BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

“Well, Charlie told Mouse that he knew something about stolen antiquities, that this Donovan was involved. Charlie had, I suspect, also figured out what game this Thomas Thompson was playing and had almost certainly worked out that Thomas Thompson and Richards were one and the same person. I figure he went to Richards’ place, confronted him, maybe. Stole the brooch but for whatever reason hid it in the chantry.”

“Well, you have it now,” Ethan said quietly. “Get some sleep. You’ve got to conserve your strength for seeing your boss tomorrow.”

Down to earth with a crash, Rozlyn thought. “Yes, that is going to be fun,” she said.

CHAPTER 40

Rozlyn woke mid-afternoon the following day. She felt better, oddly refreshed and clear headed. She showered and then, dressed in the now clean clothes, went downstairs taking the brooch with her.

Ethan had heard her moving about and made tea. He smiled warmly as Rozlyn entered the room and indicated a chair beside the fire. Cassie was curled up on the other side, reading Alice Through the Looking Glass, her pretty face creased by a frown as she concentrated. She glanced up at Rozlyn, grinned at her, then went back to her book.

“I should say thanks,” Rozlyn told Ethan. “I’m embarrassed. I turn up here at some ungodly hour and you take me in and then I bring trouble to your door. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Ethan handed her a mug of tea. It was hot and strong and slightly sweet when Rozlyn sipped at it. It tasted like nectar.

“You’re looking better,” Ethan told her, “and as for looking after you, what else should I do? Anyway, my belief is that these things happen for a reason. Part of the interconnectedness of life. For you to come walking through my door was not without its purpose.”

“The Web of Wyrd,” Rozlyn laughed. “You read to me about that. No one’s read to me since I was a little kid.”

“Ah, well I thought it might be appropriate under the circumstances,” Ethan said.

Cassie looked up, bright blue eyes gleaming with interest. “Did you read Kendryk’s letters to her?”

Ethan nodded. “Some of them. Would you get them for me please, Cassie? I left them in my room, on the dresser.”

Cassie leapt to her feet and trotted off up the stairs. Rozlyn watched her, wondering and saddened at this woman with the body language of a child. “Who’s Kendryk?” she asked. “And,” taking the brooch from her pocket, “what the hell is this?”

Ethan picked it up and weighed the object thoughtfully in his hand. “In nineteen twenty-two my father was staying at what is now Mark Richards’ place. It was then called Albermy and belonged to a man called . . .”

“Frederick Greer. A banker of some sort. I read the book you published. Donovan Baker wrote the foreword.”

“Oh. You found that, did you?” Ethan nodded thoughtfully. “In those days we were still . . . we’ll I’d never have said we were friends, but we rubbed along well enough. Both experts in the same field, though I was already retired of course but it was inevitable we should work together from time to time, I suppose. Anyway, the quickest way to give you the story, is if you let me tell it from the start.”

Cassie returned, carrying a polished wooden box. Ethan took it from her and sat it, closed, on the floor at his feet.

“In nineteen twenty-two, my parents were house guests and, if you read the book, you’ll know that a so-called excavation took place one Sunday afternoon in the middle of July.”

“A treasure hunt, Donovan called it.”

“And a treasure hunt it was. Imagine it, ladies in their silks and gentlemen in waistcoats and shirt sleeves wielding shovels and spades borrowed from the outdoor staff, digging away there in the ruins. There was more of it then, the chantry I mean. A wall fell not long after and another section was removed as a precaution. The stone went into building a rockery in the 1950s, when that sort of thing became something of a fad and I’ve no doubt close inspection of the rest of the estate would reveal pillars and cornices recycled as birdbath stands or some such.”

“I didn’t think they found anything?” Rozlyn said.

Ethan smiled. “My father was an amateur historian. He was also interested in what was then the developing science of archaeology. Techniques were still primitive, by today’s standards, but some albeit patchy methodology was starting to be applied and my father was an avid reader about such stuff. It was his influence, I suppose, that led me to where I am now. His and my mother’s rather unusual skills.”

“Unusual?”

Ethan hesitated, but Cassie giggled. “She could see things like Ethan does,” she said. “Ethan says you can too, but you don’t like to do it yet.”

“See things? You mean she was psychic or something?” Rozlyn’s laugh was derisive. “I’m sorry, Ethan, but I don’t do with that sort of stuff. It’s about as real as Alice in that book Cassie’s reading.”

“And yet, when you took the spearhead from me, you saw,” Ethan said softly.

“I saw nothing. I just . . . imagined it because of the stuff we’d been talking about, that’s all.”

“And Treven?”

“Treven?”

“You talked about him in your sleep. That’s when I knew you should be told about all of this,” he indicated the box and the brooch.

“All of what? Look, I’ve got one man dead and another beaten so badly he lost an eye. I’ve got a racket bringing illegal workers into the country and a bloody psycho who, though he might well be an educated man, is little more than a thug, as far as I can see. If you have anything to help me with that, then Ethan, I’ll listen gratefully enough. But