Read Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) for Free Online Page B

set foot outside her bedroom. The winter stretched ahead of Allison, dull and dim and relentlessly wet.
    Maybe she should have chosen the Bella Vista Rest Home!
    She pulled the curtains shut with a snap that made Ruby jump. Allison threw her head back against the sofa, an action that made her head spin. She closed her eyes, waiting for the dizziness to fade. There was nothing to look at in any case. She was already tired of the monotonous view, rain and clouds and tossing gray water, and they hadn’t even reached Seattle.
    Ruby was wrong. A person could easily expire from boredom.

C HAPTER 3
    In the Moreno Valley, where Frank Parrish stood ankle-deep in yellowing grass, late autumn sunshine slanted across the barracks and mess halls of March Field. A dry wind fluttered the brim of his Stetson as he squinted into the afternoon glare to watch the JN-4, dubbed the Jenny, joyously carve the empty sky with turns and rolls and dives. Its double wings flashed in the sunlight, and he had the odd, poetic thought that the airplane seemed to be laughing.
    The Jenny banked, angled toward the runway for a touch-and-go, then sailed up and over Frank’s head where he stood with Captain Carruthers. His ears thrummed with the sound of the engine, and the airplane was so close he could see the vibration of the struts between the double wings. The student in the front seat was grinning ear to ear. The instructor, in the back, waved to the men on the ground. Frank tipped his head up, one hand on his hat, but keeping a close eye on the undercarriage, the slight movement of the lower wing, the landing wheels spinning in the wind.
    “What do they say about the stick?” Frank asked, after the noise of the plane’s motor died away. “Advantage over the wheel?” The Jenny had previously been controlled by a Deperdussin control wheel, but this version, sometimes called the Canuck because of the Canadians who had redesigned it, used a stick. Frank’s right hand twitched with the urge to know for himself what it felt like, to understand the connection between the control and the craft.
    Carruthers said, “Depends who you ask. Some like it better. Some think the Jenny was fine the way it was.” He clapped Frank’s shoulder. “You can ask the pilot yourself.” The two men started across the field. The desiccated grass rustled under their feet, and the sun burned Frank’s shoulders through his jacket.
    He had arrived just that afternoon, climbing off the train in Riverside to be met by one of Carruthers’s sergeants. The sergeant had installed him in bachelor officers’ quarters, then brought him to the airfield to meet the captain.
    Captain Carruthers was exactly the sort of clear-eyed, broad-shouldered military man that a younger Frank Parrish had dreamed of becoming when he enlisted in the King’s army. He had been impatient to be in the show, to ride off in glory to fight the Hun. The British Army had snapped him up in a heartbeat, eager to commission a young officer with both engineering skills and a lifetime of horsemanship to recommend him. Frank thought he would be like Carruthers, career military, straight-backed, proud, with clarity of purpose and a taste for adventure.
    He sometimes thought, now, that the greatest shock of his war experience was not even the loss of his left arm, which was misery enough. The worse shock, in many ways, was the profound shift in his perception of the world. He came home stunned by the carnage, the cruelty, and the excesses of war. He might, he supposed, have regained his commission once he was able to tolerate his prosthesis, but he could never have accepted it.
    None of that dimmed his respect for Carruthers. The captain, and the others who labored here at March Field, had been essential to the ultimate victory of the Allies. Frank knew Carruthers by reputation, and the efficient operation he saw around him proved that the captain had earned it. Frank had saluted him in all sincerity, and shaken