The Convenience of Lies Read Online Free

the feng shui of the old house itself. Hester knew intuitively Lexie was trouble. Yet McCall was under her malign spell. That much was obvious. Too bad for him there were none so blind as those who will not see.
    Hester paused to deadhead one of the old English roses in the bed by the kitchen window. They were fading now but a few still managed to raise their defiant colours like the flags of a routed army.
    *
    ‘Please don’t tell me you’re sleeping with that dumpy old matron,’ Lexie said.
    ‘She keeps house while I’m away. I like her. She has insight and real spirit.’
    ‘If you say so. Now listen, you saw me filming in Oxford. Why didn’t you wait?’
    ‘I could ask why you didn’t wait for me all those years ago.’
    ‘Yes, I suppose you could… but what would be the point?’
    McCall studied the faced he’d so adored. She was right, there wasn’t any point. Whatever she answered would change nothing.
    ‘Then tell me why you’re here.’
    ‘Because I need your help. You’re still a reporter, aren’t you?’
    ‘In theory.’
    ‘Well, something awful’s happened in my family and it’s like it’s all become mixed up with the script for the “Inspector Morse” I’ve just done.’
    ‘I don’t understand. Acting is entertainment, not real life… remember?’
    ‘Sure, but a kid disappears in Morse and it turns out she’s been murdered and you’ll never believe it but my sister’s little girl has just vanished, too.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that but it doesn’t mean she’s been murdered.’
    ‘No, but I’ve got this terrible premonition that something wicked’s happened to her.’
    ‘That’s just your vivid imagination, Lexie.’
    ‘You’re not taking me seriously. I’ve got this terrible feeling. I’m worried sick.’
    McCall knew how Lexie could make a production out of nothing but thought it best not to remind her.
    ‘I take it the police are involved.’
    ‘Yes, they’re out looking for her.’
    ‘Then I don’t see what I can do to help.’
    ‘Let me see if I can change your mind,’ Lexie said. ‘But can we get out of this pollen stuff first? It’s really getting to me.’
    He took her through the drawing room, lined with paintings of whiskery old gents who’d been lawyers and adventurers, soldiers and diplomats but now mouldered in the vaults of St Mary and All Angels on the far side of Garth Woods.
    From the hallway beyond, McCall led her up a staircase fashioned from chestnut and wide enough to take a horse. The wallpaper was 1920s Chinoiserie - pagodas and rare birds amid cherry blossom. Here and there, the dimly silvered paper was slightly foxed through where paintings had once hung.
    ‘I’d forgotten how spooky this old place is.’
    McCall didn’t answer but carried on down a landing of oak planks polished smooth by the efforts of maids long gone and the daily passage of those they’d served. They stopped at the last door.
    ‘I work in here,’ McCall said. ‘It’s quiet and out of the way.’
    It was hardly more than a servant’s chamber with an iron bedstead, a kitchen chair and an old pine table, empty but for an electric typewriter and a wire tray heaped with papers and press cuttings. Lexie looked about her, smiling, slowly shaking her head.
    ‘This little room reminds me of Staithe End, Mac… the cottage, Norfolk, remember?’
    ‘How could I not?’
    ‘Happy times… if only we’d known it. Such happy times.’
    ‘For a while, I guess.’
    ‘You were my Byron, my skinny boy, always so intense. You still look consumptive.’
    ‘And the golden curls aren’t what they were.’
    ‘Life can be a bit of a bastard, can’t it?’
    Lexie looked at him almost sadly but with great fondness and held out her hands.
    ‘Come on, Mac. We’re both a little older… what we had is still ours, still precious.’
    She pressed him to her and he sensed her breasts against the crib of his chest. They kissed in silence. If neither spoke, the spell could not