Geek Fantasy Novel by E. Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

however … Ralph withered beneath her solicitousness. She “couldn’t be more fascinated” by Ralph’s two little cats at home. She was “amazed” that he had been president of the Technology Awareness Club in high school. She found it “so very charming” that Ralph had never before left the United States, and that he loved his middle-class schoolteacher parents. (“It’s
charming
of you, it just is, you darling!”) He was suddenly lost, though, when in one breath she went from being “totally delighted” that Ralph liked his new quarters to crossly demanding that “all you children ignore that gunshot from a few minutes ago.”
    The children, as will do any children addressed in the plural, stared back balefully.
    “Really, honey,” Gert continued, “those kinds of things aren’t nice to think about. Say something pleasant, Beatrice. Pleasant is pretty.”
    “My mum just got buried, Gertrude.”
    “Yes, of course, so she did. Let’s get on with dinner. Where
is
dinner?”
    After the meal, the Battersby children convened on the patio to strategize. Ralph and Cecil paced the floor while Beatrice reclined in a splendid pose on a chaise and Daphne worked out her nerves by swinging from an eave.
    “Okay, Daph, that’s enough,” Cecil said, holding up his arms until Daphne dropped into them.
    “So have you guys figured it all out?” Daphne asked, for a moment only white tights and crinoline underskirt as she struggled to the ground.
    “We’re pretty sure it was a gunshot,” Beatrice reported.
    “It’s not even hunting season, is it?” Cecil asked.
    “It’s always hunting season,” Beatrice said.
“Something’s
sure to be getting killed.”
    “Why don’t we ask Mummy and Daddy about it again, now that they’re not all fussy because servants are around?” Daphne asked.
    “No chance,” Cecil said.
    “Thousands of years of cultivated civilization, and ignorance is still the best way we British have come up with for dealing with problems,” Beatrice said to Ralph, a trifle affectedly. She squinted. “But you know, that’s probably not exclusively British at all, is it?”
    “I don’t think so,” Ralph said. “Haven’t really thought about it.”
    “Tell us more about
America,
Mr. Ralph,” Beatrice said, throwing her pitch ridiculously low.
    “Bea! Someone’s probably been
shot,
and you’re making boring talk!” Daphne squealed.
    Cecil clapped his hands on Daphne’s shoulders. “I’m sure no one’s been shot, Daph. A bird, somewhere.” He winked over her shoulder. “But it’s certainly worth investigating, to make sure.”
    “I’ll take that way, and you take that way!” Daphne said, pointing in random directions.
    “Sure, whatever. You coming?” Cecil asked Ralph.
    “Oh, I don’t know,” Ralph said, eyeing the chaise next to Beatrice.
    “You should go with them,” Beatrice said. “This is the only adventure you’re going to get all summer.”
    “Don’t you think,” Ralph said, “that if a firearm has been set off, it’s not wise for us to wander off into the countryside?”
    “Ralph,” Beatrice said, “what are you so uncomfortable about? We’re in the country — there’s always a grouse to be shot somewhere around here. Ifthere was anyone dangerous around, those guards would have stopped them. Don’t be so wimpy.”
    And so he went. Soon enough, he was enjoying his search of the twilit grounds. When he returned to Beatrice twenty minutes later, he found Cecil and Daphne already back and lazing about the patio. None of them had turned up anything, not a single clue.
    “A hunter’s bullet,” Beatrice concluded. “Death of the usual variety, nothing to worry about.”
    Indeed, Ralph wouldn’t turn up a single clue about that night, about the gunshot or the Battersby parents’ reluctance to discuss it or the guards or even the funeral, for a little over a week. In the meantime he spent a large part of his days on the phone with British Telecom,