The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon Read Free Book Online

staring wide-eyed during this outburst, laid down her spoon. “Do you know, I’m hoping the next course will be served soon. This boy is so sleepy his head is almost hitting the bowl. And yet he must eat, I don’t believe he’s had a proper meal since we left Toronto, and although you’ve tried with your soup, haven’t you, Edmund, mushrooms are not his favorite.”
    “I’m afraid we’re not used to fussy eaters,” said Mother with a nervous glance at Prudence.
    “Oh, now, it’s only that he’s never cared for soup.”
    “Canada must be a very profligate country, if small boys are allowed to dictate the menu,” observed Prudence.
    “He’s bound to like the fricassee,” said Mother. “Rose always manages to come up with something very tasty.”
    But I was never to discover what Edmund thought of Rose’s fricassee, because at that moment the final drama of that momentous day began to unfold. There was a commotion in the hall, the door burst open, Min’s red face appeared, full of self-importance, and I was summoned outside. There in our hall was Mr. Breen, of all people, hat in hands, eyes ablaze with excitement, though I noted that he wasn’t so preoccupied that his glance failed to take in Meredith’s trunk, the potted fern, or the half-dozen men’s umbrellas in the coat stand.
    “I’ve been called out,” he said in the casual tones he adopted when most agitated, “to Buckinghamshire where an old acquaintance of mine, an insurance clerk, has been arrested on suspicion of murder. You must come. Wolfe is out of town and I may need someone to take notes. Besides, you won’t get many other opportunities like this. On with your hat and off we go.”

Four

    I sat beside Breen in the cab , too stunned to do more than watch the familiar villas and terraces of Kilburn roll by. Though the sky was overcast, the streets were brightened by trees newly in full leaf. We stop-started past shuttered shop windows and locked yard gates, overtook omnibuses and horse-drawn carts, then ground to a halt behind a delivery lorry. On the pavements, a straggle of tradesmen and office clerks in crumpled suits and trilbies headed home. When we set off again at last, the horizon beyond the cab window began to expand, walls were replaced by fences, fences by hedgerows bordering lush suburban gardens, houses by farmland.
    The moment we had cleared London traffic, Breen opened his briefcase and worked through a mountain of mail accumulated during his holiday, filing the contents into different categories to be examined the next day by Miss Drake, who would cut out and save every square inch of blank paper; the rest she would consign either to the stove or to the buff folders of clients’ papers.
    But despite the intensity with which Breen seemed to peruse each document, I sensed he was so fired up that if we had to stop at another crossroad he would surely leap from the cab and run ahead to let other traffic know that this was an emergency, we were in a rush. It seemed to me I could smell the Highlands on him, a whiff of heather and soft rain that clung to his wiry hair and the fibers of his clothes. I, on the other hand, was feeling ever more displaced, unable to comprehend how I had been wrenched suddenly from the dining room at Clivedon Hall Gardens to the inside of a cab with Mr. Breen, and still reeling from the shock of seeing my dead brother’s mistress and child eating soup in our dining room.
    “Did you have a pleasant holiday, Mr. Breen?” I asked, in some vague hope that if I observed the niceties, the evening might not slip even further out of control.
    His head snapped up. “ Pleasant . What kind of a tepid word is pleasant ? But yes, I had a good holiday, thank you. I walked, I strode out. I breathed pure air. You should try it sometime.” He addressed me, as he often addressed a bench, with biting irony. I thought that he must be referring obliquely to the crowded hall at Clivedon Hall Gardens.
    Yet, despite