Child's Play by Reginald Hill Read Free Book Online

Yorkshire accent, and looked like a twelve-year-old. But when old ladies of great wealth pronounce, old lawyers of good sense take heed, and Lexie had been taken on and hidden away in the nethermost reaches among the storage cabinets and deed boxes so that she would not besmirch the Messrs Thackeray etcetera image.
That had been three years ago. Only a month after she joined the firm, old Mrs Huby had had her first stroke. Had it proved fatal, there was little doubt in Thackeray's mind that after a decent interval, little Lexie might well have been urged to seek a job more suited to her taste and talents.
But the three years that passed had seen a change, not so much in the girl herself who seemed almost indistinguishable from the odd little creature who had first arrived, but in Thackeray's conception of her. Observation and report had slowly convinced him there was genuine intelligence here. Checking back, he had seen that her school references all said she could have stayed on after O-levels, but family pressure had been brought to bear. That awful man Huby! Thackeray shuddered every time he thought of him. It was partly as an anti-Huby gesture, partly because he liked to toss the occasional cat among the complacent office pigeons, but mainly on the basis of true desert that he had elevated this little sparrow to Miss Dickinson's perch.
'Lexie, I won't deny your aunt's influence helped you get the job, but it's your own abilities that will keep you in it,' he said rather tartly. 'Now, what do you think of these letters?'
'Well, they'd all like the money sooner rather than later, but from the sound of the letter and from him coming all this way to see you, this Mr Goodenough at PAWS is the one who'll do something about it.'
'Excellent. Yes, even before he telephoned, I guessed that Mr Andrew Goodenough was going to be the focus of action.'
    'You don't seem bothered, Mr Eden,' said Lexie in a puzzled voice.
    'Bothered! I'm delighted, Lexie. Merely administering the estate until 2015 would be very dull. Not unprofitable, of course, but dull. But if we have to act on behalf of the estate against an attempt to overturn the will, that could be both lively and extremely profitable. Instant money too, always welcome. So, bring on the lawsuits I say!'
    He sat back, pleased at being able to show this naive young thing what a sharp and worldly fellow he really was.
    The naive young thing, far from looking impressed, was glancing at her watch.
    'Am I keeping you from something, Lexie?' he said sharply.
    'Oh no. I mean, I'm sorry, Mr Eden, it's just that I've got an appointment in my lunch-hour and it's nearly half past twelve . . .'
    She looked so distressed, his sternness dissolved instantly.
    'Then you must run along,' he said.
    She left, darting from the room with the swiftness of a wren. An appointment? Hairdresser perhaps, though that close crop of indeterminately brown straight hair didn't look as if it owed much to the coiffeur's art. Dentist, then. Or boyfriend? Alas, least likely of all, he suspected. Poor little Lexie. He could see her growing old in the service of Messrs Thackeray etcetera. He must do what he could for her. Getting her out of the Old Mill Inn and away from the influence of that awful father of hers would be the first step. But how to manage it?
    He sat quietly, applying his mind to the task. It was a good mind and it enjoyed the business of manipulating other people's destinies.
    He heard the building emptying. His nephew and junior partner, Dunstan Thackeray, stuck his head round the door.
'Coming to the Gents', Uncle Eden?' he asked.
This was not the odd inquiry it sounded. The Gents was the familiar abbreviation of The Borough Club For Professional Gentlemen, the prestigious Victorian institution which had had a Thackeray on its founding committee and of which Eden was the president-elect. As a liberal modernist, he deplored and detested it. As a senior partner in Messrs Thackeray etcetera he had to keep