The Power of One Read Online Free Page A

he’s a country bobby, probably never encountered anything more major than a stolen boat. He couldn’t handle this.’
    â€˜Then we need someone who can,’ Lydia told him. ‘And fast, Edward. They killed Paul, just like they threatened. They aren’t going to stop.’
    Mrs Simms padded quietly across the hall of the de Freitas’ house. At least they weren’t shouting any more, she thought, and this last month they’d seemed to do nothing but. What she’d taken for a happy marriage when she’d accepted the job was proving to be anything but if all the arguments were anything to go by. So different from when they’d first come. She wondered if it was the countryside that wasn’t suiting them. After all, townies didn’t always settle, did they, but today topped everything. A murder!
    She paused before knocking on the door to the Big Room as she always called it. Stuck her head around the door. ‘I’ll be off then?’
    â€˜Oh, God, is it that time already?’ Edward and Lydia stood so close together as to almost be touching but Margaret Simms could feel the gulf breeze blowing between them even from across the room. She opened the door wider and stepped inside, genuinely sorry for her employers.
    â€˜I’m really sorry to hear … you know. I mean, if there’s anything I can do? Folk round here tend to rally round in a crisis.’
    Lydia managed a smile. Edward looked as though he was about to choke.
    â€˜Thanks, Margaret. We really appreciate that, but we don’t know what’s going on at the moment. We just know that Paul is …’ She looked away, unable to continue.
    â€˜Dead,’ her husband said. ‘Paul is dead.’ He sounded so utterly desolate that Margaret Simms felt her own throat tighten and her eyes prick with tears.
    Quietly, she closed the door on their grief and let herself out, crossing the rear lawn and taking the cliff path home as she did on fine days when the walk was nice. Once out of sight of the house, she dug in her bag and found her mobile phone. Her sister, Chrissie, was on speed dial. ‘You’ll never guess,’ she began. ‘Oh, you’ve heard? No, I had it switched off at the house, didn’t seem right, gossiping about it when I was there. Shot, they said. Blood everywhere. Yes, a shoot-out, on
his
boat in our little bay. Oh, in bits they are.’ She glanced back towards the house and paused, frowning, certain just for a moment that she’d seen someone, a tall man, standing close to the rear gate, then, when she looked again, the man was gone.
    â€˜Oh, you’re back. Everybody, Rina’s back.’ Bethany greeted Rina with such effusiveness she might have been away for weeks and not just a few hours.
    â€˜Matthew’s cooking lamb for dinner.’
    â€˜Smell’s good,’ Rina approved. ‘What do you have there, Tim?’
    The dark-haired man looked up from the papers and miscellaneous pieces of wood and glass spread across the kitchen table.
    â€˜It’s a new illusion,’ Bethany announced, clasping her hands joyfully together. ‘It arrived by special delivery about an hour ago.’
    Rina glanced at the title on the typewritten sheet. ‘Pepper’s Ghost. Oh, if I remember right, that’s quite an old illusion, isn’t it, Tim?’
    â€˜First performed by Mr J. H. Pepper on Christmas Eve in 1862. I got dad to make up a model so I could demonstrate the effect to Blake. They’re keen to make it happen, but I don’t think Blake and Lilly quite get how it works.’
    Rina examined the little model. Tim’s father was an artist and set designer and the model was based on measurements and photographs Tim had sent him of the newly restored art deco stage at the Palisades Hotel. Tim, magician and mentalist extraordinaire, worked there four nights a week and the new owners, Blake and Lilly, were keen to