Read Wexford 18 - Harm Done for Free Online Page A

a child, and I - I thought, you’ve always been kind to me and gentle and patient, and I’ve never appreciated that. And I - I put my arm around him and lay beside him and hugged him. That’s something I haven’t done for years. . .”
       “Come on,” said Griselda, “don’t cry. Well, do cry if it makes you feel better.”
       She put her arm around Sylvia, but only for a moment, because the phone was ringing again.

    A designer in textiles who lived and worked in Pomfret had had her entire stock stolen. The collection, quilted coats and waistcoats, bedcovers and throws, as well as batik wall hangings, dresses, tablecloths, and napkins, had been housed in the basement, which had been converted two years before into a workshop. The basement window was barred and the door into the area double-locked and bolted, but the window of the cloakroom, a cupboard-sized place containing lavatory and diminutive washbasin, was open. Whoever had got through that window must have been thin and lithe, and he or she had evidently removed the entire haul through the same aperture.
       “Or unbolted and unlocked that door from the inside,” said Inspector Burden, “taken the stuff out, gone backs bolted and locked the door again, and escaped through that broken window.”
       “I couldn’t do it,” said Wexford sadly. “If it were half the size, I couldn’t.” He looked critically at Burden, whose new taupe-colored suit enhanced his slimness. “And I’m bound to say you couldn’t either, Mike. Did they put a kid in there? A kind of Oliver Twist?”
       “God knows. We’ve found no prints apart from her own and the guy she lives with. She values the stuff that’s gone at fifty thousand pounds.”
       “Does she now? I thought these craftspeople were supposed to be on the breadline. You know what they say, that they’d make more dosh going out cleaning than they do from their exquisite needlework, pots, batik, et cetera.”
       “That’s what she values it at. It’s got nothing to do with whether she can sell it or not. By the way, before I forget, we’ve had another mum phoned up to say her daughter’s missing.”
       Wexford banged the desktop with both fists. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
       Burden didn’t answer. Always particular about his appearance, he fingered his tie, also a shade of taupe but patterned discreetly in dark red and pale blue, and looked about him for a mirror. A small one had always hung on Wexford’s yellow wall between the door and the filing cabinet.
       “It’s gone,” Wexford said impatiently. “I don’t like mirrors or ‘looking glasses,’ as my old dad used to call them. I look in one to shave in the morning, I have to, and that’s enough for the day. I’m not a male model.”
       “Evidently,” said Burden, by now studying the best image of his face and neck he could get, their reflection in the glass that covered Wexford’s Chagall print. “I don’t know what’s wrong with this tie, it goes crooked whatever I do.”
       “For God’s sake, take it off then. Or do as I do and have two ties to wear on alternate days, the blue one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and the red one on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and vice versa the next week. Now perhaps you’ll tell me about this missing girl.”
       Burden sat down on the other side of Wexford’s desk. “It’s almost certainly nothing, Reg. Do you know that there are more than forty thousand teenagers missing in this country? Of course you do. Anyway, this one won’t be missing, she’s not a child, she’s eighteen and she’s probably done a Lizzie Cromwell.”
       “And what might that be?”
       “I mean she’s gone off with a boy or gone to visit friends, or dropped out or something.”
       “What do you mean, ‘dropped out’?”
       “She’s at university somewhere. She came home here for the weekend, went out on Saturday night, and hasn’t been seen