Touch and Go by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online

dropped to her side. She went on looking at Holme Fallow.
    â€œYes, it’s mine, but I’ve never lived there. I shall some day. I hate this house—don’t you?”
    â€œNo—why should I? Why do you hate it?”
    Lucilla gave a laugh which was not in the least like the schoolgirl giggle of a little while before. It had a dry, unmirthful sound.
    â€œOh, it’s a first-class house—central heating, hot and cold water in all the bedrooms, and every modern convenience, like the house-agents’ blurb always says. It doesn’t belong to me, thank goodness. It was my step-father’s, and the Guardians have taken it on from the nephew who came in for everything. He’s in India, so he doesn’t want it himself.”
    â€œWould you like to live at Holme Fallow?” said Sarah idly.
    Lucilla flushed and was silent. Then she said,
    â€œNobody’s lived there since the war. I was born there, and then—my great-grandfather died—and Mummy married my step-father—and Uncle Henry never came home.”
    â€œYou mean he was killed?”
    â€œNo, he wasn’t killed, but he never came home. He had shell-shock and he couldn’t keep still. He had to go on travelling all the time, and he never came home. He died about six months ago.” She had spoken in a low, expressionless voice. Suddenly it changed and came alive again. “Would you like to go over and see the house? They won’t let me go alone, because Aunt Marina’s an old fusty-fuss, but no one could object to my going with my chaperon.”
    â€œAm I a chaperon?” said Sarah laughing.
    â€œYou ought to know. You’re either a chaperon or a governess, and we might just as well get it quite dear at the very start that I’m not going to be governessed.” She shook back her hair and tilted an impudent head.
    Sarah laughed again.
    â€œI’m not really set on being a governess,” she said.
    â€œNo—you don’t look like one, thank goodness. I was going to make your life a hell on earth, but I’m calling it off for the present. We’ll go and look at Holme Fallow to-morrow and sleuth the burglar.”
    Sarah had more thoughts—very quick, disturbing ones. She hoped her voice was all right when she said,
    â€œWhat burglar?”
    Lucilla clutched her arm and swung it to and fro.
    â€œWhy, it was the day you were here. You know, when you came down to see the Guardians and nearly killed me. Whilst you were doing all that, someone was burgling Holme Fallow. You see, there’s a caretaker called Snagge, and he went out at six and he didn’t come back till eleven, because he’d been in to Ledlington to the pictures. And he didn’t notice anything that night, but next day he came up here all of a doodah and said the place had been burgled. There were damp footmarks up the steps to the side door, and in the passages, and all over the parquet, and a desk had been broken open and what not. Aunt Marina was in a most frightful fuss. A car had been driven right up to the house, which was pretty fair nerve, but I suppose they knew Snagge would be out. Everyone in the village knows that he and Mrs. Snagge go in to Ledlington on Thursday evenings. They’ve been doing it for years, so I expect the burglar knew. And the village policeman, who is a nice fat old grampus called Minnow, says he thinks it was a gang, because another car had been standing by the west drive and there were marks where petrol had been spilt.”
    Sarah breathed an inward “ Golly! ” Then she opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. The suspicions which had come to her when she first beheld the chimney-stacks of Holme Fallow were being most painfully confirmed. She had most undoubtedly seen the burglar at his burgling. But would it really be a good plan to say so? Would it really give her what you might call a good start with the Guardians? She had a horrid