Page 15 of And Then There Was the One
“So?” he repeated pleasantly.
“Have you had any brilliant insights? That’s why you’rehere, isn’t it? A sophisticated man of the city, here to show us country simpletons how to solve a murder?”
Sebastian took a sip of cider. “I would never presume to tell a woman her own mind, but I can’t help feeling that you don’t like me very much.”
“Everyone else likes you plenty,” Georgie said, taking a grumpy sip of her own drink. “They can make up for whatever adoration I am insufficient in displaying.”
“I find it rather refreshing, truth be told,” he said. “Some women are simplytooeasy to charm, you know—it takes all the sport out of it.”
“They’re not foxes.”
“Women and foxes, Georgie, are more alike than you might think.”
“Don’t you haveworkto be doing here? How are you going to help us solve a murder if you’re chasing after every female with a distracting pelt? What would Mr. Fitzgibbons have to say about that?”
He looked suddenly shifty, which naturally caused Georgie’s attention to sharpen on him. “He would not be… entirely surprised,” he hedged.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that I may have recently found myself… entangled in a personal matter… with a lady who happens to also be… matrimonially entangled… with someone at Scotland Yard.”
Georgie wasn’t fooled by these linguistic gymnastics for a second. “You had an affair with a policeman’s wife?” she hissed. “What iswrongwith you?”
“A question my family has often had cause to ask themselves,” he said reflectively. “And I shall simply say to you what I said to my sister when she learned of this predicament: the lady in question was extremely pretty.”
Georgie blinked at him—and then, suddenly, a dark suspicion set upon her. “This is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
He arched a single eyebrow at her in a rakishly charming sort of way. Georgie was not remotely charmed. “My dear Georgie, I am here to help you solve the latest in a plague of homicides that has befallen your idyllic countryside home.”
“But this is whyyou, specifically, are here,” she insisted, feeling more certain of the truth by the second. “You caused a mess and immediately fled town?”
He sighed. “It wasn’t an enormous scandal—the police lieutenant in question wanted it kept quiet—but Fitzgibbons was annoyed about the whole thing. He’s on thin ice with Scotland Yard at the best of times, since they’ve butted heads in the past, and he was threatening to let me go, so I showed him your letter and volunteered to spend a few weeks in the countryside until matters died down. He thought if the lieutenant was under the impression that I’d been reprimanded somehow, he might not kick up too much of a fuss when I reappear.”
Georgie snorted. “Are you really that good of an assistant?” Her tone was extremely skeptical; nothing that she’d witnessed so far evidenced a particularly keen investigative mind.
“Secretary.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m hissecretary, not his assistant,” Sebastian said, raising his glass to take another sip. “I—you know—handle his correspondence. Answer the telephone. Maintain his calendar.” He waved a hand vaguely. “That sort of thing.”
Georgie’s jaw dropped, though she wrenched it closed a moment later. She set her pint glass down with a deliberatethunk.“Let me be certain I understand this,” she said evenly. “I wrote to Mr. Fitzgibbons explaining that we’d had a string of murders in a village that had not seen a murder in the previous three decades, and that I was concerned that the death of our council chairman might not be of natural causes, and instead of taking these concerns seriously and coming himself, he sent us a womanizing secretary who can’t keep his thoughts on the matter at hand for more than five minutes at a stretch before the next tantalizing lady catches his eye?”
“I don’t think that’s entirely—”
“Well, I do.” Georgie stood up. “Thank you for the drink, Mr. Fletcher-Ford—but I believe our work here is done.”
“I say, Geor—Miss Radcliffe,” he amended hastily, at least wise enough to read whatever flashed across her face at that moment. “I thought we were to be partners!”
Georgie leaned forward and rested her hands on the surface of the table, meeting his eyes directly. “The only sort of partner I mean to be to you,” she said, “is the sort who assists a shiny-shoed man from out of town in finding the next train back to London.” She nodded toward the bar. “I believe Harry often has a copy of the timetable at hand.”
She straightened, whistled for Egg—who had been snoozing beneath the table during this entire conversation, unperturbed by her mistress’s metaphorical ruffled feathers—and said simply, “Goodbye, Mr. Fletcher-Ford. It has been a…” Here, manners failed her, and after a moment’s consideration, she concluded with, “An event.”
And then she turned and swept from the pub, hoping with every fiber of her being that she would never lay eyes on that useless man again.
This was her last, comforting thought before something collided with the back of her head with heavy force, and Georgie tumbled to the ground.
CHAPTER SIX
