break the camel’s back of his professional equilibrium. ‘The cottage was broken into. Set well back from the road, no near neighbours, child’s play. All the doors were secure enough, but as usual the windows were easy as winking.’
    â€˜Nothing an amateur couldn’t manage?’
    â€˜Right. Miss Wing had been down to the one pub in the village, where I gather she went three or four nights a week, just for an hour or so. It was not quite dark when she left there. We presume that when she got back to the cottage she surprised the burglar, intruder, whatever he was, and he hit out — but very savagely.’
    â€˜Poor old thing,’ I said. ‘She seemed capable, but not the sort who’d hurt a fly. Anything interesting in her background?’
    â€˜Not really. For the last thirty years she had been a mistress at Broadlands — private girls’ school near Harrogate. Bit snobby, but a thoroughly good school, sensible people in charge.’
    â€˜Clean slate there, naturally?’
    â€˜Oh, of course. She’d have been out on her little pinkear if not. They’re very concerned and shocked, naturally. According to them Miss Wing was totally upright, responsible, common-sensical. Probably was. We’ve no reason to think otherwise.’
    â€˜That was certainly the impression she made on my wife and me,’ I said.
    â€˜Good. Well, she inherited a lot of stuff from a friend and distant relation, who died in January.’
    â€˜Rose Something-or-other.’
    â€˜Rose Carbury. Books, records, personal mementoes — and apparently this mass of papers. I presume she told you something about that, did she? Did she say that this manuscript, if it existed, was part of this inheritance?’
    â€˜Yes, she did. And certainly one page of it existed, because she showed it to us. It looked perfectly authentic — I couldn’t go further than that.’
    â€˜Good. It’s not very likely she’d take up forging in her twilight years, is it? But it’s obviously something we have to keep in mind. Now, the fact is that we know that after she had talked to you, she dropped hints to other people. Nothing much, but she certainly did talk about the thing — in the pub, and so on. Silly woman.’
    â€˜As it turned out,’ I conceded. ‘And I certainly warned her about keeping something potentially valuable in her cottage. But she could hardly have been expecting something like this to happen — nobody would. And she wouldn’t, I suspect, have realized its value herself. When she gave these hints, did she say what she thought it might be?’
    â€˜She may have. So far all I’ve heard is