The Devil's Chair by Priscilla Masters Read Free Book Online

stuff?’ asked Talith.
    Mansfield shook his head, terrier-like. ‘Crap,’ he said sharply. ‘Crap like I’d made a pass at her.’ He looked up, mischief in his eyes. ‘I didn’t fancy her,’ he said simply. ‘It was all in her imagination.’
    And both Talith and Tinsley made a mental note.
That’s another call we have to make.
    â€˜Where does Tracy work?’ Tinsley realized this was an angle of Tracy Walsh’s life they had not explored.
    â€˜At the Long Mynd Hotel. She does a bit of cleaning and sometimes waits in their restaurant.’
    Tinsley felt that some response was called for. ‘Right.’
    After a polite pause Neil continued, his voice changing now to become self-pitying and indulgent: ‘I didn’t imagine any of this would happen, believe me. I just thought that Trace would see some sense after all. I thought she was just being dramatic, that she was just tryin’ to frighten me and would drive round the block and come back again, tail between her legs, little Daisy in her arms.’ He folded his arms. ‘I thought she was calling my bluff.’
    Lara Tinsley looked closely at him. Was there was something insincere – something not quite right not only about his words but in the way he was telling the story? As though they worked independently of his brain, Mansfield’s fingers fumbled across the sofa and found the doll. They closed around the soft neck, squeezing the pliable face until the features distorted and the glass eyes bulged. As if he was short-sighted he moved the doll nearer to his face and stared at it as though he had never quite focused on it before. An expression of grief saddened his face but there was anger too as he breathed in, long and slow, as though he could divine the whereabouts of the child merely by breathing in the air that surrounded her doll. It was a form of divining that felt almost pagan. He may not have been her father, but Neil obviously cared very much about little Daisy.
    His eyes also on the doll, Talith spoke. ‘Did you in any way blame Daisy for coming between you and Tracy? For preventing you having a social life?’
    Mansfield screwed up his face. ‘No,’ he said initially, before adding, ‘it isn’t her fault. She is just a little girl.’
    Tinsley and Talith exchanged yet another glance.
    Talith pressed on. ‘Tell me a bit more about your relationship with little Daisy.’ Mansfield didn’t answer straight away but, as though he was invoking the child herself, he caressed the doll in the crook of the sofa, giving it a sentimental, almost maternal glance before crossing the room to the mantelpiece and picking up a framed black and white photograph in an ornate silver frame. A little girl peeped shyly around a door. Pretty little milk teeth, curly dark hair. Big, big eyes. It was an artistic photograph.
    â€˜A friend took that,’ Mansfield said proudly. ‘Thought she was pretty enough to be a model.’
    â€˜Do you mind if we keep this?’ Tinsley asked. ‘We’ll let you have it back, of course, when we’ve taken a copy.’
    Mansfield looked reluctant but he handed it over. ‘You asked about the relationship between me and little Daisy?’ He turned around to face them. ‘It’s good,’ he said, returning to the sofa. ‘She’s a sweet little thing and it isn’t as though I’d come between her and her real dad. He’d gone when she was just a few months old. She’s never even known him. He’d never been interested in her. I’m the only dad she’s really had.’
    He looked suddenly agitated. ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ he appealed. ‘Whether to stay here in case Daisy turns up or to go the hospital and see Tracy.’
    â€˜I think you should go to the hospital,’ Lara Tinsley said gently, not wanting to point out the patently obvious