Dread Murder by Gwendoline Butler Read Free Book Online Page B

Willy nodded. ‘I might find out there. I am known.’
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    Charlie plodded through the town, down the hill from the Castle, deep in thought. He was angry. He had been made use of.
    He walked round the Market Place because he found comfort there. The small shops with their bow-fronted glass windows looked cheerful and prosperous. It was the sort of world he would like to live in, but he knew this was not going to happen. He would be caught and dragged back to London. To the blacking factory – unless he managed to run away again.
    He would escape again, of course, and again if necessary. He could not be tethered forever; he knew he was clever. He knew that inside him was a force that could not be beaten. But age came into it; at the moment he was too young to have the use of all his powers.

    He hated being a child.
    â€˜I’ve been done,’ he said with resentment as he walked on, back to the Theatre. ‘I was picked on to carry those bundles to the Castle to give them to the Major. I could go to the clink or be transported.’
    Miss Fairface saw him entering the Theatre. ‘You look glum.’
    â€˜Feel it.’
    The actress put her hand in the bag she carried. ‘Have a humbug.’
    Charlie accepted the sweetmeat which he popped at once into his mouth. Then he smiled. ‘Thank you.’
    She took one herself. ‘So, what’s up?’ He was silent. ‘Or anything more than usual?’ she asked with sympathy. She realised that he had had a lot to make him wretched; life was not being kind to him. And she knew how it felt; life often pinched her too.
    â€˜Women and children,’ she thought, ‘we get it worst.’ It was sex, really; she would stay with that disability on her shoulders all her life. But Charlie, if he lived that long, would end up triumphant – a successful man. She could see it in his face, hear it in his voice; he knew how to use words. But now something had happened to him which he couldn’t work out.
    â€˜This isn’t just a story,’ she thought. ‘He’s a lad that attracts stories.’ She was sensitive to such things; it was what made her a good actress. She knew she had it in her to make a great actress, but life had to offer you the opportunities.
    She looked in Charlie’s face; in another decade or so,
perhaps less, he would be the sort that no woman could resist. And he would certainly have a story to tell — more than one, if she was any judge.
    She was surprised that any lad so young could have such a perceptive stare.
    â€˜Charlie …’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Don’t you think you should go back to London? To your family?’
    â€˜If they want me.’ Charlie thought about his father; he might come looking for him, or had perhaps done so already …although it was more likely in another week or so. After all, he had only been missing from his workplace two weeks, and who was going to worry about that? Not the man who employed him, and only his father when he wanted to borrow some money off Charlie. ‘Always keep some money aside and in your pocket,’ his father had said when he got him the job in the blacking factory, not revealing that he wanted the pennies there so he could borrow them.
    â€˜Your mother?’ He could hear Miss Fairface’s voice hinting.
    His mother? She would weep when she heard he was lost. She had wept when she said ‘Goodbye’, yet she had told him how lucky he was and how much he would enjoy himself. No, he concluded on reflection, she would not be looking for him in a hurry.
    The actress stared at his face and thought that no boy his age ought to have that look in his eyes. Not that she knew for sure what his age was, and she wondered if he
knew; sometimes he seemed ageless.
    Then he smiled and the happy boy came back.
    Miss Fairface sighed with relief. ‘Got a job for you … A walk-on in the play