A Well Kept Secret by A. B. King Page A

you. For your information, the doctor’s solicitors always paid my wages directly into my bank account; you can sort the matter of wages out with them if you are going there. Now, if there is nothing else you wish to discuss, I need to get ready for work.”

    There was not the slightest hint of a thaw in her voice or attitude, and he suddenly wondered if his late uncle had made some sort of promise to leave her the whole of his property if he died, and that that was what was lying at the bottom of everything? He dismissed the idea almost as soon as it appeared; he was just dreaming up unlikely scenarios. He felt sure that the truth, if and when it finally emerged, would be something far more prosaic.

    “Thank you for your time,” he said, acknowledging that their brief discussion was over. “I won’t delay you any further. I shall not be in lunch time, but I would like to have a meal at about eight this evening if that will be convenient?”

    “Do you wish to dine on anything in particular?”

    “No, I have few fads and fancies; I will leave it to your discretion.”

    “Very well,” she said, rising from the table, and without a further word she left.

    He finished his breakfast, glancing at the newspapers she had brought in with it, yet his mind remained on the intriguing matter of his housekeeper. Anyone less like his own redoubtable Mrs Croft he couldn’t imagine. Surely his late uncle could have found a more congenial person to assist him in running such a big house? Obviously he had been well satisfied with her services, unless he had been so scared of her he had been frightened to dismiss her? From what he had already seen she was certainly efficient, and he believed that she was telling the strict truth when she said that she was devoted to her late employer. Devoted or not, the idea of any sort of affair between them now seemed even more ludicrous than he had first supposed. Unless he was very much mistaken, anyone making an overtly personal move towards Mrs Brent with that sort of scenario in mind wouldn’t get past first base! Was she as off-hand with everyone, he wondered, or was it all reserved for him?

    During the early part of the morning he made a few telephone calls, and at about ten o’clock he got in his car and returned to Wellworthy town centre. It was, he thought, a bit grandiose calling it a town, for really it was little more than an overgrown village. For one thing, as he quickly discovered to his satisfaction, there was no problem parking in the high street, and every city and town he had been to in recent years had a parking problem of varying degrees of severity. Here there was ample space and nothing like the density of traffic he was accustomed to. Having parked, he stepped out of his car and noted that there was neither a parking meter nor an irritating yellow line to be seen anywhere. Having already obtained the name and address of his late uncle’s solicitors, it was to here that he directed his steps to make his first call.

    Jensen Smith and Carter, Family Solicitors said the well-polished brass plaque outside the rather small plain door of the high street offices of this long established rural practice. He entered, and made himself known to the rather mousy looking young woman sitting behind a small desk in the reception area. He asked to see Mr Dobson, the senior partner whom he knew had handled his uncle’s estate. Within a few moments Mr Dobson appeared through a door on the far side of the reception and invited him into his office after first requesting ‘Miss Grayson,’ which was evidently the mousy receptionist’s name, to muster up tea.

    The office was small and crowded out with furniture that looked as if it had been installed when the firm had first opened for business somewhere back in the nineteenth century. There were files and papers heaped about in a seemingly haphazard manner all round the room, which smelled rather dusty and airless. Mr Dobson was a man