A Place of Hiding (Inspector Lynley, #12)(131)

“You stupid boy!” Viking Woman’s voice sounded like metal on metal. “Don’t just stand there, for God’s sake,” and the milk burned behind him. She backed towards the wall. She turned her head as if she didn’t want to see her own destruction at the teeth of an animal who was in truth more terrified than she was, but instead of fainting or trying to get away, she began shouting “Adrian! Adrian! For God’s sake, Adrian!” and because her attention was no longer on him or on the dog, Paul felt his limbs unfreeze and move on their own. He darted forward and grabbed Taboo, dropping his rucksack to the floor. He pulled the dog over to the cooker and fumbled for the controls that would douse the heat beneath the milk. In the meantime, the dog still barked, the woman still shouted, and someone came clattering down the back stairs.

Paul lifted the pan from the cooker to take it to the sink, but with one hand on the dog who was trying to escape, he didn’t have the right balance. He lost the proper grip. The scalded mess ended up on the floor, and Taboo ended up where he’d been at first: inches away from the Viking woman, looking like he meant to have her for elevenses. Paul dived after him and dragged him off. Taboo continued to bark like a demon. Adrian Brouard crashed into the room. He said into the uproar,

“What the devil...?” and then, “Taboo! That’s enough! Shut up!”

Viking Woman cried, “You know this creature?” and Paul wasn’t sure if she meant himself or the dog.

Not that it mattered, because Adrian Brouard knew them both. He said, “This is Paul Fielder, Dad’s—”

“This?” The woman turned her gaze on Paul. “This filthy little...”

She seemed to be at a loss for a term that would suit the interloper in the kitchen.

Adrian said, “This.” He’d come downstairs in only the bottoms of his pyjamas and his slippers, as if he’d been caught in the act of finally dressing for the day. Paul couldn’t imagine not being up and about and busy with something at this hour.

Seize the day, my Prince. One never knows if there’ll be another. Paul’s eyes smarted with tears. He could hear the voice. He could feel his presence as strongly as if he’d strode into the room. He would have solved this problem in an instant: one hand out to Taboo and the other to Paul and What have we here? in his soothing voice.

“Shut that animal up,” Adrian said to Paul, although Taboo’s barking had subsided to a growl. “If he bites my mother, you’ll be in trouble.”

“More trouble than you’re already in,” Adrian’s mother snapped.

“Which is plenty, let me tell you. Where’s Mrs. Duffy? Did she let you in?” And then a shout of “Valerie! Valerie Duffy! Come here at once.”

Taboo didn’t like shouting, but the foolish woman hadn’t sorted this yet. Once she raised her voice, he began to bark anew. There was nothing for it but to hustle him from the room, but Paul couldn’t do that, clean up the mess, and fetch his rucksack simultaneously. He felt his bowels loosen with anxiety. He felt his brain expanding. In another moment, he knew that he would explode from both ends, and this knowledge was enough to spur him to decide.

Past the Brouards a corridor extended to a door that gave onto the vegetable garden. Paul began to pull Taboo in this direction as the Viking woman said, “Don’t even think of leaving without cleaning up the mess you’ve made, you little toad.”

Taboo snarled. The Brouards backed away. Paul managed to get him down the passage without another outburst—despite Viking Woman’s shriek of “Come back here at once!”—and he pushed the dog outside and into the fallow garden. He shut the door on him, steeling his heart when Taboo yelped in protest.

Paul knew the dog was only trying to protect him. He also knew that anyone with a grain of common sense would have understood that. But the world was not a place where one could depend upon people having common sense, was it? This fact made them dangerous because it made them afraid and sly.

So he had to get away from them. Because she hadn’t come to see what the ruckus was all about, Paul knew that Miss Ruth couldn’t possibly be home. He would have to return when it was safe to do so. But he couldn’t leave the remains of this disastrous encounter with the other Brouards behind him. That, of all things, would not be right. He went back to the kitchen and paused in the doorway. He saw that despite the Viking woman’s words, she and Adrian were already in the process of wiping up the floor and cleaning off the top of the cooker. The air in the room still hung with the odour of scalded milk, however.

“. . . an end to this nonsense,” Adrian’s mother was saying. “I’ll have him sorted out straightaway and make no mistake about it. If he thinks he can just walk in here without a by-your-leave...as if he owns the place...as if he’s not what he patently is, which is a useless little piece of common—”

“Mother.” Adrian, Paul saw, had spied him by the door and with that single word, so did Viking Woman. She’d been wiping off the cook top but now she was standing with the dishcloth in her hand and she balled it up with her large, ringed fingers. She gave him such a scrutiny from head to toe with such a look of disgust on her face that Paul felt a shiver come over him and knew he had to be gone at once. But he wasn’t about to leave without the rucksack and the message it contained about the plan and the dream.