A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page A

she was a good reader, and before she came to Julia for this session she had been reading a book in which a character confessed to a fear of pursuit by pirates whose treasure he had unearthed. The story was vividly told and much of it remained in her memory. 'I want to be safe,' she said, quoting directly. 'I don't want them to get me, I don't want them to find me. Julia nodded, looked grave and said that was all for now as her father would he coming for her in a moment. Her father did come and he and Julia had a quiet talk in private, while Francine sat in the other room, watching a carefully selected children's video. After a few minutes he took her home in the car. She had been asked enough questions for one day, but he started asking her more. Did she like Julia? Was Julia helping her to feel happier? Was she lonely when he was away? 'I've got Flora,' she said. 'I do like Flora.' Off he went on a trip to Glasgow, Francine went to school and Flora came to the school gates to meet her at home-going time. 'You're not frightened of being outdoors, are you?' Flora said as they walked along. 'No. Why?' 'Daddy said you found being outside a bit scary,' said Flora. At home and in her room Francine took a book out of her bookshelf. It was a collection of Roald Dali stories which Flora had given her and which she had not yet read, but was now ready to attempt. Next to it was the video cassette container. She hadn't looked at that since she put it there over a year ago. Then she hadn't been able to read much, but now she could read anything - anything printed, that is. The big print on the coloured sheet inside the container, the bit that was like a book cover, of which, when she first found it, she had only been able to read 'to', she now saw said 'A Passage to India'. There was a picture, too, of a man in a turban and an old woman outside a cave. Francine opened the container, but there was no video cassette inside. The small plastic box was full of sheets of paper with writing on them. Not printing but joined-up writing. Francine looked carefully at it, but she couldn't read a word. Grown-ups could read writing, though she sometimes wondered how, and even they probably wouldn't need to much longer. Flora said no one wrote anything any more except shopping lists and notes to the milkman. Everything else was done on computers. But this person had written with a pen on the kind of paper that came in a pad from newsagents' shops and someone at the cottage had put the paper in this box and hidden it. Not herself, and somehow she knew it wasn't her father. So her mother must have taken the video cassette of A Passage to India out of its box, put those papers into it instead and placed the box in the hollow space under the floor of the wig cupboard. Francine made no further attempts to read the writing. She put the box back on the shelf where it had been before. There are people in this world with very good brains and astute minds who at the same time have no common sense whatever. Bad judges of character and situation, unable to take the long view, they are both very clever and very unwise. Richard Hill was one of them. He had murdered his wife and child. Not with a gun, not with malice aforethought and evil intent, but as he saw it, by his own thoughtless vanity. His pride in his own achievement had brought about their deaths. The Detective Chief Inspector in charge of the case had told him the man's motive and with that telling destroyed what peace of mind Richard had managed to achieve for himself. The crime committed against his wife had been drug-related and, most probably, the result of mistaken identity and dreadful coincidence. He, Richard, was called Dr Hill, though his doctorate was a D. Phil and his home was in Orchard Lane. Another Dr R. Hill, a doctor of medicine, of an Orchard Road some ten miles away, kept considerable sums of money in the house - black money, though the police didn't say that - paid him by certain