Maggie Bright by Tracy Groot Read Free Book Online Page A

you like. The price is seven pounds a week, and that includes breakfast. It isn’t cheap, but it’s . . . unique and idyllic. Who wouldn’t want to stay there?”
    She was trembling and hoped it didn’t show.
    “Captain John Elliott owns the boatyard. He keeps an eye on my boat, and on me. He is very fond of me because of my sailing dream, and has become my . . . sworn protector. If you try anything he will kill you. Mrs. Iris Shrewsbury is a current paying tenant, and is skilled at swinging kettles and shrieking. There. That is all of it.”
    “What’s her name?”
    She knew instantly what he meant, wondered at it.
    “ Maggie Bright .”
    He gave a very strange smile, one of bitter amusement and something else. She couldn’t tell what, and didn’t know if she couldn’t read him because he was an American or because he was a stranger. He certainly looked very uncomfortable.
    In fact, he looked miserable.
    Just as she was ready to turn and run as fast as she could, he said, “I ain’t stayin’ nowhere.”
    “Well   —well, what a providential coincidence,” Clare said idiotically, because she could think of nothing else. “You do look awfully tired.” He looked very sad, too, as woefully wretched as had the BV.“Some tea would be just the thing. Shall we find a place to grab a pot, and you can think it over?”
    He nodded, and she led him away.

    Inside the police station, the sergeant behind the desk suddenly remembered. He held up a hand to the next in the queue, and picked up the telephone. He sorted through the clutter on his desk, and found the card. William Percy. Youngish to be a Scotland Yard detective.
    “Yes, this is Blake. Westminster Station. William Percy, please. Thank you. Yes, Blake here   —you wanted to me to ring up if anyone visited the American priest? Yes, he just left. His name is Murray Vance. Yes, I’m quite sure. Yes, Vance, that’s the name. Well, I’m looking right at his signature. No, I haven’t a clue. Hang on   —there’s no call for that! Well, it wasn’t a long visit, you wouldn’t have had time to get here, would you? No, I don’t have that kind of manpower, that’s your job, as you frequently tell us. Good day .” He replaced the receiver, muttering, “Snotty . . . bloody . . .” Then he said brightly, “Next?”

THE TOPIC, AND HE STARTED IT, was why on earth did England go to war   —Clare nearly spat tea. Oh, I don’t know   —has to do with a fellow named Hitler and his roving gang of thugs who thought Europe belonged to them and they blew things up and killed people to get it. Nothing much.
    Honestly!
    Murray Vance was his name. After the waiter had taken their order for corned beef stew, bread, and tea, Clare had exclaimed in a nervous rush, “Well, isn’t it interesting! The man who owned my boat was a Vance. But he was British, you see. Died in January. Heart attack I’m told. Terrible shame for him. Terrible inadvertent good fortune for me. Wait until you see her. She will absolutely break your heart.”
    The subject meandered from Britain’s declaration of war in September of ’39, to the long “phony” war as the papers called it,to the fall of Denmark just a month ago, and all the devastation since   —Norway fell, and Holland only last week, and now Belgium and France were under siege. Not so phony after all.
    Cursed decorum! She wanted to push past all this opening nonsense and get to the Burglar Vicar and whatever business brought him to England.
    Clare sipped her tea and tried to think of things to say while he ate. She did harbor a particular fury over what happened to Norway.
    “I saw a picture, once. A collection of peaceful Norwegian sheep farmers in a lovely mountains-and-lakes setting. It’s absolutely awful, what’s happened. The Norwegians were neutral. It somehow made them more innocent than the Poles. It was the suddenness, I suppose, this ransacking ambush of Hitler’s. The suddenness seemed